Boone Hall Plantation

Named after founder John Boone, this is widely considered the most haunted plantation in South Carolina. The Horlbeck brothers later owned it, forcing enslaved people — including children — to work the fields and brickyard.

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

Since at least 1956, around ten distinct spirits have been documented on the property, and every major sighting centers on the brickyard and its kiln -- the site where enslaved workers endured the most brutal conditions. The ghost seen most often is a young woman who appears in pale moonlight near the road leading to the brickyard, frozen in what witnesses describe as a loop of agony. She jerks her hands back and forth constantly, as if working through some major trauma, her face always hidden behind ragged hair. She appears and vanishes without warning, repeating the same tortured movements -- a residual haunting that seems to replay suffering burned into the ground.

Near an old brick kiln chimney along the creek, visitors have encountered a second woman in tattered clothing whose face has never been seen, her long hair concealing her identity. She appears briefly before fading. Two young spirits -- a girl and boy whose stories remain unknown -- show up frequently running behind the old furnaces or appearing together to startled visitors. The children seem playful rather than distressed, darting between the brick structures.

The main house has its own 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 step and then vanish, and a wounded young woman lying across the stairs has been witnessed on multiple occasions.

In the former slave cabins, the activity turns interactive. In Cabin 11, a television reportedly turned on and off in response to visitors' movements -- switching on when someone entered and off when they retreated. Throughout the property, visitors report feeling touched by unseen hands, sharp temperature drops near the brickyard, and sudden, overwhelming grief.

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. The plantation offers guided tours, a Gullah culture presentation in the slave cabins, and seasonal events including the popular Fright Nights each October.