Boone Hall Plantation

Named after founder John Boone, this is perhaps the most haunted plantation in all of South Carolina. The property was later sold to the Horlbeck brothers, who forced enslaved people including young children to work the fields and brickyard.

Boone Hall Plantation was founded in 1681 by Major John Boone, one of the first settlers to arrive in the colony of South Carolina in 1672, using land grants from Carolina's Lords Proprietors. The plantation passed through generations, and when the Horlbeck brothers acquired the property, they erected a massive brick factory staffed by the forced labor of over 225 enslaved African people, producing approximately four million bricks every year. Those bricks built much of historic Charleston -- and the nine brick slave cabins along Slave Street, constructed between 1790 and 1810, still stand as testaments to the people who made and laid them. Captain Thomas Boone planted the first trees in 1743 in what would become the plantation's famous Avenue of Oaks, and enslaved gardeners completed the sweeping moss-draped allee in 1843 using hand tools.

Since at least 1956, approximately ten distinct spirits have been documented on the property, and every major paranormal sighting centers on the brickyard and its kiln -- the site where enslaved workers endured the most brutal conditions. The most frequently reported apparition is a young woman on the brink of adulthood who appears in pale moonlight near the road leading to the brickyard, stuck in what witnesses describe as a freeze frame of agony. She constantly jerks her hands back and forth as if reconciling some major trauma, her face perpetually hidden behind ragged hair. She appears and vanishes without warning, repeating the same tortured movements each time -- a classic residual haunting that seems to replay suffering etched into the very ground.

Near an old brick kiln chimney along the creek, visitors have encountered a second female spirit in tattered clothing whose face has never been seen, as her long hair drapes over and conceals her identity. She appears briefly before fading into nothing. Two young spirits -- a slave girl and boy whose backstories remain unknown -- are frequently observed running behind the old furnaces or appearing together to startled visitors. The children seem playful rather than distressed, darting between the brick structures as if at work or play.

The plantation house itself has its own famous ghost. According to local legend, a young woman named Ammie Jenkins fell in love with a Native American named Concha, but her family arranged a different marriage. On the eve of her wedding, an arrow pierced Ammie through an open window. She staggered down the staircase and collapsed in her fiance's arms, dying on the thirteenth step. Visitors have reported seeing a pool of blood materialize on that thirteenth step and then mysteriously vanish, and apparitions of a wounded young woman lying across the stairs have been witnessed on multiple occasions.

In the former slave cabins, the paranormal activity takes on an interactive quality. In Cabin 11, a television reportedly turned on and off repeatedly in response to visitors' movements -- switching on when someone entered the room and off when they retreated. Visitors throughout the property report the physical sensation of being touched by unseen hands, sudden temperature drops near the brickyard, and an overwhelming sense of grief that descends without warning.

Boone Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 and designated an African American Historic Place in South Carolina in 2021. Today the plantation offers guided tours, a Gullah culture presentation in the slave cabins, and seasonal events including the popular Fright Nights each October. The Avenue of Oaks, the slave cabins, and the brickyard ruins draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year -- and the spirits of those who suffered and died making the bricks that built Charleston appear to remain, their presence as enduring as the structures they were forced to create.