Crimson Hauntings reveals frightening UA legends

A collaboration among Creative Campus Initiative, University Programs, and Alpha Psi Omega theatre fraternity gave University of Alabama students, according to event coordinator and CCI intern Hilary Phillips, a chance to hear about some lengends that don't involve Alabama football.

On the nights of Oct. 30 and Oct. 31, 2007, more than 1,100 people flocked to the Ferguson Center Plaza to sign up for the free Crimson Hauntings tours.

Attendees were treated to an historic walk with a twist - APO actors stationed at campus locations such as the Quad, Gorgas Library, Allen Bales Theatre, sorority houses, and The Alabama Natural History Museum reenacted some of the more spine-tingling events of the University's past.

Among the stories told was one of a University coed whose fiancee was sent off to war. Shortly before they were to wed, the woman discovered that her beloved had been killed in battle, and she hung herself from her sorority house balcony.

"They say on some nights when the wind blows just right, you can still see her wedding dress rustling in the breeze," Phillips said.

Phillips told The Scene that the idea of the event was to portray history in an artistic manner.

As an added bonus for students who arrived early on the first night of the tours, University Programs brought in real life ghost hunter Derek Bartlett from the Cape and Islands Paranormal Research Society in Massachusetts to give a lecture in the Ferguson Theatre. Bartlett then investigated some of the allegedly haunted locations on the tour.