THE STORY
Reported Haunting
Charleston's historic St. Michael's Episcopal Church is associated with the apparition of a young woman in a white wedding dress and an older legend of a ghostly bell-ringer in the church steeple.
St. Michael's Episcopal Church, completed in the eighteenth century, is one of Charleston's oldest and most recognizable churches. Its best-known ghost story concerns Harriet Mackie, a young woman who died in 1804 shortly after putting on her wedding dress. Local tradition says her white-clad apparition has subsequently been seen wandering through the church and churchyard. An even older paranormal account appeared in newspapers in 1889. According to the story, a longtime Charleston policeman repeatedly witnessed a shrouded figure enter the church near midnight, ascend the steeple and cause the church bells to ring without touching the ropes. The apparition was said to be the spirit of a murdered man condemned to wander until his killer was captured.