Flowers Memorial Hall at Huntingdon College, a Gothic Revival red-brick building with a central tower, seen across the lawn

Huntingdon College – Montgomery, AL: The Red Lady and the Building That No Longer Stands

Southeastern US Haunted Schools

Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, has one of the most famous college ghosts in the state: the Red Lady, a girl in red said to walk the fourth floor of Pratt Hall. Pratt Hall is gone. The dormitory was demolished in 2024, and the legend is still told. This guide separates the story from the record and looks at how a ghost outlived her building.

The legend of the Red Lady

The best-known version comes from 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (1969), by Kathryn Tucker Windham and Margaret Gillis Figh. In that telling, a student named Martha arrives from New York because her father’s will requires her to attend his mother’s college. She dresses in red and fills her room with red furnishings, and she struggles to make friends. Roommate after roommate moves out. The dormitory president tries to befriend her, then leaves too, and Martha warns her she will regret it. The story ends with Martha’s death in her room on the fourth floor of Pratt Hall. Students are said to see crimson light flash over her transom on the anniversary each year.

The college has a second Red Lady in its past. According to the same book, as read in an Alabama Public Television episode, a different woman in red, carrying a red parasol, was said to walk the top floor of a dormitory when the college was still in Tuskegee. Later web retellings often blur the two. Some versions of the Pratt Hall story also call the student Margaret rather than Martha, as al.com notes.

The earliest trace: a 1931 yearbook

The earliest dated trace found is the 1931 yearbook, The Bells and Pomegranates. An archivist interviewed in the APT episode says it shows a student, probably dressed as the Red Lady, near Pratt Hall. The caption reads, “Freshman fears are culminated in the appearance of that mythical Red Woman who has caused such uneasiness to each student during her college career.” So by 1931 someone was already dressing up as the Red Lady to scare freshmen.

Windham herself attended Huntingdon from 1935 to 1939 and heard the story as a freshman. Margaret Figh, her English professor, suggested the ghost-story book in the mid-1960s. Windham wrote as a skeptic. In an interview shown in the episode she says, “I’m afraid I’m a skeptic.” She collected the story rather than verified it.

Pratt Hall: what the record shows

Julia A. Pratt Hall was a Tudor Revival dormitory. Its cornerstone was laid on May 31, 1912, and it was finished for the fall term of that year at a cost of just over $52,000, according to the National Register nomination for the Huntingdon College Campus Historic District. It was built to house a growing student body, and about 120 students moved in with President William Ewing Martin. A plain connector tied it to Weenona Hanson Hall, built in 1924. The nomination describes the building in detail and says nothing about a ghost.

Huntingdon announced in 2023 that a new wellness center would be built in the footprint of Pratt and Hanson halls, according to a college news release. Both halls were demolished in 2024. The question of what would happen to the Red Lady came up, and the college answered it with a ceremony.

The ghost moves house

A college leader describes the ceremony in the APT episode. Student ambassadors and members of the Student Government Association knocked on the front door of Pratt Hall. “Martha” came to the door dressed in red, with a suitcase and a hat box, and a parade of students escorted her to Jackson Home. As the college tells it, she now lives on the second floor there. It is a campus ritual, and an affectionate one, rather than a new sighting.

The legend also lives on in student events. Each October, women from the sororities dress in black and run across campus led by one who plays the Red Lady, a tradition called the Red Lady Run. A college news release on Fright Week in 2023 also mentions a haunted house and “Frank,” a library ghost. The APT episode suggests the Red Lady Run may descend from Senior Inspection, a World War I era custom in which seniors dressed as ghosts and woke the dorms at night.

What the record does not say

  • No record confirms Martha. Al.com reports that Huntingdon has no records to confirm the story, and no source found gives her a surname.
  • The timeline is awkward. The APT episode points out that Pratt Hall opened in 1912, the dormitory president who figures in the story was an office that did not exist until 1914, and a Red Lady was already in a 1931 yearbook. It suggests the prank came first and the sad backstory was added later. That is the episode’s argument, not a proven fact.
  • Dates differ between sources. The college’s own history places the records fire in a rented Montgomery building on August 24, 1909, while the Encyclopedia of Alabama gives 1910. The college was chartered in 1854 and opened its doors in 1856, so sources that say 1854 or 1856 are both describing something real.

The episode adds that archivists were due to begin cataloguing the papers of Margaret Figh, held at the University of Alabama’s Hoole Special Collections Library. They may say more about where the story came from.

Visiting

Pratt Hall no longer exists, so there is no building to visit for the central legend. Flowers Hall, the first building on the Montgomery campus, is the symbol of the college and is where visitors check in at 3022 Huntingdon College Drive. According to the college’s Plan Your Visit page, campus visits are by appointment on weekdays, with weekend preview days listed for November 14, 2026, and February 15, 2027. No public ghost tour was found. Visits are arranged through admissions at 334-833-4497.

Sources

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Top image: Flowers Memorial Hall on the campus of Huntingdon College, shown here because Pratt Hall no longer stands and no free photo of it was found. Photo: Chris Pruitt, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons