Mount Pleasant Magazine Sept/Oct 2013

The kiln at Brickyard Plantation. Photo by Hope Rechea.

The Kiln Ghost at Brickyard Plantation

Near Wampancheone Creek and the ruins of a 19th

century brick kiln chimney appears the startling image

of a woman standing in the grass on the side of the road.

The woman moves her hands close together in repetitive,

spastic thrusts as if in a trance. She is dressed in ragged, dark

clothes. Her face is unclear, tilted down toward her jerking

hands and masked by long, straw-like hair.

The woman has only been seen at dusk. The longer

the sunset, the more pale light passes through her image,

revealing that she is not of this world. All the sightings have

occurred within 20 yards of one another. Because of her

proximity to the kiln and the creek, she is believed to be the

Southern

Gothic

Ghosts East of the Cooper

ghost of a slave from an 18th century industrial brickyard.

The Wampancheone waterway, on the side of the original

Boone Hall Plantation, is where creek mud was used to

make bricks and tile for much of Charleston, including

Boone Hall’s slave quarters.

Speculation as to the cause of her death could present

darker, more tragic possibilities. An inventory of Horlbeck

slaves from January 1854 is kept in the manuscript section

of the Southern Historical Collections at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but the records only show

the death dates and not the cause of death for a few of the

slaves in the Horlbeck brickyard. While the work is intense

and demanded much of the slaves’ energy, it was not often