Gaines Ridge Dinner Club

This house on Highway 10 outside Camden was built in the late 1820s or 1830s for the Reverend Ebenezer Hearn, remembered as the father of Methodism in Alabama. It passed to the family that still owns it in 1898 and stayed a private home until 1985, when two sisters opened it as the Gaines Ridge Dinner Club. It serves dinner Thursday through Saturday and is known for its black-bottom pie. The owner has described hearing a woman scream her name for help, an experience she shared with a cook working in the kitchen at the time, and seeing a smiling woman at the front entrance while she was alone on the property mowing the lawn. Staff in the early years regularly smelled pipe smoke in the upstairs rooms. Guests have reported a baby crying, a woman's face at an upstairs window, and a tall bearded man in black reflected in the mirrors.