Welcome to the broadcast premiere of "Jeffrey's Southern Ghosts" here on Alabama Public Television.

This is our new YouTube series, which we're happy to preview here and broadcast.

I'm Mike McKenzie.

And I'm here with Dilcy Windham Hilley, the daughter of the great author, Kathryn Tucker Windham.

Oh, thank you.

And we are so, so excited that you've allowed us to bring this new version of your mother's stories to broadcast and to video.

Thank you so much.

Oh, and Mike, I'm so delighted that you had an interest, that Alabama Public Television had an interest in these stories.

Oh, they're a part of our Alabama culture.

And I just hope we do them justice with the videos.

I mean, your mother did all kinds of different work.

So how did the "Ghost Stories" compare to her other writing?

The "Ghost Stories" were not the first book she published.

She had a cookbook first, which is kind of surprising.

What really attracted her interest, though, after the ghost books were family stories.

And she wrote a number of books about growing up in Clark County.

I think most people remember her for her "Ghost Stories", but there were so many other things that she wrote.

You were in junior high school and high school when she started the "Ghost Stories", right?

It was something of a surprise when she said, "Here's a proof of my new book."

And I thought, "Well, that's interesting.

"She certainly has changed her tune from writing cookbooks."

And my friends read it.

And they said, "Oh, your mother's written a wonderful book."

And I was very proud of my mother.

I always have been, but, you know.

I think I understand that the first episode, "The Phantom Steamboat of the Tombigbee", is one of your favorite stories.

It is.

I love that story and probably not for all the right reasons, Mike.

People freezing and falling from the trees into the water to their deaths.

It's just, it's horrifying.

And yet, it's intriguing at the same time.

So it's quite a story.

What does video and music and everything that comes with this series bring to these stories do you think?

In a different medium, they become almost alive, you know.

So I think it's a wonderful way to enhance it.

And now, whether you are a longtime fan of Kathryn Tucker Windham's and you know the story by heart or this is the first time you've heard it, we hope you enjoy our new interpretation of "The Phantom Steamboat of the Tombigbee".

(static crackling) [Kathryn] Darkness closed in behind that boat.

All you could hear was screams for help, occasionally a splash where someone fell from one of the trees into the river and drowned.

[Narrator] Death by fire or by the freezing cold.

Imagine, all around you, one or the other has already claimed the lives of old and young, free and enslaved alike.

The light of a burning riverboat dances maniacally on an icy river.

Somewhere nearby, you hear a splash.

(water splashing) Yet another poor soul, numb with exhaustion and cold, plunges from the flooded tree tops into the water, (passenger sobbing) just as you did some hours ago.

(river water trickling) But as the final chill overtakes you, there's an unearthly site.

There will be no rest in death.

Your spirit is an eternal passenger on the ghost ship that will haunt this river forever bringing doom to all unfortunate enough to see it.

It's the Eliza Battle.

It's the ghost of the Eliza Battle warning us to leave the river.

Some tragedy is going to take place.

[Russ] Just a true horror.

These people were doomed.

Their spirits and their souls belong to the Tombigbee.

This fits the description of where it burned and sank.

They hurry away because they have been warned by the ghost of the Eliza Battle.

(creepy ambient music) [Narrator] Her name was Kathryn Tucker Windham.

You do not have to believe in ghosts to enjoy a good ghost tale.

[Narrator] A folklorist and storyteller.

For nearly 50 years, she traveled the South collecting tales of mystery and the supernatural.

But a good ghost story will stretch your imagination and make you wonder, "Could that really be true?"

[Narrator] But she was not alone.

An unearthly presence followed her.

She named the spirit Jeffrey.

This is what they discovered.

(loud mysterious music) (wind howling) Early one morning at my home in Selma, I guess it's before daylight around four o'clock, I heard somebody pounding on my front door.

And I went to answer it.

And there stood three young men.

They're excited young men, and they said to me, "We have seen the Eliza Battle."

And I said, "What?"

And they said, "We've seen the ghost of that steamship "on the Tombigbee River."

Well, I was glad to hear about it because I like my ghost stories to be verified.

And the Eliza Battle is one of the fine ghost stories in Alabama.

(eerie music) [Narrator] "The Phantom Steamboat of the Tombigbee."

(eerie music) [Storyteller] When the late winter rains send the Tombigbee River out of its banks, there sometimes rises out of the muddy water a ghost ship, the charred hull of a side wheel steamer.

On those stormy nights, some folks along the river say they hear the gay music of a steam calliope.

And others report hearing agonizing cries for help blown on the cold river wind.

"It's the Eliza Battle," whisper the folks who see the phantom boat and who hear the eerie sounds.

"It's the Eliza Battle trying to finish her trip "down to Mobile.

"Something terrible is gonna happen."

For always, the appearance of the phantom ship has heralded tragedy.

Superstitious rivermen who see the ghostly hull rise from the water leave the river for safer jobs ashore.

They know that the Eliza Battle is warning them that the treacherous Tombigbee will claim their lives, just as it claimed the lives of passengers and crews on the Eliza Battle.

(eerie music) -(paddle wheel smacking) -(wind blowing) (insects chirping) [Narrator] Mrs.

Windham and Jeffrey came through here in the 1960s in search of that infamous ghost ship.

Today, almost 170 years after the Eliza Battle sank, locals still know the story well.

My name is Nick Harrell, and I'm a lifelong resident of Pennington, Alabama.

And Pennington, Alabama's most famous story is the "Eliza Battle."

(peaceful music) Well, as every great ghost story starts off, a beautiful day turns into a dark stormy night.

(truck traveling on road) We're here right now in what was formerly known as Kemp's Landing, just outside of Naheola, Alabama, in Choctaw County.

This is the final resting place of the Eliza Battle.

(peaceful music) (eerie music) I will never forget when I was a little boy, I was in a local cemetery with my grandmother.

We had taken flowers to visit a relative's grave.

And I noticed two tombstones that had names.

And they didn't say "here lies" or anything like that.

They said "in memory of."

And I remember asking my grandmother, "Well, why does those tombstones say "in memory of?"

And she said, "They're not there, they're in the river."

(mysterious music) So she begins to tell me that back in the 1950s, they were building a local mill.

Within the weeks prior, there had been sightings of a boat that was on fire.

Well, perhaps it was the Eliza Battle.

(waves splashing) Well, of course, two weeks later, barge traffic going up the river as part of the construction for the mill exploded tragically and killed those two young men, those tombstones I had mentioned earlier.

Even though their tombstones are there at the local cemetery here in Pennington, their spirits and their souls belong to the Tombigbee.

(eerie music) [Narrator] Choctaw County was named for the Choctaw people.

They and other native tribes were forcibly removed from their homelands in the early 1800s, opening up Alabama and Mississippi to settlers from the East.

Among them were men who would own massive cotton plantations built and maintained by a system of slavery.

These plantation owners took the most fertile, river-adjacent lands and needed a way to get their product down river to the Port of Mobile where it would be sold and shipped across the ocean.

They turned to a new technology that would soon rule the rivers of the American South, the steamboat.

My name is Rufus Ward.

I'm a recovering lawyer in Columbus, Mississippi.

And now my avocation is researching history and the culture of Alabama and Mississippi in the 19th century.

So steamboats gave the opportunity for traffic both up and down the river.

And that opened the interior of both East Mississippi and Alabama to commercial trade and traffic.

Communities sprung up at landings, usually about six to eight miles apart, where people could take their cotton and in high water in the winter load it on steamboats, take it to Mobile.

And often, these same people would go downstream with their cotton and enjoy the shops, the culture, Mardi Gras, whatever was going on in Mobile.

[Narrator] Alabama's westernmost river stretching from Eastern Mississippi to Southern Alabama is called the Tombigbee, originally from the Choctaw name, Itumbi Ikbi, which could mean box maker.

Later generations understood that the name referred to a more specific kind of box.

They said it meant coffin maker.

And surely, the river lived up to its reputation.

Disaster was common.

The lifespan of most steamboats in those days was no more than five years.

Many crews pushed their ships harder and harder in the name of speed, even competing in illegal races.

A fast boat was a popular boat, but also more dangerous.

(melancholy piano music) [Storyteller] The Eliza Battle was one of the grandest steamers on the Tombigbee.

Built in New Albany, Indiana, in 1852, she was a palatial boat.

And her trips up and down the Tombigbee created excitement wherever she stopped.

And no trip was so fine or so grand as her last, the one that began in late February, 1858.

(peaceful music) The Eliza Battle's trip down to Mobile had been advertised for weeks with circulars, handbills, and newspaper ads.

In addition to the customary luxuries, the passengers were promised two bands to provide continuous music in the ballroom, glowing lanterns to decorate the entire ship at night, colorful flags and bunting draped and festooned on every deck, a calliope to play the latest tunes, and welcoming celebrations at landings all along the way.

The boats, actually, some of 'em were very nice.

There was one account that was written by an individual writing for a New York newspaper.

And he described the accommodations and especially the food as being equal to the best hotels and restaurants in Paris.

So they picked up the name "floating palaces" because they were that nice.

[Storyteller] At Columbus, they began to assemble.

Ladies wearing full skirts, so fashionable then, and carrying tiny parasols chatted excitedly as they boarded the boat.

Behind them came their personal maids.

And behind the maids came burly porters carrying trunks and valises and hat boxes.

On the wharf, the men, plantation owners all, supervised the loading of their bales of cotton.

Taking the cotton down to Mobile to sell provided their excuse for the trip.

[Narrator] Indeed, these floating palaces were like a society in miniature with the wealthier passengers and their enslaved servants staying on the luxurious boiler deck above while poorer passengers and the crew, many of them enslaved men leased from local plantation owners, sweated with the engine and cargo in the main deck below.

If you had a cabin, you would be entitled to wonderful meals, everything from hot sauce and salad dressings to salmon and different kinds of fish.

The people on the main deck, they were with the cargo, they were with the crew, it was pretty rugged.

[Storyteller] When the last bale of cotton had been loaded and the last valise had been put into the state rooms, some observers feared the cargo was too heavy.

The band struck up a lively tune, the deep-voiced whistle sounded, and the crowd cheered as the Eliza Battle pulled away from the wharf and headed downstream.

Well, like you said, Mr.

Rufus, it should be right there kind of where it points out and then it gets a high bank.

Right, that fits the description.

And the tender on the bridge behind us.

And you can see the house on top where he sat.

[Narrator] There is one solid clue pointing curious visitors to the ghost ship's grave site.

The Old Naheola Bridge was built in 1934, more than 75 years after the disaster.

The bridge tender spent his days in this little shack raising and lowering the bridge for passing ships.

According to his grandson, when the river was low, the tender could clearly see the outline of the ship's remains, half buried in the riverbed.

But little by little, year by year, it was covered up by sand until all that was left was a memory.

(static crackling) (eerie monotone) [Storyteller] Up in the pilot house, Daniel Eppes guided the Eliza Battle down the river toward Mobile.

Eppes, a veteran pilot, was uneasy.

The high water had covered many of his navigation points, and the heavily loaded vessel was difficult to handle in the swift current.

The strong and bitterly cold wind blowing rain in from the Northwest added to his apprehension.

Then about nightfall, the rain turned to sleet mixed with snow as the temperature continued to drop rapidly.

The pilot, though, when he was at the wheel, he guided the boat.

And he was in charge of making sure that they didn't ground on a sandbar or hit a deadhead, which is a buried log in the water.

The pilot set the course and where they were going.

The captain overall commanded the boat.

[Storyteller] Captain S.G.

Stone, master of the Eliza Battle, joined Eppes in the pilot house.

And together, they peered through the storm for familiar lights and landmarks.

The sandbars and the shoals were covered by the swirling waters.

And even the tall trees along the bank of the river were half submerged.

The river seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions.

Eppes relied on his knowledge and expertise to keep the Eliza Battle in the main channel.

The uneasiness of the pilot and the concern of the captain were not shared by the passengers.

The brilliant lights in the ballroom pushed back all awareness of the menace and darkness outside.

And the music of the bands drowned out the noise of the slashing storm.

Long after midnight, the dancing continued as the partners whirled and glided on the polished floor.

Then, above the music and the laughter came the cries, (eerie music) "Fire!

"Fire!"

-(passengers screaming) -(eerie music) The music, the laughter, and the dancing stopped.

Men and women rushed for the exits.

Even before they reached the deck, flames were leaping from blazing cotton bales and racing through the engine room, the cabins, the gangways.

Captain Stone ordered the pilot to run the boat into the riverbank.

But the tiller rope had been burned and Eppes could not carry out the order.

The Eliza Battle, ablaze from bow to stern, drifted crazily with the current.

Passengers jumped into the icy water as they tried to escape the advancing flames.

Some of them threw bales of cotton off the deck and attempted to use them for life rafts.

Those who could swim fought the current to find temporary safety in the tops of the nearly submerged trees where they clung to limbs and prayed to be rescued before they froze.

For a little while, the flames from the burning boat lighted the scene.

But soon, the blazing hull drifted downstream, and the darkness and bitter cold closed in on the survivors.

From the darkness came pitiful cries for help and prayers for deliverance.

There were other sounds too, the heavy splashes (body splashing into water) of frozen bodies dropping into the river from the trees.

(passenger crying) [Narrator] No one knows for sure what started the fire that terrible night.

There are a few likely explanations, though none perhaps as interesting as the legends that sprang up in the aftermath.

[Storyteller] The tragedy produced its heroes.

Among them was Frank Stone, second clerk of the boat, who swam ashore carrying to safety a child of Mr.

and Mrs.

Bat Cromwell of Mobile.

He then placed a Ms.

Turner on a bale of cotton and guided her to the riverbank.

His efforts to save a sister and her mother failed.

The sister froze to death in his arms and the mother died of cold while clinging to a tree.

You had one of the enslaved men, who was a deckhand, give up a raft he had made to survive on and drift from the boat.

And he saw a lady with a child who didn't know what to do.

And he took her and the child, placed them on his raft, pushed them off.

And they survived and then he died.

But the crew performed numerous instances of helping people and saving people that were not recorded.

But they made enough of an impression that the survivors got together, and for the captain and for several of the mates and crewmen, they gave gold watches, silver cups and different things as a form of thanking them for all they did to help people and save people that night.

[Storyteller] The glare from the burning boat and the screams of the victims aroused inhabitants of Naheola, a landing some 30 miles below Demopolis.

And they hurried to the river to give what help they could.

Meanwhile, as news of the tragedy spread, planters from nearby plantations arrived with their skilled workmen who hastily built rafts and joined in the rescue operation.

Later, these carpenters made rough coffins for the dead.

[Narrator] The survivors were taken to nearby homes to recover.

Roughly 36 hours after the Eliza Battle sank, the steamboat Magnolia arrived to take them on to Mobile where they'd be interviewed for government inquiry.

The story spread around the world, published in newspapers as far flung as New Zealand, and became a legend in the region.

The horror of thinking about, what are you gonna do if you're on a burning boat in a freezing river?

That caught people's imagination all over the world.

It was called a terrible tragedy, a horrible incident.

People just felt like these people were doomed.

(eerie monotone) (footsteps falling on gravel) (person walking panting) (insects chirping) [Storyteller] For years afterwards, people who lived close to the river, who loved her and understood her moods, said the ghosts of the Eliza Battle still plied the Bigbee's waters.

On stormy nights, they said they saw the great steamer rise up out of the troubled water.

The boat, they said, was ablaze from bow to stern, so brightly lighted that the name Eliza Battle could be read plainly on even the darkest nights.

(eerie music) And always, there was music, dancing tunes providing a background for the shrieks of terror and cries for help that came from the phantom vessel.

Tales about the ghost vessel became a part of traditional Tombigbee River lore.

Most often, these apparitions were seen by crewmen of tugs and barges.

And when these rivermen reached Mobile, they usually began looking for jobs ashore, safer employment away from the threatening river.

Sometimes speaking cautiously, they would describe the ghost ship to friends along the waterfront.

And their listeners, rivermen like themselves, would nod with understanding.

They had seen the Eliza Battle too.

[Rufus] So.

[Nick] Everything's lining up to be this spot.

Everything right off this point that we're approaching lines up to be the spot.

And it fits the description from the time.

And it fits the description from the bridge tender.

And on the east bank, it's lower here than it is in other places so it would've made sense.

(boat passengers chattering) [Captain] It's been solid flat all the way to right there.

[Nick] Come here, Mr.

Rufus.

[Rufus] Oh my God, does it show up?

[Narrator] The boat's captain spotted something on sonar just as it reached the point suspected of being Eliza Battle's grave site.

[Rufus] That's something that rises up there, isn't it?

[Nick] That's interesting.

[Narrator] Could this be the ghost ship's final resting place?

The boat circled back around.

The radar was checked again.

There's something there, but it's hard to say.

The results, inconclusive.

[Nick] She proves elusive yet again.

(eerie music) She serves as a warning for dangerous things to come, times of car crashes or large instances of wrecks and other tragedies that have occurred that coincide coincidentally with the reports of seeing the enflamed steamboat making its way down the Tombigbee.

But I definitely believe that she's a part of this Choctaw County and especially the Pennington story.

(eerie music) I've been asked a lot of times, do I believe in the ghost ship?

I don't know.

I have talked to one long-time fisherman down here who claimed he saw it.

I said, "What did you see?"

He said, well, he was out fishing.

And suddenly, it was one of those nights when it'd been hot and it was turning cool.

And he said, "Right at dark, this fog bank "started rolling down the Tombigbee.

"And it looked like something glowing in the middle of it, "just like in the ghost story."

I said, "What happened?"

He said, "I don't know.

"I got out of there as quick as I could "and I never looked back when I left."

Hurry away.

(mysterious music) Because they have been warned by the ghost of the Eliza Battle.

(mysterious music) (mysterious music continues)