Pickens County Courthouse

The Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton burned in 1876, and suspicion fell on Henry Wells, a formerly enslaved man. When officers came for him two years later he ran, was shot twice, and confessed under circumstances that included a beating. He was held in the garret of the new courthouse, in part to keep a gathering crowd from reaching him, and he died of his wounds five days later, in early 1878. A face has been visible in a pane of the garret window ever since, and the county has bolted an arrow to the outside wall, three storeys up, to point visitors to it. The story told locally is that lightning struck the glass as Wells looked down at the mob and burned his face into it. That version cannot be literally true: the garret windows were not installed until after he died. The face is really there all the same, and it can only be seen from outside the building, which still serves as a county courthouse.