Bulloch Hall’s Sobbing Well

Bulloch Hall

Bulloch is a ten-acre antebellum plantation located in Roswell, Georgia.

Major James Bulloch, a wealthy coastal planter had this Greek revival style home, Bulloch Hall, built by African American slaves in 1839.

Bulloch Hall is where President Theodore Roosevelt’s mother, Martha Bulloch lived as a child.

This plantation grew cotton, and the Bulloch’s owned thirty-two house and field slaves.

It is believed one of these slaves, a young girl, aged 14, has haunted the plantation for over century.

The Union Army made Bulloch Hall their headquarters, in 1864 during the Civil War. The family fled their home. 

Teddy Roosevelt visiting
Bulloch Hall in 1905.

The president’s mother died before the war ended, but while Roosevelt was president, he visited the plantation in 1905, to see where Martha grew up.

The plantation passed through various hands after the war, including a period of two decades where it stood abandoned.

In 1977, the city of Roswell bought the land and turned the hall into a house museum that highlights exhibits about pre-Civil War life and culture.

The young African American slave who is believed to haunt Bulloch plantation died in an accident. She was drawing water from the well behind the house when she fell in. She drowned.

Soon after this tragic death, witnesses reported they heard a young girl’s voice coming from the well. They heard her pleading for help, then her sobs.

This crying sound is still heard today. The well has been investigated numerous times, but no logical reason has been discovered for these sounds.

This girl’s apparition has been seen in the house, and since her death, another strange phenomenon has occurred for many years.

The candles and oil lamps throughout the house will not stay lit, for any length of time. At other times the entire house will light up, while no one is inside.

Even during the two decades the mansion lay abandoned, witnesses who walked past at night would report seeing candle and lamplight glowing from the mansion’s windows.

Today, visitors and staff have reported seeing the period lamps in the home, light up and extinguish when no one is standing near them.

One visitor captured this odd
figure when no one was
standing at the front of the house.

All this strange activity is attributed to the young ghost for it is believed one of her primary duties while alive was to light and extinguish all the homes' candles and lamps.