Alabama's, "Lady in Black" - Prattville, Alabama

The old Pratt Cotton Gin is located on the banks of the outer lining regions of the Alabama River in Prattville, Alabama. This skeletal wonder of brick and stone is hauntingly silent. Now free from the machinery that ran the mill for more than one hundred years, only the spirits remain. In its years of operation, a young boy named, Willie Youngblood fell to his death in an elevator shaft. His mother spent the next year in a silent depression and distraught state. She eventually prevailed in joining her son in the afterlife when she flung herself off the Pratt Mill dam and drown to death.


Today the spirits of Willie and his mother are the most prominent and infamous of Prattville. Former security personnel from the mill and even mayor, Bill Gillespie are familiar with the stories and sightings of these legendary ghosts. For years people would see the spirit of the, "Lady in Black" wandering through the machine floor. As many as fifty workers have reported to see her at once, always wearing a black dress, no doubt reflective of her mourning for her son, she searches endlessly for him in a purgatory of sadness.


Recently, paranormal investigators, Benny Reed, Jonathan Hodges, Hart Fortenbery, Keith Ramsey, Kevin Betzer and Randy and Kali Hardy, also known as, "Deep South Paranormal" took on the grueling task of investigating this mammoth abandoned mill. The evidence they gathered was indicative of the stories regarding the Lady in Black and her son. While investigating the upper floors of the mill, a black apparition was filmed moving across a section of land near the dam. Today plans to renovate and turn the mill into a residential area are underway, but does Prattville’s Lady in Black sleep? Or will she continue to search the location for her son?

You can read more about the history of the Pratt Cotton Gin and of the investigation conducted by Deep South Paranormal in, “Haunted Montgomery Alabama” by paranormal author, Faith Serafin.