HIGH POINT CONFIDENTIAL: Ghost supposedly haunted new City Hall property

Oct. 28—HIGH POINT — It may be true that you can't fight City Hall, but has anyone ever tried telling that to a witch?

We only ask because, when the city erects its new City Hall building on the downtown property currently occupied by First Baptist Church, it may be desecrating grounds that were once held sacred — and were later believed to have been haunted — by a peculiar Scotswoman named Jane Grant Mann, otherwise known as "The Witch of Inverness."

Never heard of her? Most High Pointers probably haven't, but back in the day — more than a century ago — the rumors of her haunting legacy were rampant.

Jane and her German-born husband, Charles Godlove Mann — an engineering consultant in the region's gold-mining industry — came to High Point in 1881, both of them in their early 60s. They bought a lot on what was then Salem Street — it's now part of First Baptist's parking lot, at the intersection of Church Avenue and N. Main Street — and built a stately, two-story house there, considered to be one of the city's finest homes at the time.

The Manns were generally well-regarded here, especially Charles, an affable sort who charmed the locals with his kindly demeanor and thick German accent. The locals dubbed him "The Professor," perhaps because of his thick-lensed eyeglasses and his snow-white hair and goatee.

Jane was more of an enigma, an eccentric woman who hung a large oil portrait of herself in the couple's front hall and who insisted that visitors enter the house from a side door rather than the front door.

"(She) was a very particular housekeeper," The High Point Enterprise once wrote, "and she disliked having the dust and dirt from the street brought inside by her husband's visitors."

Jane loved nothing more than spending time in the couple's garden of flowers and shrubs, a stunning array of boxwoods and strange, exotic specimens never before seen in High Point. At all hours of the day, High Pointers could see Jane in the garden, tending to her beloved flowers.

Here's where the story turns dark.

Even after Jane's death in 1895, at age 76, the locals still claimed to see her apparition in the garden, watching over her prized blooms. Children began calling her "The Witch of Inverness," referring to Inverness, Scotland, which was not only Jane's hometown but also at one time had the reputation of being a bastion of witchcraft.

Newspaper accounts suggest the ghost in the garden seemed harmless — well, until Charles died in 1905.

Having no children, the couple had willed their house to the family of a local physician, Dr. John W. Burton, and his wife, Semyra. The wife had died only a couple of months before Charles died, but John Burton moved into the Manns' house almost immediately after Charles' death.

He stayed there only a week before returning to his own home on Lindsay Street. It's unknown why Burton left so abruptly, but the speculation around town was that Jane's ghost had something to do with it. Four years later, when Burton hanged himself in his barn, superstitious High Pointers probably blamed the Witch of Inverness for that, too.

After that, according to one newspaper account, no other family wanted to live on the supposedly haunted lot, so the Manns' house was moved to the corner of Pine and Church, where it stood for several decades.

Meanwhile, the Manns' old lot remained essentially undeveloped and became known as Tate Park, a tranquil space that sat adjacent to First Baptist. It doesn't appear that Jane ever haunted Tate Park, perhaps because no one was disturbing the land there.

In 1952, though, old-timers who remembered Jane speculated she might return when the site was sold, with plans to develop it into a Sears & Roebuck department store. Those plans unexpectedly fell through — did the Witch of Inverness have anything to do with that? — and First Baptist turned the tract into the parking lot you see today.

So what will happen two years from now, when the church vacates the property and construction begins on a new City Hall building? Surely, Jane Grant Mann — High Point's notorious Witch of Inverness, who lies buried at Oakwood Memorial Cemetery — won't stand for that, will she?

No, you may not be able to fight City Hall, but a ghostly witch might. The city will find out soon enough.

jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579