THE STORY
Reported Haunting
Sturdivant Hall's best-known ghost tradition centers on banker John Parkman, whose apparition is said to remain in the mansion while doors and rocking chairs sometimes move without explanation.
Sturdivant Hall is an antebellum mansion in Selma now operated as a historic house museum. Its most enduring ghost story concerns former owner John Parkman, a nineteenth-century banker whose spirit is said in local folklore to have returned to the house. Reports associated with the mansion include a male apparition, rocking chairs moving without anyone touching them, doors opening or closing and other unexplained disturbances. The Parkman tradition became particularly well known through Alabama ghost folklore and is presented as legend rather than proof of a supernatural event.