The Screaming Hotel: The Cold Case Hidden Inside Birmingham’s Grand View Hotel for 41 Years

A construction worker came to renovate a hotel. Instead, he uncovered one of Alabama’s darkest secrets.

The Screaming Hotel

Birmingham, Alabama — May 14, 2024.

When Marcus Thompson walked into the lobby of the Grand View Hotel, he thought he was walking into a job that could save his company. What he didn’t know was that he was walking into a tomb.

Every contractor in Birmingham knew the legend of the Grand View. Workers called it “the screaming hotel.” Crews who took the renovation contracts never finished them. Security guards heard voices from empty rooms. Housekeepers swore they saw footprints appear on the carpet with no one there.

For 41 years, the second floor of the Grand View had been closed off, and no one could agree on why.

Now, Marcus — a father, husband, and small business owner — was about to find out.

 A Contractor’s Gamble

At 46, Marcus Thompson didn’t believe in ghosts. He believed in bills.

Thompson Construction was three months behind on a loan. His father had built the company from scratch. Marcus wasn’t going to be the son who lost it. So when a developer offered a $2.3 million contract to gut and renovate the six-story Grand View Hotel, he said yes — even though three other contractors had already turned it down.

“Boss, you serious?” his crew chief, Darius, asked. “That’s the screaming hotel.”

Marcus unrolled blueprints on the hood of his truck. “It’s an old building,” he said. “Old buildings make noise.”

But the moment he stepped into the Grand View’s dim lobby, he felt something off. The angles didn’t line up. The hallways looked too long. The air smelled faintly of chemicals and decay.

Still, for two months, everything went fine. His crew stripped the sixth floor, then the fifth, then the fourth and third. Then they reached the second floor — and everything changed.

The Wall That Shouldn’t Exist

The temperature dropped ten degrees the moment they stepped off the stairwell. The smell returned, sharper now — like formaldehyde.

Marcus’s men looked uneasy. The blueprints said the floor should have twelve rooms. But between Room 236 and Room 238, there was nothing but blank wall.

No door. No room number.

“That’s the one,” Darius whispered. “That’s where they say the screaming comes from.”

According to the plans, there should have been a Room 237, identical to every other room on the floor — 15 by 12 feet. But from the hallway, it didn’t exist.

The previous owner claimed it had been sealed off in 1983 because of “structural damage.” But no records existed. No permits. No repairs. Just a blank space on a floor that smelled like a morgue.

“We’re opening it,” Marcus said.

“Boss, maybe we shouldn’t—”

Marcus cut him off. “That’s what they’re paying us for.”

 Breaking Through

The next morning, Marcus and Darius set up in Room 236. They marked the wall where Room 237 should have been.

Darius raised the sledgehammer. “You sure about this, boss?”

Marcus nodded. “Do it.”

The hammer struck. Drywall cracked. Dust filled the air.

After twenty minutes, they had a hole big enough for a flashlight. Marcus peered through — and froze.

A room. Frozen in time.

Floral wallpaper from the 1980s. A rotary phone on the nightstand. Curtains drawn. Dust an inch thick.

And the smell — chemical, metallic, unmistakable.

He stepped inside. The floor felt solid. There was no water damage. No structural collapse. No reason the room should have been sealed.

Until he noticed something else.

The room was too small.

Fifteen feet on the blueprints, ten in reality.

“Five feet missing,” Marcus muttered. He rapped his knuckles on the back wall. Hollow.

Someone had built a false wall.

 The Discovery

They began tearing through it. The drywall broke easily — too easily.

When the hammer punched through, a cloud of stale air hissed out like a breath held for decades.

Marcus shone his flashlight through the hole.

What he saw made him stumble backward.

There was a space behind the wall — five feet deep, exactly what the blueprints predicted. But it wasn’t empty.

A mattress lay on the floor.

And on that mattress, two people.

A young black couple, side by side, fingers intertwined.

Their skin was brown and leathery, preserved by time. The man wore an undershirt and boxers. The woman, a white slip. Next to them were a wedding dress, a tuxedo, and a champagne bottle that had never been opened.

Marcus’s boot hit something. A black leather journal.

He picked it up. Inside the first page: James Carter.

The last entry was dated June 11, 1983.

“Michelle and I are officially married. Best day of my life. We’re at the Grand View Hotel for our honeymoon. The room isn’t great, but we don’t care. Tomorrow I meet with the owner about the discrimination case. He knows he’s going to lose. Tonight we’re just going to be happy.”

Marcus closed the journal. His hands shook.

“Call 911,” he said. “Tell them we found bodies.”

 The Case Reopens

Within an hour, the second floor swarmed with police. Yellow tape crossed the stairwell. Forensic techs snapped photos.

Detective Sarah Williams, 52, arrived first. Twenty-eight years on the force, fifteen in homicide. When she saw the bodies, her face went pale.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Do you know them?” Marcus asked.

She nodded slowly. “My mother worked their case. 1983. James and Michelle Carter. Newlyweds from Atlanta. Came to Birmingham for their honeymoon. Never went home.”

Her mother had been a young civil rights investigator back then. She’d spent years trying to prove the couple had been victims of racial discrimination — and possibly something worse.

For four decades, no one believed her.

Now Sarah Williams stood in the very room her mother had always suspected.

“You found them,” she told Marcus. “You gave them a voice.”

The Truth in the Walls

The medical examiner arrived that afternoon. Cause of death: carbon monoxide poisoning.

Both victims.

Their bodies had been treated with formaldehyde shortly after death — a preservation technique used by funeral homes.

Someone had known exactly what they were doing. Someone with embalming knowledge. Someone who’d had time to build a wall.

That same afternoon, Detective Williams uncovered the hotel’s ownership records. In 1983, the Grand View belonged to Richard Dunore, a prominent white businessman with deep political connections.

He had dismissed James Carter’s discrimination lawsuit as “race-baiting nonsense.”

Now, forty-one years later, his name was coming back from the grave.

 A Father’s Crime, a Son’s Secret

Dunore was dead — but his son, Robert, still lived in Birmingham. Williams drove to his house in Mountain Brook, accompanied by Marcus.

Robert answered the door in golf clothes, his face tightening when he saw the detective’s badge.

“My father said the room was sealed because of water damage,” he stammered.

“There was no water damage,” Williams said flatly. “The floors are solid. The walls are new. Your father built that wall. He killed those people.”

“That’s insane,” Robert protested. “You have no proof.”

Williams leaned in. “We will.”

 The Confession

Two days later, a judge granted a warrant for Richard Dunore’s storage unit. Inside were 40 years of hotel records — permits, receipts, letters.

Marcus found the file that changed everything.

A folder labeled Carter Discrimination Case.

Inside were letters between Dunore and his attorney, discussing James Carter’s lawsuit. At the bottom, a handwritten note on hotel letterhead dated June 11, 1983:

“Carter and his wife checked in tonight, Room 237. Gave them the one by the boiler. If he wants to destroy my business, I’ll destroy his honeymoon.”

Then, at the back of the drawer, a cassette tape.

Labeled: June 13, 1983.

Williams blew off the dust and hit play.

Static. Then a man’s voice, slurred and trembling.

“My name is Richard Allen Dunore. I’m recording this as insurance. That lawyer, James Carter — I knew he was trying to sue me. I gave him Room 237.

Worst room in the building. I figured maybe he’d leave. But he came to my office the next morning, said he had evidence. Said he was going to shut me down.”

“I didn’t plan it. I swear. But I snapped. I went to the basement, shut off the ventilation to Room 237, and opened the gas line from the boiler — just a crack. Carbon monoxide. They’d fall asleep and never wake up.”

“Sunday morning, I checked. They were dead. Holding hands. They looked peaceful. I called Tom from the funeral home — he helped me preserve them, build a wall, seal the room.

I told police they’d checked out Sunday morning. They believed me. Of course they did. I’m white. I’m a businessman.”

Then silence.

“I don’t feel guilty. James Carter tried to destroy me. I just defended myself.”

Williams stopped the tape.

It was a confession.

Justice, 41 Years Late

Robert Dunore was arrested two days later. In his father’s papers, police found a letter in Robert’s handwriting, dated 2019:

“I found Dad’s tape. If I go to the police, they’ll sue the estate. I’ll lose everything. I’m staying quiet. Maybe the secret dies with Dad.”

It didn’t.

On July 3, 2024, officers handcuffed Robert in his driveway.

“You didn’t kill them,” Williams told him, “but you let them stay dead.”

The Families Get the Call

That same week, Williams and Marcus drove to Atlanta to tell Michelle’s parents.

Ruth and David Peterson were in their eighties. When they opened the door, Ruth took one look at the badge and whispered, “You found my baby.”

Inside, Williams told them everything — the sealed room, the confession, the cover-up.

David Peterson stared at the floor. “He killed my daughter over a lawsuit,” he said quietly. “James believed in the law. He believed the system worked.”

Marcus promised them something: the Grand View would never bury their story again.

The Memorial

Three months later, The Carter Memorial opened in the lobby of the newly renovated Grand View Hotel.

It included photos of James and Michelle’s wedding day, newspaper clippings of the 1983 case, copies of James’s civil rights briefs, and a bronze plaque reading:

In Memory of James and Michelle Carter.

June 11, 1983 — Victims of hatred, sealed in silence for 41 years.

May their courage remind us: justice delayed is not justice denied.

Ruth and David Peterson attended. So did civil rights leaders, students, and journalists from across the country.

The story made national news.

Marcus Thompson stood in the back with his wife, Patricia, holding her hand.

“You did good,” she whispered.

“I just found them,” he said.

“You gave them justice,” she corrected. “That matters.”

 The Carter Initiative

Marcus didn’t stop there.

In 2025, he founded The Carter Initiative, a program that trains contractors to recognize signs of hidden rooms, false walls, and buried evidence in old buildings.

Over the next five years, the initiative helped solve eight cold cases across the South — victims hidden in walls, crawl spaces, and sealed basements.

Each discovery began the same way: someone noticed something that didn’t add up.

Just like Marcus did.

 The Anniversary

Five years later, Marcus returned to the memorial for the anniversary of the discovery. Ruth and David had both passed away, but their grandchildren were there.

A young woman approached him — early twenties, eyes that looked just like Michelle’s.

“Mr. Thompson,” she said, “I’m Michelle’s niece. My great-grandmother wanted you to have this.”

She handed him a photograph: James and Michelle on their wedding day, smiling, radiant, alive.

“She said you’re part of their story now. You made sure they were remembered.”

Marcus held the photo, his vision blurring.

Patricia squeezed his hand. “You changed things,” she said softly.

“I just knocked down a wall.”

“No,” she said. “You cared when nobody else did.”

The Legacy of Room 237

Today, the Grand View Hotel stands restored, its second floor bright and modern. But behind one section of wall, a small glass window reveals the original bricks of Room 237 — untouched, preserved as evidence.

Tour guides pause there every day, telling visitors about a young couple who believed the law could change the world — and the men who tried to silence them.

Every June, candles line the memorial. People come from across Alabama to leave flowers and notes. One message reads:

“You fought for justice. We heard you.”

Marcus still visits once a year. He stands in the quiet hallway where he once swung a hammer and listens.

Sometimes he swears he can hear faint voices — not screaming, but laughing.

James and Michelle Carter. Together at last.