Ghostly Carolina Lore: Alice, the Ghost of The Hermitage

Last year while in school Darth Spoilboy was introduced to the ghostly lore of the Lowcountry. You might be surprised at the number of specters, phantoms, and agitated spirits that hang around the Georgetown area still making a peculiar racket after several centuries of rattling chains, acting as weathermen, and looking for jewelry in the case of Miss Alice.

My son, Darth Spoilboy, was rather surprised to learn that the burial place of one of South Carolina's most famous ghosts was only a few short miles from Uncle Paul's house. I promised him that we would mosey down to All Saints Cemetery and pay our respects to Miss Alice and the others in the cemetery the next time we were down there. Now don't misunderstand me I'm not a ghoul, I usually don't enjoy visiting such places but on a few occasions where history is involved I do enjoy learning about the people who lived before me. Many of the older cemeteries, 18th and 19th century types, placed a great deal of personal history on the tombstones of those who lay underneath. Plus, just by noticing the date in which a person was born and then died can teach you that life just a century ago was far tougher than many in this day and age could ever imagine. While touring Charleston the family and I more or less stumbled into another ancient cemetery and could not help but notice how many children never made it beyond the age of five.


The kids and I had just finished our day at the beach and were going to meet Uncle Paul and Lady Einstein, my aunt, at a local restaurant for an early dinner. Spoilboy then remembered my promise to show him the grave site and being ahead of schedule we made a detour for some education and adventure. All Saints Cemetery is nicely tucked away from the newer, more irritating, sections of the Pawleys Island community. The new subdivisions that have sprouted like unwelcome mushrooms are several miles south and the area around the cemetery has kept a great deal of the timeless sleepy quality the entire community once had. In fact I was somewhat surprised to see no one else visiting the cemetery since the local tourist board pushes the local ghost stories as hard as possible to draw more money in the area.







I have little to no idea about how or why graves are done but I noticed these types of tombs at the cemetery in Charleston a couple of years back. One of the tombs there, circa the 1750's, was cracked in the middle running all the way across the huge slab sitting on top with enough space between the cracks to almost see what might be inside. My best guess for these types of tombs is that in the Lowcountry the water table is so high that when it flooded in the real old days coffins had a nasty habit literally popping out of the ground. Such events are somewhat rarer but one officer I knew in the National Guard had the seriously messed up duty of locating and then retrieving coffins after a flood in North Carolina where he was living at that time. Making things very much worse was the fact that the cemetery where many of the coffins he was having to locate and retrieve came was new and still very much in business. So, trying not to be gross, many of the occupants in the misplaced coffins were "fresh", in a manner of speaking.

The picture below is of the grave site of Miss Alice. Several legends about her that I have heard say that if a engaged or newly married couple walk in a circle around her grave she will pull the engagement or wedding ring off the ladies finger. The path worn into the ground around her grave seem to confirm that at least some test the old legends. If you look closely at the picture you may see the pile of coins on top of her grave. Why people are doing this I have do idea but before we started to head back out to the car and make our way to the restaurant I did drop a couple coins myself. I was especially glad after the fact that once we were out of the cemetery Miss Wiggles, who I was carrying, yelled out: "Bye everybody!" For the full story of Miss Alice I invite y'all to visit CoastalGuide.com and read the most authentic version of her story.