Helpful Drunk

Old Ben had stopped off at the local bar after work Friday to celebrate the coming of the weekend. After having a few drinks too many, he decided to take a shortcut through the graveyard on his way home. Unfortunately, in the dark he didn't see the fresh-dug hole left open for a funeral the next day and he fell in. He wasn't hurt, but try as he might, he couldn't get out of the hole. No matter how he scrambled and jumped, it was just too deep. He began calling for help, yelling as loud as he could, but nobody heard him and his voice eventually grew ragged and coarse. He finally settled down to spend the cold night in the ground until the mortician would come in the morning.

An hour later, another drunk came walking through the graveyard. Sure enough, he fell in the same hole. Ben sat in the corner watching the drunk jumping and scrambling trying to get out. Finally, just being helpful, in his ragged voice he croaked to the drunk, "You can't get out, you know."

But he did.

Roses for Alice

Ruins of Fort Davis

In far West Texas at the lonely military outpost of Fort Davis, trouble was in the wind. It was early in 1861 and in the civilized area's hundreds of miles to the east, war was coming. Most of the officers at this remote site were from the north and they vowed if war broke out, they would return there to fight for the Union. A few men were from the south and they vowed to fight for the Confederacy.  Military discipline was maintained and for the most part, the men who had been stationed together, worked together, and lived together for many months remained civil to each other no matter which side their allegiances fell.

Alice Walpole was the young, beautiful wife of a lieutenant who had recently graduated from West Point and had been assigned duty at Fort Davis. He was the youngest and most recently arrived officer at the fort, but he worked hard, was a good leader, and had quickly become friends with the other officers. Alice however, was not happy. She loved her husband, but hated the dry, barren land of this part of Texas. She was from Alabama and West Texas could not be more different from the lush climate and green landscape of her Alabama home. 

Having been only recently married, she was young and without child. This left her having nothing in common with the older wives living in the fort with their officer husbands. Alice's husband was often gone on patrol so she spent a lot of time in lonely vigil. She kept thinking of all the things back home she missed and finally decided what she missed most were the roses which bloomed in her mother's garden. She longed for an earlier time, the times when she would be with her mother working the soil in the flower gardens around her home, talking and laughing with no cares, surrounded by the sweet smell of the carefully tended roses which grew in abundance.

In the first week of April with her husband once again out on patrol chasing Indians, Alice decided to hunt for any early roses that might be growing along Limpia Creek just outside the fort. She thought if she could find some, she would bring them back and plant them around the little frame house she and her husband lived in. If she watered and took care of them, maybe they would bloom and their house wouldn't seem so barren. If enough bloomed, Alice could sit outside with her eyes closed and their sweet smell would make it seem as if she was back in the land she missed so much.

The morning air was chilly so she pulled her bright-blue wool cloak around her shoulders and set out to search the creek for roses. She ignored the recent reports of Indians close by as her brave husband and his troops were on patrol and surely had the Indians on the run far away from the fort.

Later that same night, Lieutenant Walpole returned to the fort, but Alice never did. The band of raiding Apaches her husband was in search of had eluded the troops, came back to the creek to water their horses, and there they found and kidnapped poor Alice Walpole.

As darkness fell, word of her disappearance spread through the fort. After being relieved, a guard came in and reported that earlier that day he had seen a woman in a blue cloak rushing by on a trail outside the fort. He had been surprised to see a woman alone outside the safety of the fort. After noting she seemed to be carrying an arm-full of white roses, he called to her, but she didn't stop or answer. He rushed down the trail after her to ensure she made it back to the fort safely, but she seemed to have vanished into the air. With this information, the men searched where the guard reported seeing Alice. Extensive searches were conducted over many days, but other than a blue cloak and an Apache arrow apparently dropped by one of the Indians, no trace of Alice was found.

Soon, word came that Fort Sumter had been fired upon and war had been declared. The men left to go back to fight for one side or the other. One morning, after most of the troops had left, the post commander who had been ordered to oversee the closure of the fort arrived at his office to find that unseen by anyone, somebody had slipped in and left a vase of 7 white roses on his desk. He had never seen roses in the area and was bewildered, but with all of the last minute chores he was seeing to, he didn't have the time to investigate further. The next morning when he arrived back in his office, the vase with its 7 white roses was gone. A short time later that same morning, the last 7 officers left in the fort came to his office and resigned their commissions. All 7 intended to offer their services to the Confederacy. One of those officers was young Lieutenant Walpole.

A few days later the fort was officially closed and the remaining troops left. The last officer to leave was Lieutenant Walpole who made one more search for his beloved Alice. When he left, all searching ended forever and Alice was forgotten.

Buffalo Soldiers (historical photo)

After closing, the buildings of Fort Davis were stripped for their wood and stones by the local ranchers. After the end of the Civil War, Buffalo Troops were assigned to the post to guard against the still raiding Indians. Beginning in 1867, they rebuilt the buildings and grounds, eventually making the fort larger than the first one. It remained in operation until 1891 and today is one of the best preserved historic forts in America.

Stories persist however, that Alice never left the fort. The men who manned Fort Davis beginning in 1867 had not heard of poor Alice or the story of the roses mysteriously left on the previous post commander's desk. They had no idea why they occasionally got a whiff of roses inside a post building or in the middle of the large parade ground. The troops reported this numerous times, but it was always chalked up to wild imaginations or too much of the local rotgut whiskey.

It wasn't until the old fort was being restored and it's history was being researched that the story of Alice was uncovered through letters, diaries, and official reports. Then it all started making sense. Through the years since the Buffalo Soldiers left, visitors continue to report briefly seeing out of the corner of the eye, a young, beautiful woman with a blue cloak over her shoulders hurrying by followed briefly by the sweet smell of roses. Most often though, her visits are unseen. She lets people know she is still there by the scent of roses; the scent of roses where there are none.

Lady in Black

One evening not so long ago, a passing truck driver south of Refugio, Texas saw a woman standing all alone at the end of a dusty dirt road where it intersected with the highway he was traveling on. She was young, very beautiful, and wore an old-fashioned black dress. She looked to be in some kind of distress so the kind-hearted driver pulled over to offer her a ride. As she approached his truck, he moved quickly to the passenger door and held out his hand to help her up the steep steps into the cab.

"There's a gas station in the next town," he said. "If you need to make a phone call, you can make it there." Softly, she replied "Thank you, sir" and stared straight ahead.

They drove down the road in silence until reaching a small gas station on the outskirts of a sleepy little community. The trucker eased his eighteen-wheeler into the station next to the one diesel pump to refuel. He walked around and opened the passenger door to help the lady out of the truck, but when he opened the door, she was gone.

For a long moment, he looked at the empty seat in confusion. When he turned, the owner of the station, an elderly gentleman, was slowly making his way toward him. "Did you see the lady that was with me?"

"No," the owner replied, "I saw you drive in, but you were by yourself."

"No, there was a lady in a black dress. I picked her up a few miles south of here."

The owner's eyes grew wide as a look of terror crossed his face. "A lady in black?"

"Yes," said the trucker.

The owner made the sign of the cross, moved quickly back into the little station, turned out the lights, locked the door and hurried off into the darkness.

The truck driver stood speechless for a long while, not knowing what to do. Then a very old man came limping from behind the building. He was so old his face looked like it had worn out two bodies. He walked with the aid of a hand-carved cane and wore a simple white shirt, cotton pants and sandals. "Mister!" he said. "You had the Lady with you?"

"Yes, a young lady in a black dress."

"Ah," the old man said. "The Lady in Black. Sit down on the curb here and I will tell you about her." The old man eased himself down and began his story.

"Many years ago when Texas was still a part of Mexico, a huge ranch covered this whole region. A very fine old couple owned the ranch. When they died they left everything to their handsome son. He was a fine young man and a catch for any senorita, handsome, rich, and not married. Everybody thought this young, handsome ranchero would go into the nearby village and find a wife."

"Instead, he journeyed into Mexico and married a poor woman. She became the woman boss, La Doña and governed the large ranch with her husband. The women in the village were very jealous, especially one woman who thought it would be she who married the ranchero. She began spreading lies about La Doña.

About 6 months after the young couple had been married, the young husband had to travel to Spain to settle a land dispute. He left La Doña in charge of all matters. She proved to be very kind to the servants and fair with their pay for she was a woman with a good heart. A few days after her husband had left, La Doña discovered she was going to have a baby.

Months later, as the time of birth neared, she prayed for her husband to return. Her prayers were answered and one night he returned to the ranch. He had won the battle in the courts and all the land was legally theirs. As he dismounted from his horse and ran to hug his wife, he saw the life inside her.

The ranchero was delighted and eagerly awaited the arrival of a son or daughter. But that mean woman in the village had spread the rumor that the baby was not the young husbands and when he went into town one day, he heard the evil rumor, the ugly lie. Sadly, he believed the lie and was filled with jealousy. He no longer trusted his wife and when he returned home, he accused her of being unfaithful to him.

La Doña fell to her knees and cried, 'I am your wife. I would not be unfaithful to you. Never! Believe me!'

But he did not. A fury possessed him. He called two of his servants and ordered, 'Hitch horses to the wagon. You two and my wife will ride one full day to the north. Find a strong tree and hang my unfaithful wife from its branches. I will ride one full day to the south. That way, even if I become softhearted, I will be too far away to prevent the hanging.'

Now, there was an old man who always sat on the front porch of the ranch house. The old man had faithfully served many years for the young ranchero's parents and this was his reward, a job with pay for the rest of his life, to sit in the shade on the porch of the ranch house and see all the comings and goings. Nothing took place on the ranch that this old man did not know.

The ranchero said, 'Saddle me up my favorite horse, and saddle up a burro too. The old man will go with me.' And so for the first time in a very long time, that old man left the ranch and his well-worn chair on the porch. He rode one full day south with his patron as the two servants and La Doña rode a full day north on a dusty little used wagon trail. 

La Doña was brokenhearted. She cried and cried for her unborn baby and for her husband, not even thinking about herself. At sunset, the obedient servants stood La Doña up on the wagon and put a rope around her neck. Staring at the men as they tied the end of the rope around a sturdy branch, she declared, 'You and all of your descendants will know that I am a faithful wife. For many generations you will see me. I will wear this same black dress and I will never stop telling what you have done.'

The men jumped down off the wagon and one of them swatted the horse. The wagon rolled away leaving  La Doña swinging back and forth until her neck broke and she mercifully died. The servants were deeply ashamed of what they had done and they quickly cut her down and buried her in a shallow grave. No one has ever found that grave.

At the same time La Doña was giving voice to her curse, the old man was pouring a cup of coffee for the young ranchero. They had stopped for the evening in a clearing beneath a hill one day's ride from the ranch house.

'I have done the right thing,' the young man said. 'She was unfaithful.' The old man said nothing. He thought for a second and then he remembered. That old man sat by the ranch house door all day and slept on the porch all night. "Old man!' the ranchero shouted, 'speak to me!' Still, the old man said nothing. 'Old man, you know who is the father of that baby, don't you?" The old man nodded. 'Tell me!' cried the ranchero. The old man remained silent.

The ranchero pulled his pistol, cocked it and placed the muzzle next to the old man's head. 'You better speak, old man. I swear to you, either the child's father dies or you will die."

The old man looked up, his eyes rimmed red with tears. 'Mi patron,' he said. 'The father of the child is you.'

When he heard that, the young man put the pistol to his own head and pulled the trigger. The old man buried the ranchero by the campfire in an unmarked grave. No one has ever found that grave.

A year passed and on the anniversary of her hanging, the Lady in Black kept her promise. She stood by the dirt road near her unmarked grave. A family stopped their wagon to help her, thinking she had been involved in an accident. They helped her onto the wagon and she told them the story as if it had happened to someone else. When they pulled into the little village, they turned to speak to her, but she was gone. They then realized they had seen La Doña herself.

This went on for years and years. They say it still goes on to this day. La Doña will never rest. The old ones who live in Refugio, the closest big town, all know of and talk about the Lady in Black. The people know she was innocent.

And with that, the ancient story-teller fell silent. As he thought of the story for a few moments, the truck driver closed his eyes. "Whatever happened to the old man, the man who lived on the porch of the ranch house?" he finally asked. He heard no reply and when he looked, the old man was nowhere to be found.

The Bell Witch

Betsy was just 6 years old and living with her family in Tennessee when it happened the first time all those years ago. As her mamma stood at the large kitchen table rolling out biscuit dough for supper, she heard Betsy who was right behind her call out, "Mamma! Help me, Mamma! It's got me!"

When Betsy's mom turned to look, she saw her youngest daughter being held up by her long, brown hair, floating 2 feet above the dirt floor of the kitchen. She was a small child, but still, lifted as she was, her face was pulled taught by the weight. She should have been screaming in pain, but she didn't appear to be hurting. Frightened, yes, but not hurting.

As soon as Betsy's mom got her wits about her, she grabbed her little girl around the waist and pulled her down to the floor out of the grasp of those invisible hands. As they lay there crying, Betsy's father, Will, came rushing in to see what the commotion was about. He was afraid an Indian had snuck into the house and was trying to make off with his family. "Oh Will," his wife cried, "something evil got ahold of Betsy! We couldn't see it, but it was evil indeed!" Just then, the heavy wooden table lifted up on one side and as they watched in astonishment, it lifted higher and higher until the flour, the rolling pin and even the sticky biscuit dough slid to the floor. The table then gently and slowly eased back down.

The Bell family, Will, his wife, their three sons and the baby of the family, little Betsy, had moved to Tennessee from Illinois a few months previously. Nobody knows for sure whether the evil followed them from Illinois, but most agree it was either an old Indian graveyard Will had unknowingly disturbed when he built their home on top of it, or it could have been the spirit of the woman the Bells bought their land from - an evil, spiteful widow woman who claimed Will had cheated her on the deal. When she died just a few weeks after the Bell's moved into their newly built home, the woman passed away while cursing the Bell family from her death bed. 

For whatever strange reason, the spirit seemed to focus most of its evilness upon poor, innocent Betsy. It seemed to follow her wherever she went, pulling her hair and tripping her as she walked around the yard. When she went to bed at night, she couldn't sleep as the spirit pinched her, poked her, and made horrible noises in her ears whenever her poor eyes grew so weary they began to droop in spite of her determination to stay awake. Then the spirit seemed to leave, giving welcome respite to Betsy and the other members of her family. But just about the time their hopes were raised that the evilness had finally left them in peace, it would start up again. Several times Betsy's screams in the middle of the night would wake her parents who slept in the room next to hers. They would rush in to find Betsy lying in bed, drenched in cold well water and an empty wet pail laying on the floor across the room.

Betsy never knew when she ate her food whether the witch had strongly salted or peppered it or even poisoned it. Though she ate the same food from the same bowl as everyone else, she learned to take small test bites. Several times she became violently ill and almost died after eating. She was naturally thin, but she soon looked like death itself.

Every morning before dressing, she had to carefully shake out her clothes before putting them on. Not every day, but on most, her clothing would be concealing scorpions or ants or even small snakes.

When Betsy walked by animals, they seemed to sense the evilness that surrounded her - pigs snorted and ran to the other side of the pen, cows wouldn't let her milk them, horses spooked, dogs growled, cats raised their backs and hissed at her.

The family tried a number of times to move away, but a calamity always struck which prevented it. Their wagon broke an axle as they left once. Another time one of the horses that was pulling their wagon dropped dead just 1 mile from the house. The next time they tried to leave, a sudden rainstorm hit and turned the road into a bed of mud so deep nothing could travel on it for weeks. The Bells grew resigned to their sad plight.

Twelve long years passed in the same horrible fashion with Betsy barely clinging to life on many occasions, but she endured and grew to be a pretty and engaging young woman. While attending church, as the family did every Sunday, she caught the eye of a young man, the son of a neighbor. Soon they were betrothed and set a date for their wedding. The young man knew all about what had become known as the Bell Witch, but he loved Betsy and swore to do whatever it took to keep her safe.

The day of the wedding arrived and even though the knife which was used to cut the cake flew through the air by itself to stick in the front door of the church and the table holding the punch bowl tilted up spilling the liquid all over several people, the pair were married. Betsy's father gave them the gift of a brand-new wagon and 2 strong horses to pull it. The couple took the hint and hit the road with the intention of making their life together far away in Texas.

The land in Texas where, according to some
people, the Bell Witch lives.

Strangely, as they entered Texas, the witch that had been deviling them all along on their journey began to settle down. Several days into their travel across the state, it wasn't playing tricks as much and it felt like the meanness wasn't as evident. Texas was a mean country in those days and only the hardy and tough could survive in such a place. Perhaps the witch was getting tired of competing with all the meanness of the country they were traveling in. By the time the young lovers made it to the Big Bend area where they homesteaded a parcel of land, the spirit was no longer with them. Betsy and her husband lived to have a hard, but good life, raising 5 out of 7 children to adulthood and enjoying many grandchildren in their later years. They never experienced the Bell Witch again.

The old ones say the witch found a home here
with the cactus and rattlesnakes.

They didn't experience the witch again, you see, because that horrible spirit had found a spot in central Texas which didn't yet have a full compliment of evil. It stopped right there and made a home for itself. It's there still in the part of Texas where everything either bites, stings, or sticks. In that rocky hill country when horses spook for no reason, when snakes appear in flour bins, when babies scream at night, the old wise ones know the Bell Witch is the cause, still playing mean tricks and bullying the weak.

So when you come upon a sweet innocent child like little Betsy, a child with fear and hunger in her eyes, give all you can. A smile, a touch, a friendly nod. And say a prayer for those like little Betsy, that the evil witches of the world will let them be.

The Ghost of Delores Mountain

Dolores Mountain

Just outside of Fort Davis, Texas is a mountain where mysterious flickering lights are often seen on dark Thursday nights. Even though they can come up with no valid scientific reason, skeptics insist there must be some natural explanation for the strange lights. There are others, however, who know better. The lights are a sign that poor heart-broken Dolores is still looking for her slain lover.


Delores Mountain is named for a tall, dark-haired, beautiful woman named Dolores Gavino Doporto. Although very beautiful, Dolores was a sweet, simple village girl who took a job as a servant in the large house of a prosperous rancher. In the year 1854, Dolores met and fell deeply in love with Jose, a handsome shepherd boy who tended a large herd of sheep in a nearby valley. The two seemed made for each other and they planned to marry and raise a family.

The only thing that kept the couple apart was Jose's job. He had to spend many days and nights tending the sheep, guarding them from wolves and moving them from pasture to pasture so they could graze. Sometimes it would be weeks between the times the young lovers could be together in each other's arms. To show their continuing love and devotion to each other, every Thursday night, Dolores would climb to the top of the mountain near the ranch house where she worked and light a fire of brush and fallen tree limbs. Jose would build an answering fire in the valley. The fires let each know the other was safe, still very much in love, and anxiously waited for the day they would have saved enough money to begin their life together and never again be apart.

One Thursday night, Dolores climbed the mountain and lit her fire, but there was no answering fire from the valley below. Dolores stayed all night, feeding her fire with a dwindling supply of tree branches, but when the morning sun began to peek above the horizon, she knew without a doubt that something horrible had happened to Jose. She rushed back to the ranch house and with tears streaming down her face, begged her employer to mount a hunt for her betrothed.

It took two days, but the group of hired hands and other local ranchers found the mutilated body of Jose several miles from his flock. It was evident the Apaches had also seen the fires and had attacked, tortured and killed the hapless sheepherder.

Dolores was heartbroken and utterly despondent. She lost all joy in life and although she managed to go about her daily chores, there was no life in her eyes. The villagers prayed for Dolores, that her heart might one day begin to heal, but their prayers went unanswered. Several months later, there had been no improvement in her demeanor when one Thursday night, she stole away, climbed the mountain and lit a fire for Jose. It became her sad ritual to again climb the mountain every Thursday as she had when her love was alive, to build a fire and sadly stare off into the distance waiting for an answering flame which would never come. 

Top of Dolores Mountain

For 40 years, Dolores continued her forlorn ritual. She grew old and gray, but never recovered from her loss. When she died, she was buried in a simple grave near the path she had worn from her weekly trips up the mountain. It is in her honor the mountain where she lit her fires is known as Dolores Mountain. 

Poor Dolores has been dead for many years now, but on those Thursday nights when nothing, not even a sliver of a moon lightens the dark sky, the flickering light from her fire can be seen on top of Dolores Mountain. If you climb to the top of the mountain the day after the fire is seen, you will find the ashes of her fire scattered about by the strong West Texas wind. And if you look closely, perhaps you will also find bits of wood charred and blackened by the fire kept burning by a sad woman whose love will never die.

Haunting of the Alamo

One of the earliest pictures of the Alamo - 1858.

There are few people who grew up in America that do not know of the Alamo and the battle that took place there between February 23rd and March 6, 1836. All 182 Texans, including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, were killed while defending the Alamo garrison and approximately 600 Mexican soldiers were killed or wounded while trying to take it. Bodies of the Texan dead were dismembered and burned, the ashes left to be blown away by the winds. Today, the Alamo is a shrine, a registered historical site and the literal cemetery of those hundreds of men killed in the battle. Is it any wonder there are many chilling stories of ghostly experiences there? For almost 200 years, there have been reports of strange, smokey spirits floating around the grounds, of screams heard that seem to come from inside the sacred walls, and sounds of gunfire and explosions echo between the buildings in the dark of night.

The Alamo in 2012

The first ghostly encounter is recorded as happening only days after the final battle. General Santa Anna, commander of the Mexican troops and ruler of Mexico, quickly left the scene of the carnage. He placed General Juan Jose Andrade in charge of the battle site and town of San Antonio. Because of the stench of blood and death and the grizzly work of retrieving the Mexican bodies for burial, he made his camp several miles from the Alamo. Santa Anna had ordered him to destroy the Alamo so as soon as the last Mexican body had been buried, Andrade sent a colonel with a contingent of men to destroy and burn what was left of the Alamo garrison. They soon returned telling a story of 6 "ghost devils" guarding the front of the building. As the Mexican soldiers approached, the specters emerged from the walls with flaming sabers in their hands, screaming and charging at them. The men fell back and ran away without fulfilling their orders. General Andrade, scoffing the men's tale, took along members of his staff and went to investigate in person. In his official report he described seeing with his own eyes, 6 men with balls of fire in their hands who screamed and began advancing upon him and his terrified staff when they approached. Andrade hurriedly marched his army out of the city, leaving the Alamo as it was.

Most people believe all 182 Alamo defenders were killed during battle, but after-battle reports from Mexican Generals Castrillon, Perfecto de Cos, and Andrade state that 6 men, although all were wounded, survived the final bloodbath. At least one report states the body of Davy Crockett was found surrounded by 16 dead Mexican soldiers, but the General's reports indicate Davy was one of the survivors who surrendered against the impossible odds. Supposedly, the 6 survivors were brought to General Castrillon who gave them his protection. However, Santa Anna refused clemency and ordered them killed. When Castrillon refused to carry out the order, Santa Anna's staff followed his orders and, with bayonets and sabers, hacked the men to death. Over the years there have been many reports of the ghostly figure of a tall, stately man dressed in the uniform of an officer in the 1830's Mexican army who slowly walks around the buildings and grounds of the Alamo, his hands clasped behind his back, sadly shaking his head back and forth in sorrow. Upon being shown a picture of Castrillon, people who have seen this apparition immediately identify him as the "man" they saw. Could the 6 "diablos" (devils) who protected the Alamo against destruction by Andrade and his men be the 6 massacred survivors whose promise of clemency and protection were so cruelly rescinded?

The Alamo Cenotaph  in front of the Alamo in
San Antonio, Texas - 2012

The night before the final assault, the commander of the Alamo defenders, William Barrett Travis, gathered his men together and told them the end was probably near. They were facing overwhelming odds and the arrival of reinforcements which might turn the battle in their favor was doubtful. He offered any man who wanted to save himself the opportunity to slip over the Alamo walls and try to escape. Only one man, Louis "Moses" Rose, chose escape over honor and sure death. He became known as "the coward of the Alamo" and lived the rest of his life with the shame. Over the years, there have been hundreds of separate reports of a man dressed in "old west clothes," buckskin pants and a dirty cotton shirt, who is seen walking along in open fields and sometimes along the side of the road leading from Nacogdoches to San Antonio. When people ask him what he is doing or where he is going, the answer is always the same - "I'm trying to get back to the Alamo where I belong." The man then disappears, much to the astonishment of the person who was just talking to him.  It is thought this is the restless, guilty soul of Moses Rose, damned for all eternity to try to regain his honor by returning to die in the final bloody battle at the Alamo.

The author's wife & young daughter in
front of the Alamo, 2002. This was
taken with a high-end Nikon camera.
No "smokey apparition" was evident
when the picture was taken. One other
picture taken at the Alamo showed the
same smokey affect, but over 100 other
pictures were taken during the trip and
all others were sharp and clear. 

Numerous visitors over the years have reported seeing 2 small boys who appear to be about 10 and 12 years old tagging along with their tour group. Nobody knows who they are or where their parents are and nobody sees them leave. They never speak and seem to just disappear as soon as the tour group reaches the sacristy room in the Alamo chapel. This is the room where 19 women and children took shelter, seeking safety from the raging battle. It is thought the two boys must be the sons of Anthony Wolfe a defending artilleryman who was killed in the final battle. The boys, age 9 and 12, ran from the sacristy into the chapel during the final seconds of the fight, apparently seeking their father. When the Mexican soldiers entered the chapel, the boys tried to hide, but caught up with the fear of battle and fueled by adrenaline, the soldiers mistook the boys for combatants and killed them.

Each March, for a day or two after the anniversary of the battle, people who live and work in the area around the Alamo report hearing the sound of a single horse galloping across the pavement. Many are of the belief this is the spirit of James Allen, the last courier sent out of the Alamo with a letter from William Barrett Travis requesting aid. Allen left in the darkness in order to sneak through the Mexican lines just several hours before the final early morning assault. Evidently he is still trying to return to report back to Colonel Travis and to fight and die with his friends and compatriots.

For many years during the month of February, a small, blond-haired boy with a sad, forlorn look has been witnessed by numerous visitors to be peering out from one of the chapel windows. The window has no ledge and is too high for him to climb up to. It is said he is one of the children who was evacuated from the Alamo the day before the Mexican Army laid siege to it. He returns every February looking for his daddy, one of the brave men who died in the battle.

One Last Visit Home

It was raining on a dark, dreary night in mid-December when Nell was awakened at 1:30 by the doorbell in a familiar ringing pattern. She wasn't upset though as there was only one person who always used that particular pattern of ringing, her son, Jim. Nell knew this meant Jim had come home for the holidays!

Before she could jump out of bed to let Jim in though, her husband Charles told her to stop. "Hold on a second and let me check first," he said. After putting on his robe, he left the room headed toward the front door.

Charles was Jim's stepfather, not his real father. His real father had been killed while saving a wounded comrade in Vietnam when Jim was still young. Charles never took to Jim and Jim never seemed to accept Charles. It's hard raising another man's son, especially when that man died an almost mythical-sized hero in the son's eyes. The two had argued often and as soon as he graduated high school, Jim had left their home in that small Texas town for a college in a big northern city over 900 miles away.

Nell lay there in bed waiting for the angry voices to start. Charles would be upset at being awakened in the middle of the night and Jim would be tired and short-tempered after driving such a long distance only to be harshly greeted. For several minutes though, there was only the sound of the rain. When Charles finally returned, he said, "There was nobody there," as he got back into bed. Nell was sure her husband was lying. She couldn't understand how he could be so cruel as to turn away her son in the middle of the night in such a rain storm. She lay there fuming until the sun peeked over the horizon.

That morning, the rain had stopped and the clouds had gone away, but Nell was still furious with her husband. She burnt his breakfast toast, but he just left it untouched on his plate and didn't say a word before leaving for work. As soon as he was gone, she went to the front porch looking for proof that Jim had been there last night. She saw no muddy footprints on the clean boards around the door, but that didn't change her mind. Jim was the only person who ever rang the doorbell in such a rhythmic pattern so she knew he must have been there. She prayed he would not be so mad at the way Charles had treated him that he wouldn't return again later that day.

She had begun to clean the house when the phone rang. She hoped it was Jim calling from wherever he had spent the night to let her know he was on his way to visit. When she answered the phone however, she was stunned to discover it wasn't Jim on the line, but a police officer from the large city 50 miles away. He was sorry to tell her, Jim had been killed in an auto accident there and she was needed to come identify the body.

Nell's knee's went weak and she sank to the floor. Shakily she asked, "What time did this happen?"

"At 1:30 this morning, Ma'am," the officer replied.

It was the exact time the door bell had rang with Jim's special rhythm. And Nell knew for sure, it had been Jim after all, home for one last visit.

Hiram's House

Hiram Martin Chittenden

One of Yellowstone National Park's important early figures was Hiram M. Chittenden. Working for the Army Corps of Engineers, he spent two extended tours of duty in the park. A West Point graduate, he first came to Yellowstone as a lieutenant in 1891 and for the next 4 years was in charge of maintenance and construction of the roads and bridges. Like so many others, he fell in love with the clean air, beautiful scenery and wondrous sites he was exposed to every day. After 4 years there, he requested to remain, but it was not to be and he had to report to a post in the northwest.

In 1899, his request to return to Yellowstone was successful and he was overjoyed that spring when he was able to return. His return came with a promotion and he was assigned to the post of Engineer Officer. In 1902, the government gave him a larger budget and Hiram was able to turn his attention to new buildings and offices, including a badly needed new mess hall.  Later that year, with the planned arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad to Gardiner, Montana at the park's northern border, he was able to convince Washington, D.C. of the need for a magnificent entrance to the park. 

Historical picture of the Roosevelt Arch at Yellowstone

On February 19, 1903, under Hiram's supervision, construction on what has come to be known as the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance was begun. President Roosevelt was visiting the park when construction on the arch itself was started so he was asked to place the cornerstone. The stone he laid covered a time capsule containing a picture of himself, a bible, several local newspapers and a few other mementos of the time. The arch was completed on August 15, 1903 at a cost of $10,000. 

Roosevelt Arch as it looks today.

With the larger budget, Hiram was also able to have a new home constructed for himself. He personally oversaw the construction of his house which was located just east of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. The house was a rather simple design and built of wood, but it fit him perfectly and was large enough to accommodate his family on their frequent visits. His wife Nettie and their children Eleanor, Hiram Jr., and Teddy remained at the family home in St. Louis during most of his various posts, but often came to stay with Hiram at Yellowstone for extended periods of time. He had one of the rooms in the house built as his office and he spent many hours at his desk smoking his cigars while reading, writing, and making plans for the future of the park.

The Chittenden home now serve as offices for several
park organizations.

In late 1905, he was given orders to a post in Seattle, Washington. After a total of ten years in his beloved Yellowstone, he was loath to leave, but he answered the call of duty and left behind his park and his home. He and his wife planned to return to Yellowstone in retirement to live out their lives, but in 1917 at the age of 58, Hiram contracted an illness and passed away without ever seeing the park again. At least not while he was alive.

The original Chittenden home is currently occupied by the offices of the Yellowstone Association and the Yellowstone Institute. The employees are sure old Hiram returned here after his death. Computers in the office sometimes shut down and then turn themselves back on while an employee is working on them. Repairmen cannot explain it because they can find nothing wrong with the equipment and when removed from the premises, they work perfectly. Overhead lights flicker on and off. Electricians have been summoned numerous times, but can find nothing wrong with the wiring. The employees are convinced Hiram doesn't like his home having electricity and is trying to let them know of his displeasure.

Could Hiram's spirit still be staying here?

Other than the annoying, but harmless pranks with electrical items, the employees consider Hiram to be friendly and even helpful at times. Doors often open and close by themselves. Upon entering in the morning, the employees will find doors that were left open will be closed even though the building was locked and no one had entry during the night. One of the managers tells how once he had forgotten a report he needed so he returned that evening to retrieve it. Upon entering the front door, he saw the door to his office, which he had definitely left open, was closed. As he crossed the room, his office door slowly swung open for him. After looking around to make sure nobody else was there, he retrieved the needed report and left, making sure to lock the front door behind him. He was the first to arrive the next morning and found his office door to be closed once again.

Hiram, Nettie, Hiram Jr., Eleanor, & Teddy

The conclusive evidence of Hiram's presence though is the aroma of his cigar. Smoking in public buildings has been prohibited for a number of years now, yet the smell of cigar smoke is often present in the room which used to be Hiram's office as well as a room upstairs which used to be his bedroom.

Shortly before he died, Hiram confided to a friend that his only regret was not accomplishing more while in Yellowstone. Evidently he has returned to spend eternity in the place he loved the most and perhaps to help guide those who are today working on the park and its future.

Maybe Henry Wordsworth Longfellow had Hiram in mind when he wrote, "All houses in which men lived and died are haunted houses. Through the open doors the harmless phantoms on their errands glide with feet that make no sound upon the floors."

Buffalo Bill's Irma Hotel & The Forever Guests

Buffalo Bill Cody

William Frederick Cody was born on February 26, 1846. He was born in what was called "Iowa Territory" and moved to Kansas when his family sold their farm and relocated to Fort Leavenworth. His father soon died and at the tender age of 11, with his family destitute, Bill Cody went to work with a freight carrier as a "Boy Extra" riding up and down the length of a wagon train delivering messages to the drivers and workmen. Two years later, he became a scout for the army and at the age of 13, killed his first Indian.

At the age of 14, Bill became a Pony Express Rider, a position he held until his mother became seriously ill and he returned home to care for her. She regained her health over the next several months and Bill left to work for a freight company delivering supplies to Fort Laramie. When the Civil War broke out, he tried to enlist in the army, but was refused due to his age so he continued working for the freight company until he was accepted into the army in 1863. Bill served until his discharge when the conflict ended in 1865. 

Upon his discharge, he made his way to Rochester, New York where he met and fell in love with Louisa Frederici. They married and eventually had 4 children, one of whom was a daughter they named Irma. After returning west to serve as a civilian scout for the army, Bill was involved in numerous battles with the Indians and he gained a reputation as a fearless combatant, even being awarded the Medal of Honor. The award would later be rescinded when the standards for receipt of the medal were changed to exclude civilians. When Bill wasn't fighting with the Indians, his job required him to hunt and kill bison to feed the army troops and workers for the Kansas Pacific Railroad who were building a rail line west. 

Buffalo Bill Cody in 1903

An expert shot and hunter, he killed 4,832 buffalo in 18 months, earning the nickname of "Buffalo Bill." A renown sharpshooter of the time, William Comstock, was traveling around the country performing shooting tricks under the name "Buffalo Bill" Comstock. The two Buffalo Bills agreed to a buffalo shooting contest to determine who would get to exclusively use the name. Over an 8-hour period, Cody shot and killed 68 bison to Comstock's 48. The legend of Buffalo Bill Cody had begun.

From 1872 to 1882, Buffalo Bill performed in his friend Ned Buntline's Wild West Show and in 1883, he created his own circus-like show he called Buffalo Bill's Wild West. With many of his friends like Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley as headliners, the show was a huge success and traveled across the U.S., Great Britain and Europe. In 1901, a train accident resulted in the death of 110 of the show's horses and injuries to a number of the human performers. Annie Oakley was so badly injured she was told by doctors she would never walk again. Through sheer will and determination, she recovered and even eventually returned to performing again, but the show had to shut down for a while and never recovered financially. It finally went bankrupt in 1908. 

Irma Cody

 In 1895 during the off-season for his show, Buffalo Bill, impressed with what he saw as the growth and economic potential in northwest Wyoming, came to the area and was instrumental in the founding of the town of Cody. Each year afterwards, he returned to assist in the continued development of the town and in 1902, he opened a hotel he named "The Irma" after his beloved daughter. He had one of the suites, #35, built and furnished to be his private, personal room and office for when he was in town. He called his place - "just the sweetest hotel that ever was" and often said if he could choose where he would spend eternity, it would be at The Irma.

Buffalo Bill died on January 10, 1917. Historical records indicate that not long after Bill's death, guests and workers began reporting odd things happening in the hotel. The reports have not stopped. Today, after several renovations and additions over the years, The Irma is still in business with 39 rooms and guests may stay in 15 of the original rooms, including #35, Bill's private suite. Interestingly, the new rooms are apparently left un-visited by any entities from beyond, but not so in the original rooms or in the restaurant which used to be the hotel's bar.

Guests in Suite 35 have reported hearing people talking and walking around in the room above them. The problem is, there is nothing but a slanted roof above Suite 35. Hotel staff have repeatedly reported hearing voices and people laughing in the room as they pass by on their nightly rounds, but no guests are registered for the room and upon unlocking the door and looking in, the noise abruptly stops. After investigating, they invariably find there is nobody inside. In several of the rooms, most notably #35, #29, and #16, the cleaning staff has reported making the beds with clean sheets, turning their attention elsewhere and within seconds looking at the bed again to see the bedclothes turned down or rumpled. Pictures hung securely on nails are often found to be on the floor - on the other side of the room far from where they would have fallen if they had just somehow slipped off. The hotel has a picture a man took of his wife sitting on the bed in Room #16.  They were alone in the room, but when the film was developed, it clearly showed another woman in the room with them - floating in the air above the wife. 

The Irma Hotel in 1908

Guests staying in a room alone have reported being awakened in the middle of the night by being touched lightly on the face or arm by a cold hand. One lady staying by herself in Room #35 marched down to the front desk to complain because the covers on the bed were pulled down firmly enough to land on the floor. Night personnel are accustomed to guests in the original rooms coming down at night requesting to be moved to a different room for various reasons that are hard to explain - rocking chairs which start rocking on their own, the sound of swishing petticoats going from one side of the room to the other, TV's and lights turning on and off by themselves, water faucets turning on and off with no help from a living human hand, uncomfortable feelings of being watched and of not being alone and dark shapes "caught out of the corner of my eye." 

In the restaurant, staff have for years reported seeing a man walk in and take a seat in one of the booths, but when the waitress goes over to take his order, the man has disappeared. Numerous times, night staff have reported seeing a man dressed in old-west cavalry clothes moving in the halls of the original building. He seems to be floating however as only the top half of his body can be seen. No records of who he may be have ever been uncovered.

Perhaps old Buffalo Bill did manage to choose where he would spend eternity. Maybe he just occasionally returns to check on his investment. In its heyday, The Irma saw many of the famous and infamous as guests. Perhaps some of their spirits checked in, but never checked out of "just the sweetest hotel there ever was."

Author's note:

Front entrance of The Irma Hotel

About a year ago, this blog's author, with his wife and daughter, spent the night in room #29, one of the original rooms which is supposedly haunted. The room itself was furnished in period furniture with a number of interesting old photographs on the wall. The mattresses were new and very comfortable in their antique wooden bed-frames. The carpet was rather old and the floor took an unsettling rather sharp dip down along the entire outside wall.  Walking across the large room resulted in creaks, squeaks and pops from the wooden floor under the carpet.  After checking out everything and unpacking our overnight items, we left to explore the town and get some supper. 

The room the author & his
 family stayed in

Returning a few hours later, we found our room to be exactly as we had left it. Our teenage daughter settled in her bed on one side of the room with her iPhone and computer while we lay down on our bed with our books. After a long day of driving and walking around the town, it didn't take long for all of us to agree it was time to turn out the lights and get to sleep.

We had just gotten comfortable when from the enclosed bathroom just about 4 feet from us there came a loud noise. I got up to investigate and upon turning on the light in the bathroom, found my shaving kit to be sitting on the floor. There's nothing fancy or different about my kit than any other kit out there - a fake leather zippered bag just big enough to hold a toothbrush, a razor, a few toiletries and several other overnight necessities. When I had finished brushing my teeth that night, I had set it firmly on the back of the sink away from the edge where it might have a chance of falling off or getting knocked off, but fall off it did - evidently. I picked it up, took it back into the room with me, sat it on the dresser next to the bed and turned out the lights again.

A few minutes later, we heard another sound from the bathroom; like something had once again fallen. Feeling a bit more perplexed and yes, a bit more unsettled and wary, I carefully and slowly reached inside the bathroom and turned on the light. There in the middle of the floor was a packaged bar of Irma Hotel soap! There were built-in shelves to the side of the tub which held the towels and on one of the shelves was a little wicker basket holding a couple of bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The basket, still sitting upright with all of its other contents in place, was deep enough that the soap was below the top edge and there was absolutely no way that bar of soap could have been jostled or tipped over and fallen to the floor. At least no way for it to happen according to the laws of physics as I know them! Plus, the soap was laying in the middle of the floor close to the door several feet from where it would have landed if it had just fallen out.

Note the shelves & basket with
soap & toiletries

I've never actually seen a ghost or a spirit, but at that moment in that room, I admit I was a bit unnerved. I picked up the soap half expecting it to feel really cold or hot or somehow different, but there was nothing remarkable about it. Before turning to leave the room with the soap in my hand, I did something I felt kind of stupid for doing - I said out loud, "Stop it! We just want to get a good night's sleep and we'll be gone in the morning so behave and leave us alone for the rest of the night!" My wife asked from the bed, "Who are you talking to?" "The ghost or spirit or whatever is throwing things on the floor," I replied. "Right, that will work" she said with a nervous chuckle.

It evidently did work though. We both lay there in the dark, holding hands, legs touching for mutual assurance everything was OK, but we never heard anything else or felt a cold hand on our faces. After what seemed like an hour or more, I could tell from her breathing my wife had fallen asleep. I lay there with wide-open eyes, listening for noises, waiting for something else to fall on the floor, all senses on high alert for the feeling of an unseen presence, some danger I would have to protect my family from. I'm not sure how long I lay awake, but sometime in the night I drifted off. The next thing I knew light was coming in the window and the darkness had passed. Leaving the door open, we quickly brushed our teeth and took care of all the other morning bathroom functions, but by mutual agreement, with the Psycho shower scene for some reason playing over and over in our heads, the wife and I decided we really hadn't gotten dirty yesterday and it would be OK to skip our morning showers. We'll take 'em tonight when we stop at some other place.

The bar of soap - touched by a spirit?

We gathered up our things and checked out. The front desk guy asked if we had had a good night. I answered, "Yes, everything was fine." He looked at me kind of funny so I said, "Why do you ask?"  "Oh," he replied, "sometimes our guests who stay in the same room you guys did report some strange stuff." "Nope," I lied, "nothing unusual at all. Slept just fine." "Very good," he smiled. And with that, we put the Irma Hotel in our rear view mirror.

I kept that bar of soap and brought it home with us. It sits on my desk in my home office. Sometimes I pick it up and wonder. It has never thrown itself down to the floor again and it still feels like just another bar of hotel soap. But I know it's not.

Lovelorn Light

Have you ever suffered the pain of being in love with someone who doesn't love you back? Those unfortunate souls know precisely what the term "holding a torch" means. For how long, though, does one continue to hold this torch? For some, like Ed Wilson, the answer is forever.

North entrance to Yellowstone near Mammoth Hot Springs

In 1885, Ed came to Yellowstone Park just 13 years after it was established. There were very few visitors to the park yet, especially during the bitterly cold, snow-bound winters. The U.S. Army guarded the park and there were few if any park amenities established other than the Army camps. Ed hired on as an Army scout. His duties were to guard against poachers and to provide the camps with fresh meat which he was authorized to hunt and kill. By all accounts, he was good at his job and took his duties very seriously. After catching and turning in several soldiers he had caught illegally hunting or shooting animals for sport, a few of the men didn't particularly care for him, but everyone respected him. He didn't make close friends with anyone as far as can be found. He had a reputation as being strange because he spoke of the mysterious and the unseen and, unlike the other scouts, he preferred to travel in the wilderness alone and at night. During the darkest and fiercest storms when everyone else would stay inside their shelter, Ed would always venture out to scout and never return until the storm had passed.

Mr. G. L. Henderson, a widower with 4 daughters and a son, was hired in 1891 as the Assistant Park Superintendent. He moved to the park with his children and established the Mammoth store and the post office within the park which his children managed. Ed met and fell in love at first sight with Mary Rosetta, Mr. Henderson's youngest daughter. In his own way, Ed tried to court Mary Rose to win her hand, but she didn't return his affections. She had no doubt heard the strange stories about Ed and being in his late 30's, he must have seemed ancient to the young and very beautiful Mary Rose. With her beauty and the lack of females in the park, Mary Rose had the pick of any young soldier and it soon became obvious to everyone that Ed had no chance.

On a warm day in July, Ed walked up the hill behind the Henderson's store and he didn't return. He had told nobody he was leaving and no one saw him go. Given his peculiar habits and his comings and goings while performing his duties, no one knew he was missing for several weeks. When it was determined he had not checked in and nobody had seen him for almost a month, his quarters were searched where his guns and other items he would have carried with him while out scouting were found. A group of soldiers was organized and a search was begun. After several weeks of intense searching and another month of looking with no results, the official search was called off due to the winter weather setting in.

The hill behind the store where Ed's remains were found and
where his light can still be seen.

A year had passed when one day several soldiers decided to enjoy the nice weather and a day off by hiking to the top of the hill behind the store. There they stumbled upon Ed Wilson's skeleton. Next to his remains still clutched in his bony fingers was an empty bottle of morphine. It was determined that Ed had committed suicide by poisoning himself.

Now, almost 125 years later, there's an unexplained faint light that many people have seen on the top of the hill behind the Mammoth Hot Springs Village store. Both employees and visitors have regularly reported seeing it, most of whom have never heard of Ed Wilson's story. Oh, it's not there every night, but sometimes when the clear night sky is especially dark and it seems there are a million twinkling stars shining, a door from Wilson's dimension opens into the dimension of the living. The light on the hill is where Ed sat and with a heavy, broken heart, decided it would be impossible to live without his beloved Mary Rose.

The Fiddler

Henry Albright moved to rural Arkansas when he was just a baby. As the only child of a middle-age couple who farmed and raised a few cows, chickens and pigs, he was terribly lonely as there were no neighbors or relatives with small children nearby. He played by himself, mostly with sticks and stones which he used to build make-believe castles. What Henry most liked to do though was read. 

His father had been a city man with a decent job at one time, that is until he lost his job and most everything else in the stock market crash of 1929. Unable to find work anywhere, he had moved his wife and baby son to the small frame house on a few acres of farm land which had been left to him by his grandparents upon their death. They could at least eek out a living and raise their own food there.  He had brought with them a number of books from the library he had owned when times were better and it was these books which became Henry's friends. He taught himself to read by sounding out the letters, asking his mother for help when he was stumped. By the time he started school, he was far ahead of his classmates. As he learned to better comprehend what he was reading, he went back and re-read all his father's books again.

Henry proved to be a very bright, avid student and almost always made the highest grades in his class. Unfortunately, he remained mostly alone as the other kids never could figure out what to make of him. He rarely took part in the games the other kids liked to play at recess and mostly spent his time in school sitting alone away from the others, reading books his teacher would bring him. When school was not in session and he was not needed to tend the fields at home, Henry roamed the hills and forests and noted all the things that change with the changing of the seasons.

One Monday in the fall of Henry's senior year, due to a teacher's convention, school would not be in session. As the crops had been gathered, he was not needed at home so Friday afternoon Henry packed his pup tent, a lantern, beef jerky, and a small cooking pot and set out for a few days of camping in the woods. As he left home, the air was clear and crisp, the sun bright and warm.

It was late afternoon and a number of miles from his home when Henry came to a small clearing in the woods and decided to camp for the night. He was only a mile or so away from Jeb Gibson's shack where he could buy some eggs and milk for his breakfast in the morning. Everybody knew and loved "Old Jeb," a life-long bachelor who had lived in his little house "since God invented dirt." Darkness had set in by the time Henry had finished his meal of the ham sandwich he had packed from home. With only a small sliver of moon in the night sky, he lit his lantern and began to read a book on philosophy his teacher had recently loaned him.

As his eyes began to tire, Henry turned out his lantern and lay down to sleep. Just as he got comfortable though, from out of the woods behind him came the sounds of a violin, sad, haunting clear notes that seemed to tremble in the air. At first he thought he must be imagining it as there was no house for miles around except for Old Jeb and he didn't play the violin. Henry climbed out of his tent and looked around. There was no light anywhere, but the music seemed to get louder, more insistent, drawing him to seek out the source. Who in the world would be out here in the cold, dark woods wondering around playing the violin?

For some reason Henry could not explain, he was compelled to find the source of such haunting music. He had walked a short way into the woods when he found a deer path. He followed it on silent feet, around boulders, deeper and deeper into the forest. At times, the music seemed to be right in front of him, but then in the next instant, it seemed to be further down the trail. Finally, in the distance, Henry saw a dim, stationary light. It became larger as he slowly crept up on it, until he came to a slight rise in the trail. He could see clearly now that it was not a circle of light as he had thought, but a rectangle which seemed to be glowing through an open door. He strained to see the building itself, but he could not make out walls, windows or even a roof. Yet from somewhere near the light came the sounds of the violin. It seemed to surround him, coming coming down from the night sky, from the trees, from the very ground he now laid on.

All of a sudden, the music stopped. Henry could see two women step into the doorway, one older, stooped with gray hair, the other young and beautiful. They were oddly dressed even for these Ozark backwoods, in long, full calico skirts and tight bodices with lace inserts. The young one reached over and placed a protective arm around the older one's shoulders. Somewhere off to the side, Henry heard an unseen horse whiny loudly. Both women looked toward the woods with a look of confusion on their faces. It seemed they were looking straight at Henry.

As he was contemplating whether they could actually see him or not, a shot rang out! Then another and another! The night was filled with the wild shrieks of the horse and a single scream from one of the women. Suddenly, there came another loud report and a blinding flash of fire. As Henry looked on with wide open eyes, he heard another shot and the young woman fell to the ground. The old woman seemed to bend down to help the young one, but another shot rang out and the old woman was also felled. Both lay in stillness that only death can produce. And then, appearing as if from nowhere, a young man ran into the doorway, leaping over the bodies of the women only to come back out a few seconds later holding a rifle. He shot again and again into the woods and as Henry lay there in fear, he heard the sounds of snapping twigs and the rushing footsteps of someone trying to run away. After a few seconds, Henry raised his head just in time to see the male defender fall to the ground next to the bodies of the women.

Henry hurried back to his camp, his mind playing over and over what he had seen. He intended to find someone in the morning to report the awful crime. Tired from the hike and with the adrenaline slowly reduced, he finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep. As the sun rose over the horizon, Henry was startled when he opened his eyes to find Old Jeb standing over him. Old Jeb sat down a quart of milk and 6 eggs next to him, said, "I figured you could use these" and walked away back toward his cabin. 

After breakfast, Henry began to doubt himself, to doubt what he had seen. Perhaps it was all just a dream and wouldn't he look the fool to report such a story to the authorities if it wasn't true. He decided to go back to ensure it wasn't just a trick of a tired mind. Although it wasn't easy, he managed to find the almost hidden deer trail again and then followed his tracks. By early afternoon he had found the cabin from the night before. At least he found what remained of the cabin. It had been a low, long structure with one room and a lean-to kitchen. The ridge pole was broken and the roof had caved in long ago. The remains of the door, its old buckskin hinges shredded with age, leaned open against the wall. Henry carefully stepped inside and found the floorboards rotten with weeds growing through the cracks. The fireplace mantle was covered with moss. Desolation and decay were everywhere. It was obvious nobody had lived there for many years.

Henry left and made his way back to his camp. He arrived just before the sun went behind the trees. In confusion, Henry ate several pieces of jerk and drank a cup of water from his canteen. After dark, he listened for the music, the sweet, haunting notes of the violin, but none came before exhaustion overtook him with sleep. The next morning, Henry awoke to find Old Jeb sitting on a log on the other side of the fire pit. He had once again brought milk and eggs for Henry's breakfast and this time he had brought enough for himself as well. After eating, Old Jeb brought out two corn cob pipes and a small sack of tobacco. He handed one of the pipes to Henry and after both men had gotten a good fire glow going, he sat back down on the log, looked Henry straight in the eye and said, "You heer'ed the music did'n ya?" 

Henry didn't know what to say so he remained silent. "You been to tha cabin in tha woods too, ain't ya?" Henry nodded in reply. "Course you don't know tha story 'cause you ain't really hill folk. My kin've been here many a year. I'm the last of the old un's. I reckon since you see'd it, maybe you won't think I'm just a crazy ol coot so I'll tell ya the story." 

"A hundred years ago a boy child was born in that cabin. His name was Daniel, but he was a strange one and never seemed to fit in anywheres. He hated farm chores and everythin' bout these hills. His kin worried bout him, but didn't rightly know what to do. Daniel always wandered 'round like he was dreamin or somethin, all fidgety-like ya know? Like he was always lookin' for something. And he hardly ever talked to nobody. He was a strange one, that's fer sure. Then one day he spied his dad's fiddle hanging over the fireplace mantel. He stood on a chair, got it down, and started playing that thing like he was born to it all natural like. He played such haunting melodies that the animals in the forest went quiet. The whippoorwill stopped callin', the wood dove stopped cooin', and the crickets stopped chirpin'. It was real strange how that boy could play like that and nobody could understan' it. 

Then one day a outsider fella came to the woods. Said he'd heer'd 'bout Daniel's ability an he told him about colleges and places to study music and such. Places an' things folks in this holla didn't know nuthin 'bout. Daniel got all kinds of excited 'bout it and his pappy said he could go. But then the sickness came through and his pappy caught it and died. Daniel had to stay to tend to the farm and help his mama. Daniel did what he had to do, but his fiddlin' took a turn. It sounded all sad an mournful, like he was poring out all his sadness and disappointment into his music. It 'bout drove his mama crazy and she would go hide out in the woods when she couldn't take it no longer.

A while later, one mornin' Daniel went to the barn and found a newborn colt one of the horses had given birth to the night befor'. For some reason, Daniel took a shine to that colt. They formed a real bond those two did, like they was growing up together. That colt grew into a beautiful filly and Daniel loved it more than jus' about anything. And Daniel's music turned all happy again and it made his mama happy and the animals got quiet to listen to it again.

Daniel didn't give up his dream of freedom from the farm and being able to make a livin' playing his fiddle, but as time passed, he found another love, a girl named Hattie from the next holla over. It was like he knew from the start he was s'posed to marry her and I reckon she did too. He knew if they married he'd never leave this hill country, but he din't pay it no never mind. He figured after they married, he'd play love songs through the cold winter nights and when the babies come, he'd put them to sleep with lullaby songs. Folks said it was just like God had planned it all along.

"Cept another man already loved Hattie. A mean bear of a man who promised a day of reckonin' if'n Hattie turned him down. But Hattie was a real hill girl, Henry, and they have no fear of nuthin. She told him outright she wasn' goin to marry him and she thought no more of it, didn' even tell Daniel.

The weddin' day came in October and after they was hitched, they went to Daniel's mama's place to live until they got a place of their own. They spent the evenin' laughin' and singin'. While Daniel played the tunes, Hattie sang the words in her beautiful voice. Come dark and Daniel and his bride were gettin' anxious to head to bed and enjoy each other's private company when all of a sudden a terrific noise came and like to shook that cabin all ta pieces! And then Daniel heer'd a horrible sound. A loud cry from his beloved filly was what it was. He rushed outside and found her dying, lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood. She'd been so scared of all the noise that she tried to jump the fence and a wood stake had driven' right through her. 

Noises came from the woods and Daniel figured out quick what was happening. It was a mob of men like them gangs of Baldknobbers or bushwackers that used to ride through the countryside killin' and burnin'. Nobody knew who they were or where they'd strike next. Praise ta God there ain't no more of that nowadays!"

Henry knew the rest of the story as he had seen it all himself with his own eyes, but he sat there still and quiet as Old Jeb knocked the spent tobacco from his pipe, carefully loaded it up again and got it fired before continuing.

"Daniel was real skeered, a course, for his loved ones and he ran back toward the cabin. Jus' as he rounded the corner though, he heer'd a shot and a flash of fire. Then he saw Hattie drop to the ground. Before he reached the doorway, there was another shot and his mama dropped beside Hattie. Daniel kept running until he reached the door of the cabin. He jumped inside, grabbed a rifle and came out shootin'. They say he musta opened fire in all directions, just firin' again and again in all directions. 

The next day, my pappy who had heer'd all the shootin' and commotion, and two other men crept in to tha woods to investigate. They got to tha cabin and found Daniel laying dead by the door next to his women folk with his rifle by his side. Evidently, the loss of everythin' he loved was more than he could stomach and he used his last bullet on himself. Five more dead men were found in the woods 'round the cabin with Daniel's bullets in 'em. One of 'em was the fella that'd made the threats, the one Hattie had turned down.

That cabin's full of haints now. It don't happen ever night, but when there ain't much moon and the wind is jes right, I can heer'd that fiddle music all the way down ta my cabin and then I can heer the shootin' an I know them haints is a livin' it all over agin. I reckon they's doomed to it till they ain't no more of these hills."

Without another word, Old Jeb knocked the ashes from his pipe, gathered up his milk bottle and began slowly walking back to his cabin. Henry packed up his belongings and headed back home. He wanted to be far away from these woods before the sun went down and sad, sad music from a haunting violin could be heard again.