As Halloween draws near, many people are in search of spooky events for the season. If a ghost story sounds appealing, Ghosts of the Black Belt will be offering those and many other haunted attractions for students and community members to enjoy throughout October.
Sponsored by the UA Center for Economic Development, Ghosts of the Black Belt offers tourists a night of ghost stories and tours, while enhancing the rural economies of towns in the Black Belt region.
Nisa Miranda, director of the UA Center for Economic Development, said the UACED has been working with rural areas for the past 25 years.
“Many of these places have a lot of interesting stories as well as history, culture and natural resources,” Miranda said. “There’s a lot of folklore and story telling about ghosts in the Black Belt. As a result, we thought it was a very interesting topic to concentrate on.”
Ghosts of the Black Belt is in its second year. Many of the events, like the Katherine Tucker Windham ghost walk in Thomasville, have grown to be so large that they are now festivals. Linda Vice, the tourism director for rural Southwest Alabama, said the UA Honors College played a role in creating some events.
“Communities have to realize what their strengths and weaknesses are and pick out those strengths and play to them,” Vice said. “And what we’ve found to be the strength in working with The University of Alabama is our stories and our traditions.”
Vice said she worked with the Honors College to produce a YouTube series called “Alabama Ghost Trail.” The series featured 22 first-person accounts of ghost stories and experiences.
Miranda said doing fun events like the Ghosts of the Black Belt allows communities in the 11 Black Belt counties to benefit from the influx of tourists.
Both women believe the economic development of the Black Belt region is an incremental one involving a lot of planning and imagination.
“These are outreaching service projects where we are helping poorer regions of Alabama become more viable,” Miranda said. “It’s a way that shows how The University of Alabama is active in improving the living conditions and economic situations of people outside of Tuscaloosa.”
Some of this year’s Ghosts of the Black Belt attractions include a haunted house at Old St. Stephen’s Historical Park, a ghost hunting investigation in Cahawba, and the Thomasville ghost walk.
Vice said most of these events are family-friendly and admission is roughly $5 per event. Additionally, she said most of the attractions are close enough for UA students to attend.
“I really enjoy all of them,” Vice said. “In the Black Belt, everybody loves ghosts and we figured out why. One [reason] is the Celtic heritage of the Scots-Irish people and the other is the African tradition with the voodoo.”
