Stumbling Upon a Haunted Pizza

I have been meaning to go to Sam and Greg's Pizza in downtown Huntsville, Alabama for sometime.  It is notoriously haunted.  It has been investigated by paranormal investigators and proven to be haunted using all the ghost hunting gadgets such folk use.  It has been featured on the local news.  Psychics have declared it haunted. Yet, for some reason I haven't stopped by.  I even love pizza and their pizza is wonderful. 

Last week a lovely young writer named Stephanie contacted me to do an interview for a local magazine. I was delighted when she invited me to meet with her at Sam and Greg's.  I assumed she knew it was haunted and invited me there because of its haunting, but it was just a wonderful coincidence.  I had heard that all of the paranormal activity associated with this cute little restaurant takes place in the upstairs room, so we sat upstairs.  I believe the activity actually happens in the forbidden region of the restaurant just beyond the lock door, but it was still nice to sit and talk about ghosts next to such a haunted place.

 

On my way out of the restaurant, I asked one of the employees about the stories associated with the restaurant.  She says that the rumors that circulate amongst the staff state that the ghost that haunts Sam and Greg's was once a maintenance man in the old building.  His boss used to like to play practical jokes on him and he was always being laughed at.  Nobody can say for sure if it was all the jokes, or if the maintenance man was just lost in all his melancholy, but, according to the oral tradition, he killed himself in the building on the second floor.  His ghost still wanders Sam and Greg's making mischief to this day.  The staff who talked to me about this says she's not sure she believes all this, but she still finds the story fun and so did I.  

The Haunted Upstairs Area Can Be Seen From the Upstairs Dinning Area

The Upstairs Dinning Area

The Children of Walker Street

The Spanish Flu killed between 50 million and 100 million people between 1917 and 1920.   It swept the globe, killing people in every corner of the world.  It was a particularly cruel plague.  Most illnesses prey on the weak.  They take the elderly and children, but the Spanish flu was indiscriminate. It killed many healthy young adults as well as the weak. It is considered to be the second largest disaster in human history and it infected 28% of the human population and killed 3% of the global population.  It killed more people than the black plague.  Enormous Flu wards were created to care for the amazing number of sick that over ran hospitals and health facilities where the sick were lined up like cattle to wait for death.

It is no surprise that the Spanish Flu left many ghosts.   I've found many ghost stories related to this terrifying epidemic.  The story of Walker Street in Historic Huntsville, Alabama is one of the sadder of these tales.  According to local legend, the Spanish Flu hit Walker street with a particular cruelty.  It took mostly children, leaving entire homes empty.  So many people died that the bodies of the dead would be left on the front porch  because there weren't enough healthy people left to bury the dead.  

The ghosts of the many children that died on Walker Street during the Spanish Flu are still said to wander the streets at night.  They've been seen singing and playing in the shadowy dark.  They sing nursery rhymes as they play and haunt the living that have been left behind.  There is a  rhyme that the children are said to have made up.  "I had a bird whose name was Enza, I opened the window and in flew Enza."  The children are said to still sing this little rhyme as they wander Walker Street.

One of the Most Haunted Places in Alabama

Merrimack hall is tucked neatly away in the West end of Huntsville. The building itself seems oddly out of place here. It is surrounded by tacky strip malls and modern buildings that all appear a bit shabby and rundown. The road in front of it is loud and busy. Everything about this part of West Huntsville is dingy and colorless. Merrimack Hall steps out of this setting like peacock in a barnyard. It is a pretty building that has been lovingly restored to its former glory. It is inviting and before you even walk in you begin to wonder what lurks inside.


Inside, the building is just as beautiful as it is outside. The building was restored by the Jenkins who has turned it into a nonprofit performing art center and a community resource. The walls inside are covered with playbills and programs from all the performances that have shown at this community center. They are also covered in newspaper articles and stories about the way the Merrimac performing arts center has given to the community. It is hard to imagine any ghosts in this exciting environment, but the ghosts at Merrimac Hall are so active and so dark that they have turned skeptics into believers and have made brave men quake.

The Merrimack wasn’t always a performing art center, but it has always been a community center. The early part of the twentieth century in Alabama was ruled by large mills and the microcosms that grew up around them. Huntsville, Alabama’s history reflects this trend. Large mills sprang up around the area that is now Huntsville and in the shadow of these mills, villages grew and thrived. Mill owners provided their employees with housing, schools, and all of their needs.

Merrimack Textile Mill was one of the largest and most successful of the Alabama mills. In July of 1900 Merrimack Manufacturing Company of Lowell, Massachusetts, opened its textile mill in Huntsville and the first village houses appeared in its shadows. When the Mill began operations it had 750 employees who lived in 60 houses clustered around the mill. The Merrimack Mill was an instant success and demand for the Mill’s textiles seemed to grow immediately. This large demand lead to the construction of a second Mill in 1903.

So the Merrimack Village expanded and more houses were built. In order to serve the growing population of the Merrimack Village, the building that is now Merrimack Hall was constructed. This preliminary structure served many purposes. It was a community center even then and was used to house a small school for the children, a bicycle shop, a photo shop, and two barber shops. Merrimack hall served many purposes for the growing community that was bursting out of the seams around it.   Merimack hall served as a community center until the 1980's when the mill finally closed it's doors. 
Now, Merrimack hall has been given a new breath of life. It has been turned into a community center again and has rediscovered itself as a place where stage dreams are made real. But the ghosts of those that used to live in Merrimack Hall haven’t moved on. They still cling to their old community center and they don’t want to let go. Merrimack Hall has been the site of continual paranormal activity since its reopening and renovation. Those who have been to the hall have heard phantom voices, seen doors close by themselves, and seen objects move on their own. Some say that Merrimack is haunted by a little boy named Charlie Foster who worked in the mill before child labor laws had made this illegal. They say that Charlie wanders the community center that had been the center of the world in life making mischief.


The Alabama Paranormal Association (APS) investigated the haunting at Merrimack Hall. The Alabama Paranormal Association is a nonprofit group that investigates paranormal activity using technology and reason. They use instrumental readings, eye witness accounts, and history to assess and evaluate whether or not a location is haunted. I spoke with Leilani, from APS about their findings at Merrimack Hall. According to Leilani, Merrimack hall is one of the most active haunted sites she has investigated. She believes that the site is haunted by multiple spirits and that Charlie Foster isn’t the only ghost clinging to the old building.

APS reports that they were able to catch several apparitions on film. Leilani also describes hearing voices, singing, and footsteps on the stage during the investigation. She says that she had a man who was quite skeptical with her. He said that he absolutely didn’t believe in ghosts, but after they saw a full apparition of a man sitting in a chair, he changed his mind. Other evidence that APS caught during their investigation included a very interesting Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) recording. During this recording, an investigator asked if the ghosts liked the Christmas lights and a voice on the tape distinctly answered “yes”. One of the investigators had brought their iPod with them on the interview so I could hear the EVP. It was a chilling recording and the voice on the tape sounded like that of a young man or boy. APS felt that Merrimack was one of the most haunted places in North Alabama.