COURTLAND
In the old Baptist Church, doors will slam by themselves. On Linden Street, a family is afraid of their own backyard at night because of a man who appears there. On Colonial Street, if you look into the windows at the right time, you might see an apparition staring back at you.

These are just a few of the haunted tales of Courtland, as told by the Southampton Renaissance Faire crew in their annual Walking Ghost Tour fundraiser.

“We were sitting thinking about what we could do to raise money to keep the Renaissance Faire free, and it happened to be around Halloween last year,” said Patti Watkinson, one of the event’s organizers.

“I started doing research at the library and asking questions to get something together,” said Dawn Gunn, another organizer. “Everybody loves a good ghost story.”

Garrett Piersa, who led the 6:30 p.m. tour, said a lot of people his age are looking to get out of Courtland because it bores them. But if you really look, there’s a lot of history to the town.

“In the cemetery by St. Luke’s, one of the gravestones reads, ‘She took her secret to her grave,’” he said. “No one knows for sure what that secret is, but some speculate it might be her baby.”

That was actually one visitor’s favorite story.

“The cemetery and that girl’s secret,” Madison Cooley, 8, said. “That was creepy.”

Of course, Madison also liked the Colonial Street house because she thinks her mother and father might have gotten a picture of one. This was her second year going.

“It is really fun and there are a lot of really cool facts,” she said. “I thought I’d see something this year, and we did.

“It looks like she got one in the middle window, and you in the side window.”

As far as the picture of a ghost, her mom, Tina Cooley, said they might have gotten something.

“It’s possibly something, possibly nothing,” she said. “I don’t know. We’ll have to pull it up on the computer.”

Jessica Xinos brought her son, Dylan, 6.

“I thought it was well-put together information,” she said. “It was a nice mix of history and folklore. Dylan liked it also.”

Sharon Bay, the Faire’s treasurer, said they had 20 people last year, and in its second year, she said they doubled it.

“We had three full tours this year,” she said. “I thought that was pretty cool.”

With the Rebecca Vaughan house now in Courtland and being restored, that also brought a new aspect to the tour. The house was the last stop during Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, and his followers killed the residents. It was the first stop on the tour.

Cameron “Jilg” Bowden said his little brother, Melvin Bowden, 6, liked that part the best.

“When my brother found out that the insurrection of Nat Turner was real, at first he was sad,” he said. “Then he was scared because he was afraid the ghosts would come out and get him.”