The Haunted Tryon House Apartments

Posted: 12.27.2024 | Updated: 12.27.2024

Charlotte, North Carolina, is nicknamed the Queen City, a relic from an earlier colonial past when North Carolina paid tribute to the kings and queens of England. 

The nickname has stuck around, but perhaps it has become a bit of a relic in the post-Declaration of Independence times. 

Perhaps instead, a more fitting name for North Carolina’s city would be the Ghost City since it has no shortage of phantasms lurking about. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Tryon House Apartments. 

On its surface, it appears to be your run-of-the-mill apartment complex, but behind those walls, some say, there hides a grim history and a host of ghosts that continue to plague the place. 

Keep reading for more information, and be sure to take our in-person ghost tour with Charlotte Ghosts to learn more about this city’s haunted history. 

Who Haunts the Tryon House Apartments?

To begin to tell the tale of who haunts the Tryon House Apartments, this blog will go back to the very beginning of the apartment complex, back before man walked on the moon and before the building had the name it bears today. 

Yes, the history of the Tryon House Apartments dates back over a century to the early 1900s. The tragedy that befell this building during that time would echo for generations to come. 

After that history is related, the blog will describe the ghosts, who has seen them, who they may be, and what they are known to do to visitors who encroach upon their territory. 

One thing is for sure, though – if there are any ghosts infesting the Tryon House Apartments, they’ve been there for quite some time, and they’ve left behind some very curious evidence of their existence over the years.

History of the Apartments

The property that would become the Tryon House Apartments was constructed in 1918. At the time, it was known as the Guthery Apartments. It was designed to be affordable yet fashionable housing for young couples and single people. To this day, it remains uptown Charlotte’s oldest continually operating apartment complex.

However, its residential services would be interrupted on March 13, 1940. That day, a boiler room explosion caused a massive fire and claimed the lives of six people, including  H.R. and Etta Ely, Hazel Martin and her son Edward, Rowena Dickinson, and Mabel Rockett. 

The reports from the fire department detail that the flames were so hot that they melted aluminum cookware and even the metal gas meters, too. Once the gas meters went up, that added to the flames, sending even more fire up the elevator shaft. To this day, the Tryon House Apartment fire remains firmly entrenched in the history books as one of the most tragic disasters in Charlotte’s history. 

The Tryon House would eventually be rebuilt and reopened to young couples looking for a first apartment to call their own. These days, there are whispers that some spooky remnants of the fire remain inside the building, but for the price, some say the possibility of ghosts is worth it to snag a nice apartment down there. 

Tryon House Apartment Hauntings

Some of the remnants of this great fire have taken up the form of ghost sightings over the years. But those certainly aren’t the only mysterious phenomena that have pervaded this apartment complex. A former building manager swore that in the 1990s, he would occasionally see the interior walls of the apartment transform. 

They would turn from modern, clean drywall into the scorched bricks and flaming wood that the old apartment had burned down with. Sometimes, there’d even be traces of smoke and ash in the air. That same building manager swore that every resident he spoke to had some kind of similar tale or ghost encounter. 

Perhaps these ghosts and manifestations result from some of the fire victims who refuse to leave their homes, even a century later. That would certainly explain the “crying phenomenon” that many residents swear they’ve experienced. 

Occasionally, when residents are walking down the hallway late at night, they’ll hear a sudden crashing and booming sound, like someone is throwing themselves against a wall. The sounds of crying follow this crashing sound. However, if someone were to open the door where they heard this sound coming from, they would usually be met with an empty room. 

Various sounds also echo throughout the halls of the complex, from loud footsteps to mysterious knocking to hushed voices. All of these sounds, when investigated, seem to come out of nowhere. Either residents were imagining someone making these sounds, or the person making them was invisible to the naked eye. If ghosts are behind these actions, the generally held theory is that they’re former residents caught up in the fire and never identified or buried. 

Bleeding Walls 

If these ghosts were there from the old Tryon fire – where it was reported that some victims had jumped out of their apartments to escape the heat – it might explain why they’ve stuck around. After all, such a horrific end might make a ghost feel tethered to the spot that they died in until they felt some kind of justice for their death had been achieved. 

However, that still does not explain another mysterious phenomenon frequently seen in the Tryon House Apartments—the bleeding walls. Residents of all ages and genders have spotted the bleeding walls on many different floors.

They look much like they sound, as though the walls of the building have somehow grown veins and begun leaking blood down onto the floor. For fans of horror movies, this might seem eerily similar to the scene from The Amityville Horror. But it doesn’t seem as though this strange occurrence is only limited to Hollywood or even limited to the Tryon House Apartments.  

Instead, it is a recurring phenomenon often seen in places that have experienced a tragic or violent incident in the past. Occasionally, the blood is accompanied by some type of orange or brownish ooze. However, one thing is clear: the bleeding walls of the Tryon House Apartments still have no concrete explanation today. 

Haunted Charlotte

So, that concludes the tale of the ghosts of the Tryon House Apartments. If you’re still interested in learning more, there are plenty of ways to explore further. 

We’re very active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, so you can always follow us there to get more up-to-date information about other hauntings across America.

If you want to get a more up-close-and-personal look at haunted Charlotte, be sure to take one of our in-person ghost tours of the area. These tours provide an unforgettable real-world experience that cannot be duplicated by reading an online article or blog post.

If you do take one of the tours, just be sure not to wander off and touch any bleeding walls you may see! And, as always, keep reading our blog for more real North Carolina hauntings.

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