The Outlaw and the Dog: Saint James Hotel in Selma

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 4, 2026 · How we verify

Few buildings in the Black Belt have gone from Union headquarters to abandoned shell to boutique lodging and back into business, but the Saint James Hotel in Selma has done all of it. The brick hotel on the Alabama River dates to 1837, survived the fighting that leveled much of Selma in 1865, and spent more than a century shuttered before a multimillion dollar restoration brought it back. Along the way it picked up a reputation for apparitions in nineteenth century clothing, a dog nobody can find, and an outlaw who is said never to have checked out.

Quick Orientation

• Built: 1837, originally known as the Brantly Hotel
• Civil War role: Union headquarters during the Battle of Selma in 1865
• Postwar owner: Benjamin Sterling Tower
• Closed: 1882, after financial trouble
• Reopened: 1997, following a six million dollar renovation
• Reported phenomena: figures in 1800s dress in the courtyard, a phantom dog, sightings attributed to Jesse James and a woman named Lucinda

The Brantly Hotel and the Battle of Selma

The building opened as the Brantly Hotel in 1837, which makes it older than most of what surrounds it. That matters, because Selma did not come through the Civil War intact. During the Battle of Selma in 1865 the hotel served as Union headquarters, and while a great deal of the town was destroyed, the building itself came through unscathed. Whether that was discipline, luck, or simple utility to the occupying force, the practical result is the same: a structure that predates the war still stands where almost nothing else of its age does.

After the war the property passed to Benjamin Sterling Tower, and the hotel entered the phase that supplies nearly all of its ghost lore. From 1881 the outlaw Jesse James is said to have been a regular guest, favoring the hotel’s tavern as a place to drink and to hold private meetings away from the street. That association is repeated in every account of the building and is now inseparable from its identity, though it is worth reading as hotel tradition rather than as documented registry evidence. Outlaw associations attach themselves readily to old river town hotels, and this one has been retold for well over a century.

A Century With the Doors Locked

Financial trouble closed the hotel in 1882, barely a year after its most famous guest is supposed to have been drinking in the tavern. What followed was not a slow decline into other uses but something closer to suspension: the building sat untouched until the 1990s. A six million dollar renovation then returned it to service, and it reopened in 1997 under the name it carries now, the Saint James Hotel.

That long dormancy is the single most important fact about the place for anyone interested in its atmosphere. More than a hundred years of emptiness in a building that had already witnessed a battle gives any visitor a great deal to project onto, and the restoration deliberately preserved the period character rather than erasing it.

The Courtyard, the Dog, and Lucinda

The most consistent reports at the Saint James involve the interior courtyard, where guests and paranormal investigators describe seeing figures dressed in 1800s attire. The hotel has been visited by television ghost hunting teams and by psychics, and those visits have fed the building’s standing as one of Alabama’s better known paranormal destinations. None of that constitutes proof of anything, and the hotel’s reputation and the reports it generates now reinforce each other in a way that is difficult to separate.

The named figures are predictable given the history. Jesse James is the apparition most often claimed, along with a woman identified in the stories as Lucinda, described as his girlfriend. The third recurring account is the odd one, and the more interesting for it: a dog, said to resemble James’s own, seen and heard in the hallways when no actual dog is on the property. Scratching, padding footsteps, and glimpses at the edge of vision are the usual form.

Treat all of this as reported experience. There is no verified evidence of a haunting here, and an old masonry building with hard floors, a central courtyard, and guests who arrive already knowing the stories is an environment that produces plenty of ambiguous noise without any help from the dead.

Staying at the Saint James

This is a working hotel, not a tour site, so access is straightforward: book a room. It draws thousands of visitors a year, a good share of them specifically because of the ghost stories, and the staff are used to the questions. The courtyard is the location most often named in accounts, so it is the obvious place to spend a quiet evening.

Go for the building first. A hotel that opened in 1837, served as a Union headquarters, stood empty for a century, and came back is a rare thing in itself. If something crosses the courtyard while you are sitting out there, that is a bonus, and the honest version of the story is that nobody has ever been able to show it to anyone else.

See Saint James Hotel for Yourself

Sources

• Alabama's Saban retiring after legendary career
• Alabama WR coach Holmon Wiggins leaving for Texas A&M, per reports
• Reports: Shephard joining DeBoer's coaching staff at Alabama
• Mississippi State Expected To Hire Coleman Hutzler As Defensive Coordinator
• Kalen DeBoer Named Head Coach of Alabama Football
• Wikipedia: 2024 Alabama Crimson Tide football team

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