Bethel United Methodist Church in Chester was founded in 1837 and moved to its present-day location in 1897. According to Tally Johnson in the Ghosts of the South Carolina Upcountry on pages 22 and 23, The Old Lady in the Nursery has been told by generations of Sunday schoolers at Bethel.
According to the details in the book, two friends were playing upstairs on a Sunday near the nursery when they heard a piano playing behind a locked door. After listening for a while, the girls realized that the light in the room was off and the door was locked from the hall side. The two quickly informed a parent of what they had observed and discovered that the room had once been a piano room more than thirty years before.
Additionally, others have physically seen the ghostly woman. Tally called the church office and spoke with the secretary only to learn that she had heard footsteps in the hall at all hours but had never heard the piano. According to the secretary’s account, the pastor, at the time the book was published, had seen the woman dressed in a 1970s-style pantsuit inside the nursery, observed the apparition through the large window from his office across the hall, and felt a breeze in the hallway as if the ghost was passing by him.
We recently spoke with another who also encountered the specter in the nursery one Sunday morning.
The weirdest is that no one has ever died within the building. According to Johnson, the speculation is that she was once a nursery volunteer who died at home.
Written By: John G. Clark Jr.
Image: John G. Clark Jr. (June 2021)
