Ghost Hunters Spend Halloween Eve Searching for Spirits at Bon Secour’s Historic Swift-Coles Home
Southern Ghost Girls Tours and guests carried EMF monitors, REM pods and spirit boxes through the 16-room Baldwin County mansion, where workers reported seeing an apparition in 1977.
BON SECOUR, Ala. — On an afternoon in 1977, construction workers moving bookshelves on the first floor of the Swift-Coles Historic Home said they saw a woman coming down the staircase. She wore her hair in a bun, a high-collared white shirt and a dark skirt. According to the story they told, she looked at the men, asked, “What are you doing with my library?” and disappeared.
Almost 50 years later, people are still trying to reach whoever may be lingering in the Baldwin County landmark.
Among them is Southern Ghost Girls Tours, which spent Halloween Eve at the home with groups of guests, carrying gear such as EMF monitoring devices, REM pods and spirit boxes from room to room.
A favorite stop for a traveling tour company
Founded in 2018, Southern Ghost Girls Tours travels across Alabama and to states including Tennessee, Louisiana and Georgia. The company tours historic venues and hosts private events such as ghost hunts, murder mystery dinners and bar crawls, with a large portion of the proceeds going to the historic venues it visits and to local charities.
Owner and CEO Lesley Ann Hyde said that of the more than 100 places the group has investigated, the Swift-Coles home is a favorite.
“When you walk up, it’s magical, and you really feel like it’s a home. I don’t know how to really explain it,” Hyde said. “It’s by the river, the Bon Secour River, and Mobile Bay is not too far from here. Water makes things energize, especially for ghost hunts. I love this place.”
Hyde, who is from Birmingham, said she had her first ghost experience at age six. She considers herself a medium who hears voices that give her messages, and she says she has used that ability to help police departments with missing persons cases.
From fisherman’s cabin to 16-room mansion
The house began in 1882 as a four-room cabin built by a local Creole fisherman named Thomas Gavin. Lumber baron Charles Augustus Swift bought it in 1898 and expanded it with his wife, Susan Platt Roberts Swift, raising 11 children there. Today it stands as a 16-room mansion close to the Bon Secour River.
The home stayed in the Swift family until 1976, when local entrepreneur Norman Nicholas Coles purchased it.
The stories that surround the house
Along with its deep roots in Baldwin County history, the home has collected years of reported sightings and hauntings. The tales involve the spirits of the Swift family and Civil War soldiers, and even victims of gangster Al Capone, tied to a legend that some bodies from his Chicago crimes were disposed of in the area. None of those accounts has been proven, but they are a large part of why investigators keep coming back.
After dinner on Halloween Eve, the tour leaders took guests through the bedrooms once used by the Swift children and along dark hallways lined with artifacts from the home’s past, trying to communicate with whatever might be there.
Bringing strangers together
For Hyde, the appeal goes beyond whether anyone is convinced. She said she enjoys gathering believers and skeptics for a night of fun at a time of division.
“The most joy I get out of this is bringing people together on a tour or an event and seeing the people that don’t know each other. They come from all walks of life. They’re strangers when they get to the event,” Hyde said. “When they leave, they all know each other. I enjoy seeing them laugh, have a good time, socialize and that brings such joy to me. To bring people together like that to have fun.”
Those in the mood for a different kind of visit can read about the home’s holiday vintage fair.
