There have been two apparitions at Huntingdon College (located in Montgomery, Alabama) known as the Red Lady, but the story of the second is much more detailed.
The second lady was a former student named Martha who came reluctantly to Huntingdon from New York, because her father's mother had attended Huntingdon when it was in Tuskegee, and his will specified that she must attend his mother's alma mater. Martha did not especially want to come to Alabama, but her father's fortune was large and she knew his deep love for his home state. Martha was dressed in red when she arrived, and she brought with her red draperies for her windows at Pratt Hall and a red spread for her bed together with other accessories of the same color. Although many of her fellow students asked her to explain her apparent obsession with the color red, Martha always demurred.
Being a stranger and shy, as well as unhappy in her unfamiliar surroundings, Martha could not make friends among the students. They sensed that she was different from them, and having heard she was wealthy, they mistook her shyness for disdain. Martha sat alone and apart from them in the dining hall, and seldom spoke to her roommate. When other girls dropped in to visit, she seemed so cold and unfriendly that they eventually stopped coming. Truthfully, many of them had only come out of curiosity to see the red prayer rug Martha had bought in Turkey and the odd little red figurines on her bookshelves.
Martha's roommate eventually found the situation unbearable and asked for permission to move out. Soon another roommate had come and gone as well, unable to live with the surly girl. After a number of other room changes, the president of the dormitory, a kindhearted girl who had a reputation for getting along with everyone, moved in with Martha.
Every effort made by the drom president to reach out to Martha was rebuffed. After growing sad and depressed, the dorm president soon made plans to leave as well. Just as she was about to go, Martha, who had not known of her imminent departure, returned to the room. With a look of defiance she said, "So you couldn't stand me either - like all the rest of your stuck up friends. I was beginning to think you really wanted me to be your friend but you hate me just like the rest. Well, I'm glad to be rid of you! Take your things and go! But I'll tell you one thing, my dear: for the rest of your life you'll regret leaving this room." The house president was disturbed by this bitter outburst but in the midst of her many activities she soon forgot about Martha's prophetic words.
The sad girl, abandoned by the one person she had believed to be her only friend, formed the habit of wandering into rooms where the other girls were congregating, but her presence cast a chill upon the groups and they would soon find flimsy excuses for leaving her alone. Then, with a feeling of alienation from all humankind, she would return to her solitary sleeping quarters, where she would wrap herself in her red bedspread and retreat from the whole world.
Later, Martha's behavior allegedly became even more strange: She would wait until the lights were out, and then she would visit one dormitory after another, never saying a word but staring into space as if she were in a trance. As time passed, she took to walking up and down the halls during the darkest hours of the night. Often she would alarm the girls by opening and closing their doors, then hurrying away to resume her pitiful promenade.
One evening after Martha had not appeared for classes or meals all day, her former roommate, the dormitory president, had a guilty feeling and decided to go see her, thinking that this time she might be able to help Martha in some way. As she neared Martha's room at an isolated corridor at the top floor of the building, she is said to have noticed flashes of red shooting out into the corridor from the room's transom. Opening the door, she screamed and fainted. Girls from all over the fourth floor of Pratt rushed from their rooms to see what was wrong. Martha was found on the floor of her room, dressed in her red robe and draped in her red bedspread, having committed suicide by slashing her wrists.
Since the tragic suicide, students at Huntingdon say that on the date of Martha's suicide each year rays of crimson light flash down from the transom of her room, and the Red Lady returns to haunt the corridors of Pratt Hall. Students have reported seeing Martha's ghost on Pratt Hall's fourth floor, claiming to have seen it pass through walls or closed doors, wandering restlessly in search of peace.