Castleberry Bank Building
A former bank in Castleberry, Alabama, Castleberry Bank Building is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Former bank in Castleberry; research record. The archive files it under haunted places. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, every one filed as account rather than fact. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.
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Is Castleberry Bank Building haunted?
The record holds 1 claim — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed reported experience. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
At the corner of Cleveland Avenue and West Railroad Street in Castleberry — the 'Strawberry Capital of Alabama,' between Evergreen and Brewton — stands the town's old bank building, once its only financial institution and at one time its post office. The original bank failed in the Depression, and local legend supplies the era's standard tragedy: a bank president who lost everything is said to have taken his life inside. A later financial institution occupied the building into at least the 1980s, and its employees reported the file's core phenomena — the smell of cigar smoke, a man's voice and footsteps crossing the empty bank, objects moved overnight.
The October ritual
The building's modern haunting file is unusually well-documented as journalism. The Evergreen Courant's Lee Peacock made it an annual October ghost hunt, and on October 20, 2012, he, Monroe Journal reporter Josh Dewberry and Alabama Paranormal Research Society's John Higginbotham spent the night inside; Dewberry's published account, 'Cigar smoke and dead silence,' records the distinctly sweet scent of a lit cigar moving through the building just after ten — experienced, reported, unexplained.
The dossier keeps it as reported experience anchored to a real Depression-failed bank: a small-town landmark whose ghost is, fittingly, smelled before it is seen.
The record of claims
Southern Spirit Guide recounts unexplained cigar smells and voices. Castleberry Bank Building's file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. The claim rests on experience rather than evidence, and the file says so. It's the kind of claim that outlives debunkings — too many witnesses, too few explanations.
Sources on file
- 01Alabama Hauntings — County by County, Part IISouthern Spirit Guide · blog · A4
Field notes & open questions
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