Historic Courthouse
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Pickens County Courthouse
The Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton, Alabama, is world-renowned for 'The Face in the Window,' one of the American South's most legendary folklore phenomena. In the late 1870s, a freedman named Henry Wells was accused of setting fire to the county's previous courthouse. According to local lore, as an angry lynch mob gathered in the square below, Wells peered out from a garret attic window and declared his innocence, warning that he would haunt the town forever. A sudden bolt of lightning struck the window pane at that precise moment, permanently etching the ghostly likeness of his terrified face into the glass, where it remains visible to this day.