Haunted History at Rawls Hotel

By LeeAnn Capps

A soft cool breeze briefly passes by your face, followed by the sweet smell of tobacco. It's a subtle reminder the original owner Japheth Rawls is still watching over his beloved historic Rawls Hotel in downtown Enterprise, Ala.

Built in 1903, this elegant, historical, and legendary hotel is haunted. Or at least several unexplained incidents occur regularly.

Some say you can hear kids laughing when no one's around.

People have spotted an elderly gentleman wearing overalls and smoking a pipe.

Sometimes there is a strong smell of perfume.

Children's handprints appear on items such as paper or children's laughter coming down the hall when no one is there.

All the bathroom faucets are on when no one has been in the building.

Lights have been turned off or turned on. Anyone who works in the building at one time, or another has had some experience with the friendly ghosts.

Psychics have said the spirit of the original owner Japheth Rawls is still in the hotel, guarding it and overseeing the activities of the employees. So is the hotel's second owner, the Rawls niece Margaret, who hangs out on the second floor and watches from one of the offices that face Main Street – where she can see what goes on downtown.

Hayden Pursley, a transplant to the area, bought the dilapidated hotel before being torn down in 1978. He spent three years restoring it and often talked about his ghostly experiences. One of his favorite stories was installing new window treatments in the ballroom. Two days in a row, he hung valances over all the windows throughout the ballroom but found them lying on the floor the next day. Working alone in the building, he began rehanging the treatments for the third time. As he started to work, a wooden board flew across the room and hit him. Speaking to the ghost of Japheth Rawls, he said out loud, "Okay. I got it. You don't like them." He picked out different valances that still hang in the ballroom today.

---HISTORY---

Originally from Virginia, Japheth moved to Georgia to work in the turpentine business. There he met and married Elizabeth Cox. The couple never had children but raised and educated 13 children from three related families.

Being in the turpentine business, Japheth kept moving his family closer to Alabama following the pines. His nephew Jessie (J.P.) came to Enterprise looking for new forests and liked the area so much that he convinced his uncle to move the family there, where they settled down and stayed.

Since the town was growing – Japheth built a two-story brick hotel – and the entrance faced the train depot.

The hotel was first named the McGee Hotel after the general manager James Henry McGee. He and his family lived in the hotel. Sometime later, it was renamed The Hotel Rawls.

Japheth died in 1925 and left it to J.P.'s wife Margaret, Elizabeth's niece on her side of the family, and Japheth and Elizabeth had raised her as their own.

In 1928 Margaret and J.P. decided to enlarge the hotel – making it three stories and modeling it after a Spanish mission-style hotel they had seen in Florida.

The Rawls was the social center of the town. However, with the decline of the passenger trains, the hotel suffered a series of misuse and neglect and was to be demolished in 1978.

Not wanting to see a piece of history destroyed, a retired military soldier, Hayden Pursely, bought the Rawls and spent three years restoring the 64,000-square-foot building.

He wanted to restore it to its beautiful state and have it listed in the National Historical Register, which happened on September 17, 1980.

Several businesses opened in the restored building, as did a restaurant. Hayden sold the building in 1999, which is still owned by Keith Gay, and is the headquarters for his company Navigator Development Group Inc., along with leased space for The Rawls Restaurant and several other businesses.