The Resident Ghost of Hunter's Store

Words by Roy Scott Photos by Rachel Ledbetter

There is something about this season of the year, with its howling winds, early darkness, jack-olanterns and trick-or-treaters that conjures up a good ghost story. Ghost stories are as much a part of Southern culture as sweet tea and fried chicken. Whether or not we believe in ghosts, we will sit and listen, allowing ourselves to be pulled into the story and the world of the afterlife. For some of us it is reassuring and for others absolutely terrifying, but in the end ghost stories hold a fascination for all of us whether they are truth or Fiction.

South Carolina is especially rich in stories of restless spirits, mysteries and the unexplained. Columbia has the Third-Eye Man, Alice Flagg haunts Murrells Inlet, and the Blue Lady of Hilton Head is a tale passed down through generations. Here is a more current story from the Upstate...

The original home of Hunter’s Store has been located across from Pendleton’s Village Green since 1850. The Hunters built a new store across the street in 1929, abandoning this original building.

“I was staying after business hours to work upstairs when I heard the downstairs door open and close. Thinking it was an employee who had returned for some reason or another, I called down the stairs and, receiving no reply, I went down the worn stairs to investigate and found no one. Then, I heard footsteps upstairs, and returning, found no one. I called home and asked if supper had been prepared and being told it had not, I asked them to hold off a short while, as I was coming home.”

Those were the words of the late-Hurley Badders, former executive director of the Pendleton District Historical, Recreational and Tourism Commission. What he heard that night while working late in the Commission headquarters, located in Pendleton’s old Hunter’s Store building, was just the beginning of strange happenings at 125 E. Queen Street.

Jo McConnell, former Pendleton Historic District tour/events coordinator, walks upstairs to the second floor of the historic Hunter’s Store building in Pendleton.

Everything from A to Z...

Built in 1850 and located in the center of Historic Pendleton, the building first served as a general store for Jesse Lewis. It came into the Hunter family in 1870 when it became "Hunter and Long." Partner James Hunter bought full control of the business which passed through several generations of Hunter ownership, becoming known as simply “Hunter's Store.” The store was the Wal-Mart of its day. Everything from A to Z – apples to zinnia seeds – could be purchased there. Dry goods, such as shoes, clothing and hats, were sold alongside local produce, fresh eggs, flour and coffee, as well as farm tools and chicken feed. It remained in business until 1929, when the owners moved to a building next door, closing the original structure which sat mostly unused and crumbling until the newly-formed district commission bought it in 1968. With new plumbing, electricity and other improvements, Hunter’s Store soon housed photographs, business and church records, and historical records for Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties.

...the ghost of a man who died...

In his book, Remembering South Carolina’s Old Pendleton District, Hurley Badders admitted that even though his experience with unexplained door closings and footsteps in the building was unsettling, he initially didn’t take it too seriously, that is, until the incident was mentioned to B.G. “Punch” Hunter. Over 90 years old, and one of the former owners of the store, Hunter told Badders that what he heard was the ghost of a man who died in Hunter’s Store in the late 1800s.

According to Hunter, the man, who was a friend of the Hunter boys, fell off his horse and into Eighteen Mile Creek. The men had been drinking, so rather than taking him home and facing the wrath of their wives, they left him in the caretaker's apartment on the second floor of the store. “He was already soaked on the inside and the stream certainly drenched his outer person,” Badders said. “It was May and the windows were open, but it turned cold and the man died from the exposure.”

There is something here...

Badders first heard the strange noises in the early 1970s. For years, Commission staff members heard footsteps and noises from the second floor. When renovations were being made to the building, the workers often reported hearing something fall, then scurrying footsteps.

Donna Roper, former currator of the Anderson County Museum, while serving as a new staff member at Hunter’s Store, heard what sounded like several books falling on the second floor. She was alone in the building at the time. Once she summoned the courage to climb the stairs, she found nothing out of place. When she later told Badders about the strange noises, he apologized for not mentioning to her that the building was haunted.

Next, even stranger things began to happen.

“One time we placed the office chairs in certain positions at closing time, and they had been moved when we returned the next day,” Badders said. On another occasion, Badders was assisting two women tourists at the counter, “and one of them started shuddering and said, ‘There is something here.’ They started to leave and her companion stated, ‘She is a psychic.’”

In addition, written in pencil on the door frame at the one-room apartment, which Badders said “Punch” Hunter remembered being there, but not knowing who did it, were the words: “May 19, 1894. Very cold.” Were the notations related to the man who died there? Could the date in 1894 be the actual night he died? Interestingly, Badders said: “Fine researchers that we were, we never pursued the matter.”

...not a warm and fuzzy feeling...

And, then the unthinkable happened. Once again, Donna Roper was the unfortunate victim.

This time, she was working alone on the first floor in the middle of the day. Suddenly, she heard footsteps from upstairs. At first, she thought nothing of it. The unexplained noises were very common at that point. But then the footsteps started heading toward the staircase, and the sound of feet slowly touching each wooden step followed. Roper rose from her seat and peeked around the corner to see who was coming down. She hoped that it would be a familiar face.

In the book, More Ghosts of Upstate South Carolina, writer John Boyanoski detailed what Roper saw: “The shape of a man in a dark, crumpled suit came into view as the sun shone through the back door. The man stopped on a little landing at the base of the stairwell just before three more steps jutted in an L-shaped direction. The man’s head was covered by thick, curly red hair that matched the beard on his face. He stood there for a second and simply vanished. No further walking down the steps. No saying anything. No going out the back door.”

Years later, the ghost made another appearance. Jo McConnell, Pendleton Historic District tour/events coordinator, was working in the store one day when she said she had a close encounter. From Boyanoski’s book: “One of the other employees heard McConnell, and later said McConnell made the strangest sound she had ever heard. When the woman looked up, McConnell was clinging to a nearby countertop. The woman rushed to her. Was she sick? No, McConnell answered. She had just spotted the curly haired man.”

"I got up from my desk and was walking around the corner to the water fountain. There was a corner alcove that I passed," McConnell said. "When I looked, I had an impression of a black silhouette, a man with his shoulders hunched over. He had very curly, bushy hair, boots and a black, wrinkled suit. I had the feeling like he was trying to hide. It was not a warm and fuzzy feeling."

McConnell later told her story to a Leadership Pendleton gathering, and two of the women there, who had been volunteers at the office as teenagers years earlier, told her that they had seen the image of a man dressed the same way, but never said anything about it, fearing people would think they were crazy.

And, then there was the time that Badders was meeting with people in the office after hours while his grandson, about three years old at the time, played elsewhere in the building. Suddenly, the youngster came into the office and asked “Who is that man?” When investigated, there was no one, but Badders said the boy claimed that the man had been standing at almost the same spot of the previous sightings, and that he had curly hair and a black suit.

“We don’t know what happened that time,” McConnell said. “Was it a child’s imagination, or something else?”

One can only wonder...

In keeping with the wishes of the Hunter family, the identity of the man who died in Hunter’s Store remains a secret. The penciled-in notations in the caretaker’s apartment have faded over time, but have been preserved. “I think it verifies our ghost,” McConnell said. In the fall of 1970, the entire town of Pendleton, plus a small area extending into Pickens County, was named to the National Register of Historic Places. It is a popular destination for tourists looking for authentic heritage attractions, such as house museums, walking tours of the residential section, shopping for antiques, local hand-made craft items, restaurants, local lodging and special events.

The Hunter’s Store building is now part of Lake Hartwell Country, one of 11 South Carolina regional tourism offices, covering Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties. The building houses one of the largest archive collections of local, historical artifacts in the Upstate. In addition, it has an extensive genealogy library that is open to the public with information about the families that once lived in the region. The COVID-19 shutdown caused Hunter’s Store to be closed for several months. There are now plans to open a bookstore on the first floor of the building in Fall, 2021, which will become the first true business to operate there in 92 years. One can only wonder how the long pandemic inactivity and the opening of the bookstore will affect the “resident ghost.” Will staff, customers, tourists and researchers hear the footsteps? Will the furniture move during the night? Will someone actually catch a sudden glimpse of the man in a dark suit?

One witness reported seeing the sudden image of a man with curly hair and beard, wearing a dark suit, on this staircase landing.

“May 19, 1894. Very cold.” These words are written in pencil on a door frame near the stairwell on the second floor of the Hunter's Store building. “I think it verifies our ghost,” McConnell says.

For more information, visit lakehartwellcountry.com