HAUNTED MANSION IN DOWNTOWN: Built in 1870, the Heck-Andrews House was one of the first houses built in Raleigh in the aftermath of the Civil War. This Second-Empire style mansion, featuring a unique spiral staircase curling into a tower with a trap door, once held a bustling Raleigh family with 13 children.
However, by the 1980’s it had dwindled down to just one tenant — a bag-lady who would often be seen rolling her cart up and down Blount Street, collecting “treasures.”
Somewhat of a hermit, Gladys Perry was occasionally seen wandering the streets with ghost-white makeup and red-rouged cheeks; but most of the time her creaky old mansion was sealed. Sadly, she was forcibly evicted when the state decided to buy her home. With no family, she was sent to a nursing home, where she rapidly deteriorated and passed away. Her home, full of piles of antique roadside “treasures,” remained abandoned for decades — slowly falling apart inside. The antique stairwell caved in; the beautiful mirrored walls cracked; the ornate ceiling tiles caked in dust and mildew. Ivy grew over the windows and doors, and when curious people would peek inside the dark windows, they’d sometimes swear they saw Gladys’ ghostly white face peering back out at them.
Due to the disturbances, psychics and shamans were called in to do a reading on the house. One shaman reported being haunted by terrible nightmares for weeks after investigating the Heck-Andrews House, describing seeing a “body beneath the basement floor” in her dreams, and hearing it call out to her with wild loneliness. She believed it to be the spirit of the house—or perhaps of Gladys herself—longing for its glory days as a beautiful Blount-Street Mansion, full of children and fancy parties. Tragically, both the house and the tenant both wasted away for decades due to abandonment — so the lonely, haunting soul within could be either one.
Do you want to see some Raleigh sites with REAL history and paranormal legends? Come on our Haunted History: Paranormal Expedition tour, led by a real historian and paranormal investigator, using real ghost-hunting equipment like EVP and air temperature thermometers. Our first tours are this weekend!
