Supernatural CLT: The Bootlegger House

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Taps turn on and off in the dead of the night. A chair perches improbably on two legs. A blow torch turns on by itself. Watery phantom footprints appear on the stairs. This is just some of the paranormal mischief carried out by the trickster ghost of The Bootlegger House.

John Causby doesn’t have to leave home to hear any ghost stories. He’s been living with a paranormal prankster for decades. Twenty two years ago, when Causby purchased the quaint Queen Ann-style house on the corner of 7th and Poplar streets in Charlotte’s historic 4th Ward, he learned a secret that would chill the souls of many people.
“At the closing, the owners slid the keys across the table and said, ‘By the way, there’s a mischievous spirit in the house,” Causby says.
The bootlegger house is probably one of the most haunted residential locations in Charlotte,” says Jason Tapp of Spooky Charlotte. Certainly the house has a fascinating and varied history, suggesting many stops along the way where it might have picked up its current spectral resident.

“During the 1920s, this house served as an area for bootleggers to hide their liquor,” says Cher Lambeth, an investigator for the Charlotte Area Paranormal Society.

There’s a door to a secret compartment underneath the stairs, Causby reveals, a place for the bootleggers to store their wares. The ghost, however, seems to be linked to a liquid other than liquor.

“Water is a theme, and a lot of things happen with the water here,” Causby says. “We woke up one morning and there were wet footprints on the stairway. The water would come on at three o’clock in the morning in various locations throughout the house – the bathroom sink or the kitchen sink – and I’d have to get up and turn the water off.”

Other preternatural pranks include a chair found balanced on two legs, a door mysteriously locking and a cooking blowtorch that switched on by itself, but water imagery predominates. One night, Causby caught sight of a figure wearing a wet rain coat from the corner of his eye. He asked the specter to identify itself, and a kitchen pot fell clattering to the floor.

“Water is associated with paranormal activity,” Lambeth says. “Water conducts energy. large bodies of water, rivers, [and] running water especially, are said to be sites of heightened paranormal activity.”

Causby says an underground spring runs under 7th Street, bubbling up occasionally through the pavement. The ghost, however, didn’t need to travel by a subterranean stream to come to 4th Ward. The Bootlegger House, built in 1894, was originally situated in the predominantly African American neighborhood of Brooklyn, now 2nd Ward. When Brooklyn was leveled in the early 1970s, under the aegis of “urban renewal,” Michael Trent purchased the house for $50 and moved it to its current location. Stoplights on Tryon Street had to be temporarily removed to make room for the house to pass.

This move provides a clue to the nature of the Bootlegger House’s mischievous spirit, Tapp believes.

“The current ghost is supposed to be one of the old owners,” Tapp says. “But I feel if they didn’t have any paranormal activity in the old location and they do now, then it may be [the haunting] has to do with the new location in 4th Ward.”

The notion of a watery specter arising from a subterranean river could be enough to make any home owner make sure the taps are firmly shut off before going to bed and turning off the light.