Case file · Haunting
Face in the Carrollton courthouse window
After the Pickens County courthouse in Carrollton, Alabama, burned, Henry Wells, a Black man accused of the arson, was said to have stared from an attic window before he was killed by a mob in 1878; his face, people say, was printed on the glass.
1878 CE · 33.26, -88.10 · status: legend
The account
The pane survives and is shown to visitors; the face is said to return whatever cleaning is tried.
The sceptical view
Weathered glass and pareidolia explain the 'face'. The story records a real act of racial violence.