Witchery Art: A Gothic Cabinet of Curiosities and Mysteries

A collection of gothic horror stories, urban legends, ghosts, haunted houses & other curiosities

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The haunted Brown Hotel and Theater in Louisville, Kentucky plays host to ghosts, monsters and Blue Oyster Cult

Featured articles (Footer), Haunted Hotels and B&Bs, Journal, Ohio River Valley, Pubs and Taverns, The South

The lobby of the Brown Hotel, in downtown Louisville. The ghost of James Graham Brown, the man who built it is said to haunt the mezzanine, looking down on his guests.

Sitting across the lobby of the Brown Hotel in Louisville, with his back to the wall sat a young man. He slouched in the overstuffed arm chair, looking up towards the balcony of the mezzanine. It was late in the afternoon, and he was killing time till showtime.

The Brown was born upscale in the roaring twenties, to compete with the Seelbach Hotel, just down the street, which was built with the grandeur of the Old World European hotels. The Brown Hotel, and its owner, James Graham Brown, had a tough row to hoe catching up with the Seelbach, which was almost twenty years its senior. It had even been immortalized in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. 

Living in Great Neck, where Fitzgerald had lived when he started the novel, and based much of it on, the Seelbach might have been a better choice for the young man. Or maybe not, as his tastes ran towards science fiction and the bizarre. And this afternoon, this place was getting its weird on.

Curly haired, decked out in black and still wearing his shades, he recognized the face of the man looking down from the mezzanine. It was plastered all over the hotel. He slid out of his chair and made his way serpentine to the stairs. The gothic cabinet on the landing loomed above him, its carved wooden jesters catching the setting sun, laughing at him, making him question, rightly, his sanity. 

Carving on a cabinet in the Brown Hotel

At the top of the stairs he was met with a rush of activity. A bridal party was rushing by, elegant and at a great expense. The ceremony was over, the bride and groom were on the way to the Brown for the reception and the guests were streaming in. The young man from Long Island crossed over to the railing, just down from where he’d seen the old man. 

He looked out across the lobby. It was all hustle and bustle and no one even noticed the bizarre symbol emblazoned on his chest. Or how when he turned his wrist just the right direction and it caught the sun from the windows, a thin beam of light scanned across the room. 

Looking to his left, jutting out from behind one of the columns, he saw a cigar glow, as the owner took a puff. For a moment he caught the profile of the face, and it was James Graham Brown, the man who built the Brown Hotel. 

Eric Bloom, of the band Blue Oyster Cult moved from his spot by the the railing to see for himself, face to face, a man dead for over fifty years. 

But there was no one there, just an empty space and the smell of a cigar. He looked down into the lobby and into his own eyes, still wearing the shades, but now 77 years old, and staring up at the cartoon character of his younger self, slouching in that overstuffed chair.

The sunlight on the grate in the lobby of the Brown Hotel. I swear, at the time it felt cosmic.

Stoned in the lobby of the Brown Hotel

I was dreaming up both characters, sitting in the lobby of the Brown hotel, waiting for Lisa to finish dressing, soaking up the atmosphere. The ghost story has been repeated many times … the old man looking out over the lobby, the smell of a cigar being the only trace when you look for him. 

Eric Bloom was on my mind as we were in Louisville to see Blue Oyster Cult at the Brown Theater later that night. 

I was sitting across from what appeared to be one of the original check in windows. The setting sun shone on its metal bars, and for instant I realized that this same moment had existed now for about a hundred years. Light from that same sun came through the same window and struck that same piece of steel, day after day. 

That’s probably when I realized the gummy had kicked in. A bit later, my stoned reverie on Old Louisville ghosts and rock stars was broken as Lisa came down, and we set off in search for food. They serve food in the lobby, but there was a Sicilian joint down the street. We could drink the difference in price.

It was warm for December, and walking with Lisa in downtown Louisville was downright romantic. It was a different world for us. There were young people everywhere, swarming the place. And by young, I mean teen and preteen, dressed to the nines and my mind boggled. I came from an era where in high school the biggest decision you had to make was which band band t-shirt to wear?

And as often as any, that was Blue Oyster Cult. 

Window in the Brown Hotel

The dark stain on the Brown Hotel in the fight for racial equality in downtown Louisville of the 20th century

As in most horror stories, the true evil lies within people’s hearts while they were alive. 

James Graham Brown was born in 1881 in Indiana. He moved to Louisville in 1903 and started a lumber company with his father and brother. But he quickly moved into commercial real estate buildings in the downtown areas. He seems to have eschewed romantic love and raising a family himself, being single minded in creating a vibrant, and architecturally stunning downtown Louisville. Starting with the Brown Hotel and Theater.

But sadly, only for the whites. In the late fifties, as Louisville was moving towards desegregation, he dug in his heels. He did allow black school children to attend performances of The Ten Commandments at the Brown Theater, but refused any other black patrons at any other time. 

During a performance of Porgy and Bess on Christmas of 1959, black ticket holders weren’t allowed into the theater. Even though the play was performed by an all black cast. 

This seems to have been one of the straws that led to the camel’s back crumbling, as sit-ins and other demonstrations were held outside the hotel and theater, and spread downtown. These went on for the next three years and the town’s reputation was being tarnished. More residents were arrested for protesting segregation in Louisville than in any other American city. A “Buy Nothing For Easter” campaign attracted 75,000 signatures, and the turmoil was taking a heavy economic toll. 

And yet Brown refused to allow entry to blacks until the city council changed the laws in 1963, banning segregation. Louisville became the first city south of the Mason-Dixon line to ban segregated accommodation. And Brown fought it as long as he could.

You can excuse him by saying he was a product of his time. But in reality, he was worse than his time.  

There’s a life size bronze cast of Brown walking his dog outside of the Brown Hotel. He looks more rotund than in the photos that are still visible inside the Hotel.  Brown lived in a penthouse suite on the top floor. It’s now off limits, and on the floor below, some guests have complained of the noisy footsteps coming from above. When told no one is in the room above, they ask for a new room on a different floor.

Down the street there’s a marker, remembering the protests over desegregation, but no mention on it of the protests at the Brown Hotel. James Graham Brown is a name that still has power in Louisville. With no heirs, his fortune, which was extensive, went to his foundation. It’s done an amazing job of improving life in Louisville, for people of all races. 

That’s one thing I’ve learned … Even good people do monstrous things from time to time. And even monsters are capable of doing good. 

Downtown Louisville

Monsters on the prowl in downtown Louisville, waiting for our appointment with Blue Oyster Cult

Blue Oyster Cult redefined what a monster was in the 1970s. They came along as I was transitioning from adolescent to teenager, and got under my skin. I had been a horror film nut, was well acquainted with science fiction as well, and their lyrics alluded to that sort of thing, albeit obliquely. 

It’s how they became the thinking person’s hard rock band. Even if the thinkers were mainly teenagers. They were marketed as the American answer to Black Sabbath. A horror film injected into rock and roll. Blue Oyster Cult created new monsters, replacing wolf men, the reanimated dead and vampires with the new ones … bikers, murderous drug dealers and junkies. People with death in their eyes. 

Eric Bloom and Jules Radino of Blue Oyster Cult, performing at Louisville’s Brown Theater.

And surprisingly, for a while, had hit singles. Here in the midwest, in the seventies and eighties we had a sweet tooth for hard rock. Blue Oyster Cult was already headlining coliseums without a hit single. Then Don’t Fear the Reaper came along and blew things sky high. 

We were monsters back then. Probably not nearly as bad as we remember, or for some, maybe even worse, but life felt dangerous, and this was the soundtrack to that era. 

As we walked back to the Brown Hotel, I began to see the other monsters. Some were in t-shirts with the BOC logo, easy to identify. 

At the Rabbit Hole Bar inside The Brown, they were better dressed, but still unmistakable. The overheard conversations from this upscale crowd were more like dissertations on who were the best bands of the seventies and why.

The haunted Mezzanine looking out over the lobby of the Brown Hotel

Drinking above our station in the lobby of the Brown Hotel

Louisville feels like New Orlean’s midwestern cousin. Particularly in the summer, you can feel the river here. There are gothic neighborhoods, blocks of bars and restaurants popping up all over the city. It’s an old town, with all the old problems we’ve never dealt with, like poverty, crime and racial divisions. And walking into the Brown Hotel, no matter how you try to justify it to yourself, is stepping into that old, genteel world. 

It was rowdier than we imagined it then, and still is now.

The Brown Hotel is a swanky joint, no doubt. You can tell by the price, and also by the fact that there’s a telephone right next to the crapper. That’s a dead giveaway that where you sit is intended to cradle the asses of people far more valuable than yourself. That makes doing your business there doubly satisfying. 

The lobby was a maelstrom of activity. The wedding guests were decked out in tuxedos, giving that touch of high end charm that a place like the Brown Hotel lobby needs to get the full effect. Over to one side, huddled around a TV was a circle jerk of men, watching a college football game. Their wives sat on the couch, wishing their husbands showed as much enthusiasm for their orgasms as they do for a touchdown. 

The Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville, decked out for the holidays.

I’d stood out on the street after the sun went down, having a smoke before the concert. When I first saw the band forty years ago, the question was how to smuggle your weed into the venue. Now it’s where can you find a place to smoke it before you go in, when you gave up your car for valet parking. 

Just down from valet parking was a bush, dim lighting – obviously designed for discreet pot smoking. While I stood there, I heard pounding feet coming towards me. I saw a young girl, maybe thirteen years old, dressed to the nines, her entire top half glittering with blue sequins, running down the sidewalk. Tears were pouring down her face. She didn’t fit in with the perfect teens we’d been meeting earlier, no matter how shiny she was. 

Above me, red and green lights signaled the oncoming train we call Christmas, adding another element of fervor inside. 

The girl came back around the corner of the hotel, still crying, but texting now. She’s learning about monsters too, just monsters of a different generation. I’m so old now I’m not even sure I recognize the new ones.

The Brown Theater in downtown Louisville, a part of the Brown Hotel.

Blue Oyster Cult turns the Brown Hotel’s decor from art deco gold to a gothic red and black

Inside the Brown Theater, we were in the balcony, the front row looking out. It’s an old world theater, based on the Music Box Theater in New York City. It could work as a Blue Oyster Cult album cover. 

The first time I saw the band was in a stadium in 1981, the last year they had a hit. The last time we bumped paths was about eight years ago, in a small town in southern Illinois, whose entire population you could have squeezed into that stadium. 

Blue Oyster Cult draws great crowds at events like that. And there’s the dichotomy with the band. They can play a bike rally as easily as the Brown Theater. It’s a result of singing about the outlaws of society. You develop an audience of outlaws. That they’re still drawing crowds fifty years later means that concept has legs. 

Lamp on the ceiling of the Brown Theater

For me, what the band truly excelled at was what they did right out of the box, creating an atmosphere. That was what made the Hammer horror films, those with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee so perfect. It was the mood those films set that was truly supernatural. 

BOC could take concepts and lyrics – often donated from others, and put them to music in ways which accentuated the diabolical, and made it sound romantic. No other group could play straight rock and roll and make it lock together like a Bach quintet. 

It’s that ornate edge, that air of the gothic that created a mystique around them, that makes playing on gilded stages oddly appropriate. But senior citizens are seldom gothic icons, unless you’re Vincent Price. And so far, no rocker has managed to quite pull that transformation off. 

Blue Oyster Cult at the Brown Theater

In concert, Blue Oyster Cult is consistently great

I don’t write concert reviews. They’re like YouTube videos shot on someone’s phone at a show. If you watch those, you’d likely to think Eric Bloom’s voice is as much a part of history as his laser wristband. But the sound at concerts aren’t mixed to sound good on phones. In concert, his voice sounded fine. He didn’t sound like he was in his twenties, but his snarl was intact. 

Buck Dharma wrote the hits, starting with Don’t Fear the Reaper. But he’s admittedly, more into creating pop songs, though occasional gothic jewels that invoke the full moon still pops out. He’s a bit younger than Eric at 73, and his talents haven’t diminished much. Of the guitar gods, he’s likely the most melodic. 

Buck Dharma, center, along with Danny Miranda, left, and Richie Castellano, right of Blue Oyster Cult at Brown Theater

You could make the point about how amazing it is that people of that age can still play music with that edge. But that’s insulting. It’s not like Mick Jagger getting more positive reviews for his stamina in prancing on the stage than his singing. These guys still do their job.

It’s Eric Bloom’s songs that gave Blue Oyster Cult its gravely feel, something that’s carried on even to their latest album, The Symbol Remains. It’s not a bad album, but I still couldn’t help but feel, the only songs that really felt to me like Blue Oyster Cult were the Bloom songs. 

It took twenty years for this album to appear. I hope it’s not their last. So far, no group, particularly hard rock groups have brought it full circle, returning to the beginning, but seen through the eyes of someone half a century older. They’re one of those groups which could surprise you and do it. 

It was when I was looking around, tracing the lines of the architecture to a soundtrack of Blue Oyster Cult that I got it. Their music creates aural spaces, and sometimes you find yourself in one of those spaces, with the song that fits it. I still miss the voices from the classic lineup that have fallen away. Those voices created spaces which the band can’t go to now. But the tightness of the current band just about makes up for it. 

And when you close your eyes, Blue Oyster Cult sounds better than ever. 

The guitar quartet of Blue Oyster Cult

Back in the lobby of the Brown Hotel, where people are behaving like dogs

In retrospect, we should have just went back to the room after the show. It was the first time I’d broken city limits for an overnighter in over a year. We were celebrating our anniversary after all. 

But there were a couple empty seats at the Rabbit Hole bar, so we took them. By now the place was filled with the bleary eyed, and at times, the plastered. You know a gaggle of women are blotto when they all want a cigarette, and none of then have smoked for years. It’s a sign of the times when no one at the bar was able to help them. 

The music from the ballroom was providing a steady thump on the ceiling. Play That Funky Music White Boy. I scanned the mezzanine for James Graham Brown, certain this would be enough to call him to his post. But he didn’t show. 

I opted for safe choices at the bar with a couple bourbons from the Bulleit family, and a couple Falls City English Style Pale Ales. A can of Falls City cost eight bucks. My Granny Bert drank Falls City, and would have turned over in her grave at that price. 

Carvings in the Brown Hotel

Lisa went exotic, with a Mojito and Long Island Ice Tea. Our bar tab could have bought us a room in many places, but it was worth it. Sometimes you have to sit in a swanky bar, just like you have to sit in dive bars. When the bar has a ghost, and down here even the Bulleit family who made the bourbon has one, it’s worth the tab.  

By the time we started up the elevator, the hotel was feeling like the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. Instead of two bloodied girls in the elevator, it was a family from Louisiana, who had brought their young son up to see the concert. The father’s favorite song of the night was (Then Came) The Last Days of May, a song about a murderous drug deal. The boy just looked a bit stunned. 

Lisa went on to the room. I stopped at the coke machine next to our room. It took credit cards, and I was fumbling by this point. The room across the hall, filled with drunken young wedding guests seemed to have their TV up loud, which made me jittery. The ice machine was humming. The coke machine was beeping and rejecting my advances. I was growing frustrated. The TV behind me grew louder. I heard a woman crying out, arguing, a man yelling “you think that hurt,” followed by a pounding, three times on the wall. That jerked me back into reality, for it was when I heard the sound of the wall being hit that I realized the voices weren’t from a TV. 

Then all was silent, except for the humming of the ice machine. I stood there a minute, listening. Nothing. I went over to their door and listened, nothing. 

I got Lisa, told her what happened and drug her out into the hall. Still silence, and I began to wonder if I imagined it all. I thought about it, then called the front desk. It’s one thing hearing a fight. It’s another when the fight abruptly goes silent. 

A bit later security is knocking on their door, I’m watching through the keyhole. There’s evidently two young ladies sharing this room, the young man isn’t supposed to be in there, the girls are begging the hotel detective not to throw him out. They were hysterical, the young man was silent and finally it grew quiet, the hotel dick left and by then Lisa and I were exhausted. 

Our room at the Brown Hotel. When the hotel was modernized some years ago, the walls between adjoining rooms were torn out, doubling the size, and reducing capacity by 50%.

Fitful dreams and farewell to Louisville

I didn’t sleep well. I had that weird feeling I’ve gotten when staying in places which were truly haunted. In those cases I can usually point to something strange happening, but not here. 

The Brown Hotel is a haunting place. It’s a space carved out of the humid Louisville atmosphere, gilded and made to feel like you’re in another land altogether. It’s no wonder the building itself seeps into your subconscious. That was the idea behind the designers.

The same can be said for the body of work created by Blue Oyster Cult. They created structures in sound, spaces inside the mind. Once you’ve been there, it’s easy to find your way back.

In the end, the Brown Hotel is a living hotel. People are always passing by. The lobby can be full of people dining, some of the most well-heeled folks I’ve ever seen. You might share the Mezzanine and hallways with staggering guests. But in this case at least, you couldn’t blame it on the band. 

For Blue Oyster Cult fans are after all, blue blooded.

https://www.brownhotel.com

Tales Told By A Tombstone … on Betsey Reed, The White Lady of Baker Cemetery, and a quartet of southern Illinois hauntings from Lawrence and Crawford counties

Haunted Graveyards and Cemeteries, Journal, Native Americans, Ohio River Valley, Pagans, Heathens and Witchcraft, Southern Illinois Hauntings and Legends, True Ghost Stories

Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed was the first and only woman hung in the state of Illinois. Is she the White Lady of Baker Cemetery? Is she even buried there? Was she even guilty, or is that why she still haunts her grave? There are more mysteries about Betsey than facts.

The ghost of the White Lady is a supernatural archetype, who manifests herself in nearly all cultures, dating back centuries. Southern Illinois is no exception. Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed of Baker Cemetery, near Palestine, Illinois is the most recent White Lady story in the limelight of southern Illinois. She’s even got her own biopic. There are those who believe that as a witch, she cast a curse which is still doing damage in both Crawford and Lawrence county today.

Granted, the people saying that are usually paranormal pundits on the internet, who if they landed in southern Illinois, with our spotty cellphone reception, intense heat and humidity and mosquitoes that could pack away a small family, would turn and run back shrieking to more populated areas. 

I’ve seen the ghost of the White Lady more than once.  I saw her run across the hallway of an inn a thousand years old in Glastonbury, as clearly as I’ve seen anything. I’ve seen white men as well, even more clearly and frequently. They don’t get the publicity because a woman in white is more romantic of a story. 

The one consistency I’ve noticed is speed. It lasts a second, if you’re lucky. Most of the time it’s just the hem of a white dress disappearing through a door, and there’s no one on the other side. 

The most vivid one could have been a dream. I was living in Vincennes, Indiana and she was standing beside my bed, beckoning me, so I got out and followed her. In the living room she turned around as though to tell me something, and disappeared. I thought it was a dream, but there was no transition from sleeping to waking, and I was standing in the middle of the living room. 

There could be a mundane, quasi-scientific explanation. I work with translucent layers with my photography. When you layer a color with bright highlights over a background, then gradually make it transparent, if it’s light enough, it becomes something akin to white or grey. Even something as dark as red hair can be mistaken for white. 

Ghosts, particularly those who are merely repeating the past, are often described as transparent, and frequently white. Hence Casper, the friendly ghost in his sheet. I’ve seen those apparitions as well, and always assumed they were wearing white or something almost as light. So it’s easy to be misled by your eyes. 

I once had an art teacher demonstrate how in darkness, there is no color. Color requires reflected light. It if it reflects the full spectrum, which is rare, an object appears white. Usually it’s grey, or cream, or even a light blue if illuminated by moonlight. If it absorbs all light, the object appears black. In between you have colors. 

So a ghost, specifically one which is just replaying the past, which isn’t corporeal, won’t reflect light. And therefore has no color. If it was wearing dark clothes in life, or was dark skinned, a transparent image would be almost invisible against a dark background. But if it was wearing light clothes, had light skin or hair, the imprint of reflected light would still stand out against the dark. But there would be no color. 

I’d had a list of haunted places around Lawrenceville for years. I’d recently watched a documentary on Elizabeth “Betsy” Reed, who was hung there in the nineteenth century, and as the White Lady haunted the cemetery where she was buried. 

So one balmy Saturday afternoon, the lovely Lisa and I set out from Carmi, up Route One to get a feel for these haunted places, and the landscape and history behind them. 

The church at the Hutson Family Memorial Cabins, near Hutsonville, Illinois

Route One … a two lane highway meandering through declining small towns in southern Illinois

Route One goes north from Carmi – through Crossville, Grayville, Allendale, Mt. Carmel and finally Lawrenceville, which is about as far north as I’d really wandered. It’s two lanes, and it can be an hour and a half to Lawrenceville during tractor season. 

But if you’ve got time, it goes all the way into Chicago as Halsted Street, and you see a lot of interesting things along the way. Till you hit Danville, it pretty much skirts the Big Wabash River, with Vincennes and Terre Haute on the Indiana side. The Wabash was an early lifeline into the area, dating to the French in the sixteenth century. So you find a lot of French names, and French superstitions, such as the werewolf, Loup Garou. 

Whether that werewolf made it across the Wabash we don’t know. But I’d bet dollars to donuts the story did. 

For the most part, certainly for a few decades in the nineteenth century, Illinois was settled from the south up. Or rather, from the rivers inward. So these are some of the oldest communities in the state. 

The shores of the Wabash are dotted with signs that the native Americans were here. Not just as settlers pushed in, but for centuries before, dating back to the mound builders of the Mississippian culture. Up here it was the Vincennes branch of the culture, a rival for the Angel settlements to the south, with their impressive mounds near Evansville, Indiana. 

In the early nineteenth century, it was commonly believed that these mounds were built by visitors from Europe, or even the middle east. Some of the most learned minds of the day swore that the native Americans didn’t possess the technology to build them. 

For the settlers, the mounds had to be a source of great mystery Even the native Americans of that day didn’t know the story behind the mounds, or the people who built them. Only long lost legends, barely remembered. Which no doubt became merged with the superstitions and folklore of the settlers. 

Someone who had lived in Britain, Ireland, or elsewhere in Europe where there  were mound building cultures, would certainly transfer that folklore to their new surroundings. 

Likewise, those who believed in witches, would find them here in the wilderness as well. And with those beliefs came paranoia. There is nothing as frightening as a small, isolated community, dependent on each other for survival, engulfed in a wave of supernatural fear. Remember Salem?

For this was wilderness. These were people moving into new areas, and the vast prairies proved too hard to plow. That left the woodlands, complete with the big bad wolf, the three bears, coyotes and any number of hidden, as well as mythical dangers.

The Hutson family cabin. left, a reconstruction near where the original stood was the site of a ghastly Indian attack in 1812.

Blood, fire and lead … the dark history of the Huston Family Memorial Cabins

Native Americans were one of those dangers, an almost spectral presence because of their ability to move unseen through the thick forest, they were a constant fear in 1812. The tribes were rightly pissed at the intrusion, as this was their homeland. They had banded together at Tippecanoe, over in Indiana under Tecumseh. A force under the command of William Henry Harrison had ridden north to sack Prophetstown, which was to be the heart of Tecumseh’s dream. 

Unfortunately Tecumseh was out of town, and his brother, Tenskwatawa violated a parley and attacked Harrison. To do so he’d cast a protective spell around his warriors. Native American witchcraft. Harrison repelled the attackers and proceeded to sack the town, destroying Tecumseh’s dream. And native American tribes began moving westward, leaving only a few scattered remnants behind. 

Occasionally they lashed out around here, often quite viciously. The settlers fought back, and found their revenge in equally gruesome ways. It’s hard to look at the story from either side and not think “my god how can be people be so atrocious?”

So the Hutson Family Memorial Cabins near Palestine was our first destination. It’s a recreated Pioneer settlement, with a bakery, general store, barn, inn, weaver’s cabin, museum and of course, a church. The church is actually a work of primitive gothic splendor. And sitting here in silence on the grass, looking around me, it felt as though I could be on a movie set. And at any moment, the set could be filled with extras in period costumes. 

Which is quite the sensation to have in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cornfields, with no other people in sight. In fact, I don’t remember more than a car or two passing by while we were there. 

And of course, a recreation of the original Hutson cabin is here. In roughly the same place it would have originally stood. My first feeling was of claustrophobia. The place is tiny, and housed seven people. Surrounded by the dangers of the forest. It was through that you’d need to travel to the safety of the fort. And of course, this wasn’t a village back then. Just a small farm.

According the grandson of Isaac Hutson, the Hon. Austin Hutson, one day in 1812, his grandfather has been on a trip to the Indiana side of the Wabash for provisions. Isaac had moved his family to the vicinity of Fort LaMotte in 1810, which according to his grandson, was situated in the midst of hostile Indian country. His writing makes the settlers out to be John Wayne replicants on steroids, and all native Americans burning with treachery and evil in their hearts. 

Isaac returned from his trip to find a horrific scene waiting for him. His farm was ablaze and his family missing. He feared the worst, that his wife and five “interesting” children were dead inside. Investigating further, he saw it was true, and that the culprits were Indians. 

Along with some neighbors from the area of the fort, he set off after them. According to the Hon. Austin, “We remarked that their pursuit was in vain, but those eager pursuers, perhaps, thought differently, for many a straggler did their unerring rifles bring to the dust. And the red men finding that the whites were in pursuit and in desperate earnestness, stopped not until they had put many miles between them and the dreaded pale face foe.”

That those that he took his revenge on might not be a party to the fate of his family didn’t appear to matter. In that day and age, native Americans were often painted with the same broad brush. Eventually he made his way back to his smoldering cabin.

“The bones of Mrs. Hutson and those of her nearest son were found near the fire place. As the doors were barred, they had either attempted to climb out of the chimney, or rescue the little babe from the boiling soap kettle into which it had been thrown, no doubt, before the house was fired.” 

“The kettle was suspended from an old fashioned crane, which was fastened in the jamb, and swung around like a gate. Think of the feelings of that mother when she saw her tender infant, about six months old, torn from her bosom by bloody hands and cast into the kettle. The sweet little hands are seen struggling with the bubbling surface; the strangling gurgle is heard; the foaming lava leaps the sides of the kettle; a noise of quenching fire is heard, mingled with the pleadings of the agonized mother, the deafening screams of the children and the threats of the brutal savages. Then followed the blows of the tomahawk; deep wounds were inflicted, from which the blood in streams did flow; the rough unpolished puncheon floor was colored red with human gore. The doors were fastened and the rude cabin set on fire. Around the burning house the remorseless red men danced with fiendish glee and yelled with demoniac merriment.”

That’s the mellow version of the story. A couple hundred years of folklore has made it even more grisly. One can’t help but wonder at the accuracy of the grandson’s account. By the time they poked through fire, the cabin had been burning and smoldering throughout much of the day at least, and likely through the night. How much evidence could have been left about what had happened prior to the fire?  Who watched the native Americans dancing with glee in their demoniac merriment?

Isaac spent the rest of his life as an Indian fighter, and eventually died doing so. One can understand his rage and prejudice, even a couple centuries later because of his loss, if not his methods. But those were different times. Even then, not everyone reacted to atrocities the same way. 

While researching Vona Shue, the Greenbrier Ghost of West Virginia article last year, I was reminded of the Muddy Creek massacre, which took place in the same area of West Virginia where Vona lived. It was my great grandmother, or rather one of them with several greats before her name, as this was in 1763. Settlers were banned by law in this area, but for one reason or another they decided to skirt the legalities. Then on June 26th, out of the blue, several native Americans showed up, bringing gifts and wanting to party. Each cabin in the settlement saw native Americans and settlers settling in for a bit of eating and drinking. 

Back in my ancestor’s cabin, my grandmother complained of a headache. A native American said he could cure it, and she told him to go right ahead. He buried his tomahawk in her skull, and with that sign the settlement was wiped out. As I’ve heard it, her son was coming home from hunting and saw the massacre, and hid out till it was safe. 

That fellow hiding in the tall grass … that’s my ancestor. I can’t blame the Indians as the settlers weren’t supposed to be there to begin with. Luckily for me, one of my line was more about self-preservation than revenge. 

Fort LaMotte, a reconstruction at Palestine, Illinois was built for the War of 1812 and to provide security for settlers coming into Lawrence and Crawford county.

A lost Frenchman’s discovery lead to Fort LaMotte, Palestine and a haunted opera house on a deserted Main Street

The area the Hutson family had moved to was guarded by Fort LaMotte, built by a group of Baptists near what is now Palestine, Illinois around 1810, which has been reconstructed on the outskirts of town. About seventy rangers were stationed at the fort, under the command of Captain Pierce Andrews.  

The fort was named after John Lamotte, a Frenchman who was a part of the LaSalle party which came through the area, and who was separated from the main expedition and found his way here. 

During the War of 1812, when a couple of coopers, scouting the river bank near Africa Point on the Wabash for wood spotted some canoes, a squad was sent  from the fort to check it out. The native Americans ambushed the soldiers, killing four and wounding two. The soldiers escaped back to Fort LaMotte, and presumably, the remaining Indians went on their way. 

Today the fort was standing silent, in a pasture which appears to be used for events involving horses. On one side is a ball park. On the far side was a street with houses. No doubt during events, with costumed interpreters, this would be an impressive site. But empty, locked up, it felt simply abandoned. You can’t feel the history here, despite a noble try with the restoration.

The same could have been said for Palestine itself, at least the Main Street. Palestine is a good sized small town of about 1,400 people, certainly respectable for this area. It’s well kept, obviously old and with a quirky sense of of humor, shown by peculiar statues and other art in the town. 

Which almost makes the emptiness of the place on a Saturday afternoon even more ominous. There was a definite Children of the Corn feel, with the corn being close to picking.

The Haunted Fife Opera House
Fife Opera House in Palestine, Illinois shows how propserous the town once was. It’s served many purposes, including a mortuary and funeral home. It’s believed to be haunted.

There were a handful of patrons at the tavern on Main Street, which is dominated by Fife Opera House. We parked at the side and wandered around. 

It’s hard to imagine on these empty streets, devoid even of traffic, that this place once warranted an opera house on this scale. It’s said when they threw the lights for the first time, all the lights in town dimmed. 

There have been no White Ladies reported at Fife Opera House, that I’m aware of. Only the sound of a woman singing opera, as well as a few mumbled voices over the walkie talkies of paranormal investigators. 

David Fife was the man who built the opera house, and he also used it for a general store. Being a licensed embalmer, he used the second floor at the back of the building as a funeral home. His nephew shot himself there, and Fife himself was believed to have died here. 

When one considers suicide in a funeral home, the mind kind of boggles. 

Later it became a furniture store. It’s not known when the building took on the reputation of being haunted. Looking online, you don’t even find much in the way of details about the haunting. But standing outside, you can feel it.

There in the hot sun, peeking in through the windows for a glimpse of the splendor inside, you do get the feeling that the place could be haunted. This building which saw so much life, now spends most of its time in silence. It seems to me it would be easier than most places to hear the past.

But the same can be said of the whole town, and many of these small southern Illinois towns. You can feel the life which was once here, before being abandoned to suffer the long decline. 

The road to Baker Cemetery, haunted by the White Lady
Looking back on the road up to Baker Cemetery. It’s said that electronics don’t work here, though we didn’t have that problem. We did have issues getting GPS to find the place however.

Mysteries surround the white lady of Baker Cemetery, Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed

Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed was believed to have been born early in the 19th century. Her tombstone doesn’t give the year of her birth, or her husband’s with whom she shares a tombstone. Only the date of her death, by hanging. 

Most accounts have her as being 38 years old. Though believed by some to be partially disfigured, she’s believed by others to have had the power to mesmerize men. 

But like most of the story of Elizabeth Betsey Reed, you can’t trust anything you hear. Your gut instinct is about as helpful as the facts. Even the tombstone, and where Betsey is buried is surrounded in mystery. 

When you take a story from folklore, and then present as fact, history or historical fiction, it has the effect of making people believe that what they’re learning is the truth. In fact, there is no way to learn the truth of what happened with Betsey Reed. 

There are plenty of contemporary newspaper accounts, from Chicago and back east mainly. It’s oddly familiar reading the debate between those who viewed Elizabeth Betsey Reed as a victim on the liberal east coast, and deserving of mercy, and those in the midwest who thought hanging was too good for her. She was a cause in the 19th century death penalty debate. 

Elizabeth Betsey Reed was the first, and last woman executed in Illinois. This is true. But few know that the first person executed, at least legally in Illinois was a black man in Cahokia for witchcraft. He was supposed to be burned at the stake, but someone got ahead of the game with their pistol, perhaps out of mercy, perhaps out of fear. 

Betsey was believed to be a witch too, or at least that’s the folklore. My hunch is that story came later, as none of the contemporary sources I’ve seen mention it. And they would have been on that story like stink on shit. 

The most useful article I found wasn’t contemporary, but from the Princeton Daily Clarion of December 5, 1913. 

Princeton is just across the river from Mt. Carmel, about 20 minutes south of Lawrenceville, where she was hung. Early on we find out that the author knows many of the people involved. She has the names of the jury, the witnesses, the judge – and knows his family history. She writes with familiarity with many of these people, so even though the author likely wasn’t alive at the time of her trial and execution, it’s drawing on sources who are using their memory of the events. 

Which isn’t always all that accurate of course. Like the comment that Betsey was hung from a tree, rather than the gallows. 

But they make another statement, which explains where the information comes from … “Elizabeth Reed and her husband lived near Palestine, Crawford county, on the farm cf my great uncle. James Baird. They being old and infirm and without means, he allowed them to live in the old log house, giving them a few acres for cultivation. Elizabeth must have had some terrible disfigurement of the face, for she always wore a wide white band about her head and tied under her chin, ard when she went out a thick veil.” 

This is obviously someone still seeing Betsey as a victim, but someone with closer ties than all the writers out east, or up in Chicago. At first I discounted the story, as I’d heard that Betsey was around thirty or forty. She had the ability to charm men. She found God before her execution and was described as being robust on the way to the gallows, and during the 90 minute sermon preached before her hanging. That doesn’t jibe with her and her husband being old and infirm. 

But then again, her husband had been treated for a stomach ailment for two or three years prior to his death. That jibes with being old and infirm. 

Much has been made about her confession, that she killed her first husband, starved two of her children to death and dispatched one or two more via poison. But as the Chicago Tribune printed October 18, 1885, “days after the hanging, her confession was published post mortem, sold widely, but not a single copy can be found today.”

Which begs the question … did the confession ever exist? Or was it just a story circulated to sell newspapers?

And at any rate, her confession only came out after her death, by all accounts. So she was convicted on evidence that was only related to the death of her husband, a sickly man it was testified, and the the testimony of a little girl. 

The author goes on to state that she asked the woman who rode in the wagon with Betsey on the way to the gallows, who had helped her find Jesus, if she thought her guilty. She replied that she didn’t, and once again mentioned that she was nearly seventy.

The entrance to Baker Cemetery, near Heathville, Illinois. It’s believed to be haunted by The White Lady, thought to be Betsey Reed.

Was Elizabeth Betsey Reed a witch?

Who can really say? Today, we can’t even agree what a witch is. But I can’t help but be drawn to comparisons with Salem, Massachusetts, and their encounters with witches. 

Elizabeth was never accused formally of being a witch. And it was never mentioned in contemporary accounts. It could, and likely is a modern addition to the story, relatively speaking. 

But the connection with the Salem trails is startling. The star witness, who claimed to see Betsey putting the poison in her husband’s sassifrass tea was a young girl, just as in Salem. Without that evidence, there would have been no conviction. Unless the townspeople were already convinced she was a witch. 

Another point made in the Chicago Tribune article is that there were several ambitious young doctors in town, and aside from the fact that the body was buried beneath scaffold, “no one cared what became of her body.”

Other papers were more specific. She was exhumed and an autopsy performed. Or the autopsy was performed prior to burial. In her stomach was found several pieces of brick, no bigger than a pea, and pulverized glass. She was eating the jail she was imprisoned in, trying to hasten her death and beat the hangman. 

The doctors said they didn’t think she would have lasted through the week. And that explained her weakness on the scaffold. Unless of course, you’re following the stories where she’s up and praising Jesus. 

My first thought, is why do you do an autopsy on someone who has just been hung? Isn’t the cause of death pretty much certain? Why check the contents of the stomach, when everything put in it, at least in most cases, would already be known? Why would it even matter?

It’s also worth mentioning that several papers had announced her suicide from swallowing a quantity of glass, only to have to issue a retraction that the hanging had been carried out after all. Which came first? The rumor of the suicide? Or the story of the autopsy?

But the story is there from the very beginning. A hanging is a gruesome event. This one drew 10-20,000 people to a town of a few hundred. An autopsy keeps the people in town just a little bit longer. The hanging of Elizabeth Betsey Reed was good business for Lawrenceville. 

In my own hometown of Carmi, an hour south of Lawrenceville, our first hanging was halted with a stay of execution by the governor, delivered to the sheriff the night before the hanging. The sheriff arranged for the rider to come back the next day, while the condemned was on the gallows, to deliver the writ. He feared a riot from the crowds gathering in town without an execution, or something equally as exciting. 

So you can’t put anything past these people. They’re my people, God bless them, but sometimes people behave like dogs. 

The rumor of witchcraft stems from when Betsey was being held in the jail at Palestine. It was a formidable structure. You had to climb a ladder to the second story, then you went down to the floor for the first, which was set two or three or feet below ground level. There were two alternating layers of timber a foot thick. It was a dungeon, and somehow, Betsey managed to set it on fire. 

She was caught running down the street, almost insane from some reports. She was moved to Lawrenceville, which set the stage for the final act. And back home in Palestine, the rumor mill started grinding out the story that Betsey was a witch. 

If it’s true she was about seventy, impoverished, living on the outskirts of town, and convicted on the testimony of children, then the correlations between her and the Salem witches are even closer. She’s the kind of woman that people believe to be a witch, because she fit the archetype. 

So Elizabeth Betsey Reed was witch, because in part at least, she was likely prosecuted by people who believed she was a witch. To be a witch, in that time and place, didn’t require you to do anything.

In that day and age, witches were thought to be old, ugly, the crone in the woods. Today witches take on a more glamorous aura, just as mythical. But it’s only natural that over time, a poor old woman prosecuted because of suspicion and little evidence, becomes younger, a temptress and more malicious than in life.

Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed is buried at the far end of the cemetery, and her grave was only discovered by accident.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Reed springs up in folklore springs up before her body is even cold

As noted, a group of doctors, or medical students did an autopsy on Betsy’s body. But the reliability of this report is sketchy. 

According to some, Betsey was buried beneath the gallows, and the students dug her up. Then once their grisly deed was done, buried her in a pauper’s field in Lawrenceville. So even before she’s spent a night in the grave, there’s disagreement about where that grave was. 

And remember … the longer the time between execution and autopsy, the harder it is to explain the rumors of poisoning by ingesting glass that made their way to print even before the editors had seen the first reports of her hanging. 

If there was an autopsy, it was done immediately, and she was buried. Either beneath the scaffold, or in a local cemetery. Then, according to later legends, her relatives, brothers are often mentioned, dug her up and moved her to Baker’s Cemetery, outside Heathville, just south of Palestine near where Betsey and her husband lived. 

It’s there  you find the tombstone, the grave of Betsy and her husband. 

But wait a minute. 

Would her husband’s family dig up his killer and bury her next to her husband? Would her own family dig her up and bury her next to the man she was accused of killing. If they thought her guilty, it’s unlikely they would have went to the trouble. And more unlikely they would have buried her next to him. 

Unless the family, on both sides, if there was a family, believed her innocent. Only then would either side agree to burying the two together. After all, there were plenty of free places to bury bodies on the frontier. 

The original tombstone for Elizabeth "Betsey" Reed
Stone discovered on the outskirts of Baker Cemetery which is believed to be the original marker where Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed was secretly buried.

A trip to Baker’s Cemetery

I’d read that electronic instruments, like cameras and recorders don’t work in Baker Cemetery. I can’t vouch for that. My camera worked fine, as did Lisa’s iPhone. We had no trouble taking photos, even at Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed’s grave.

As usual, Lisa was the one to find it. I didn’t really try to be honest. I knew she’d find it before I did. It’s a modern tombstone, set in 1988 by a nearby family who always believed she was innocent. A man was hunting along the edge of the woods there, and stumbled across a small square stone that had the initials ER carved on it. It’s obviously old, obviously hand done, just as you’d expect from a poor settler family in the 1840s. 

But there’s always a mystery with Betsey. There is no old stone for her husband. In the records of Baker Cemetery of 1944, he doesn’t exist. Though on the edge of the woods, in all fairness, maybe his stone hadn’t been discovered. And perhaps the new one replaced it. Who knows?

The new stone is edged in pennies of people coming to pay their respects, just like us. And there is a mood in Baker Cemetery. It’s a summer day, the sun is shining, it’s hot, humid. But the place just feels oppressive. 

I sat on a tombstone nearby, a modern one, big enough to hold my fat ass without any problems, and just let myself go blank. Lisa was between me and Betsey’s grave, and I brusquely asked if she could move, as she was fucking with my feng shui. I didn’t mean to sound gruff. It was the result of the last hour or so, where our electronic devices that should have taken us directly to Baker Cemetery refused to work, even back in Palestine. I still just had anxiety and frustration in my voice.

We knew the cemetery was near Heathsville, so we set off for that town. Luckily we blinked before coming into town, as that’s about how long it takes to pass through it. We guessed that the population must be eighty, but someone had removed the zero from the sign, so it read eight. 

Just past town there was a road which we thought we should take but the sign was too small to read. I pulled into the next turn to turn around, and a truck that had been following us pulled in beside us. He rolled his window down, and Lisa rolled down hers.

“You lost?” he asked, sounding more friendly than menacing. These are small communities, and they tend to shy away from outsiders. It’s not as bad as in Betsey’s day, but long hairs and Lisa’s bumper stickers can arouse suspicion. 

She told him we were looking for Baker Cemetery. He paused for a second, then gave us directions. And was on his way. 

So when we finally pulled into the winding dirt road that runs next to a creek, and up a hill, I half expected to see a convoy of villagers coming in behind us with pitchforks and sickles. That left me paranoid, on top of the irritation and panic that comes from being lost, and seeing the sun dip lower in the sky. 

Lisa moved away and went back to taking photos and I pondered. But nothing came to me. 

When you put aside the EVPs various paranormal folk come up with, what you have here is a classic White Lady story. The White Lady, seen walking among the tombstones. As Betsey is believed to be buried here, and she went to her death in white, it’s assumed that’s who the White Lady is. But that’s a guess. 

This is a graveyard that’s been in use for over 150 years. The earliest markers were of wood, and likely why Betsey’s husband had no marker. Those are long gone. But all these people had stories, and any woman buried here could just as easily become a Lady In White as Betsey. 

I walked over to where Lisa was standing. She had a stabbing pain in her side, like someone stuck a knife between her ribs. She was leaning against a tombstone, obviously in pain. There was no cause for it that she could pinpoint, except riding too long in the car perhaps. It finally passed and we decided it would be a good time to leave, as we still had stops to make in Lawrenceville, and the sun was going down. 

The abandoned hulk of the burned out Lawrenceville High School, Is there a White Lady haunted it as well?

The ghosts at Lawrenceville High School

The old Lawrenceville High School stands abandoned on a high hill on the edge of Lawrenceville, Illinois, overlooking the Embarrass river (pronounced Ambraw) below. A few years back a fire swept through empty building, leaving an eerie brick shell. A weeping willow, ancient and huge stands guard at the shattered front doors. 

At the foot of the hill is where the gallows were erected for Betsey’s hanging. The trouble is, nobody knows exactly where. But it’s a safe bet that this is the hill that people clamored over to get a good view, whichever direction they were looking. Even the low estimate of ten thousand gawkers would have covered this whole area. 

The Crawford County Ghost Hunters have done a pretty extensive investigation at the football field, which is where most people believe that the gallows stood. They found a few bad EVPs, heard unusual sounds and in general, felt creeped out. 

Abandoned Lawrenceville High School Football Field
Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed is rumored to have been hung where the football field stood at Lawrenceville HIgh School. Though likely not true, it certainly puts off a creepy vibe down here.

I walked around the high school, which looks like a castle on a hill in ruins. Peering into the empty rooms, without ceilings into the sky above, it looks deserted much longer than a few years. 

The grass is a bit tall, and every path that seemed to lead to the football field was locked behind a chain link fence. I finally found an open gate and wandered down into the pit. The grass was blowing a bit in the breeze, and I can’t say I ever saw a place look more empty. 

The goalposts rise eerily out of the grass, and I could still remember seeing this place packed with people, the sounds of shoulder pads slamming into each other under the bright white stadium lights. 

What creeped me out was knowing that in the one year I played football in high school, the last sixty seconds of the game against Lawrenceville where I finally got to play, we might well have been playing over the buried corpse of Elizabeth Betsy Reed. If she was indeed buried beneath the scaffold, there’s a good chance she’s still there. If not, where I got pulverized by a tight end might well have been where her neck was snapped. 

But according to most historians, the actual site of the gallows was likely a quarter mile to the east. So what supernatural occurrences could the Crawford Paranormal folks been picking up on?

They’re convinced it’s remnants from the hanging. But I can’t buy that. The football field is simply a convenient location for the legend to live. 

Still, that doesn’t mean that Lawrenceville High School isn’t haunted. 

The abandoned Lawrenceville High School
A grey lady, similiar to The White Lady is believed to haunt the abandoned Lawrenceville High School

The grey lady of Lawrenceville High school

It’s said that the Lawrenceville High School had been haunted for years. But nobody spoke up till Halloween, 1975. 

The football team had been over in Bridgeport kicking the asses of their main rivals, and returned to the high school after the game, still elated. They hung out for a while in the locker room, till one team member made a run to the water fountain. 

“I went upstairs to get a drink. I heard a noise and turned around to see a lady standing behind me. I took off running – but when I stopped and looked back I didn’t see her anymore.”

He ran back downstairs and told his teammates, some of whom wanted to go upstairs and check it out. When they did, they’d see something move, freak and run away. Finally they girded their loins and went upstairs for another look. 

One of the boys described what happened,  “we thought we saw something move. It looked as if it tried to hide. Then we saw something move from window to window. It was a tan-ish figure. I saw it at least five times that night. I got scared and ran out, and then had to go back in to see if I was going crazy. One time she was so close I could see her eyes. They were shiny and – weird. You couldn’t really tell it was a woman. I guess we just felt it was.”

A couple of other students saw the figure, as well as some of the parents, who had went inside. Other reports came from the parking lot, where parents were waiting for their sons. One said, “I was outside. I saw the blinds going up and down. I saw the lady moving back and forth in the band room on the top floor.”

These weren’t anonymous reports. These are people speaking in a national magazine using their real names. That’s taking a chance in a small town, where talking about ghosts can lead people to believe you’re half a bubble off plumb. 

Trust me. I’ve got experience in that department. 

Interior of the burned out Lawrenceville High School
A school librarian in the 1950s was brutally murdered by a jilted lover, and is thought to be the ghost which still haunts the abandoned Lawrenceville High School

Lawrence Lore, the blog of the Lawrence County Historical Society where I got the story tracked down a possible source of the haunting. 

Georgine Lyon of Madison, Indiana became high school librarian in August 1952. She had been engaged to  Charles Petrach of Gary, Indiana. Chuck had served in World War II, seen action in Japan and was injured there, which left him a bit “erratic.”

Georgine caught on to this fact, and after he got busted for drunk driving and lost his license, his car and his job, she broke off the engagement, and took a job as librarian at Lawrenceville High School. 

On September 3, 1952, Charles showed up in the high school library, which was empty at the time and asked Georgine to reconsider. When she turned him down, he pulled out a 22 and started firing. Georgine was hit in the right temple, the lower throat, twice in the heart and three times in the abdomen. 

 Could she be the grey lady of Lawrenceville High School?

Railroad Bridge at Lawrenceville haunted by the White Lady
A railroad bridge on the outskirts of Lawrenceville was rumored to be haunted by The White Lady, who was killed by a train in the mid twentieth century.

Still more Stranger Things, The White Lady on the railroad bridge

I’ve stolen liberally from the website, Folklore, Legends, Tall Tales, An Interactive Casebook For Knox County, Indiana by Richard King for years. It’s only right. He still owes me a bottle of Jameson over a bet. 

What I like about his site is he covers much more than Knox County, Indiana. I’ve found stories about southern Illinois which were once big news across the country, but long forgotten in the state where they were born. 

Like the White Lady that haunts the railroad, waiting on the bridge for a train to take her pain away. 

On the edge of Lawrenceville, an old steel railroad bridge still crosses the Embarrass River to the east of the tank farm of the old Texaco refinery. The refinery was big business in Lawrenceville and responsible for much of its population. Then it shut down, leaving a town to decline and fade. Looking at the satellite view from Google maps, it’s apparent that though most of the structure is gone from the refinery, much of the mess is still there. 

I had a notion it might be tricky getting down to the river, as this meant going through the area where the refinery used to stand. To be honest, I wasn’t excited about taking the path. The railroad tracks looked to be a safer bet, but it appeared it would be a choice between one or the other, as both sides of the tracks looked overgrown and wet. 

It turns out that I was right. The whole area is sealed off by chain link fences. While I drove, Lisa pored over Google maps on her phone, looking for a way in. The sun was rapidly going down, and as we crossed the tracks I stopped and looked towards the river. In the distance I could make out the bridge. 

Lisa was having no luck, so I hung a left and headed towards the river. I didn’t get far, before running into more chain link, this time courtesy of CSX railroad. So I parked in a skeptically legal spot, and decided to head for the bridge on foot, as I really needed the photo, and to feel the place. Lisa stayed behind to safeguard the car from any authorities who were likely to pop up. 

I immediately realized it was a bad idea. It was still hot, getting dark and the bridge was barely visible in the distance. But I set off all the same down the tracks. 

There’s an art to walking on railroad tracks, or rather the cross ties. The rocks in between are large and jagged. The ankle twists frequently. The only way to make good time is to walk on the wooden ties. But to walk on each tie means taking tiny steps. Skipping a tie means a longer stride. I was in a hurry so I skipped a tie and opted for a longer stride. 

I passed more No Trespassing signs, and after about a quarter mile I was in an area that was sealed off on both sides of the track. You could tell there was something noxious about the place, Toxic even. 

According to the article on Richard’s site, “She was said to be about our age, a high school girl or maybe just a little older. At some time in the past she had put on her nicest white dress, and walked the mile or so through the refinery stink and the tank car yard and walked out onto the bridge and waited for a train. When it came along she made no attempt to jump or get out of the way, she just stood there in her white dress and let it hit her.”

“A full train of cars at fifty tons apiece or more takes quite a ways to stop, and there was no way those trainmen could keep from hitting her. At forty, fifty miles an hour there’s not much left when a train hits a person like that, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a pretty girl or not. At least it must have been over pretty quick.”

I remember as a child, growing up in Carmi that an old man had been hit by a train a short time before. Some friends were playing along the tracks and found a shoe. With the foot still in it. So I was used to the gruesome idea of death by train from an early age. It’s only got worse as I grew older, and more people I knew died from them. 

So that had me weirded out. I would occasionally hear a scream in the distance, as likely to be a little kid as a lady in white. But it was unnerving all the same. By this time I was moving at a good clip, drenched in sweat, short of breath, the blood pounding in my head. 

I was reminded of the series, Stranger Things which deals with mysteries around small towns, fenced off with secret horrors going on within. Though based on Long Island legends, it’s located in the show in southern Indiana. In one episode, they have to escape to Illinois, and according to my calculations, they’d have been right around here. 

I’d hear an occasional high pitched whine that sounded like a train whistle and jerked my head around and stopped. Each time it was a large power line running along the tracks, screaming out in the silence. Otherwise it was silent. There are no people back here. No cars. No wildlife for that matter, and the sky was turning pink.

The girl who died here was thought be about high school age, and was believed to be depressed over losing her boyfriend in the early days of a war. Nobody was sure which one, though WWII is a likely candidate. 

The author to the story on the site, related the following, which he had heard from his girlfriend’s brother, who worked for the railroad. 

“When we got to his house, her sister-in-law told us he had been crying. Then laughing. Then he cried some more, and then he started getting very, very drunk. I had seen a few drunks before. When we got to talking, he was laughing again, but he was shaking like he was real cold. He’d seen her, he said: the girl on the bridge. He told us about it.”

“It seems that sometimes since that first time, the train crew would see a girl standing out on the bridge right where the one had been hit before. It was no ghost either; when the train hit, there was blood across one side of the engine front on the fireman’s side and as they went past they could see her white dress go under the wheels. The first few times, trains had stopped there and the fireman and head brakeman would go back to see who it was. When they got there, there’d be nothing there. They were told that it was probably a trick of some kind, a stunt by some kids with a dummy and some white rags. That was the official explanation anyway, and for a while at least, the trainmen were ordered not to stop at that bridge if they thought they had hit someone.”

The story dates at least to the 1950s, and it’s not heard of much since. I finally made it to the bridge, with still enough light to get the photo. As I got my photos, the whir of the camera the only sound. The White Lady didn’t come out to greet me, but I was thankful for that. I didn’t want to watch her go down, and didn’t want to be on the tracks when a train was coming. 

So I texted Lisa I was on my way back. By then she had relocated the car to someplace legal, not much further away than before, and had started wondering if I was dead. I assured her I was till amongst the living, though I didn’t see any, and turned heels and started back down the tracks. 

The haunted Hamptons and ghosts from the sea from Long Island’s south shore

Journal, Long Island

With hundreds of souls lost to the sea off Fire Island, there are countless shadows seen walking in the mist, all along its famed beaches.

The haunted Hamptons in many ways gave birth to haunted Long Island … with an unhealthy dose of folk horror born from witch trials, ghosts washed up from the sea, and almost four hundred years worth of history. 

It’s said that the longer a place has been occupied, the more relics from the past, the more the likelihood of ghosts. The Atlantic shore, and eastern end of Long Island is rich with both.

In the beginning, Long Island was home to native Americans, who had an advanced culture here. Different tribes lived somewhat amicably together on the narrow island. They farmed, they hunted and they fished. When the Dutch came, the natives thought there was room for everyone. But the white men kept coming, and eventually many of the native people abandoned the area. There was some resistance, easily put down. Those that chose to stay were felled by an invisible enemy … smallpox, which the Europeans brought and the natives had no immunity to. 

While the Dutch were building a foothold on Manhattan, the English were landing on the eastern tip of Long Island. In 1640, an Englishman, Lion Gardiner, late of Connecticut moved to the island which still bears his name, nestled between the north and south fork of Long Island. His influence was soon being felt by the settlements that began to spring up on Long Island itself. 

Change came a bit slower to the eastern end of Long Island. For the uninitiated, haunted Long Island shoots out from Manhattan into the Atlantic, long and thin like a shark. On the eastern tip, like tail fins of the shark, it breaks into the two forks. 

Between the tips of the forks lies Gardiner’s Island.

Today, the island is still owned by Gardiners, albeit sometimes jointly in an uneasy family truce. Speaking on his family, the 16th Lord of the Manor, Robert Gardiner explained “we have always married into wealth. We’ve covered all our bets. We were on both sides of the Revolution, and both sides of the Civil War. The Gardiner family always came out on top.”

As any fan of gothic horror can tell you, this is a recipe for a family curse, as well as family ghosts.

Settlements on Gardiner’s Island were followed by British settlements at Southold on Long Island proper in 1640, then Southampton, Hempstead, Huntington, Brookhaven, Smithtown and East Hampton, all within fifteen years, moving east to west.  

By 1664, all of Long Island, as well as the Dutch colony of New Netherlands was in English hands.

As Captain Kidd made his way back to the U.S. mainland in 1699 after his spree, he stopped at Gardiner’s Island, and buried a chest and a box of gold, as well as two boxes of silver. He did so with the blessing of the owner of the Island, who received a piece of gold cloth and a bag of sugar for his cooperation. It’s also said he laid a death threat on Gardiner, not to dig it up or divulge its location, which he did when Kidd was being tried by the courts in Boston.  He produced the treasure, but kept one diamond, which he gave to his daughter, Mary. 

Gardiner’s second daughter, Elizabeth was dead by this point, having died in 1658, of a sudden affliction. The day before her death, she fingered another East Hampton resident as the cause of that affliction, the witch Elizabeth Garlick. 

So within twenty years of the British landing on Long Island, the supernatural was alive and well. 

The dangers of the whaling industry brought riches and specters to the south shore of haunted Long Island. In the seventeenth century, a more pressing danger here in East Hampton was thought to be witchcraft.

With the English comes witchcraft to eastern Long Island

The village greens on haunted Long Island are time capsules. Focus straight ahead and it’s the 1600s. Adjust your field of vision a slight amount and it’s the nineteenth century. By standing in the middle and turning in a circle, widdershins of course, you can see four hundred years of history flash by. 

On the village green in Setauket, and again in East Hampton, you can make out voices from the past, speaking of witches charged, arrested and awaiting trial. Standing there, seeing the relics of the past surrounded by modern beauty, it’s easy to hear accusations like that and wonder how people can be so stupid?

But if you stay quiet, and it’s a cool fall day, after the leaves have changed, you might find a dark spell coming over you, and as you slip back in time, suddenly it doesn’t seem as tame and convenient as you thought. To the west lies the forest, native Americans, and beyond them, the Dutch. Your enemy. To the east, the Atlantic Ocean. You’re surrounded by death.

And in your midst, a witch. 

The people who founded Long Island were well versed in the stories detailing the ways of witches. Whether it was the fear of the unknown, or just fear of those different from you, it didn’t matter. A steadfast belief in the dangers and presence of witches was a reality. You didn’t have the luxury of deciding if you believed in witchcraft, ghosts or even demons. People more educated than you were certain they did. So you worried more about how to protect yourself from them. 

A modern example? Today we turn to our leaders for guidance, and those who consider themselves educated and intelligent listen to the people believed to be experts. And follow their advice. So we get a vaccine- myself included, while those who choose to make up their own mind, based on beliefs rather than expert testimony often don’t. 

With this same logic, if you got a Covid vaccine this past year, you’d likely vote in an examination to send a suspected witch to trial. And if found guilty, demand her life. Because most of the leaders – political, religious and social all believed firmly in the existence and dangers of witchcraft. 

The ghost of a grieving lighthouse keeper is believed to have hung himself here, from the top of Fire Island Lighthouse.

Today we call it superstition. Back then it was called self preservation

I always assumed the south fork of Long Island was a different story. Everyone knows about the Hamptons, and even out at the tip, you have Jimmy Buffet, Dick Cavett and Woody Allen. I never had any reason to go out there. 

And then I had a wedding to attend in Montauk. So one afternoon I plotted my course and headed east. 

I started coming into villages with the surname of Hampton … Westhampton, Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton … and I found myself stunned. You can tell the well-heeled live here. It’s clean and uncluttered. But also full of history. By the time I hit Easthampton, I’m agog. There are windmills. Fucking windmills. I briefly consider blowing off the wedding. But I’m also the photographer, so I soldier on. 

A few weeks later I get a call from Linda Mackey. She’s writing Haunted Long Island II, and wonders if I’d do some photography for it. I’m up for that. She sends me a shot list, and I see I’ll be going to the Hamptons. 

Sailors from the doomed ship the Louis V. Place are believed to haunt Lakeview Cemetery in Patchogue.

A chilling tale of the ghosts of drowned sailors buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Patchogue

There are four sailors buried in the Lakeview Cemetery in Patchogue, New York from the schooner The Louis V. Place, lost off Fire Island in February 1895. The voyage was plagued by the weather, which caused the ship to ice up, becoming what was described as “a floating iceberg.” When it ran aground off a sand bar on February 8, the sailors were suffering from hypothermia and too frostbitten to aid rescuers, who were forced to turn back and return the next day. 

That night in an attempt to fight off the icy waters crashing over the decks, the doomed sailors climbed the rigging, one last time. Out of eight crew members, six froze in the rigging, two were rescued still alive, but only one survived. The captain fell into the sea, and going against the current, his body floated 30 miles to within yards from his home in Hampton Bays. 

It’s said that moans and wailing can be heard coming from the graves, and a mist forms which rises into the trees, like sailors climbing into the rigging. 

FIre Island Lighthouse is believed to be haunted by a former light house keeper, who has been heard racing up the stairs to hang himself from the top.

Is the Fire Island Lighthouse a beacon for ghosts on Haunted Long Island?

Fire Island was originally popular with whalers, back in the 17th century, and saw a fair bit of piracy. In 1826 a lighthouse was built, as it was a dangerous stretch of coastline. By the 19th century, the whales were pretty much all gone, but by then there was other ocean traffic in the area. 

In the 1850s, the merchant ship The Elizabeth ran into problems. Smallpox spread through the ship, killing the captain, leaving an untrained crew which ran the ship aground off Fire Island during a storm. They thought the lighthouse there was in New Jersey. 

Sarah Margaret Fuller, a scholar, literary critic and author was drowned in the wreck, and it’s said you can still see her walking along the beach. She was different than the usual shipwreck victim of the time, a person perceived to be of importance. So the old lighthouse came down and a larger, more modern one was built. 

On Fire Island itself, the lighthouse is said to be haunted by a ghost of a former keeper of the light. 

The keeper and his family stayed on while the new lighthouse was under construction. Come winter, building halted for a bit, and during this time his daughter took sick. The bay was frozen so the doctor couldn’t get there, and the girl died. The mother left and never came back, and the keeper is said to have lost his mind from grief, and hung himself when the new lighthouse was completed, from the trap door at the top. 

His ghost haunts the gift shop at the bottom, as well as the sound of his footsteps climbing the stairs, followed by crazy laughter coming from the top, just before you hear him tie off the rope and jump, followed by a gut-wrenching crack.   

Ghosts from the Ketcham Inn in Center Moriches have been reported at least since the 1930s, and quite possibly before.

At the Ketcham Inn, one of haunted Long Island’s oldest ghost stories, and archaeology shows fear of the supernatural goes much further back

Benjamin Havens, who owned the inn in during the Revolution was believed to be part of George Washington’s spy ring, and presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both stayed here. Old time music has been heard coming from the inn when no body was inside, heavy door latches are heard opening and closing, and at times the door itself then swings open, revealing no one there. 

The ghost is believed to be a young lady who lived here early on here, and who died in a fire. There’s evidence of that ghost story dating to the first half of the nineteenth century, but it was certainly well known by 1930. 

While restoring the house, items were found hidden in the floors, such as shoes, which was believed to be done in the colonial era for protection from ghosts, witchcraft and other things that go bump in the night. 

One wonders why they were put there? What caused the fear that led to that? There were no witches on Long Island convicted of the crime. But the belief lived on, all the same. 

Dating from the seventeenth century, The Halsey House in Southampton is believed to have seen native American attacks and more recently, ghosts.

Does a seventeenth century ghost haunt the Halsey House in Southampton?

Thomas Halsey was one of the founders of Southampton, one of the earliest English settlers back in 1640. His son Thomas, who accompanied him built the house which has stood to this day. In 1648, Elizabeth Halsey, wife of Thomas was killed and scalped when she was attacked by native Americans from the Pequot tribe, down from New England. It’s often said this happened here, which would account for strange occurrences. 

It has a reputation for being haunted, as any house this old would, with reports of cold spots, and the feeling you’re not alone. 

Is it Elizabeth which haunts the Halsey House, or one of the many others who lived here over the centuries? 

The Halsey House in Southampton is believed to be haunted by several ghosts, including one former owner who sits on the porch and pops ladies on the bottom with a BB gun.

Upscale ghosts haunt the upscale Harpoon House in Southampton

Dating back to 1684, today the Harpoon House is an upscale guesthouse, with an adjoining full service restaurant – BluMar Hamptons, and AM Nightclub. Both equally upscale. 

The Harpoon House was the former Post House, the second oldest building in Southampton.  

The New York Times reported a witness stating that he saw two ghosts dancing here “like whirling dervishes” back in 2008. Other apparitions have been sighted, the sounds of wild parties are sometimes heard, and one former captain of the restaurant reported of hearing several voices, like people at a table talking, and seeing on the wall the shadows of a group of people walking by. 

Little Beatrice is believed to haunt this windmill on the ground of the old Southampton College.

Little Beatrice and the haunted windmill of Southampton College

Before we get too far from Southampton we have to swing by Mill Hill Windmill, which originally stood in the village of Southampton, and is now located in the Shinnecock Hills outside of town.  

Built in 1712, standing at the shore it was a landmark for sailors, till it was moved to its present location in 1890, when to prevent it being torn down, a wealthy lady of the area purchased it. 

It was later sold to the Claflin family, who built a 30 room summer cottage on the estate. Their daughter Beatrice is believed to have fallen down the stairs to her death in the windmill. 

When it became a part of Southampton College, and used for classes, students sometimes reported a feeling of being watched, that someone else was in the windmill with them. A little girl’s face and shoulders have been seen looking out the windows, and students passing by at night have spoken of a quiet, child’s voice, calling out to them. 

The ghosts of little children in the basement fear the ghost of an angry old man on the third floor of the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor

On to Sag Harbor, and ghosts from the whaling era on haunted Long Island

It’s a short trip from Southampton to Sag Harbor. Sag Harbor sits right in the crotch of the two forks of eastern Long Island. Though its history only dates to the early 1700s, the past bubbles up more frequently here than in some places to the west which are even older. 

Out here people weren’t so quick to pave over things. It’s the Hamptons, there’s a lot of money pouring in. And people with money love a good view. They’re here for the quaint towns, the picturesque old houses, and for the prestige of being in the Hamptons. They’re willing to buy houses just to tear down for an unobstructed view of the sea.

And they’re willing to pay to keep things that way. 

So as you move east you see more old houses remaining, the nicer ones, many with historical markers in front, or small signs on the house itself. There might not be ghost stories to go with them, but it’s an almost visceral feeling, that there’s something happening out here. 

Once in Sag Harbor, in the center of town, the past opens up to you, several eras living side by side. 

In fact, in 1895, The New York Times reported that young men were seeing a six foot tall ghost, with a musket and long hat, and the young women of the town were remaining indoors. 

Across the street from the library is Mrs. Sage’s home, and open to the public as The Whaler’s Museum. It’s haunted too.

The John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor, haunted by children and a grumpy old man

The John Jermain Memorial Library was a gift to the town from Mrs. Russell Sage, who also donated the park, the high school and after her death, the house across the street which is now the Whaler’s Museum. 

She wanted something nice to look at from her front porch, so she had it designed in a Greek Revival style, complete with dome. She did herself proud. 

The ghosts of little children are believed to haunt the children’s section. But according to ghost hunters, the little ghosts don’t like going to the upper floors because of the grumpy old man, whom they are all afraid of. He’s been noted before, a malicious presence, and known to occasionally roll chairs across the floor. 

The Whaler’s Church in Sag Harbor is believed to host a number of ghosts, mainly centered around the choir loft.

Whaling era ghosts still walk around haunted Long Island’s Sag Harbor  

The building with the most stories attached seems to be the Whaler’s Church. It’s a formidable Egyptian Revival structure, and once boasted a 168 foot steeple. But that came down in the hurricane of 1938, crashing into the Old Burying Ground. 

The choir loft appears to be the most haunted part. An organist, practicing alone one evening saw two melting faces on either side of her when she looked into the organ’s mirrors. And a maintenance worker found himself mysteriously shut in a crawl space, when the door slammed closed and locked itself .

And a faithful member of the church made an appearance in the choir loft the night he died, recognizable by his long beard. 

The daughter of a former miller still haunts the burial ground adjacent to Gardiner’s Windmill in East Hampton.

Why is the jewel of the haunted Hamptons, East Hampton, one of the least haunted places on the south shore?

As soon as you make the turn into East Hampton the village pond lies to your right. Then there’s a windmill, towering over the burial ground of the people of early East Hampton. 

Lion Gardener lies here, who died in 1663, one of the original settlers, and a larger than life figure. That was his windmill we passed back there. The family decided the original grave markers weren’t good enough, and dug him up and erected a more suitable crypt, with him carved in stone as a medieval knight. 

One of his daughter’s was afflicted with a mysterious illness, and she fingered Goody Garlick as a witch and the culprit. That should have been enough to have the unfortunate woman hanged in that era, but she managed to defy the odds and lived to a ripe old age after being found innocent. 

None of these parties appear to haunt the cemetery. That honor is reserved for a daughter of the miller who worked at the Gardiner Windmill nearby. 

East Hampton’s rural past sits just across from the present, with eras mingling together, along with a history of witchcraft accustations.

Walking around East Hampton in the cold, with snow on the ground, I was amazed at how I could be transported back in time. It’s said that they put the cemetery in the middle of town because in Britain, they were situated on the edge of town. And they wanted to be as different from the home country as they could be. 

With that, and the historic buildings that remained and have been preserved, and of course the windmills, it’s easy to slip back into the colonial era. Then turn and look across the road and it’s a hodgepodge of all the eras that have come since, with a strong focus throughout on the nineteenth century. 

You can’t help but wonder, where are all the ghosts? There are a few ghost stories from East Hampton. One 13 bedroom house at 52 Middle Lane is haunted by Barton Kaplan, who drowned in the pool after an evening of fun and libation. A former owner also shows up at the Mill House Inn. And the Grey Gardens, at 3 West End Road can boast U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater as a witness to the multiple hauntings in that home. 

There are a few more, but for the most part, it’s eerily quiet. But this is the Hamptons after all, some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Ghosts could lower the property value, and even apart from that, there’s a New England quality to the people. Some things, especially skeletons, are best kept in the closet. 

A little girl ghost has been spotted, and occasionally run over along this stretch of Old Montauk Highway.

Drivers Beware! Ghosts haunt the highway from the Hamptons to Montauk

You leave East Hampton on Old Montauk Highway, and once you’re past yet another windmill, you soon find yourself in the Pine Barrens. The area is aptly named, as the trees are twisted by the wind here, stunted, with little else but brush growing. The closer you get to Montauk, as the land narrows and the ocean closes in, the wilder it feels. 

Just past Amagansett there’s a stretch of highway which is believed by many who have seen her to be haunted by a little girl. 

It’s not just the highway, as she’s also been seen walking down the beach. Sometimes she’s seen walking on or across the highway with her mother. According to one particularly chilling tale, “I could remember what she was wearing clear as day. She was in a dark red dress with white trim and a white bib style front to the dress. Her hair was brown and was up in a ponytail.”

She turned to look at me, but before our eyes could lock I slammed both feet on my brakes. My car slid at least 15 feet until I heard and felt two distinct bumps in my steering wheel. I became frozen by the idea of running a child over since I have 6 nieces myself.”

When he got out to check, there was no one there. 

Ghosts of native Americans and the well heeled of the early twentieth century walk side by side in at Montauk Manor.

Native American ghosts haunt side by side with specters of the upper classes

Sitting high above the village of Montauk, on Signal Hill is Montauk Manor. The tony atmosphere of East Hampton tones down in Montauk, but not by much. 

Montauk is the Hampton’s surfer brother. 

It wasn’t always this way. In the early part of the twentieth century, Carl Fisher who had drained a swamp and built Miami Beach, and later The Indianapolis Motor Speedway built a 178 room Tudor Hotel atop Signal Hill. He even dug a harbor for his new resort, and for a while it was a world class tourist mecca. 

Then came the depression, and it never really got back  on its feet. At the building’s lowest point, it lay empty for twenty years, a target for vandals and ripe for the birth of ghost stories.

Then came a new lease on life, and as the building sprung back to life, the ghost stories finally started getting around. 

It’s possible Montauk Manor was cursed from the beginning. Next to Signal Hill is Fort Hill, where the native Americans once had a formidable fortress. Unfortunately, when the Narragansetts attacked the Montauketts in 1654, the Montauketts chose to leave their safe confines and fight in what became known as Massacre Valley. 

You can tell by the name the outcome of the battle.

It’s said that the Montauks buried their dead atop Signal Hill, which would make Montauk Manor an incredibly, expensive, and likely cursed desecration of sacred ground. And it would explain why there are so many sightings of native American ghosts here. 

But the more recent dead haunt the place as well, remnants from it’s glory days early in the twentieth century. 

They’re not confined to the hotel. Montauk is believed to be alive with the spirits of the dead, and the ghosts of native Americans have been seen crossing Old Montauk Highway numerous times. 

The iconic radar installation at Camp Hero

Stranger Things abound in Montauk

Netflix’s Stranger Things was inspired by the legends and rumors associated with Camp Hero, out past Montauk, near the very tip. Associated with the fabled Montauk Project, it’s impossible to say what did and didn’t happen here, or what was and wasn’t studied, discovered or unleashed on the area which is believed to still haunt the park to this day. 

But that doesn’t stop people from speculating. 

Camp Hero State Park does have a cloak of mystery about it. But then again, you’re out at the tip of haunted Long Island, surrounded on three sides by water.  

That something was going on here isn’t the question. It was a military installation, and they did build a faux village to hide the coming and goings. The Germans did land a short distance from here, at Amagansett, during World War II as part of an espionage mission which went horribly wrong. All but two of those who landed on this beach ended up with a noose around their neck.

If you walk the beach between Camp Hero and the lighthouse, you can’t miss the remnants of that war, concrete bunkers to defend against an invasion that never came. 

Military installations from World War II along the beach between Camp Hero and Montauk Lighthouse

At the very tip, Abigail of Montauk Lighthouse haunts the tip of haunted Long Island

The British used the high ground here for watch fires during the Revolution. George Washington remembered its strategic location and commissioned a lighthouse during his term in office. 

The lighthouse was necessary as this is a treacherous stretch of ocean, with many ships, and many lives lost. One of those was a young lady by the name of Abigail. History has forgotten, or never knew her last name. 

When the ship that carried her went down in a winter storm, she made her way to the beach below the lighthouse. It’s said she was carried up the cliff by rescuers, but she died within. 

Her voice and soft cries are said to ricochet off the thick walls. She’s been seen climbing the steps, strolling the grounds and beach. She tugged on a worker’s shirt repeatedly, and other staff in the gift shop speak of furniture moving in the middle of the night, pictures swinging on the walls and strange noises. 

The ghost of a young lady named Abigail who haunts Montauk Lighthouse, on the tip of haunted Long Island.

The Haunting of Long Island

I’ve often wondered why Long Island is so haunted? The easy answer is there is almost 400 years of history here, which is plenty of time to accrue ghosts. 

But it’s more than that. Standing here atop the bluff, looking dead east, the nearest mainland is Portugal. The beach below, the furthest point east, more or less of Long Island has its own ghost. The haunting of Long Island starts right here. The first European settlement on Long Island started on the north fork, far to the east as well at Southold. And it has its ghosts too. 

The further west you go, it seems the younger the ghosts are. Out here on the forks, the eastern most part of Long Island history hasn’t had so many layers covering the originals. It’s easier to bubble up to the surface. 

From the eastern most tip, to the jagged western edge awash in the glow from Manhattan, the supernatural populates haunted Long Island as surely as the living. From the riches of the north shore, to history of the southern coast, and Fire Island out in the Atlantic, the belief in ghosts, witches and other children of the night have haunted Long Island from the beginning. 

And continues to this day. 

What to wear on haunted Long Island

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Tales of Old Stony Brook III: What dark, deceptive spirit haunts the Country House Restaurant if it’s not Annette Williamson?

Featured articles (Footer), Journal, Long Island, Pubs and Taverns, Tales from Stony Brook

Annette Williamson and the Country House Restaurant
The house which is now home to the Country House Restaurant in Stony Brook, New York was built around 1710, and purchased and enlarged around 1740 by Obediah Davis, whose family lived here for four generations, till well past the American Revolution. After them, Thomas Hadaway, a somewhat known actor purchased the house. Hadaway was a spiritualist and used to hold seances in the house. In modern times at least a couple of ghosts are believed to haunt the place, with everything from full bodied apparitions, to shattering glasses and bottles hurled at patrons, to following patrons home.

Annette Williamson and the Country House Restaurant in Stony Brook is one of the most often told ghost stories on Long Island. It’s said that the house, almost three hundred years old, is the most active haunted house on the island. It’s hard to dispute that, but one thing that’s almost certainly true … whoever haunts the Country House Restaurant isn’t Annette Williamson. 

According to Bob Willemstyn, owner of the former Obediah Davis/Thomas Hadaway House, now the Country House restaurant, the ghost of William Sydney Mount, famed nineteenth century artist who lived down the road, still shows up on occasion for a seance, as he did back in the nineteenth century. 

He related his story to me, that on at least four occasions over the years, a cloaked figure has been reported in the restaurant, once standing near the entrance to the bar near a side dining room, just across from where we spoke. In addition, there are times when things mysteriously break, like wine bottles being thrown from the shelves in the basement while he stood by watching, which he also believes might be the dark presence of William Sidney Mount.

But the most active spirit in the Country House Restaurant, the site named by noted Long Island historian and ghost hunter/psychic Kerriann Flanagan Brosky as Long Island’s most active, is Annette Williamson, who is believed to have lived, and died here during the American Revolution.

She’s been witnessed everywhere, from inside the house, to people seeing her looking forlornly out the front window, to floating above the roof. 

Willenstyn has also related that when he encounters her spirit, he feels an overwhelming sadness and your eyes will well up. He’s witnessed people cry from the feeling. 

And then there’s the ghost from “across the street,” a malevolent spirit which has been known to smash glasses in front of your face. 

The Country House has a full range of haunting elements, including the above mentioned spirits, fully visible apparitions which interact with the living. Annette Williamson even tried to entice the child of one of the patrons, a little girl, into the men’s bathroom to play. There are footsteps, walking as well as running. Light flashes are common, seemingly without normal causes. And for those who believe in such things, more orbs and EVPs than you can shake a stick at.

Additionally, there’s the poltergeist activity, perhaps the most belligerent form of the supernatural.

And yet to dine there for most is an entirely different experience. It’s high end, fitting for a restaurant with so much history. But the ambiance is lighthearted, feminine almost. As though Annette has influenced the very decor. 

Though even the owner admits the upstairs is an entirely different story. 

The haunted Hawkins-Mount Homestead in Stony Brook
Noted Long Island artist William Sydney Mount lived in the Hawkins-Mount Homestead, built about 1725 and a short walk from the Country House Restaurant. Mount was a spiritualist for a time, and used to visit the Country House, historically known as the Hadaway House for seances. The Hawkins-Mount Homestead is believed to be haunted as well.

Who was Annette Williams?

The main source of the story, which now lies all over the internet is Kerriann Flanagan Brosky’s book, Ghosts of Long Island. Most of the tale is told to her by Willenstyn, and involves sightings of the lady going back to before he worked there, let alone owned the place. 

According to Ghosts of Long Island, she was murdered either for being thought a British sympathizer, or hung in her bedroom by the British themselves. As the legend goes, her parents had left her in charge of the servants and slaves, and went to New Jersey where they had property. There they were killed for supporting the fight for independence. 

Everyone involved admits the historical details are sketchy, as you’d expect from that time period. What happens at the Country House restaurant is modern history though, and witnessed by a lot of people, both customers and employees.

There are mysterious lights, accounts of people hearing their name spoken behind them and turning to find no one there.

Though the official line, as befitting a working restaurant, the spirits are friendly and somewhat comforting, many of the ghostly experiences reported there are anything but that. One reporter had a drink thrown in their face by Annette. The current owner was once telling the story to a friend who was expressing his disbelief, when a chair came hurtling through the air at them, just as they caught a glimpse of a white garment turning the corner from the room.

And of course there is Annette herself. Typically in hauntings, no one sees an apparition, or it was seen in the distant past. But Annette has been seen by numerous people, numerous times, through the present day. She can be playful, stealing the owner’s tietack and leaving it by the fireplace where she was supposedly hung. She can be helpful, opening stuck windows.

Perhaps it helps the romance that by all accounts she’s very pretty. And though there are reports of other ghosts, it is Annette that has stayed longest, is experienced most frequently, and seems to have made a home which she enjoyed for a very short life, a home for eternity.

That in a nutshell, is the story of Annette Williamson and the Country House Restaurant. With so many people witnessing so many phenomenon, it’s hard to deny that the Country Restaurant is haunted. 

But by Annette Williamson? Quite frankly, I don’t believe she even existed. 

The colonial era Stony Brook Mill Pond on Long Island
The mill pond at Stony Brook, just down from the Country House Restaurant. This stretch of road has several homes with tales of the supernatural, including the colonial era mill still standing at the end of the pond.

Looking for evidence of Annette Williamson 

It was November of 2008, and I was just getting started with these stories. Stony Brook was nearby and I love the place. It’s where I stayed the night before my first job interview on Long Island having driven a thousand miles for it. It always felt like home, albeit a home from another lifetime. 

It feels very New England here, which makes sense, as this end of Long Island was home to some of the earliest settlements, often populated by people coming down from the Massachusetts and other English colonies. Walking around Stony Brook in the fall is an unexpected slice of perfection. 

I was there to visit the Obediah Davis cemetery, which is where Annette Williamson is buried. I had read it was hard to access, up a steep hill without a path. But it turns out there’s a street that goes up there. There’s even a sign when you access it from the road, rather than slogging up the steep hillside from the Country House Restaurant. 

It does exude atmosphere, with many of the graves dating from at least the earliest part of the nineteenth century, and many with curious inscriptions. I did find three Williamson tombstones, but no Annette. There were too many to examine and too little time to do so. 

So I made a mental note to come back to it.

The Country House lives up to its reputation for fine dining, and it’s a lovely atmosphere. Not particularly haunting, but that’s more of a cerebral thing. If you know about it, it colors the ambiance. If you don’t, it’s a romantic dinner for two. Or one in my case. But I had a good conversation with owner, and found him to be credible. But oddly enough, though he mentioned William Sydney Mount’s ghost, he never mentioned Annette.

Entrance to the graveyard where Annette Williamson was claimed to be buried
Entrance to the Obediah Davis Cemetery, where Annette Williamson is believed to have been buried. The cemetery sits on a hill overlooking the Country House Restaurant, as well as several other houses dating from the colonial era. The dead from the southern entrance to Stony Brook were oft times buried here in early days.

Twelve years later, I remember to finish it. 

I’m gathering all my old Long Island stories into a book. It’s easier than I expected to put myself back there, though it’s been about a decade since I set foot on Long Island. Which is good, as there’s likely a bench warrant out for me for a parking violation in the Bronx. 

So I go to find my article on Annette Williamson and the Country House Restaurant, and remember I never wrote it! I didn’t write it because I couldn’t find the tombstone. I had read the dates on the stone matched the story, and I wanted to get the dates right for her death. 

That tombstone is essential in determining the truth of the story. Because it wasn’t gleaned from history. Instead, it was told to the owner by a British psychic who happened by a couple night in a row, the second night with a Ouija Board in tow. And it’s from him that nearly all the elements of the story of Annette Williamson comes from. 

His claims were verified by Ms. Brosky’s accomplice, Joe Giaquinto, a very well-known psychic and self professed ghost buster. In fact Mr. Giaquinto speaks of Annette as though she’s almost adopted him, frequently coming to speak to him.

Ms. Brosky, who is a historian first, rightly frames the importance of the stone when she says “According to historical records, the only insight into the Williamson family living there appears on the gravestones of two of its members.” She points to two headstones, John Williamson and Annette Williamson. Being buried in the family plot would lead one to believe that they lived in the family home. 

I looked online, because the Long Island ghost hunting crowd is nothing if not thorough. If it was there, someone would have found it. Especially since you can pretty much drive up to the cemetery. 

Nothing. 

According to historical records, the only insight into the Williamson family living there appears on the gravestones of two of its members.”

I had recently watched one of Ms. Brosky’s webinars on their investigation into Annette Williamson and the Country House Restaurant, and remembered them showing the stone. I went back and watched again, and they do show us a photo, and it’s of the three stones I had taken a photo of on my first trip there. 

The stones were in place and look pretty much identical to how they looked when I visited. But perhaps they were still mostly unreadable from moss or lichen. And there are actually four members of the Williamson family buried there. The only recorded female I can find through official records and poking around the stones is a woman named Hannah, who died in 1827 and is buried next to her husband, William. In the video, Joe Giaquinto misidentifies William’s stone as Annette’s father, but his stone shows that William Williamson died in 1831.  

If the stones were covered and illegible at the time, it’s understandable. If you can only make out a few letters, Hannah could easily be mistaken for Annette. But it’s hard to figure how William as her father fits the story told by the psychics, as they had Annette’s mother and father being killed in the war in New Jersey. These graves are all for people who died in the nineteenth century. 

So it would appear, there is no tombstone in the family plot with Annette Williamson’s name on it. Which would make sense. This family cemetery is the Obediah Davis cemetery, named for the man who built the house the County House restaurant is in, and where his family lived for four generations. And by all accounts, all through American Revolution. 

In short, there is no evidence at all that the Williamsons lived there. In fact, the Williamsons lived just around the corner, and the family history is well known and well documented. There is no Annette in that family either. 

But why are Williamson’s buried in the Davis family cemetery? That’s simple. There are many people in that cemetery who don’t bear the name of Davis. And the Williamsons lived just down the hill from the cemetery. As one of only six burial grounds in Stony Brook today, it’s the obvious place to bury your dead, when it’s in your own back yard.

The purported grave of Annette Williamson, the ghost of the Country House Restaurant in Stony Brook, NY
The Williamson family plot in the Obediah Davis Cemetery. The three stones pictures are for Hannah, John and William Williamson, all of whom died in the nineteenth century, several decades after the Revolution. These are the stones usually pointed out as Annette’s grave.

What is in a name? History.

Annette told the psychic that she and her family were Dutch, which when I read that again, struck me as wrong. Williamson isn’t a Dutch name. It’s Scottish in origin, which fits with the demographics of the area, and the Williamson family living around the corner. There is a Dutch variant, but that’s not what’s on the tombstone or in the historic record for the family in Stony Brook. 

What’s more, this was an English colony. A few generations earlier, New York City was New Amsterdam, and much of Nassau county to the west was Dutch. But when the British forced them out, they went inland for the most part, not further out on Long Island. And if

And for that matter, I wondered about the name Annette. That’s also not a Dutch name, but in fact French, and wasn’t popular there even till late in the 19th century. I did records search for Annettes in New York in the colonial era, and found next to nothing. The name simply wasn’t used. 

There are variants, but the only one that really sounds like Annette is Janet. That also wasn’t in vogue either during that era. 

The grist mill in Stony Brook, on Long Island, New York
The grist mill at Stony Brook is believed to be haunted as well, by another lady in white. Which leaves at least three ghosts of women dating from the colonial era within a mile.

Loyalists in Suffolk County

There were thousands on Long Island loyal to the King during the revolution. Particularly after the British took the island after the Battle of Brooklyn. The biggest demographic most likely to support the king was farmers, and this was farmland back then. The Davises and the Williamsons were farmers, though carpentry appeared to be the Williamson’s main trade, and though Davis was a noted supporter of the colonial cause. One of the Williamson’s also fought for the colonials in the Revolution, so it’s hard to imagine how Annette would be considered a loyalist.

So why would the locals have taken a particular dislike to a young lady who merely had British soldiers occupying the family home. That was a common occurrence on Long Island, the person owning the house had no choice, and nowhere else does it seem to indicate a particular allegiance to the crown or not. 

And even if she was a loyalist, there were hundreds of farmers so loyal to the king on this part of Long Island that they signed an oath of allegiance.

It just doesn’t make sense. 

You could make the case that the other story is true. That in fact, she was hung by the British in the Country House. But that would mean the psychics were wrong. And the story came from the psychics to begin with. If the psychics got her manner of death wrong, her name and nationality wrong, and where she was buried wrong, perhaps the whole story is wrong?

Annette Williamson and the Country House Restaurant is one of the most popular ghost stories on Long Island
Annette is often seen peering out the window, second from the left on the bottom floor. Though it’s hard to imagine how anyone could get a good look at her from the road and across the yard.

Which begs the question, who haunts the Country House Restaurant?

Bob Willemstyn specifically told me about his belief that William Sidney Mount has haunted the place, a dark spirit. His description of Annette usually touches on the overwhelming sadness of her. He’s the one who lives with the spirits there on a daily basis, and his description of them isn’t exactly bright and cheery. A fact borne out by all the employees who have quit after having the shit scared of them in the Country Restaurant. 

And one has to remember, this house has a history of slavery, which is bound to have wound up the negative energy here to the breaking point. 

I touched on the film The Legend of Hell House in my article about the Hawkins-Mount Homestead, home of William Sydney Mount. Though the film is obviously fictional, it makes some important points about multiple hauntings in one location.

The story revolved around a scientist who believed ghosts to be nothing more than residual energy, and how his opinions clashed with two mediums who were investigating with him the Mt. Everest of haunted houses. One of the two mediums believed she was learning the truth of the haunting from a spirit there, which preyed on her feelings and sympathy. 

The other medium stayed shut off and just wanted to survive the experience. 

At the root of the film was a question. Were the hauntings from numerous spirits, or one spirit which directed the others, giving the appearance of multiple hauntings. 

This is a common belief, from Jesus to Aleister Crowley, that some ghosts are essentially what some call demons, ancient, formless beings taking the appearance of whatever ghostly shells are floating about, giving the appearance of a familiar, and trustworthy spirit. And as I can attest, you can’t trust these spirits. They aim to deceive.

There’s an obviously dark spirit which haunts the Country House Restaurant. And one who claims to be the ghost of a beautiful, attractive woman (by modern standards more so than colonial), wrongly robbed of her life, who gives those who interact with her a false name and history. To me, that’s more than a bit creepy. 

Psychics who visit the Country House on a regular basis assure us that Annette is harmless, and downright helpful for those involved in spiritualism. 

But one account has Annette following a psychic home, and every time she turned on a light, the bulb blew. Another psychic says she not only followed him home, but still frequently speaks to him to this day. 

In short, we’re talking about a ghost which not only haunts a house, but assumes a false identity and follows you home. Which is new twist on an old tradition. A mint and a poltergeist at the end of beautiful dinner. 

Dinner at the Country House Restaurant
Dinner at the Country House in Stony Brook can border on the supernatural, for the flavor alone. Certainly high end, with dinner running $40-50 a person, it’s pricey, but worth a visit.

On the value of psychic testimony in supernatural investigations

That testimony derived through psychic phenomenon can be downright dangerous hasn’t been in dispute in this country for over four hundred years. The practice of accepting evidence from the other side without physical evidence to back it up was banned here following the Salem witch trials, and the wrongful execution of 20 people in the late 17th century. 

The story of Annette Williamson is wholly dependent on psychic testimony. The physical evidence that psychics point to in order to give credence to their communications with Annette – her tombstone – appears to be nonexistent. There are those who claim to have seen her grave, to have photos of it, and yet never produce the evidence. 

There is no historic record, nor even early written accounts to back the story. Is it possible the story is true but simply lacks physical evidence due to the passing of time? Of course. 

But to get to that belief, you have to first dispel the physical evidence that does exist. The house in question was owned by the Davis family, not the Williamsons. The Davis’ are on record as living here during the Revolution. The Williamsons did exist, lived a short distance from the house, and buried their dead in the same graveyard, where Annette Williamson is said to be buried. The only photos of the graves produced as evidence, are of the Williamson family, and none of those family members even died in the same century as the American Revolution. And none are named Annette. Even the girl’s name doesn’t fit the story … a Dutch girl with a French first name, attached to a Scottish surname, living in a very British colony.

There’s a simpler solution … the psychics are wrong. Harry Houdini spent a good chunk of his life exposing fraudulent mediums, the kind who preyed on people’s pain, fears and grief, and offered them hope, for a price. He didn’t discount the possibility of psychic phenomenon, and certainly not life after death. But he was suspect, and rightly so, of the motives of many spiritualists and mediums.

I’ve known a few psychics in my time, and some of them could do amazing things. Some of them were downright charlatans. And it’s been that way since the Babylonians. 

It’s possible the unknown psychic who first told the story of Annette to the owner of the Country House Restaurant had been in the Obediah Davis Cemetery, and had seen a stone. Perhaps as the story goes, it was fallen, covered in leaves, dirt and debris, and the name of ANNEDAVIS on one of the stones, who died in 1785 (2 years after the Revolution ended), was misread. And from that stone he chose to weave a tale, perhaps for a free dinner.

If you choose to give the psychics the benefit of the doubt, the best you can say is they are deceived by the spirit, into believing it’s someone that it’s not. That means Annette isn’t all glittery light and unicorns as they’d have us believe. But something much darker. 

Regardless of whether the story of Annette Williamson is true or not, doesn’t mean the Country House Restaurant is any less haunted. It just means nobody knows exactly who is haunting it. And that perhaps the haunting isn’t as wholesome as we’re led to believe.

So who haunts the Country House Restaurant in Stony Brook? The truth is nobody knows.  Beware anyone who says otherwise, for as Houdini would say, they’re likely trying to sell you something. 

Tales Told By A Tombstone: “Prepare For Death and Follow Me,” Secrets of the Witch’s Grave at Big Hill Cemetery

Death, Journal, Ohio River Valley, Pagans, Heathens and Witchcraft, Southern Illinois Hauntings and Legends

Big Hill Cemetery is roughly the size of a football field, and likely has a lot more burials than you see stones for today.

The witch’s grave in Big Hill Cemetery, between Broughton and Norris City, Illinois sparks folklore just by its existence. The macabre epitaph and who carved it is a local mystery. But an even bigger mystery is why did one young lady’s tragic death and burial turn her into a witch?

When you grow up close to the countryside, you end up in country graveyards. Teenagers congregate there, in groups and couples. It’s where you get drunk, get high, get laid and most of all, get scared. 

Teenagers are still close enough to being little that it’s often easier to remember how to get scared. Some of the old fears aren’t hardened into disbelief yet. Going into a country graveyard at night is liberating. You’re facing your fears. And standing in an open field surrounded by trees, the moon and stars overhead, in a sea of tombstones is downright magical.

The best graveyards have that one tombstone. The one with a story behind it. So famous it’s got a name. 

In Big Hill Cemetery, outside Norris City, Illinois, that tombstone is known as the Witch’s Grave. 

Or witch’s stone, and likely a few other similar names. This isn’t history, it’s folklore. The story changes with every telling. The purpose of the story isn’t to impart history. It’s to scare the listener. 

People go to these graveyards because things happen there. Folklore has many layers. What we hear about the past is just the tip of the iceberg of what was once there. To find proof of that, all you need do is look to the present. Like this story sent to me about Big Hill … 

“I did go out there with some friends back in high school drinking, a couple friends got hammered drunk. As my buddy is puking in a bucket he started to choke. Another friend stuck a finger in his throat to clear his airway and quickly removed his finger when it was stabbed by something in our friend’s mouth, and hand to God swear it on my children. we pulled a fishing hook out of the back of our friend’s throat. Coincidence? I don’t know but bizarre… definitely!!!!“

Oddly enough, I can believe this. I’ve hung out with guys like this all my life, and at times, I’ve been a guy like this. The last time I went fishing – decades ago – I gave it up when I hooked myself in the cheek. 

The problem with being a graveyard with that one tombstone, is it attracts traffic. People talk about kids going into graveyards like they didn’t do it themselves when they were that age. Occasionally someone will screw it up, and there’s no getting around that. Big Hill was heavily vandalized a few years back, so it’s easy to see why they don’t like nocturnal visitors. 

But that’s where kids learn. Sure, they learn about beer and other nefarious things, but they also learn the folklore, which contains that one germ of history. And generation after generation passes it down. So rather than being a forgotten place, graveyards are still living places. 

And the people who are buried there sometimes get a chance to be remembered, once more. 

Stone inscriptions, particularly when done by amateurs usually consist of two angled strokes meeting in the middle. The lettering on the witch’s stone is actually carved out, and the typography bears more of a resemblance to printed letters than carved ones. Like you might find if a grieving husband carved his wife’s stone.

The epitaph that screams “witch”

It’s a relatively common epitaph throughout the world, “As I once was so you are now. As I am now soon you will be. Prepare for death And follow me.”

It’s so well known that there’s a famous retort to it … “To follow you I’m not content, until I know which way you went.” 

The epitaph dates to at least the fourteenth or fifteenth century in Europe, and you find it fairly often along the east coast of the United States. But the further west you go, the less you see it. By the time people were pushing west in numbers, the epitaph was out of fashion. Still, you do find it here in the midwest, as well as cropping up further west and south.

Around here it’s rare, and for those who don’t follow epitaphs, it can be unheard of, and obviously, macabre. Being an epitaph of some length, it’s usually found on larger stones, and those are often the most interesting and unique stones in the cemetery. 

Those are the stones that get a story, and somewhere along the line, the story sticks. The purpose of the story, as you sit at night in a graveyard is to scare the shit out of the listener. Ghosts make for a good scare, but they’re unpredictable. You need an entity you can call up, to dance around the grave widdershins, just like they did back in the old days to summon … the witch. 

Most epitaphs talk of the deceased and that’s it. This inscription speaks directly to the person reading it, a warning from beyond the grave. That’s a powerful connection for anyone with an imagination. 

And so the poor young lady buried beneath this stone becomes a witch.

At the bottom of Big Hill.

A sunny afternoon in Big Hill Cemetery, looking for the witch’s grave

I’d heard about it since I was a teenager, 40 something years ago. But it took me this long to get out here, a random Facebook post by a friend jogged the memory.

The landscape is pretty much flat leading to the cemetery, and even before you get there you realize why it’s called Big Hill. It is a big hill. Not huge, nor particularly high, except compared to the surrounding countryside. 

You pass Shiloh Church nearby, around the foot of Big Hill. There’s usually a church associated with a cemetery this size, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The burials predate the founding of the church in 1869. The current Shiloh Church building, actually quite picturesque, dates to 1941 and it’s still in use. Instead, being a high point, the early settlers naturally thought it a good place to bury the dead. You don’t want your kin washing up in a flood after all.

It’s a country lane up Big Hill, a slow incline with lovely views, then a sharp curve and up you go to the top. Lisa’s driving and she guns it, probably overkill, but she’s used to mountains. 

The gates of Big Hill Cemetery

The sign seems reminiscent of an old west graveyard with its bizarre lettering, hand cut out of steel. The cemetery is rectangular in shape, surrounded by woods, laid out like a football field and perhaps close to the same size. 

It’s also hot. There’s no shade in the cemetery, and the sun was beating down. Graveyards are better at night, but it’s hard to read inscriptions then. There are many stories in Big Hill cemetery, so it’s easy to get lost reading the tombstones. Like the two brothers, who enlisted in the Illinois Infantry in the Civil War, and both died in 1862. There are also several Necked Discoid Gravemarkers, documented by Michael J. McNerney.

His book had already given me the story of the witch’s grave, the historical record at least. But he made no mention of witchcraft. His book also taught me a lot about tombstones in my area. It’s an invaluable resource.

Most epitaphs talk of the deceased and that’s it. This inscription speaks directly to the person reading it, a warning from beyond the grave. That’s a powerful connection for anyone with an imagination.”

We make a pass through, finding something of interest nearly every place you look. Around the back you’re in an older part, and as you reach the tree line you catch a glimpse of rolling farmland below, a truly pastoral view. 

I’d seen photos of the witch’s grave, so I knew it would be instantly recognizable. Lisa was trying to read inscriptions. I told her just look for the coffin. 

And there it was. At first sight it appears to be a stone coffin, covered in inscriptions. It’s actually a marker, made of solid sandstone and five foot long. These are unusual, and certainly macabre. But not unheard of, even around here. There are two others I believe in Hamilton County. And more throughout the midwest and south. 

What makes this stone particularly unusual is typically these types of markers aren’t inscribed. Researchers believes that is because these were usually used to sit a coffin on for services prior to burial, not an actual burial stone in many cases. Which explains why several graveyards contain one. 

The witch’s grave at Big Hill is cracked, which adds to the mystique. That becomes another aspect of the story, how was it broken? If you approach with imagination, the witch’s stone comes into focus.. 

Coffin Stones are usually found uninscribed. One reason is for some cemeteries, they were used as a base for coffins during services, rather than a grave marker. Surilay’s marker is about five foot long, and feasibly her size.

Carved by a grieving husband, or a hired hand?

You have to look closely to read the inscription, and the poor spelling and lack of punctuation can be confounding …

William N. Essary in respect to his tru love Surilly Belvin Daughter of Orin and Elizebeth Belvin was Born Dec the 7th A.D. 1841 Died on  ——. he 21st AD 1863  Oct 21 1863 AGE 22 yrs 10 mo And 14 days old  Behod ye strangers passing by as your are now So wonst was I as I am now so you must be—Prepare for deth and follow me

Below that is a border of opposing diagonal lines, a motif repeated on the ends and sides. The stone is maybe ten inches thick, and sits upon a stone slab almost as thick. 

The big question is did William N. carve the stone himself?

I know a thing or two about typography. When you look at the letters, they’re incredibly complex for someone out in the backwoods of southern Illinois. The serifs are elaborate, the lines thick where they should be, and thin where they should be. It’s not professional perhaps, but it’s studied. It could have been copied, but what samples of this type of carving could they have been looking off of?

Typically amateur stone carvers inscribed the text using alternating chisel strokes, creating a type of inverted V for the strokes of the letters. But this stone is carved differently, where each letter is opened up into negative space. The lettering looks more like handwriting, or to be precise, the type of font you see in books and newspapers. 

Whoever carved it knew a thing or two about lettering, if not necessarily stone carving. To be sure, there were people in the area selling commercial tombstones. Those could be ordered as blanks and inscribed by someone local, or ordered with the epitaph already added.

If you look at nearby cemeteries you can find other examples of sandstone carved tombstones, inscribed by a similar hand. It could be the same person, or someone completely different. But the carving on the witch’s stone is not of commercial quality, but not as primitive as most amateur stone carvings. It reminds me of a lot of folk art, of higher quality than most amateurs, but still bearing the hallmarks of an individual’s style, learned as they go rather than being taught a trade. 

Then there’s another theory, that it was the grieving husband. That I can imagine, taking the time to do it the best he could. Using as an example, perhaps the family bible. We know his family was a bit better off than his neighbors. So they likely could afford the big piece of sandstone, and perhaps even someone to carve it.

Still, you’d expect a professional carver to know how to spell. That’s not the case here, so if it’s not the husband, it’s another amateur, though perhaps someone with more experience than him.

But it’s carved at his direction, that much is certain. After all, the epitaph makes it clear that these are his words. And it’s an ominous warning he leaves us with. 

The typography on the witch’s stone at Big Hill Cemetery shows a fair amount of typographical knowledge. The consistency of the same letters repeated belie actual skill, and not just someone copying.

What happened to Surilay?

Something in Mr. McNerney’s book, A Shape In Time And Space which threw me off, is that he had copied the husband’s name from the carving as William N Essary, and that he was known as Nathan. It’s possible there was more moss on it when he visited, as it’s clearly an M now.

Nathan was his father, and also the name of his son.

Which is why I couldn’t trace him through genealogy. He comes up pretty easily with an M. William McKinney Essary. He was born in 1833, here in Hamilton County. He was married to Zarelda Surilay Belvin Essary.

The spelling there is obviously different from the stone, where it’s Surilly. But doing a Google search for that name only comes as one derived from Sanskrit. I’m thinking that’s not a 19th century frontier name. Doing a search for Surilay returns William Essary’s wife, and no one else. Doing a search for Zarelda does manage a handful of people by that name, some women on the frontier. So I can assume that perhaps, the genealogy spelling is correct.

Surilay was born in 1841, around Chattanooga, Tennessee, and they were still there in the 1860 Census. It must have been late 1860 or early 1861 that the family moved to Hamilton County, Illinois, as late in 1861, her father, Orrin Belvin enlisted in the Union Army at McLeansboro. 

The obvious question is what caused Surilay’s untimely death, as she was only about 22? Accidents were commonplace of course, as was disease. Particularly lethal was when communicable diseases spread throughout a community. 

There are four people buried in Big Hill that died in 1863. The first was on September 3, Surilay was the last on October 21. The youngest was three years old, the oldest 36. The other two in their twenties. It’s certainly unusual to see deaths clustered that way. 

From the end of August till October of that year, you can find eleven tombstones of people who died in Hamilton County, mostly clustered around this area, and mostly young people. 

Surilay’s brother died earlier that year, in February. I remember the tombstones of two brothers buried at Big Hill, who died the year before while in the army, stationed in southern Illinois. Both died of disease. The father of Surilay’s husband died in 1865, about the same time as her husband’s sister. Death seem to come in clusters in this area during the Civil War. 

A measles epidemic had swept through the area in the winter of 1861-62, and an army camp down the road in Shawneetown saw eight soldiers die from it. 

It’s an odd coincidence to have so many young people dying in a short period of time, so disease jumps to the top of the list as a cause.  Another explanation for Surilay’s early death, could of course be childbirth. That was a highly dangerous act on the prairie. 

Two brothers from Hamiltom County who died in service of the Union during the Civil War, seven months apart.

A grieving husband or a two timing cad?

Family genealogists claim that William McKinney Essary’s first son, Nathan Daniel was born in February of 1864 in Tennessee, four months after the death of his wife in Hamilton County, Illinois. According to their work, William married the child’s mother, Hannah Lemay on June 2, 1867, over three years later, and their next child was born nine months after that. It would be another eight years before they had another child, but then had five more in the next few years. 

It doesn’t make sense that while she was speeding towards an untimely death, he was making babies down in Tennessee. It doesn’t fit with the obvious devotion to Surilay, shown in the tombstone. And it doesn’t explain why he waited three years to marry the child’s mother.  

So I dug deeper and found the 1880 U.S. Census, and located William M. Essary there. Contradicting the genealogists, it reads that N. David Essary was born about 1863, not 1864, and in lllinois, not Tennessee. 

So it’s certainly possible, and quite likely that Surilay was the child’s biological mother. Or perhaps she died during an outbreak after giving birth. William McKinney Essary raised their son, with help from his cousin, Elizabeth, who was still living with them in 1880, and had been living with the family since William McKinney was a young man at least. 

My guess is when he remarried, his new wife adopted his son and together they raised him as their own. He claimed her as his mother, because he never knew his biological mother. The genealogy isn’t meant to blacken his father’s name. It’s just nobody thought of how this would look a century ago, when Nathan was asked who his mother was.   

So the facts don’t make William McKinney Essary out to be a scoundrel. And it’s quite possible that he was the devoted husband that the tombstone makes him out to be. 

Tragedy surrounded them. Surilay’s father was on his way home from the war, when the ship transporting them caught fire, killing about him and about 200 more soldiers from southern Illinois. Soon after William’s father and sister died. It was time he started over.

So that just leaves the question of how did Surily become the witch of Big Hill Cemetery?

The small stone in the foreground appears to be being swallowed up by the earth. There are likely many stones buried here today. That stone contrasts with the later stones above, when the area was beginning to see a bit of prosperity.

The witch hunt turns up more names, and tombstones

When I started researching witch’s graves around the country, I quickly found this on a forum … “Witches Killed by there {sic} towns people would use this on every Witch Tomb across the US … “As I Once Was So You are Now. As I Am Now Soon You will Be. Prepare For death And Follow Me.”

So that’s obviously not historically correct in any way. In fact, of people known to have been executed as a witch, most had no tombstone and none have that epitaph. 

Where it’s valuable is as a marker of where the folklore exists today. The saying is equated with graves reputed to be of witches, who were killed by the townspeople. It doesn’t take much to realize that this is the plot of probably half of the horror movies involving witches in the 1960s. They still make them from time to time. And that’s likely a booster shot for the legends told about these graves, if not the original source.

But the folklore could predate that era. It’s just that every generation puts its own stamp on the legend, and in the process obscures the earlier stories which inspired them.

Necked Discoid Gravemarkers get their name from the disc at the top, sitting atop a neck on the stone. There are a few at Big Hill Cemetery, and were often bought blank. Someone local with skill in carving could be hired to the work, or one could it themselves. These type of markers are somewhat rare, and often some of the older markers in the midwest. Their appearance at night can look like a person standing there, which makes them a popular destination for young people.

So where are these other witch’s graves? Here’s a sampling …

In Katy Magnolia Cemetery, in Katy, Texas, the grave of Barbara Snyder has the distinction of being the witch’s grave. 

There’s nothing about the lady which would make a person think witch, except the overly large tombstone with that same epitaph, speaking right to the person reading it. 

Legends include a cold breeze that blows from the stone, black cat conventions at the base and leaving a coin on the grave ensures good luck. And reading the epitaph aloud brings bad luck. There as here, visiting the stone is a high school tradition. 

May D. Knotts is buried in the Quaker Valley Cemetery, in Riverton, Kansas. She died in 1904, fourteen years old. The legend has it that suspected of being a witch, she was burned at the stake. Or hung from a tree. 

In reality she died of pneumonia. Again, the only connection is this same epitaph.

Then there’s Annabelle Davis, who died in 1881 at the age of 19. She’s buried beneath what’s known as the Witch’s Pyramid, in Ridgeway Cemetery, Ridgeway, Ohio. It’s said to always be warm to the touch, and her ghost has been seen fluttering around it. 

The only thing about her that leads people to believe she was a witch is this same inscription … 

Remember youth as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you must be
Prepare for death and follow me.

Lisa and I are standing at the gate of Big Hill Cemetery, looking out over the open field. Off to the left and some ways away is the witch’s grave, the tombstone of Zarelda Surilay Belvin Essary.

Lisa asks me what I think Surilay would make of this, remembered 150 years later for being a witch, when she wasn’t?

It’s a fair question. But the story of her being a witch leads people to still be interested in the person buried there. Which from time to time, inspires someone to investigate. And find that no, of course she wasn’t a witch. And so I’m able to tell a bit of her story. And if my guess is true, that Nathan Essary was actually her son, in some strange way that feels like reuniting two lost souls. And if it’s not true, it’s more fodder for others to look into and solve the the mystery for themselves. 

Meanwhile, on dark nights, under the stars and moon, young people carry on traditions older than the communities where they still exist.

The 1925 Tri-State Tornado: In search of the scars from the worst tornado in U.S. history and finding them closer than I expected … A tale told by a tombstone

Death, Journal, Ohio River Valley, Ohio River Valley, Southern Illinois Hauntings and Legends

I came across these two tombstones in Newman Cemetery, outside of Carmi, Illinois and my curiosity was piqued as they had died on the same day. Their story gave me a push down the path of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado.

The 1925 Tri-State Tornado was an anomaly amongst tornados, in both fury and lifespan. When it was done rampaging across three states, around 700 people were dead or dying. Entire towns were obliterated.

A tornado is a unique kind of horror, with the ability to conjure up apocalyptic and downright bizarre scenes. Your house might be flattened, whilst your neighbor’s is untouched. The person you’re sitting next to might die, and you live. 

From the time you realize a tornado is going to hit, you’re living with the absolute certainty that every second might be your last. When the outer bands reach you, you’re in almost complete darkness and your house is being soaked in torrential rain and hammered with debris. And when it strikes with a deafening roar, there’s nothing to do but hold on and wait, and hope you come out alive. 

The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 was between a mile and a mile and half across, moving at 65 miles an hour. That’s a minute of pure blind terror and if you lived, you’d be waking up to a whole new world, your old world swept away. 

It passed within a mile of the house where I’ve lived most of my life. I’d heard people talk about the big one but didn’t realize how big it was, even though the scars were all around me.

So I set out to find those scars along the tornado’s path, through the last stretch of its trek before it left Illinois to spread more misery in Indiana.

Tornados are mythical beasts, and yet very real. The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 was the most monstrous of them all. 

The Big One

The official name for the tornado that cut across Missouri, Illinois and Indiana on March 18, 1925 is the Tri-State Tornado. But most people who were alive then just called it the big one. 

That title isn’t likely to be challenged any time soon, as it was the most deadly and devastating tornado in American history, and the second most deadly in the world. 

What makes that record particularly terrifying is that it tore through small towns and countryside, not large cities.

I’d heard older people talk about it when I was a kid, how it affected their little part of the world. What happened to them that day, to their neighbors. 

Their little part of the world got torn apart. The tornado spared the towns in our area, instead cutting a swath through the network of country neighborhoods, which were anchored at churches and schools.  Everybody in that part of the country knew someone – was likely close to someone – who was lost in the storm. 

I’d heard about the tornado since I was a little kid. My great grandma, Mee Maw, told my Granny Bert that she and Aunt Nellie could hear it from their house. They knew what it was from the roar, and all I remembered of the story was it sounded pretty bad. The story was always finished with “it could have been a lot worse.”

It was a lot worse. In Murphysboro, DeSoto, West Frankfort and many other places along the tornado’s path where it didn’t miss the towns. But that misses the point. A tragedy like that distorts our sense of scale. There were as many people killed in a single building elsewhere during the tornado as there was in my entire county. 

But those are statistics. When deaths start numbering in the hundreds, it’s too easy to stop seeing the individuals. That doesn’t make the pain any less for those here who were affected. Death tears at us one on one, with a single death carrying infinitely more of a sting than a hundred, when it’s someone you love. 

Those people killed in the country were links in a chain that connected families into communities. When those links were broken, too many could never be fixed.

The last time I heard people talking about the 1925 Tri-State Tornado was just a few years ago. It was a stormy night, my accomplice, Todd Lane was here. He had just arrived, and we were on the porch, watching the wind blow, and the lightning light up the sky, which was a wall of clouds. 

The tornado siren went off, which means there’s a tornado that’s been spotted in the area and it might be heading our way. 

Todd Lane said he’d never been in a tornado, but he wasn’t worried. I said I had, and I was. Hence the standing on the porch. I get that from my dad. Like me, he preferred to stand outside and watch what was coming. If it got bad enough, there’s watching from the front door, three seconds from the basement. 

Todd Lane asked “what does a tornado sound like?”

I thought about it and started to answer with “it sounds like a train,” when I realized, in the near distance I heard a roar, which sounded a lot like a train. 

“Actually, it sounds like that,” I said. People hear that it sounds like a train and think of the whistle. But it’s the grinding of the steel wheels on steel tracks, the increasing rumbling and roar of the engine that can shake a house that sounds like a tornado. I’m a couple blocks from the train tracks here, but you can hear its vibrations when it’s miles away, long after the conductor has stopped hitting the whistle.

I turned to look and he was gone. I turned back to the sky and a second later he’s standing there, wearing his coat, with his bag and drink, putting his shoes on … “should we go to the basement?”

We didn’t and the roar died down. This time it actually was a tornado, about a mile from here. It killed an acquaintance of mine just a few miles away, before dying off over towards Griffin, Indiana. 

Later, people said it followed the same path the big one had, back on 1925. Which unfortunately for people living in the midwest, isn’t all that rare. Tornados are the most extreme weather phenomenon of the midwest, and are fairly common. And most people who live here have a story. 

The Tr-State Tornado of 1925 passed through here
A stretch of countryside near Carmi, Illinois, where the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 passed. As it passed by, it was between a mile and a mile and half wide, and would have more than filled the entire horizon in this photo.

Some people are tornado magnets

History shows again and again
How nature puts up with the folly of man.
Godzilla.

Blue Oyster Cult

We tend to think of nature as a benevolent force, Mother Nature and all that rot. But the truth is, nature, like humans, kills. Certain animals will kill for territory, or stop the advances of a prospective mate, just as humans do. 

Nature will kill on an elemental level as well. Earth, Air, Water and Fire all wield their own horrors. The difference between an animal or a human, and an elemental force, is that elemental forces kill indiscriminately. 

In insurance terms, these are called Acts of God. As a kid, I saw them as the work of Godzilla. 

It was only in writing this piece that I came to understand a peculiar behavior of mine. When I’m in an open landscape, every so often I feel the need to figure out how I’m going to escape from Godzilla if he appeared on the horizon. 

 I’ve done this since I was a kid, There used to be a water tower visible from my house. At times I’d catch it hovering on the horizon, and saw the great beast rise behind it. And I’d start plotting my escape. 

Yes, I saw a lot of creature feature films as a kid. But I’ve learned since then they only gave shape to an elemental force I stared into as a child. 

My first experience with a tornado was when I was eight years old. We were on the way home and had no idea it was coming. As we approached the railroad tracks, three blocks from home, the sirens went off, and Dad pulled over on a side street as you couldn’t see anything except rain and bits of wood flying by. He told us to crack a window and get in the floorboard.

The siren was only a block away but a few seconds into its blast you couldn’t hear it above the storm.

By then, the roar was deafening and I can remember laying in the floor of the car, looking up, rather than down, watching the chaos that swirled around us. You could actually see the wind, as it was spraying rain along with debris.

Don’t forget that a tornado is a cloud. I’ve walked through clouds before. It looks like a mist, till you notice the droplets of water aren’t rising or falling, but swirling. I’ve been on the outside of a tornado looking in, and your visibility is almost zero. For the unlucky, death lies inside a cloud.

We tend to think of tornados viewed from a distance, crossing the horizon. It’s how you see them in photos and videos. It takes up part of the vista. But from the point of view of someone about to get hit, it’s towering over you, filling your entire field of vision, like Godzilla with its foot raised and about to come down. 

The foot came down and the car shook with increasing violence. I felt it start to lift, then sat back down. The roar began to quiet and I still have a vague memory of looking out and seeing it tearing down the street towards the water tower, away from us. It was like watching the ass of god walk away with a swagger. 

It was surreal and blew my young mind. 

When the foot came down it missed us but hit a mobile home less than a hundred yards away, smashed it and killed the occupant. There was a chunk of wood in the back seat, more than twice as thick as the crack I’d left in the window. 

The damage around us looked like the mythical beast had just stormed through the neighborhood. The only thing missing was the fire from its breath. 

During the Tri-State Tornado of 1925, the fire added a particularly deadly element in Murphysboro and elsewhere.

My next encounter found us fishing from a boat on the Little Wabash river, near Carmi when a storm came up. By the time we got the boat ashore, dad saw it was a tornado. 

I’ll always question his judgment as he led us into the woods, like hiding might help. Mind you, I don’t blame him, because in a moment like that you feel like you’re in a Godzilla film, wearing clothes the colors of a Yellow Cab. An easy target. 

We huddled under a tree. Lightning struck the tree and split it in two, showering us in timber. If the lightening hadn’t got it, the wind probably would have. Mom prayed. A minute later it was over. 

We sheltered from another tornado in the storm cellar of Crow Barnes Resort in Bull Shoals, Arkansas, and it was quite like a cocktail party. 

During another, I watched wooden power poles bend like trees. But because it was so close, I couldn’t see a funnel and didn’t realize what it was. 

Till a chunk of the grandstand roof from the fairgrounds went whizzing down the street. 

There were a few more close calls, nothing serious. When I lived on Long Island, I was at work one day, looking out the window at the trees. There was a storm about to hit, and I just knew, from the wind and the color there was a tornado coming. I told my boss, but she told me there are no tornados on Long Island. 

The tornado crossed just a few blocks away from us, broke a few trees for good measure and went back up into the clouds. 

The last one I was in was at night, just a few years ago. I was laying on a bench in the garden, somewhat inebriated and watching the clouds. The sirens had gone off but it was still oddly quiet, except for the roar of the wind. 

I saw the clouds were rotating. It reminded me of something I saw courtesy of LSD once, what I interpreted then to be the vortex of the cosmos. But I wasn’t that inebriated now, and when I started hearing trees breaking not far from here, I realized two things at once. The first was that vortex of the cosmos was likely just a memory of staring into the center of a tornado as a child as it passed over our car. The second was I’d just been staring up into the center of another. 

What little I know about tornados and the Tri-State Tornado of 1925

The DeSoto School, destroyed by the Tri-State Tornado of 1925
The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 obliterated the southern Illinois town of DeSoto, which had a population of about 500 people. 33 students died in the collapse of the school, the worst tornado death toll for a school in the U.S. In all 61 people died in the small town, with about a hundred injured. Deputy Sheriff George Boland was caught by the storm and lifted up into the funnel, never to be seen again. All the businesses, churches and the school, along with many of the houses were wiped away.

When people start talking about tornados I tend to tune them out. It’s strange. I know all I want to know. I can tell you quite a bit about shark attacks, though I’ve never known a person bitten by one. But I know people killed in tornados. I know details of the guillotine, torture devices of the middle ages and of the inquisition. I could give you the directions for amputating a limb in the Civil War. But I’ve never researched tornados. 

Those have always felt too close to me.

I knew that the tornado that hit Xenia, Ohio in 1974 was more than a half mile wide. I remembered from the news at the time. It was one of the nasty ones, an F5 which is as high as the scale goes. With winds over 250 miles an hour. 

But it was only on the ground for 16 minutes. That’s how tornados work. They touch down, do their damage, take their sacrifice and go back up into the clouds.

We can accept that. It’s what we’re accustomed to. 

The tornado that hit Xenia killed 32 people. In comparison, in the 1925 tornado, 33 school kids lost their lives in a single school in DeSoto. 

The Xenia tornado was part of an outbreak across thirteen states and Ontario up into Canada, that lasted over two days. There were seven F5 tornadoes, 23 F4 and more than 148 reported in all. 319 people died. 

The tornado on the ground the longest that day was 121 miles, an F4 that killed 19 people. 

The Tri-State Tornado of 1925, an F5 was on the ground for longer than any on record, about 235 miles, almost four hours, and killed at least 695 people. 

And you could have heard it from my front door. 

Site of the Trousdale School, destroyed by the Tri-State Tornado of 1925
View from the former site of Trousdale School, near Enfield, Illinois, which was obliterated in the tornado. Until it reached the hill in the distance, about a mile away, it would have been hard to tell it was a tornado. By then, it was less than a minute before it struck.

Country people are a strange lot

Carmi was a farming community in 1925. The town grew up along the Little Wabash river, never got much over 6,000 people, and was known for an industrious labor force, a bit of industry, and quite a lot of service industry. 

As well as a lot of farming. 

There was room for families, especially in the country. Sons farming the land next to their father’s land. Land passed through generations. Solid links in a chain were formed.

Schools were about two miles apart, close enough that kids could walk there. A country block was a mile long. So a school every two blocks. 

Lately in some areas, busses were running, which meant fewer schools. But the busses hadn’t got here yet. 

Along with the schools were the churches. And usually with the church, the graveyard. So you had all the places you needed for a rural community to congregate and come together. 

It’s still that way, in that it’s often through death that a scattered community comes together. When someone dies you see people you haven’t seen in years. And you see people you’ve known your whole life, but only see now at other people’s funerals. 

In 1925, death was always close by. It could come from anywhere, and without warning. I’ve known many country people, especially when I was younger who had lived through the deaths of so many loved ones, that I almost felt embarrassed to mourn my own losses. They developed a hardness grown out of necessity in those generations. They lived through the Great Depression and a couple of world wars after all.

We’re softer now. 

This is important because you have to understand why anyone would actually live in what is known as tornado alley. 

Are we fucking stupid, or what?

Simply put, living in a tornado prone area is a risky proposition. 

Any time nature decides to do it, and it decides to do so with disturbing frequency, it reaches down from the sky and picks up farms, neighborhoods, hell, entire towns and throws them back down into a pile of rubble. 

You can calculate your chance of survival by imagining the building you are in being lifted into the sky and twirled around at a couple hundred miles an hour, disintegrating in the process, before tossing you back down … and by the way when you hit you realize you were also moving at sixty miles an hour forward. 

Amazingly, people do survive. Others are never found. They might as well be in Oz. 

the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 destroying Newman School
What the Tri-State Tornado might have looked like approaching Newman School. There are many atmospheric events which take place alongside a tornado. The sky goes dark, almost black, which makes the leaves seem even greener. Old timers will tell you it’s because the wind is turning them upside down, and the bottoms are lighter. The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 was described as looking like boiling clouds, and it caused damage three miles out from its center. It was accompanied by sheets of rain, high winds, baseball size hail and to the north of the storm, snow. Temperatures that night dipped below zero, adding even more misery to the survivors. 

That enchantment of nature turned black by the Tri-State Tornado of 1925

A few year’s back, storm chasing was all the rage. Twister was playing in the theaters. The weather had its own reality shows on television. And then tragedy struck some of the storm chasers and people were reminded that this shit is dangerous. Not just an adrenaline rush.

Tornados are quite literally, death coming out of the sky. It’s Zephyros, claiming his sacrifice, just as those who live near the ocean face their own threats, like hurricanes and nor’easters from his kin Neptune. We provide the sacrifices by living here, saying “if it’s my time to go, then it’s my time.”

Something you hear around here a lot is “at least the tornado didn’t hit Carmi.” If you believe in sympathetic magic, that kind of thinking banishes the danger from your own backyard, and inflicts it on someone else’s. 

Any witch can tell you that will come back on you. 

People tend to personalize storms, and it’s understandable. If you let your imagination go to work, you can find all kinds of connections. During a tornado, every sense you possess, including those science have yet to acknowledge, are fully awake. 

A few year’s back, a tornado wiped out part of Harrisburg, Illinois, as well as Ridgway and stops in between. The sirens went off here that day, and I watched the front pass by. 

I saw something I’ve seen a few times when the wind blows. Little tendrils of clouds dipping down, twisting, trying to touch the tip of the others. Trying to connect, come together and become one. It’s like watching a dance, and sometimes they do come together and spin, like a Spinner dancing to Dark Star at a Dead show, endlessly twirling till they float back up into the clouds. 

It’s a sexual dance, except with a tornado, it’s the people on the ground who are fucked. 

A guide to the devastation of the Tri-State Tornado of 1925

The guide to the 1925 tornado in my area is The 1925 Tri-State Tornado’s Devastation in Franklin County, Hamilton County and White County Illinois by  Bob Johns. The author isn’t much of a writer – it’s more like hearing your old uncle talking about the big one. But he covers a lot of ground, in brutal detail. We even get maps of the entire route, marking who lived where. It’s an invaluable resource.

It’s also horrific in its detail, as you can’t describe a tornado in detail any other way. 

He writes that as it approached my neck of the woods, a woman caught her dress in a barbed wire fence, trying to flee the tornado. It picked her up and she was impaled on a tree stump when she landed. She pulled herself off of it and walked for help. As I said, country people are tough. Unfortunately she later died from blood poisoning.

Just up from there, some kids were blown into a hog lot, and later they had to be pulled from the hogs who had begun to eat their bodies. 

Everything about a tornado is apocalyptic. It’s an Albrecht Durer painting come to life. In the aftermath, you realize our visions of the apocalypse are sanitized, because they’re viewed from above, from a distance. We see the whole, not the carnage on the ground. In the moments that a tornado strikes, reason and logic disappear. What you see you never see anyplace else, if you’re lucky. Starting with the sixty seconds it took to pass overhead, and on into the horrible aftermath, it was hell on earth. 

Something that strikes me about Bob John’s book is that he notes several storm shelters built by survivors after the tornado. They saw something that day that we never have, and it drove them to find a way to survive it. That’s a lesson we’ve forgotten now, because we weren’t there. We didn’t see it, and we didn’t see the aftermath. So we forget.

Or make sure we have a basement.

Near Enfield, Illinois. The Tri-State Tornado came through here in 1925, clearing the land of houses and even most of the trees. Fence posts often survived and in fact, a number of people survived by holding onto them, even as at times, the wind blew their clothes away.

A mile wide cloud of death and destruction from the Tri-State Tornado of 1925

Sunday drives are in my DNA. Once a staple of rural life, you pile in the car on Sunday afternoon and drive around the countryside. Back then there were more farms, more houses, so more stories. Some of the stories trailed off when they turned inappropriate for kids. 

That’s how we translated the history of a community. Written records of rural living are relatively rare. Like most rural traditions around the world, your own history is learned orally. And in our generation, instead of next to a peat fire. it was often told in a moving car on Sunday afternoons. 

What you learn is that the countryside is made up of little neighborhoods. Families spread out, from one neighborhood to the other. So the neighborhoods are connected. You can drive through the country and name everybody that lives there. 

This is how people survived in the county, the social safety net. The chain. You weren’t alone. It wasn’t just family and friends, but everyone shared some connection. Your neighbor is just across the field. In each direction. They were there for you, because when disaster struck, you were there for them.

The Sunday drive is a tradition Lisa and I try to adhere to, when we get a chance. It’s how she learns the landscape, the roads and the history of this place. She’s better at this than I am, thinks to ask questions when we’re talking to people, and finds things quicker than I do, things I would never catch. 

And there are her jokes as well. 

Today’s drive was the route the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 took the last 25 miles of its trek across Illinois, before it crossed into Indiana for the deadly finale of its 235 mile run. 

The route is circuitous at times, as the massive width of the tornado meant you couldn’t just drive down a single road and follow the path. It didn’t travel due east/west like the roads. So it wiped out houses on adjacent roads, a mile apart.  

Counting stops to wander around graveyards and overgrown fields looking for remnants of houses long gone, we spent most of the afternoon wandering. Even without the stops, it would have been a drive of an hour or more.

The Tri-State Tornado covered the same ground in about 20 minutes. 

Toward Lick Creek Church, destroyed in the Tri-State Tornado of 1925
Levi Hook had lived on the hill above Lick Creek Church, between McLeansboro and Enfield, Illinois until a few months before the Tri-State Tornado hit. The day after he took his wagon to check on the damage. From the top of this hill, he described everything below as flattened. Nearly every house, several of which were never rebuilt had been destroyed and had someone or everyone killed.

A country community obliterated in less than a minute

As the Tri-State Tornado tore through Hamilton County and into White, towards Carmi, it turned brutal. It killed twenty people in the five minutes before it crossed Highway 14 and left Enfield township and entered Carmi township.

We’ve just pulled into the gravel parking lot of Lick Creek Church, which is a bit south and dead center between McLeansboro and Enfield. It’s an old frame church, white with a rectangular steeple. I wonder if there’s still a bell up there?

It’s the first time Lisa has encountered Lick Creek, and she smirks. I can’t wait to take her to French Lick, over in Indiana. 

Once outside the car the mood for sexual innuendo fades away. Something horrific happened out there. 

At the crossroads there’s a bridge across Lick Creek. It was an iron bridge in 1925, and when the tornado hit, it was tossed upstream 400 feet. Lisa sets off to find out if it’s still there. I help for a moment, then realize if it’s out there she’ll find it. And I’d likely miss it. 

So I cross the parking lot and look to the north. I’m a photographer. When I go someplace, I try to know as much about what I’ll see as possible. When I’m there, I want to see the past overlaid on top of the present. What you see here is terrifying. 

If you had stood here as the tornado passed by, it would filled your entire field of vision. Well, no. If you stood here you’d be dead. The same was true for as far as I could see.

Like many rural areas, houses tended to be clustered around churches, and the Lick Creek Church was no exception. For a mile around it, you’d find families closely tied to their neighbors, either through blood or marriage. 

It took less than a minute for the Tri-State Tornado to tear through the Lick Creek community, annihilating the church and almost the entire cluster of houses to the north of it for about a mile. 

The next day, Levi Hook came to survey the damage to his old neighborhood. His son, Eli had been in school the day before, almost eight miles away. The boy went out under the porch and saw it was very dark, the rain fell in sheets, there was hail, and he noticed something else falling from the sky. When the rain quit he went out and found it. It was piece of a sewing machine. All the way home the way was strewn with debris from the tornado. 

Levi had moved his family a few months before, to north of McLeansboro, and Bob Ballard was now living on his old farm. As they approached the Lick Creek area, looking out from the hill which I’m looking up towards now, Levi said “everything he could see below the hill in the Lick Creek area looked flat. Nothing was standing.”  

Rebuilt Lick Creek Church where the original stood before being blown apart by the Tri-State Tornado of 1925
The view from Lick Creek Church, with the rebuilt building in the foreground. The tornado passed through this vista in less than sixty seconds, destroying everything in its path.

Standing in the parking lot, down the road to my left, Chalon Creek lived with his family. He was visiting a neighbor when he saw the sky darken, and beat a hasty retreat to get home to his family, as it looked bad. He got within sight of the house, only to see it blow away, killing his wife, step-daughter and brother. 

Less than a minute later, Emery Lloyd was killed a few hundred feet up the road in front of where I’m standing when the tornado ripped his home apart. 

While it was killing Emery, Bob Ballard’s house, Levi Hook’s old house on top of the hill in front of me, was blown completely away, landing 600 feet to the south and splintering, not far from where I’m standing now. Before it landed, it hit the ground twice, gouging the Earth in a V shape. The tornado picked up the debris and tossed into yet another field. That was where they found the bodies of Bob Ballard’s wife and two daughters who had been carried inside it by the wind. 

Even before Bob’s house crashed into splinters, just to the east the tornado was destroying his parents house, killing his mother and grandparents. 

About thirty seconds later, Bob’s sister, Malinda, lost her husband, John Raymond VanWinkle. Their six year old daughter, Veda was found and appeared to be dead. She was taken with the others to Dave Webb’s house, which was one of the few still standing. He sheltered more than a dozen people there, injured, dying and dead, as the cold set in and temperatures dropped below freezing. 

Surprisingly, Veda turned out to be alive. In the book I read that she suffered from a broken collar bone and hip, but at the moment I’m being told by her granddaughter that the broken hip was caused when a dried up cornstalk was driven into it. 

Dave Webb’s home was still standing after the tornado passed through, and he opened it to his neighbors. A dozen of the injured and dead were brought here, till they could be taken elsewhere. All that’s left of his home today is a small mound covered in brush. What the tornado didn’t take away, time has.

It turns out that Lick Creek Church has cameras now, which are monitored by neighbors. Like a lot of places in the country, vandalism is a problem, and Lisa jumps in there and commiserates with Veda’s granddaughter about it, who watches over the place. 

She’s wondering what we’re doing here, I start to explain, show her the map and she says “you’ve read the book.” She gets it occasionally, people looking for where the tornado passed through. She’s not surprised to find that I’ve not only been through one tornado, but several. 

She tells me Veda suffered from her injuries her whole life. Because of the broken hip one leg was shorter than the other, so she had to wear special shoes. And during storms, the psychic scars came out. You didn’t talk on the phone, take a bath and stayed away from the windows. 

As she said that I smiled, for those had been the rules in our house as well.

She points out where the people lived. Off to the northeast on the high ground, Elvis Webb managed to survive by holding onto two stones when his parent’s smokehouse was blown away. When he got up he saw his parent’s home was destroyed, and his mother dead. 

To the east of the Webb farm, Marie Hollister missed school that day and had been visiting a neighbor to see her new baby. As she walked home, she was blown into a ditch and badly hurt. Her mother and grandmother were taken into the sky as it destroyed their house, and killed when they landed. Her grandfather was blown away too, but survived the landing, because he landed in Lick Creek, where he drowned. 

The baby Marie had gone to visit was killed as well. 

Elza Wilson’s daughter Edna Fern died also. Thomas McMurtry, a friend of Elza’s had been visiting and was blown into a field and killed when a tree fell on him. Elza’s mules had been blown almost seven miles away, and were only slightly hurt.

Veda married another survivor. It must have been easier, as so many people carried scars, some debilitating, some on the inside, for the rest of their lives. 

Our visitor bids her farewell and drives off. It’s reassuring to find someone still related to those who used to live here, still in the neighborhood. It’s always nice to see a name on the mailbox which matches the name on the map from almost a hundred years ago.

Just before it moved from Hamilton to White county, Barbara Hanagan and her two daughters were doing spring cleaning in the kitchen when the tornado hit. They clung to each other and when it passed, they opened the door to get into the dining room, only to find the only room still standing in their house was the kitchen. 

As the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 moved through Enfield Township, Anderson Nelson rode out the storm in his chair in his living room, with his wife Emma. The storm uprooted the trees, took down his barn, and finally blew his house down around him. Afterwards he was still sitting in his chair, terrified, surrounded by the countryside, rocking back and forth. Emma was unharmed, and once they got Anderson to quit rocking and out of his chair, he was fine too. 

Down the road from there, Herman Frymire and his wife Beulah, along with his father John lay flat on the ground and held onto fence posts, as the tornado spun over them at over 200 miles an hour. Herman couldn’t hold on and was blown loose and died. John was injured, and they lost two horses, a mule, three hogs, three sheep and two lamb. Their daughter wasn’t home. She was at Trousdale school, where the 1925 tornado exploded into Carmi township.

Artist rendition of the 1925 Tri State Tornado
What the Tri-State Tornado might have looked like closing in on Trousdale School, near Enfield, Illinois. At this point it was a mile wide and was described as looking like a cloud rolling along the ground.

A path of schools reduced to matchsticks by the Tri-State Tornado of 1925

Trousdale School sat alongside Hwy 45, which runs ten miles between Carmi and Enfield. I know the area well. I used to go to church at Wesley Chapel as a teenager, just across the road and up over the hill. A friend of mine talked me into it, convinced we’d have a better chance with Enfield girls. We didn’t. 

Across from the church, looking down on where Trousdale School once stood was a hog lot. We were hanging out there one icy winter day after church, chatting up the Enfield girls as we sat on the fence surrounding the hogs. What little cool I had was blown when I fell off and tore most of the skin from the palm of my hand on frozen hog shit. 

That was almost fifty years ago, and I still get confused on these roads. Lisa is driving now as I hate driving on the highway, and I remember the turn at the last minute and gesticulate wildly. She manages to slow down enough and turns onto a gravel road without going up on two wheels. On the corner is a wooded area, and a sign reading “former site of Trousdale School.” We parked along the side of the road, and after beating the weeds with my stick, we got out.

There’s an open area here, where one would presume the school stood. It’s been recently mowed so it’s well taken care of. Someone remembers. It feels like a memorial. At the edge of a small woods in the back, you find a few concrete structures, probably for a well or a cistern. All that’s left of the school which once stood here. 

Lisa suggests looking in the woods, and indeed there is an overgrown path. But it’s summer, and snakes live in the woods in the summer. Unless I have a good reason to believe I need to be in the woods with them, I refrain. 

I respectfully declined her invitation to search, so she volunteered to go it alone. That sounded like a good idea, and I turned to look up the hill, towards the church and once frozen hog lot. 

Steps leading to Trousdale School from the road. All that remained of the school was the bits outside made of concrete.

This area is known as seven mile flats, but it’s not flat. It’s rolling hills. Gradually rolling hills. 

Tornados are relatively low to the ground. So if you’re on the low ground, and there’s a rolling hill between you and the sky, you likely wouldn’t see it till it was almost at the top of the hill.

One reason people were caught unaware by the Tri-State Tornado was its size. In this stretch of countryside it was swelling back and forth between a mile and a mile a half wide. It’s unlikely anyone who had seen a tornado had seen one a fifth as wide. It was also masked by the storm which was preceding it, with bands of rain and hail. 

Reports say it looked like a dark cloud, sweeping along the ground. It was only when it got closer that you could see it was swirling, and the chunks of debris it was swinging in its outer bands. Each time it took another building, it had more wood, nails and stone to use as a mace to knock down the next.

If you had been looking out the front door of Trousdale School, the moment you could tell it was a tornado was probably about 90 seconds before it hit. 

Trousdale school was a one room schoolhouse, like most of the others in the area, with one teacher, Miss Pauline McMurtry,  and sixteen students. 

When the the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 hit, Trousdale School crumbled almost instantly, throwing boards, glass, splintered wood and most of the students into the surrounding woods and field where they landed like jack straws. Miss McMurty was hurt, but managed to gather her students. All but three of the students had been injured, some quite seriously. Twelve year old Vernon Miller had been killed. 

+ + +

Lisa was calling from the woods. She’d found steps. I girded my loins, tapped the weeds with my stick and started down the path towards her. 

The steps appeared to be leading from the gravel road up the embankment, to a path that led to the school. The morning of the tornado, the kids streamed up those steps for the last time. Now the weeds have them.

There once was a road here, as prior to the 1925 tornado there were several houses and families living along it. All the homes were destroyed, most of the people were injured or killed. Essentially, in places like this there was nobody left to rebuild, and it’s sold for farmland. Over time, even the roads disappear.

The disappearing road

We tried to follow the country route the tornado took after striking Trousdale school. But the road clearly shown on our 1925 map which we needed to take turned into an empty field. It was a problem we’d continue to encounter as we tried to trace the twister’s path. 

So we went back to the highway instead. We turned onto the highway then off again at 500E, back into the countryside. 

The train tracks ran across the road here in 1925. Just past the line, there used to be a crossroads. The train tracks remain and just past those there’s a road heading off to the right and we stop. To the left, where the road used to run there’s nothing but fields.

This was once a neighborhood, with families, farms and homes. It vanished in the blink of an eye, and perhaps a single rotation of the tornado. 

About sixty seconds after the tornado destroyed Trousdale School, John “Strawberry” Wilson was killed down that road, at the next crossroads, his house and farm destroyed. A bit closer to where we stand,  Charles Argo was visiting Delbert Warthen and his family the day of the tornado. They both died along with two babies. The rest of his family were, as the book says and vividly describes, torn up.

 Lisa had been talking to an elderly fellow about the tornado at work the other day, a customer. His father had told him all about what happened at the Warthen place. The horror still echoes down a century later. 

Snowden Biggerstaff was the teacher at Murdach School, just south of here, across the highway behind us. He had noticed the weather was getting bad so he dismissed school. The school it turns out was south of the tornado and escaped damage. Unfortunately, Snowden’s route home took him directly into the tornado’s path, right where we’re standing now, and his buggy was blown off the road, breaking both his arms and a leg. The horse also had a broken leg, but stayed next to Snowden till help came. Snowden died a few days later. 

To the left, on the corner, Ellis Pollard’s home was destroyed, as was Mason Veatch’s beyond it. 

To the south, just behind us, Armintie Murdach and her daughter Ethel Rhein were killed instantly. Ethel’s husband Alvin died a few days later. Albert, Armintie’s brother in law who was blind, was blown into a nearby field. He could hear Ethel and Alvin’s baby crying nearby, and followed the sound till he found her, and carried her to find help. 

View from the crossroads where the last photo was taken. The tornado destroyed the farm directly in from of us, as well as the next, killing one. It went off towards the distant right, clearing a forest that stood there, which then became farmland. The road on the right also disappears, the house once at the end never rebuilt. The scars from the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 usually aren’t things you see, but what you no longer see.

Today, staring down the path which once was a road, with houses and life, I realized finally why it’s so hard to see the scars from the tornado. Many of the houses that once stood along their length were never rebuilt, and in some cases, there was nobody left to rebuild. 

Others lived with debilitating injuries, making the hard life of a farmer impossible. Or that of a farmer’s wife. There were fewer children to inherit land, and many of those wanted to get the hell out of here. 

That meant lots were for sale, and neighbors bought the land, increasing their acreage. Since there were no longer houses on these roads, there was no need for the roads. Eventually, like this one that saw so much tragedy and death, the fields swallowed them up, leaving nothing more than a turn off which leads nowhere.

Bigger farms meant fewer farmers, fewer kids, and smaller, declining communities. Four small towns  in the tornado’s path that served farmers were “effectively effaced,” erased in other words. The rural death toll in White county, where I live, and Hamilton, the rural county next to us was 65 people, which Thomas P. Grazulis, author of  The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm calls “unprecedented.”  

Every farming family was a link in a chain which connected the people who lived in the country. They weren’t towns, but they were certainly communities and in a sense, the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 snapped the back of the old communities. So many links in the chain were broken that it was impossible to mend it. 

Schools and churches had held the small, otherwise isolated communities together. With fewer people you needed fewer churches, and many consolidated and others were abandoned. Most of those destroyed were never rebuilt.

The two miles between schools continued to die out after the 1925 tornado, and some of those communities disappear entirely, leaving only a graveyard, or if you’re lucky, a church as a reminder that once people were here. 

The scar tissue from the Tri-State tornado is dirt. Cultivated soil where houses once stood, and families grew. 

We get back in the car and start to drive. A quarter mile up the road stood Tom Finnery’s farm. The whole place blew away and his entire family seriously injured. A quarter mile north of him, the same thing happened at William Black’s home. William Richardson was killed there. 

And all this happened in less than two minutes from the time the tornado destroyed Trousdale school.. 

Straight down the road in the woods sat Newman School. The tornado approached from our right towards the school, crossing the road in this area. Rosa Jane Smith and Lucy Ellen Phillips were killed to the right of us.

I pulled into Newman Cemetery, all that’s left of what used to be the center of this small community. There’s no church here, but there is a school, Newman School. It’s a one room building, a bit larger than some of those that survive today. It’s in ruins, and next to it is a mobile home which isn’t in much better condition. Lisa asks if I’m going to go up and take photos. 

There’s a warning scrawled on poster board in the front window of the trailer. I can’t quite make out what it says, but I know not to come closer. If anyone was living in that trailer, you don’t want to agitate them. 

The rebuilt Newman School. All that remained standing was the bell and a single desk. Though many of the students were severely injured, none died. The teacher died a few days later of his injuries.

This isn’t the original Newman School. This is the rebuilt one, built on the same location. It’s the only one along this stretch of schools claimed by the tornado which was rebuilt. 

I wander out in into the field behind the school and look off to the southwest, where the the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 came from. They were on the high ground, and it’s wide open countryside. Even if they couldn’t identify it by sight right away, they had to have known what it was by the roar. 

There were twenty four students there that day, and Jasper Mossberger was the teacher. Jasper saw it coming from the window. The wind started picking up and he rushed over to the door to try to hold it closed. The building came down around them and most of the occupants were blown along with the debris, into an adjacent field. As they began to come to, they were pelted with hail. 

All that was left of Newman School, was a few timbers, a single desk and the bell. 

According to the local newspaper, Jasper was particularly grievously injured. “He seemed rational but could not comprehend that there had been a cyclone and seemed to remember nothing about it. He has a bad cut on one leg and body bruises. Practically every child in this school was hurt, several seriously.” 

Jasper died a few days later. All the students recovered.

A few months before, Lisa and I were in Newman Cemetery visiting the graves of Walter S. Warthen and his wife, Rachel. Walter’s daughter Ivy had poisoned her whole family just across the fields from here, as it turned 1900. Everyone recovered except her brother, and Ivy was sent away after a sensational trial.

Two smaller tombstones, side by side in the row behind Walter and Rachel’s had caught my eye. The names read Rosa Jane Smith and Lucy Ellen Phillips, and they both died on the same day, March 18, 1925. As I was to find out later, the day of the Tri-State Tornado.

I came across these two tombstones in Newman Cemetery, outside of Carmi, Illinois and my curiosity was piqued as they had died on the same day. Their story gave me a push down the path of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado.

James Boland lived in the open fields we had just driven past, within sight of Newman School. His mother, Rosa Jane Smith was living with him and had been ill. So James’ sister, Lucy Ellen Phillips who normally lived in Paris, Illinois had come to take care of Rosa Jane, bringing along her baby. 

They lived in the flatlands, and James saw the tornado approaching but there wasn’t anything they could do except pray. Rosa Jane and Lucy Ellen died as the house blew apart, leaving James and the baby injured but alive. 

When I read that, it was the first I’d ever heard about the 1925 tornado killing people here. Perhaps my Granny Bert had mentioned it and it didn’t stick. Then again, when people talked about that day, it was usually about the tornado, not the people.

Today, Newman Cemetery is fairly large, still in use and well kept for a country graveyard. Lisa is walking up and down the rows, checking for 1925 in the inscription. 

There are other victims of the 1925 tornado buried here, in addition to Rosa Jane Smith and Lucy Ellen Phillips. 

The same spin of the tornado that reduced Newman School to splinters also hit Orel Warthen’s home. Twenty four year old Orel was Delbert’s brother, who had died three or four minutes earlier. Orel’s son, Harold was only four years old and died with his mother, Versa when their house blew apart. He’s buried at Newman Cemetery, along with Versa’s nephew, eleven year old Wilburn Felty.

Wilburn was killed a minute later when the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 tore apart Frieberger School. About eight minutes later, Versa’s sister also died as it passed near Crossville, trapped under a stove which set the house afire. 

Up towards the site of Frieberg School. At this point the 1925 tornado was about a mile from the house I live in.

Shadows of the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 dot the countryside that nobody likes to talk about

I’ve driven these roads countless times. How many? Hundreds? I’ve known people who lived along here. I’ve seen the empty countryside, but never really wondered if it was always like this. I never understood that there used to be more life here. 

With the maps in hand, showing where people once lived, it’s like seeing the place for the first time. The countryside had to have had three or four times as many houses here in those days, a lot more people. 

My first wife’s grandparents lived just over the hill from where we are. Some of the victims share their last name. I look them up later and see that her grandfather was a little boy when it hit, and the roof blew off their house, where we are passing on our right. They were relatively unscathed, but her grandmother’s side saw two tragic deaths. 

I look for signs of old houses, dating from before 1925. There aren’t many along here. A few mailboxes on newer houses still bear the name of the family that owned the land in 1925. 

In other places you still find field roads, disappearing where a house once stood. Two miles up the road from Newman School, one of these field roads leads to where the next school along this road was located. 

You take a hard turn off the road into what looks like a little woods. We parked the car, got out and walked up to the top of the short incline. There’s enough left to tell that this was once the location of Frieberger School, where Wilburn Felty died.

It’s downright pastoral now. Nestled in a rolling hills edged by the woods. It’s a safe be that none of the trees date to before 1925. 

When I talk to people about what the tornado did at this intersection, most don’t know anything about it. A few have heard of Trousdale and Newman schools. But nobody seems to have heard of Frieberger School.

Most people I talk to who have heard of the tornado, have no concept of how it affected this area, or those along its entire route. Tornados are big news, the biggest tornado in US history took place here and the locals seem to have forgotten?

How?

Simply put, death by tornado robs a person of their dignity. How they died was horrible, and you don’t want to talk about it. 

So people didn’t. 

When the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 hit Frieberger School, it was about as close to my house as it got. It’s less than a mile the way a crow flies. About this time it made a slight jog and crossed the road. It’s curious, if it hadn’t it wouldn’t have smashed into Hadden School, about three miles away. But it did, and still managed to obliterate Frieberger School with its southern wall of wind. 

There was no early alert system in 1925. The National Weather Service was actually forbidden from issuing tornado warnings, because it was commonly believed you couldn’t predict them. 

Besides, you know the weather. And you have a good idea when you need to keep an eye on the sky. And if the tornado appears? Well, then it’s between you and your god.

In about a mile we’re crossing Centerville road. Take it right and in less than five minutes you can be parked in our driveway. 

Stokes Cemetery, near Crossville, Illinois. After crossing the Skillet Fork and Little Wabash Rivers, the tornado flattened the church here and toppled many of the tombstones.

The myth that tornados avoid crossing rivers is busted as the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 crosses three leaving Illinois

Rather than heading home, we moved a block north and followed the track of the tornado as it approached the Skillet Fork and Little Wabash rivers. 

By then I was growing weary of this trip. It was nothing but horror after horror, and you know how the story ends. It’s not a happy ending we’re driving towards. 

Near the northern wall of the tornado’s path you find the location of Barth Church, which was blown off its foundations and into the middle of the road. 

People in this area described the tornado as looking like a fast moving cloud. Moving into the river bottoms, the hills still roll, but roll quicker, closer together. They’re not higher, but the spaces in between grow deeper. 

From a house on a hill you could see it coming sooner of course. But you were more exposed. In the hollows you’d be blind to what was coming, right up until it was on top of you. 

Just down from Barth Church, Nancy Bingham suffered a broken jawbone, ankle and was essentially “skinned all over.” Her son Herman was over at Hadden School on the other side of Centerville Road.

Herman Bingman was the one student to die at Hadden School that day. His body was carried home by the father of the man who mows my yard. He’s told me the story, as his father told him. Their home had been destroyed as well.

The iron school bell was blown a quarter mile away. So was the teacher, and another student who survived.

That student’s name was Edwin Winter, and his sister, Berniece had been at school that day too. She had forgotten her overshoes, and her father and grandfather, returning by buggy from a sale nearby picked her up and brought her home, as it was looking like a storm was coming. 

Kelly and Fairzine Fitzgerald’s home sat at this crossroads, in the Big Wabash river bottoms. It was the last house hit before the Tri-State Tornado crossed the river into Indiana, and decimated Griffin, Indiana.

Her father, Ed Winters dropped his father John off at his house. His mother, Lottie came out and wanted them to stay because it didn’t look safe. Ed replied he needed to get home to the family, and they took off across the fields in the buggy as it was quicker than the road. 

As they arrived at home, Ed put Berniece in the barn so she’d be safe while they put the mules away. He told her the wind would blow her away if she was outside of the barn. That was when the tornado hit. 

Berniece saw the barn lift off the ground three times, and the third time it shattered, with a wall falling on top of the girl. Fortunately for her, she fell next to the concrete foundation, which prevented the wall from falling on top of her. Also blocking the debris was a horse, whose legs fell on her and it was unconscious or dead. 

Berniece survived with bruised legs from the horse, and went on to become my kindergarten teacher. Once the storm passed, her father noticed that nothing was standing at his parents’ farm, so he ran there with his son. Both his mother and father died in the next few days from their injuries. 

Some years later, Ed and his wife moved to Carmi, and bought a house on the corner of Fourth and Maple. Some time after that, my parents moved in the house next door. After the Winters were both gone, dad bought the house which by then was falling into disrepair, and had it torn down. Today the ground where it stood is part of the witch’s garden. 

On the other side of the Little Wabash it killed Elma Stokes, leveled Stokes Chapel Church and knocked down many of the gravestones. 

At Graves School, the teacher saw the storm coming and had his students go outside and lay in the ditch by the road. Face down. All the students but two made it out, and those two were tossed into a nearby field. One had a couple scratches on his forehead. All the other students escaped injury. 

Near there, Alma Copelin lay on the bed holding her baby daughter Elizabeth, her son Warren at her side. The tornado tore the baby from her mother’s arms and into the storm, then tossed the baby on a mattress which had landed across the road. It was hurt more from the hail that fell afterwards than her flight.

Just down from there, Pink and Effie Young were riding out the storm in their parlor when a collie dog blew through the window, unhurt.

The tornado went south of Crossville, narrowly missing that town. One young man climbed the grain elevator and watched it from the top. 

Bell School was obliterated, but the teacher, seeing the cloud coming had dismissed school and the kids had time to get home before it hit. The Little Wabash Baptist Church was blown away as well. 

When the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 took apart Kelly and Fairzine Fitzgerald’s house, Fairzine was thrown a few hundred feet into the woods alongside the river. She was the last victim of the tornado in Illinois.

As it approached the Big Wabash River it swelled once more to a mile and a half in width. It stormed through the eastern edge of southern Illinois like a petulant child, throwing a tantrum and tearing up everything in its path. 

Sixty-two year old Frederic Bodishbaugh rode out the storm holding the knob of the front door to keep it closed. The door stayed closed, and Frederick held tight, and when it had gone he saw that most of the rest of the house aside from the door and frame was gone. 

This area wasn’t as populated, so the casualties were fewer, but no less gruesome. One teenager who poked his head out of the shelter for a second had it taken off. Versa Warthen’s sister was killed when her iron stove fell on her, and the house caught fire. 

Down in the river bottoms, it’s easy to see why there weren’t a lot of people killed here. There weren’t many people living here, and even fewer now. The roads go from asphalt, to gravel, to dirt. We were skirting the creeks that flow into the Big Wabash river, working our way to the river itself. 

This is fracking country now, oil wells popping up everywhere, belching natural gas. Surprisingly, there are also a lot of people down here, most driving all terrain vehicles. It’s a sunny day and people here flock to the river bottoms. 

Kelly and Fairzine Fitzgerald’s home was the last house struck by the Tri-State Tornado in Illinois, almost within a stone’s throw of the river. They were blown from their home as it was ripped apart, and Kelly woke up in the woods along the Big Wabash. A bit later they found his wife, Fairzine, in the same woods along the riverbank, the last fatality in Illinois. 

There’s nothing left here of course, and we start walking over the levee to the woods where Kelly and Fairzine were thrown. We hear voices, laughter, music and surprisingly it’s a family reunion. Kids, their parents, old folks, dogs, all celebrating life . 

Because in the end, for the survivors, life goes on. 

A flower still growing when the house is long gone.

Once the hail stops, silence descends

I’ve started writing this piece, and as usual, it’s late. It’s March, a couple days after the anniversary of the tornado. We had a tornado watch earlier today, while we were out taking photos of the route. 

Nothing came of it. It’s usually a false alarm and a lot of people fall into complacency. Perhaps that’s why people choose to stay. It’s something you hear a lot around here, about everything from fireworks to a hundred other pastimes that often turn deadly … “well it’s never hurt me before.”

And besides, is any place really safe from nature?

In the end, the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 killed 28 people in my area.  Enfield, Carmi and Crossville were spared while the more sparsely populated country side paid the price. But as the old folks said, it could have been worse.

In Indiana it was worse, the tornado announcing its arrival by taking out the small town of Griffin. One row of house was said to still be standing as the tornado left town, but a smaller twister came out of the back of it and took those down as well. 46 people died in just a minute or two, with another 200 injured. In Owensville another nine died, and in Princeton, a larger factory town, the tornado just grazed the southern side, killing 44. It staggered on for another ten miles before finally rising up into the clouds and disappearing. 

Every spring the sirens ring out, and the people stop, listen and sometimes even take shelter. We know if it’s our time, there isn’t much we can do except hunker down and hope for the best. 

In writing this, I realized my search for traces of the tornado had turned into a memorial. It’s sad, we can Google the victims and learn their names, ages and how they died. But we can’t learn anything about how they lived. The hopes, dreams and joys. 

The internet has kept the victim’s memory alive, but they are now only defined by their death.

I’ll never be able to drive those roads again and not look for the houses and people that are no longer there. When you stop looking at the deaths as a statistic and start looking at the people, your outlook changes. It’s too overwhelming. 

If you want to find the scars of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, look for what isn’t there. You’ll find the scars on a field road which was once a lane. You find them when you see a flower growing there, which doesn’t grow in the wild, but was planted by loving hands by the gate of a fence that surrounded a farmhouse which used to stand there.  

Before the day the wind came to take it away. 

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