All Saints Cemetery

Alice Flagg died at sixteen after her brother tore away her secret engagement ring as she lay sick with malaria in 1849 and threw it into the marsh. Her ghost, always in a white dress with one hand on her chest, draws visitors who leave rings on her grave and walk backward around it thirteen times to summon her.

Church records say Alice Flagg isn't even buried here. The marble slab bearing only the name ALICE, with no dates, no surname, no epitaph, may belong to a different Alice Flagg entirely, possibly a victim of the 1893 hurricane that swept dozens of coastal residents out to sea. The real Alice, historians at Belin Memorial United Methodist Church argue, rests in an unmarked grave at their cemetery in Murrells Inlet. None of that has slowed the visitors down.

Every weekend, ghost tour groups file through the gates of All Saints Cemetery on Pawleys Island and head straight for that flat marble slab under the live oaks. They leave rings on it. They walk backward around it thirteen times while calling her name. A group of teenagers who completed the ritual in the early 2000s saw a girl in a white dress standing off to the side of the cemetery. She vanished before anyone could speak.

The legend goes like this: Alice Flagg was born around 1834 into one of the wealthiest planter families on the Waccamaw Neck. Her brother, Dr. Allard Belin Flagg, lived at the Hermitage, their family's plantation house on Murrells Inlet, and controlled the household after their father's death. When Alice was fifteen or sixteen, she fell in love with a young lumberman. Her family considered him far beneath their station. Her mother put it bluntly, at least in one retelling of the story: "How can you etch on this earth anything that's worthwhile if you attach yourself to this common lumberman?"

Alice and the lumberman became secretly engaged. He gave her a simple gold ring, which she wore on a ribbon hidden beneath her dress, pressed against her chest. Dr. Flagg discovered the engagement, demanded she return the ring, and shipped her off to a boarding school in Charleston to separate her from the man. Nobody ever recorded the lumberman's name.

At school, Alice contracted malaria. Dr. Flagg rode to Charleston in his carriage during a storm and found her delirious, clutching at her chest where the ring still hung. He packed her into the carriage for the long ride back to the Hermitage. She drifted in and out of consciousness, reaching for the ring the whole way home.

Alice died at the Hermitage in 1849. She was sixteen years old. Her family dressed her in her favorite white gown for burial. When Dr. Flagg found the ring still tied to its ribbon beneath her dress, he tore it away and threw it into the marsh. It was never recovered.

The ghost of Alice Flagg has been seen at both the Hermitage and the cemetery ever since, always in a white dress, always with one hand pressed to her chest, always searching. Visitors at the cemetery describe something beyond the visual sightings: an overwhelming wave of grief that seems to rise from the ground near the grave, a sadness too specific and too sudden to be their own. Others report a distinct tug on their rings, as if unseen fingers are trying to pull the jewelry from their hands.

The tradition of leaving rings and jewelry on Alice's grave started decades ago and continues without interruption. Offerings appear and disappear with no clear pattern. A ring left in the morning may be gone by afternoon. New ones show up overnight.

All Saints Episcopal Church has stood on this site since 1739, built because Waccamaw Neck residents could only reach the original parish church by water, which was, according to colonial records, "very hazardous in blowing weather." The cemetery dates from the 1820s and holds the graves of the most powerful planter families of antebellum Georgetown County. It features some of the finest gravestone art in the South Carolina lowcountry, spanning from about 1820 to 1900. But nobody comes here for the gravestone art.

They come for a flat marble slab with one word on it. Whether Alice Flagg actually lies beneath that stone or somewhere else entirely, her ring is still missing. People keep trying to return it.