## Section I: Arrival at Selma

In Selma, a town ripe with history and laden with the mellow charm that only nousabilia can deliver, sits an edifice of beleaguered grandeur: the Sturdivant Hall Museum. There, where time pauses and collects itself into layers, the hallways don’t just recite stories, they breathe them. They don’t just echo footsteps, they absorb them in their wallpapered bellies, preserving the prints of the past indefinitely.

One of those prints is tinged with the spectral shades of afterlife. When you hit that spot in the story, it’s as if you had crossed an invisible line into a zone Stephen King, our master of macabre, often took his readers to – an uncanny dimension where the living are haunted by the unrestful dead.

John Parkman’s life accrued a medley of roles: banker, gentleman of the south, and the doomed inmate. Accused of embezzlement and sentenced to imprisonment, the ultimate tragedy visited him when he tried to dance with audacity and was met with the fatal sting of a bullet in the chest.

## Section II: Ghostly Whispers in the Halls

Through the rich lineage of the Sturdivant Hall Museum’s history, Parkman’s haunting presence has remained a constant. Whispers travel the length and breadth of Selma, speaking of a spectral figure roaming the hallways, drifting through ancient walls, blending with the texture of the woodwork. But it isn’t just the vision designed to induce goosebumps; there’s more. Visitors speak of the peculiar scent of cigars, the kind perhaps Parkman used to puff on in his living days, wafting through the air and perforating the senses.

Amid the pin-drop silence navigated only by the ticking grandfather clock, you’ll sometimes hear the shuffling pads of ghostly feet; an intimate, eerie serenade of the desolate building by its eternal, undesired resident.

## Section III: Shades and Shadows of the Unseen

Uncertainty is a resident all of its own in the Sturdivant Hall Museum. It cloaks the rooms and hallways and makes them a canvas for the eerie tales spun around Parkman’s ghost. It’s the encounters that visitors have had with the unseen that transform this historic building into a sanctum of spectral tales.

When you look into the mirror in the drawing room, you may spot an ethereal entity gazing back. Some talk of midnight strolls, of a spectral figure brooding in gardens dusted with moonlight. Others speak of doors creaking open menacingly, windows shutting with a bang, as if beckoning dread with open arms. Most spine-chilling of them all are the tales of visitors feeling an unseen presence traipsing behind them, a chill tracing the length of their spine as if Parkman were standing right there.

## Section IV: Into the Terror of the Inexplicable

But Selma didn’t merely end up housing a spectral figure. The town transformed over decades, gingerly embracing the uncanny in the ordinary. Parents would narrate Parkman’s tale to wide-eyed children, their night-time stories resounding with the echo of ghostly footsteps. By the time these children grew up, the tale of ‘Parkman, the imprisoned ghost of Sturdivant Museum’ became a part of their lives just as much as the riveting stories about their ancestors.

Stories of unusual occurrences, of inexplicable blots of shadows creeping into photographs taken at the museum, of strange reflections and the echoing laughter trickling out into the apprehensive silence — the narrative woven around Parkman’s ghost reverberated through the town with a lingering sense of dread.

## Section V: The Ghost of Sturdivant Hall and Beyond

John Parkman may have died a tragic death that day during the prison escape, but he breathed life into the chilling narrative of Sturdivant Hall Museum. Today, when the sun casts long shadows on the creaking wooden panels, when each room echoes with the history embedded in its corners, Parkman’s spectral presence weaves an eerie tapestry of whispered secrets.

Although his ghostly presence may induce a spine-chilling dread, it also beckons the curious, the brave, and the inherently adventurous. As Selma sleeps under the blanket of stars each night, the Sturdivant Hall Museum stands dignified. Its vast halls steeped in history, its rooms echoing with leftover life, and its garden, littered with ghostly whispers, merge with the silence, bearing immortal testimony to its spectral resident, the eternal ghost of John Parkman.