THE STORY
Reported Haunting
The ruins of the historic Brick House on Edisto Island are associated with a long-standing legend of a young bride murdered on her wedding day by a jealous former suitor. Her apparition is said to appear at an upstairs window, and some versions of the story claim that a bloodstain on the windowsill could never be removed. Later retellings identify the bride as Amelia Candace Hamilton, though her identity and the circumstances of her death vary considerably between versions of the legend.
The Brick House, also known as the Paul Hamilton House, was constructed around 1725 on Edisto Island and is one of South Carolina's important surviving examples of early colonial architecture. The house remained standing for roughly two centuries before a devastating fire in 1929 left only its brick shell. The ruins were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. A ghost story associated with the house has been recorded in South Carolina folklore for decades. In its basic form, a young woman preparing for her wedding was confronted by a rejected suitor and killed at or near an upstairs window. One version recorded by Margaret Rhett Martin in 1963 describes the killer as a local Native American who shot the bride with an arrow, while a later account by Geordie Buxton describes a Charleston man who shot her with a pistol. Despite these differences, both traditions maintain that the bride's ghost continues to appear at the window where she died. Buxton also records a legend that the windowsill remained stained with her blood. A more recent version circulated by The Lantern identifies the bride as Amelia Candace Hamilton and adds reports of wedding music and the sounds of an unseen steamboat on the nearby water. Those details should be regarded as later folklore rather than established history. The Brick House remains privately owned and is not normally open to the public.