ZOMBIES IN MISSISSIPPI?

By Linda Mann

Yes, dear reader, those trudging, blank-eyed, soulless brain eaters appear in Mississippi too! Humans everywhere have a fascination with horrific monsters, especially other humans transformed into horrific monsters. Incredibly, one of the earliest recorded zombie infestations occurred during the Union Army’s siege of Vicksburg in 1863, but more about that later.

History of Zombies

The fear of zombies, Kinemortophobia, goes back in time at least to ancient Greece, where heavy stones were found in graves to hold down corpses and prevent their rising from the dead.

According to History.com, “Unlike many other monsters—which are mostly a product of superstition, religion and fear— zombies have a basis in fact, and several verified cases of zombies have been reported from Haitian voodoo culture.”

In the 17th century, African slaves were forced to work in the sugar cane fields of Haiti. Their lives were so miserable that many committed suicide just to escape. Some believed that suicides wandered the earth for eternity as the condemned undead.

Haitian Zombie

The religion Voodoo, originating in West Africa, was practiced widely throughout Haiti, the Caribbean, and the American South in those days. Priests known as Bokors administered concoctions containing tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin derived from certain fish and marine life. When given in the correct dose, a hapless person could become paralyzed and comatose. The person appeared to be dead and would be buried alive. Later, that person’s body could be exhumed, revived, and forced into slavery. Reanimated into a greatly diminished state of consciousness, they became zombies.

Accounts of the dead and buried reappearing years later, quite alive, are rare but not impossible. History.com offers the following:

“A 1997 article in the British medical journal The Lancet described three verifiable accounts of zombies. In one case, a Haitian woman who appeared to be dead was buried in a family tomb, only to reappear three years later. An investigation revealed that her tomb was filled with stones, and her parents agreed to admit her to a local hospital.

In another well-documented case, a Haitian man named Clairvius Narcisse entered a local hospital with severe respiratory problems in 1962. After he slipped into a coma, Narcisse was declared dead was buried shortly thereafter.

But 18 years later, a man walked up to Angelina Narcisse in a village marketplace, insisting she was his sister. Doctors, townspeople and family members all identified him as Clairvius Narcisse, who claimed he had been buried alive, then dug up and put to work on a distant sugar plantation.”

Clairvius Narcisse sitting next to his grave.

Voodoo exists in parts of Mississippi and Louisiana today. One wonders if tetrodotoxin is still used, legal or not, to make zombies.

By contrast, the following accounts indicate zombieism caused by a virus.

Zombies in Vicksburg and More

After the fall of New Orleans to Union forces during the Civil war, the city of Vicksburg was the final key to victory for the Union. On May 18, 1863, 3,200 Union troops arrived and laid siege to the city. Bombardment and starvation ensued. On June 17, Vicksburg residents saw a person staggering around nonverbal and dazed – the first zombie. Soon, there were hundreds. Confederate soldiers shot them until their ammunition ran out. Some believed that Union forces allowed the zombie “plague” to continue unchecked. On July 3, The Union army entered the city to find an estimated 2,000 zombies to shoot and kill. They found that, unlike Confederate soldiers, zombies do not surrender. They just keep coming.

Confederate Zombie Drawing

Two other similar zombie plagues occurred in similar climates and in similar circumstances of regional trauma. Along with Vicksburg, they are the “Top Three Zombie Outbreaks in History.”

On Labor Day, September 2, 1935, a Category 5 hurricane made landfall on Key West, Florida. Heavy winds and rain destroyed almost everything. Rats emerged and were seen everywhere, and soon, zombies, first mistaken for traumatized hurricane victims, were everywhere too. The island was cut off from the mainland by the storm, and numerous residents drowned trying to escape the zombies by swimming away. Finally, FVZA* troops from all over the south arrived and managed an extermination that took three weeks. Over 3,000 people were infected and destroyed.

In the 1890s, there was a contentious dispute in Hawaii between native islanders, who wanted the islands to remain independent, and powerful sugar cane growers, who wanted to join the United States.  Queen Lili’uokalani was on the side of the islanders and enacted measures to weaken the influence of the sugar industry. In August of 1892, a zombie plague that started among Chinese laborers in the sugar cane fields spread from Oahu to Honolulu.  Residents fled in terror to other islands.

Desperate, the Queen asked the United States for help.  FVZA troops arrived and cleared the city and countryside of zombies. Sugar growers took advantage of the chaos – perhaps even helped it along – and staged a coup, deposing the Queen. The outbreak killed nearly 2,000 people. Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1898 and became the 50th state on August 21, 1959.

Military Preparedness

What’s to be done to protect us from the scourge of a zombie virus?

According to the Hattiesburg American, May 14, 2014, “Foreign Policy Magazine published an article exposing the fact that the Department of Defense has a response for ‘counter-zombie dominance’ if zombies attacked and the military had to combat them in order to ‘preserve the sanctity of human life’ among all the ‘non-zombie humans.’

The unclassified document, called ‘CONOP 8888**,’ is a guide for military planners trying to isolate the threat from several different kinds of zombies… even chicken zombies.

‘Given the rapidity at which zombie outbreaks spread, decisive, overwhelming, and possibly unilateral military force may be required to negate the zombie threat,’ the plan reads.

Under ‘Offensive Operations’ in the CONOP 8888, the Department of Defense ‘has been directed to eradicate zombie threats to human safety using military capabilities… neutralization of zombie capabilities through denial, deception, disruption, degradation or destruction.”

There’s an important clue here. It’s “neutralization… through denial.” Make no mistake, however, Kinemortophobia is alive and well in Mississippi.

The Clarion Ledger, May 4, 2018:

“GULFPORT, Miss. — A police report says a [Kiln] Mississippi man accused of stealing a front-end loader and ramming vehicles in a Walmart parking lot did so because he thought it was the end of the world and zombies were chasing him.”

If the Pentagon has a plan to protect us from zombies, does Mississippi? Indeed not.

In 2023, Digg.com ranked the ten major US cities best equipped to survive a zombie apocalypse and the ten worst equipped. Criteria included vulnerability, bunkers and hideouts (like basements), outdoor gear and firearms accessibility, military protection, transportation, resident fitness, hospitals, supermarkets, and pharmacies, among others. Houston, Texas, ranked as best city for survival. Tragically, Jackson, Mississippi, was the second worst city in the rankings, only slightly better than Miramar, Florida. Mississippi can do better, people.

Zombie Culture

One simply cannot miss the zombies in today’s popular culture. We have countless movies – some made locally because of Mississippi’s rich zombie heritage – TV shows and series, comics, books, games and organized hunts, zombie paintball, costume competitions and parties, bands and music, food, festivals, retail stores, and more! Zombies will not die out any time soon. Some folks call zombies an industry, like weddings. There are, in fact, zombie weddings.

While working people may feel like zombies on Monday mornings, we’d feel worse to find real zombies wandering around after a bad storm, a political coup, or a civil war. Wait…

We must find comfort in the Pentagon plan until an antidote, or a cure is found for this terrible threat to life as we know it. In the meantime, if we need them, we have zombies to keep us awake at night.

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Zombies in Mississippi resources:

https://www.history.com/topics/folklore/history-of-zombies

The Top Three Zombie Outbreaks in U.S. History

*https://fvza.org/about2.html

**https://allthatsinteresting.com/conop-8888

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/05/04/mississippi-man-thought-zombies-were-after-him-who-rammed-cars-police-say/581903002/

https://digg.com/data-viz/link/best-us-cities-zombie-apocalypse-ranked-xJEsgsVGCL

The Deason House

Ellisville – Jones County Mississippi

by Natasha Mills

There’s nothing quite like a good southern ghost story to get your heart racing and ignite your imagination. You visit a spooky location, hear a sound, or feel a touch when no one else is around, and then you share that story with someone else. Before you know it, everyone in the area knows about the strange occurrences. This is how folklore spreads – through word of mouth, passing down the beliefs, customs, and stories of a community from one generation to the next.

Whether or not ghosts are real, one thing is certain: ghost stories keep history alive in people’s minds. Each haunted location has its own story, often rooted in tragic events that give rise to the legends we whisper to each other in the dark.

One such tragic tale took place at the Deason home in Ellisville, Mississippi in the 1800’s. Completed in 1847, the Deason house is the oldest home in Jones County. The construction of the home began in the 1830s but was completed by Boyles McManus after the original owner, Ed Chapman, passed away. Amos and Eleanor Deason were the first family to occupy the home and the original 700 acre homestead.

The house immediately drew attention with its unique exterior – all of the wood was cut to resemble stone, and it was painted white, a rarity in the area at the time. People came from miles around to see the painted house.

In October of 1863, a tragic event occurred at the Deason Home. State Representative, Amos Deason hosted Major Amos McLemore, a close friend, who was in town with orders to capture Confederate deserters and their leader, Newt Knight. On the night of October 5th, the Deasons slept in the attic to allow their guest to use their bedroom during his visit.

According to legend, Newt Knight decided to strike first and entered the Deason’s home. He quietly approached the bedroom and found McLemore, standing before the fireplace, his back turned from the doorway. Newt is said to have shot the Major in the back several times and then fled the scene.

The blood from the Major’s murder stained the pine floors of the bedroom and saturated the joists underneath. Despite all efforts, the blood refused to be removed from the wood and although the stains were covered with new flooring, the blood still remains beneath, a testament to the crime.

The home is now owned and operated by the Tallahala Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It is also known as one of Mississippi’s most haunted homes, with reports of shadowy figures, unexplained noises, and other paranormal activity.

Several paranormal agencies, including Delta Paranormal Project and Southern Paranormal Investigations, have visited the home and reported experiencing voice, touches, and other unexplained phenomena. If you are interested in learning more about the history and haunted happenings of the

home, you can check out their YouTube videos, which I will link in my references. If you’ve had an experience at The Deason House, we’d love to hear about it and if you have never been, consider planning a trip to Ellisville and taking a tour – who knows, you might experience something unexplainable that you can pass down to the next generation.

References:

https://deasonhome.wordpress.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Deason_Home

https://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/story/news/local/2018/10/12/deason-home-ellisville-xcene-gov-mclemore-killng-haunted/1223796002/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_McLemore#:~:text=Amos%20McLemore%20(August%2023%2C%201823,was%20killed%20at%20Deason%20Home.

The Lady In Red: Cruger & Lexington Mississippi

By Natasha Mills

As a wedding DJ by trade, when I hear the words “Lady in Red”, I automatically hear the strains of the 1980’s Chris De Burgh song, of the same title, playing in my head. However, Mississippi has its own Lady in Red. In 1969, on the grounds of Egypt Plantation, near the home of the J.T. Thomas family, workers digging a septic tank line, with a back hoe, made a startling discovery that has captivated people’s curiosity to this day.

Mississippi is filled with legends, lore and mystery. Lexington Mississippi seems like your typical small Mississippi town, but it has something that isn’t so typical. It has the Lady in Red. The burial plot for this unknown lady now lies in Odd Fellows Cemetery. However, it was originally found on a plantation in the tiny town of Cruger.  A back hoe operator made the discovery when his equipment hit something foreign. Just three or four feet below the surface they found a glass-topped, metallic coffin. Not only was it a shock to find a coffin on private property, especially since the land had belonged to the same family for many generations, but it was an extra shock that the coffin was so unique.

These body-shaped burial cases were patented in 1848 by Almond Dunbar Fisk and manufactured in Providence, Rhode Island. They were expensive compared to pine coffins and could command prices upwards of 100 dollars, compared to a wooden coffin’s price of 2 dollars. These coffins were popular among wealthy families and desirable for their potential to deter grave robbers. The caskets resembled an Egyptian sarcophagus with sculpted arms and a glass window plate for viewing the face of the deceased without risking them to the exposure of odor or pathogens. (What a coincidence that a casket resembling an Egyptian sarcophagus was found on a plantation named Egypt!) The coffins were airtight and were known to be used by families of loved ones whose dearly departed had died away from home. The coffin would preserve the remains of individuals during their long journey to be buried by their family later.

If the coffin itself was not odd enough, an even more bizarre find was that the body inside was completely submerged in alcohol. Alcohol was often used in these coffins when the deceased was afflicted with an unknown illness or disease.

Inside this alcohol-filled coffin were the remains of a beautiful young woman perhaps in her twenties. She was completely preserved and looked like she had died only days ago instead of many years. She was said to have been wearing a red brocade dress, hence the moniker “Lady in Red”. She also wore silk boots with buckles, a long cape, and white gloves adorned her hands as they lay crossed over her chest. A delicate blanket covered her long dark hair.

Who was she? Why was she buried on the property in an unmarked grave? How old was she? These are questions that no one seems to have the answers to. Some reports say she was born in 1835, while others say that is her death date. Some speculate that she died from yellow fever while others think she was a tourist on a boat travelling the Yazoo River and died suddenly, but then why would she be buried without a marker on a nearby plantation to which she had no connection? The family who own the property have found no connection with the mysterious woman to anyone in their family’s history to this date. 

The Lady in Red’s body was transported thirty miles southeast of where she was originally discovered. She was given a burial plot in The Lexington Odd Fellows Cemetery. A simple headstone now marks where the lady in red rests, hopefully in peace. The headstone reads “Found on Egypt Plantation 1835-1969. The first year is a guesstimation of her birth and the second marks the year her body was found on the plantation.

Since the discovery of the coffin and its beautiful occupant, tourists and ghost hunters alike have flocked to the cemetery to see the gravesite. There are also those who believe that the lady and the coffin never existed. They argue that if she was real, where are the pictures of the coffin from when she was discovered? Wouldn’t the press have been all over such a grand story with cameras in hand? But perhaps cameras weren’t as common in smaller towns during this time as they were in larger cities. There is little information to go on when it comes to who the lady is. People are no closer to discovering the truth behind her identity, but there are still those out there trying to find answers.  

I am not certain that we will ever know who she was or why she was buried in the manner she was. However, maybe we are not meant to. Someone obviously loved her enough to ensure she was preserved and untouched in her eternal rest. Maybe that is all that needs to be known.

If you have visited the Lady in Red’s gravesite, we would love to hear about it.

Resources:

To This Day, The Lady In Red Remains One Of Mississippi’s Most Baffling Mysteries   

The Mystery of Mississippi’s Lady in Red

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/magnolia/2019/02/14/lady-red-who-woman-unearthed-mississippi-1969-unsolved-mystery/2766496002/

UNSOLVED: “Lady In Red” Coffin is a Mississippi Mystery

https://www.thedeadhistory.com/blog/15329

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-of-the-lady-in-red

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-of-the-lady-in-red

Cruger, Mississippi: the Grave of the Lady in Red~

The Heartless Harpe Brothers

By Linda D Mann

“Two heads are better than one, brother
When everything’s said and done
If there’s a problem to master
Two minds can master it faster
And four eyes are better than two, brother
For seein’ a sticky time through
Two noses can smell better
Two throats can yell better
Two heads are better than one.
I can try on my own to get by on my own
But the fact of the matter remains
What I start every time falls apart every time
And that’s why I’m stickin’ to pickin’ your brains, Oh
Two heads are better than one, brother
When everything’s said and done
BIG HARP: I ponder and mull better; LITTLE HARP: I break a skull better
BIG HARP: I see the facts better; LITTLE HARP: I swing an axe better
BIG HARP: I do the plottin’, LITTLE HARP: But I do the swattin’
And that’s how the business gets done, brother, cause two heads are better that one.
ARE BETTER THAN ONE!”

So goes a show-stopping number in The Robber Bridegroom, a 1975 Broadway musical. The story is based on a 1942 novella by Mississippi’s beloved author Eudora Welty who spun legends and visions of the ancient Natchez Trace into a tale of mystery, comedy, lust, greed, and love. She recrafted the 1812 Grimm fairy tale of the same title and made a modern, American version.

Big Harp and Little Harp are comic villains of the piece, but Big Harp’s actions are limited, as he is literally reduced to a severed head carried around in a trunk by his little brother. The head comes out of the trunk when Little Harp needs help in the thinking department. A simple theatrical trick creates the delightful effect of a disembodied head talking and singing along in a duet!

In Welty’s fairy tale, the Harps are ruthless but stupid and bungling. Such characters can be endearing on the stage, but in real life, these two were evil-doers of the first order. If half their legendary crimes are true, they still qualify!

“Family” Life

One of the many legends of the Harp brothers – perhaps cousins named Harper or Harpe passing for brothers – was about that severed head. Whose was it, and who carried it around? More about that later. For starters, they were usually called “Harpe.” Eudora Welty dropped the “e” for her story.

Micajah “Big” Harpe and Wiley “Little” Harpe have been dubbed “America’s first serial killers” for the trail of brutal murders they left behind during their rampage through the South in the 1700s. They killed from 39 to 50 people not so much for money, but for pleasure.

They sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, joined a Tory gang, and practiced burning farms, raping women, and pillaging American patriots. They also served as military volunteers not paid by the British but content to survive by robbery and looting.

Later, they joined a group of Chickamauga Cherokee Indians to raid settlements in North Carolina and Tennessee. In 1782 they took part in the Battle of Blue Licks in Kentucky where they helped defeat an army of frontiersmen led by Daniel Boone.

They kidnapped the daughter of an American captain who wounded Little Harpe in his attempted rape of a young girl and made the captain’s daughter and her friend their “wives.” For the next twelve years, the Harpes, their “wives,” who may have changed from time to time, and other bandits lived in an Indian village near Chattanooga. When their “wives” repeatedly gave birth, the brothers killed their own babies if they cried too much.

In 1797 Little Harpe married a minister’s daughter, and the other two “wives” became property of Big Harpe. At some point, Big Harpe married twice – to sisters! The serial killings began around 1798 after they were driven from Knoxville, Tennessee, for stealing. They became known for disemboweling their victims, filling the cavities with stones, and throwing the bodies into rivers.

After several murders in the area were attributed to the Harpes, they were captured and imprisoned in Danville, Kentucky, but they escaped, leaving another trail of death in their wake. They made their way to the Cave-In-Rock on the Illinois bank of the Ohio River, where the notorious river pirate Samuel Mason kept his stronghold. The Mason gang preyed on helpless travelers on slow-moving flatboats below the cave.

The Harpes devised an entertainment of taking travelers to the top of the cliff, stripping them naked, and pushing them off to die on the rocks, sometimes on a blindfolded horse. This was too much even for Samuel Mason, and he forced the brothers, wives and surviving children to leave. The Harpes returned to Tennessee and continued the killings – a farmer, several men, a boy, a father and son, children–an entire family.

Natchez Trace Terror

They traveled parts of the Natchez Trace, an ancient sunken road stretching from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee, robbing and murdering as they pleased. It was a lawless frontier, and defenseless travelers feared robbers falling on them in the night during their journeys on the Trace. Stories vary in detail but persist today about the notorious Harpes and their terrorism along that road.

King’s Tavern in Natchez, opened in 1769, is the oldest building in town. During the Harpe’s reign of terror, it was a way station – a refuge and watering hole for weary travelers. Highwaymen often stopped there to spend money they’d stolen from their victims, and the Harpes were seen drinking in the bar while decent families slept upstairs.

One night a newborn cried incessantly and annoyed Big Harpe, so he got up from the bar, went upstairs, and brutally murdered the child to its mother’s horror. Today, visitors to historic King’s Tavern sometimes hear a baby and a woman crying upstairs when there is no one there. Some see the shadowy figures of several ghosts known at the property. Among them – the Harpes. Some say the ghosts of the Harpe Brothers wander the streets of Natchez for eternity.

In 1799, Big Harpe bashed his own infant daughter’s head against a tree to silence her crying. This was the only murder for which he ever expressed remorse. The Harpes were once shown hospitality at the Stegall home in Kentucky, but they slit the throat of their host’s four-month-old infant boy for crying and killed his wife for screaming at the sight of her baby being murdered. The brothers ran to the west to escape a posse that included Moses Stegall, the avenging father and husband of the victims. While attempting to flee, Big Harpe was shot twice and hit with a tomahawk. As he died, he confessed to twenty murders. When asked why he killed so many, he replied, “because I hate the whole human race!”

Moses Stegall slowly cut off Big Harpe’s head while he was still conscious. Stegall stuck it on a pole (or on a tree) at a crossroads for all to see and left the body to be devoured by animals. That intersection was called “Harpe’s Head” for years thereafter.

Witch Dance

There is a tale about Big Harpe’s visit to a fascinating spot on the Natchez Trace Parkway near Tupelo, Mississippi. The Trace is now a scenic National Parkway with many historic markers along the way to explore. As described on its marker, Witch Dance was a magical place for witches of unknown origin – perhaps ancient native people – to gather for wild nighttime dances and rituals. At each place where the witches’ feet touched the ground, no grass grows. One can still see the bare spots.

When Big Harpe arrived at Witch Dance with an Indian guide who told him the legend, Big Harpe laughed, danced on the bare spots, and challenged any witches to stop him. At the time, none did. After Big Harpe lost his head in Kentucky, a witch removed his skull from the crossroads where it hung and ground it into a powder to make medicine. People who retell that story on the Trace sometimes hear witchy cackling coming from the woods. A campground lies near the marker today. Imagine sitting around a campfire on Halloween and listening to the story of Big Harpe’s head! Wouldn’t you hear something strange in the woods?

Little Harpe escaped the posse that killed Big Harpe and rejoined the Mason Gang. Later, using the alias John Setton, he and another outlaw killed Mason and cut off his head to collect the bounty for it. They were recognized, however, and apprehended near Greenville, Mississippi. In 1804 they were hanged and decapitated. Their heads were impaled on tall stakes on the Natchez Trace as a warning to outlaws. There are other versions of the story, but Little Harpe loses his head in each one.

So many stories – so many severed heads! Which ones are true? Did the witch get Big Harpe’s head? Did Little Harpe carry Samuel Mason’s head around in a trunk? How many heads did the brothers cut off or bash in, anyway?
The Harpes were once called “inhuman fiends” and “the Bloody Harpes.” Some thought they must be shapeshifters because they were so cunning and elusive. Some said they posed as traveling ministers. There was a rumor that they pretended to be the men looking for the Harpe Brothers!

The notorious Harpes garnered such a bad reputation that many of their relatives and descendants changed their names to avoid association with them. Quite a few books and films used facts, legends, and re-imagined or supernatural versions of Harpe Brothers stories in their narratives. Eudora Welty knew all about the legendary Harpes when she wrote The Robber Bridegroom. Under its entertaining surface, her all-American fairy tale is as dark and horrifying as the Grimm fairy tale that predates it. It is about good and evil in the world. Once upon the Natchez Trace, the heartless Harpe brothers committed scores of grisly murders for pleasure and lost their heads as punishment.

So, are two heads really better than one, if the heads belong to the Harpes?

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Harp Brothers Resources:
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-harpes/
https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/the-horrible-harpes/article_56c4c76f-7ce1-5d0a-ae53-
bdb06eecddfe.html
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ms-witchdance/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpe_brothers
https://www.supersummary.com/the-robber-bridegroom/summary/ (Welty)
https://www.pookpress.co.uk/the-robber-bridegroom/ (Grimm)
https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/harpe-brothers.htm

Honey Island Swamp Monster

By Steven Cornelius

Honey Island Swamp Monster

Sneaking around the Pearl River is the Honey Island Swamp Monster. The monster is described as being seven feet tall, with long gray hair and large yellow eyes. The creature also has huge, webbed feet and smells like putrefied trash. Local legend tells the story of a tragic train wreck in the early 20th century. The train was carrying a traveling circus traveling along the Pearl River. Emerging from the wreckage was a group of chimpanzees that escaped to the forests surrounding the river. The story implies that the Honey Island Swamp Monster is a direct descendant of these escaped chimps. Some locals believe that the swamp monster is just a giant alligator that roams the banks of the Pearl River, but others aren’t convinced. If you happen to be hiking along the Pearl River, keep your eyes peeled! You could be the one that discovers the truth about this local celebrity.

The legend of the Honey Island Swamp Monster offers one explanation to a very scary and inexplicable something that happened to me five decades ago. In the early 1970s, I was dating a beautiful redhead who would eventually become my wife. She was a student at Saint Dominic’s School of Nursing situated near where Lakeland Drive and I-55 intersect on the east side of downtown Jackson. While I was finishing up studies at Ole Miss, she was training to become a registered nurse. Two or three times each month on a Friday afternoon, I pointed my trusty little Mercury down I-55; headed from Oxford to Jackson, where I spent all my energy convincing that sweet girl to marry me. Each Sunday evening at one minute before midnight, I reluctantly kissed her goodbye, stepped out of the Saint Dominic’s dorm lobby into a muggy night, and a hundred steps later, climbed into my little Mercury Capri and pointed it north on I-55, trying hard to stay awake and alert for the three-hour drive back to the Ole Miss campus.

One late spring Sunday night I left the bright lights of Jackson and thirty minutes later passed by the Canton exit and soon started over the two-mile stretch of swamp formed by the Big Black River. I turned up the radio and relaxed; I pretty much had the Interstate to myself and pushed my little car until the speedometer read about ten over the speed limit. A misty fog was forming around the tree line on north and southbound lanes of I-55, so risking a speeding ticket was preferable to an hour or delay added to my trip because of fog obscuring the highway. Just after crossing the northbound bridge over the dark and still Big Black River, I picked up a flash of movement out of the corner of my left eye; something was stirring on the southbound side of I-55. My first thought was a herd of deer were about to run across the interstate and I surely didn’t want to hit a hundred-pound doe at almost eighty miles per hour, destroying my car. I took my foot off the gas, tapped the brakes, and slowed to about fifty; just about the time a vaguely human-shaped form moved out of the mist, gathered speed and sprinted across the southbound lanes, bounced over the grassy median, and ran directly in front of my car. As this thing passed about fifty feet in front of me it turned a round face toward my headlights. What I saw was a hairy black almost human-shaped head with bright yellow eyes and canine teeth…running like fury in a crouched manner using long forearms to pull itself across both northbound lanes before disappearing into the swampy brush and trees about forty feet off the pavement.

The whole episode took maybe ten seconds…from first sight until it crashed through dense underbrush along the treeline. I eased onto the northbound shoulder and sat for a couple of minutes rubbing my eyes, then stepped out of my car and glanced around the dark tree line, eyes straining to pierce the darkness, looking and listening for any sign that would confirm what I saw. No sound except for the occasional vehicle roaring by tires whining in the distance and the familiar chirping and chattering of frogs and other swamp critters. Climbing back in my little car, I accelerated north and two and a half hours later, sat in my dorm room replaying that event over and over in my mind, trying to decide if it really happened or did I just hallucinate the whole thing due to lack of sleep and fatigue. For years afterward, every time I drove over the Big Black, memories of that dark night surfaced and I tried to sort out whether I saw something or was it my overactive imagination. I sincerely believe that I saw something cross the interstate, moving really fast as it passed through my headlights before disappearing into the rapidly forming mist and thick underbrush; but the mind does play tricks…especially late at night.

Flash forward twelve years. For a time during the 1980s, I lived in Picayune and worked at the Stennis Space Center, a huge NASA, and US Navy facility that forms the eastern border of the Honey Island Swamp. The seventy thousand-acre swamp is indeed a spooky place, with or without monsters. I took my young sons fishing there a couple of times and the place gave off an unwelcome, otherworldly atmosphere. If you were unlucky enough to get lost, being grabbed by a gator and never heard from again was a distinct possibility. My young boys and I sat a couple of hundred feet from our launching ramp in a twelve-foot aluminum boat, water slapping against the dull aluminum hull as we tried to focus on catching fish. Before long, a dense white mist formed, laying just on top of the still brown water, and suddenly, we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. All the while, I could hear the splash and grunt of gators longer than our boat sliding into the Pearl River backwater a short swim from where we sat. I wasted no time getting us out of there and we didn’t go back.

During my time in Picayune, an old man who ran an auto repair shop and junk yard befriended me and sometimes on lazy Saturday afternoons we’d sit in his dimly lit garage drinking cokes and talking about his experiences growing up in that part of south Mississippi. I told him about fishing in the Honey Island Swamp. The old man shot me an alarmed look, “You stay the hell away from theah…you heah me?” I nodded that yes, I heard him. His expression softened, “I wouldn’t worry about the Honey Island Swamp Monster but there are plenty of smugglers and bootleggers back in theah that will gobble you up and your bones will nevah be found.” That explanation made a lot of sense to me. Back where I grew up in northeast Mississippi, we had a thousand-acre swamp called Sharp’s Bottom that was much the same way. Men distilled whiskey and conducted other forbidden trade back in the swamp and if a person went deep into the swamp and got too nosy, they were never heard from again.

I told the old man about the thing that ran across the interstate that dark spring night almost fifteen years earlier. He nodded his head, “I can see dat. They’s creatures back in these swamps that will never be found, unless they want to be found.” Escaped circus chimps living in the tops of eighty-foot-tall cypress, poplar, and oak trees foraging for food, breeding, and growing wilder as each year passed made total sense to me.

The Devil’s Crossroads: Clarksdale, MS

By Natasha Mills

I went to the crossroad, Fell down on my knees.

I went to the crossroad, Fell down on my knees.

Asked the Lord above, ‘Have mercy now,

 Save poor Bob, if you please.

– Cross Road Blues by: Robert Johnson

Mississippi, the Delta region in particular, is often called “The birthplace of the blues”. The term “Delta blues” is used to describe music characterized by the percussive use of the guitar. While various researchers speculate that the blues first emerged in Mississippi in the 1880’s or 1890’s, by the 1900’s, blues was gaining popularity across the South. 

 The exact location of the birthplace of the blues is lost to the sands of time. However, one of the primary centers for that type of music in Mississippi was a place called Dockery Farms. It was one of the most significant plantations in the Delta and it was essentially a self sufficient town, complete with a school, churches, telegraph office; as well as having its own currency. It was owned by William Dockery and housed hundreds of tenant families, most of whom were African Americans who had come to the area searching for work.

Since William treated his workers fairly, most of them stayed for long periods of time. One such family living in the area was that of Bill Patton Jr. He eventually purchased his own land and operated a country store nearby. His son Charley Patton began a career in music. He had been inspired by a local musician and in turn, Patton inspired many more. So much blues has been traced back to Patton and his contemporaries around Dockery that the area is regarded by some as “The wellspring of Delta Blues.”

 Mississippi was home to some of the greatest and most influential blues players of all time; Son House, Charley Patton, and Muddy Waters, just to name a few, but none have a story quite like Robert Johnson.

 In the late 1930’s a young musician, Robert Johnson, recorded 29 songs that would become some of the most influential blues music of all time. About a year after he recorded his songs, he died. He was 27 years old. We don’t know a lot about him. His life was not well documented, but what we do know, from those who knew him and heard him play, has painted a very strange tale.

 Before Johnson recorded the music that would go down in history as legendary, he performed in local juke joints, reportedly Dockery Farms. Some of the bluesmen that frequented these establishments, such as Son House, remember Johnson as a kid who could play the harmonica well at age fifteen. However, he was horrible at guitar. He would come into the joint and beg the musicians to let him play their guitars between sets. House remembers Johnson grabbing a guitar while the band was on a break. He would play it, making noise and annoying patrons.

The story says that no one could stop him from playing guitar and his father dogged him about it so much that he ran away. He took off one night down the road from Dockery Farms, according to legend, and disappeared for six months.

The next time Johnson walked into a juke joint and grabbed a guitar, Son was there to see it. Johnson walked up and asked Son if he could play. Son told him to do whatever he wanted, but not to annoy guests. He suggested that Johnson make use of his time on stage. Johnson played and it is said that he was so talented that all of his audience sat with their mouths open.

 People began to speculate that his leap from horrible noise maker to amazing guitarist was so drastic that it was leaning toward the supernatural. It was rumored that Johnson had spent his six months away learning to play guitar from a bluesman named Ike Zimmerman. They practiced at night, in a graveyard where no one would complain. Others say that he didn’t stop there. It is believed that when Johnson left Dockery Farms the night he ran away, he stopped at a nearby crossroads and made a pact with the devil.

 The traditional belief by locals about the devil and crossroads goes like this…If you want to learn to play an instrument, you go to a crossroads at midnight and you take the instrument you want to play. You get there early so that you are certain to be there at the stroke of midnight. If you take your instrument and play it while you stand there in the center of the crossroads, a big black man will walk over to you and take the instrument. He will tune it and then he will perform a piece of music on it. He will then hand the instrument back to you. Some believe that you also have to write your request and offer of your soul on a note. The note must be buried in the center of the crossroads for this to work.

 Either way, most people believed that something unnatural had happened to give Johnson such talent in such a short time. Even his own songs seemed to hint at something of that nature occurring. He recorded songs such as “Crossroad blues”, “Hellhound on my Trail,” and “Me and the Devil blues”, although his lyrics make no real mention of any unholy encounters.

 As Johnson and his music became better known, he was warned about the hazards of working in juke joints. All the women liked Johnson. He was told to be careful of women, because most that looked at him would already be spoken for and that could get him killed.

 One story of Johnson’s death states that Johnson had a lover, and his lover had a boyfriend. The boyfriend poisoned Johnson’s whiskey one night at the juke joint and Johnson was left feeling sick. He was taken to a friend’s home and died a few days later.

Some say that it wasn’t whiskey that killed him, but the devil that came to collect his soul. That version says that Johnson became feverish and seemed to think a hellhound was after him. He became ill and crawled across the floor while barking at the moon in pain. The official death certificate states that Johnson died from complications of syphilis.

There are conflicting reports as to his burial location. There are three different cemeteries with headstones that state he is buried there but none of them have ever been confirmed.                                    

 In Clarksdale, Ms., where the crossroads were said to have been, (Hwy 61 and 49) there is a large crossroad sign and a guitar to mark the spot, but that seems to be only a tourist attraction, meant to attract people to the area. It is said that the real crossroads are closer to Dockery Farms and the place where Johnson grew up. There is no marker. (Hwy 8 and 1). 

What really happened to Robert Johnson? Did he sell his soul to the devil in exchange for legendary talent, or did he simply practice with a professional? Did he die of poison, or syphilis, or did the devil come to take his payment? Which one of the cemeteries houses his body?

 We may never know for sure, but one thing we do know is that Johnson left his mark on not only Mississippi, but music history.

 If you have been to Devil’s Crossroads we would love to hear about it. Leave a comment or send your story via email to msfolklore@gmail.com.

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Resources and Additional Information:

Blues

http://www.clarksdale.com/crossroads.php

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/robert-johnson-myth-devil-crossroads-story/

Robert Johnson: The Life And Legacy Of The Blues Giant

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/devils-music-myth-robert-johnson/

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/26919

Birthplace of the Blues?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_House

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muddy_Waters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley_Patton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ike_Zimmerman

Robert Johnson: Murder or Bad Whiskey?

Fact-checking the Life and Death of Bluesman Robert Johnson

Vampires and Other Night Creatures

By Steven Cornelius

As a kid, I constantly read sensationalist magazines and trashy novels…especially anything I could find on vampires and werewolves. Visiting the town library, the summer I turned ten, I discovered the gory history of “Vlad the Impaler.” Vlad the Impaler, in full Vlad III Dracula or Romanian Vlad III Drăculea, also called Vlad III or Romanian Vlad Țepeș, (born 1431, Sighișoara, Transylvania [now in Romania]—died 1476, north of present-day Bucharest, Romania), voivode (military governor, or prince) of Walachia (1448; 1456–1462; 1476) whose cruel methods of punishing his enemies, by impaling his enemies on stakes in the ground and leaving them to die. This earned him the name Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Țepeș). He inflicted this type of torture on foreign and domestic enemies alike: notably, as he retreated from a battle in 1462, he left a field filled with thousands of impaled victims as a deterrent to pursuing Ottoman forces.  gained notoriety in 15th-century Europe. Some in the scholarly community have suggested that Bram Stoker’s Dracula character was based on Vlad.

After bombarding my brain with such stuff for years, it was easy for me to believe that hordes of eastern European monsters were traveling to America to dine on a fresh young victim who tasted like pinto beans and cornbread. These beasts lurked in the shadows on dark nights, waiting for me to drop off to sleep. I lay for hours, petrified with fear, covers clutched around my neck, staring through a curtainless window into infinite darkness, listening as it was rattled by a strong north wind. Dropping off to sleep was no help because vampires chased me through gory nightmares until dawn. Vampires were especially frightening to me because they wield truly otherworldly powers, preying on victims at night when we mortals are at our weakest. Applying rational thinking to the irrational, how do you fight a creature capable of turning into a bat and giving chasing, or become a wisp of smoke and enter your bedroom through the tiniest opening? A shape-shifting night creature that can morph from human form into a bat or a puff of smoke and then reappear in the shape of a man or woman really got inside my head, and I’m not the only one.

More people than one would imagine suspend disbelief and embrace notions of the undead roaming the earth at night. Zombies, vampires, and werewolves creeping around under the light of a full moon feeding on us as we mill around like cattle with little to no defense against them. Why an otherwise rational nurse, policeman, or accountant willingly buys into such myth and legend requires much soul-searching and critical examination. It makes a rational person want to jump to their feet and shout, “just how much of this stuff are we prepared to believe?” In laying the groundwork that allows belief in such creatures, it is important to point out that all good myths and legends contain a kernel of truth, such as our friend Vlad, whom I referenced above, or at least the distant appearance of truth. I’ve certainly encountered co-workers early in the morning who looked undead, especially after a long night of drinking. However, the bottom line is…humans love a good scare. Horror movies consistently pack theaters…even when the plot and execution stink.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Ann Rice, renowned author of “Interview with the Vampire,” though I would have loved to have sat down with her for an hour or so. Maybe I could have screwed up enough nerve to ask her if she believed any part of the well-crafted fiction she created. I remember watching an interview with Ms. Rice just after her debut novel hit bookstores and became a runaway bestseller. She was very forthcoming in answering questions about how the idea for such a book came about. After a few minutes, the psychology behind her story wasn’t too difficult to puzzle out. Ms. Rice had recently endured the horror of losing her young daughter to leukemia. She began writing as therapy. Her daughter died from a disease of the blood, one of the characters in her first novel is a child vampire, created by the ageless vampire Lestat. In advanced stages of leukemia, the patient only looks truly alive after they’ve had a blood transfusion. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that one of the oncologists involved in her daughter’s treatment nicely fit the description of Lestat in her first book. Ms. Rice’s Vampire books created a huge number of fans, many came to book signings dressed as characters from those novels, and like any writer, she reveled in such devotion.

In searching the internet of things, I found oblique and vague accounts of those having seen or encountered a spirit, but no one has admitted to a firsthand encounter with a vampire, zombie, or werewolf. That supernatural aspect of the undead remains a mystery because apparently, no one survives such an encounter or will admit to having seen such a creature…if they indeed exist. I included one story below about vampires in Mississippi, though the proof is very sketchy. In the Vampire House story below, a body is found drained of blood. A hundred years later, a reporter accidentally captures a ghostly, transparent spirit on camera. These adventure seekers saw what they saw was captured on a digital camera for posterity, except it was ultimately lost to time. I have my own ghost stories, so I am the last person to cast doubt on what these young men experienced. Read the story and decide for yourself.

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The Vampire House
Published 1 year ago on October 24, 2021, reprinted with permission
By JD Fogas

(Photo by Aaron J Hill from Pexels)

“When I was a younger man in my 20’s, my friends and I decided to play around with the paranormal. We heard a rumor that an old, desolate home that rested beside the roadway was haunted. Some called it the “Vampire House”.  The origin of the name was unclear, but the gist was that over 100 years ago, a reporter came to do an interview for a story. That reporter never returned to work.  They found his body, drained of blood, a few weeks later. I was the skeptic of the group. I didn’t believe in all the mumbo-jumbo but was more than happy to entertain the notion with my friends.  So, we decided to pay this place a visit for ourselves and see what was so spooky about it. We arrived to the home late one night. It was in autumn, though I cannot remember the exact month or day. I remember it being cold. The home was falling apart. Half the ceiling was in the living room and the floors were riddled with holes.

Being the bright bunch of individuals we were, we decided to enter the home and explore. Two of my friends started freaking out, saying they saw something, and decided to run to the car. Me and another friend decided to stay a bit longer and prove that we were not going to be scared so easily.

Now, I did not see anything myself, nor did my friend.  We decided to go back to the car and take the others home.  When we got to the car, the two friends that got scared started pointing at the house. “TAKE A PICTURE! TAKE A PICTURE!”  I did not see anything worth taking a photo of, but I was getting bored with the experience and humored them and took a photo with my cell phone. We got back to town, and I dropped everyone off and didn’t give it a second
thought.

The next day, one of the friends who wanted the photo asked me if I could send it to them. I told them it was no problem and began to pull up the photo. That’s when my heart felt like it stopped. I remember taking the photo. There was nothing to be seen with the eye except an old, abandoned, falling-apart home. However, the photo told a different story.  The photo captured, clear as day, an old woman standing on the porch. She was dressed in an old-time dress with ruffled shoulder sleeves and a long dress. The dress stopped at where her ankles would have been, and it appeared she was floating.  Her hands were clasped together as if she was praying. Her hair was arranged in a bun, and she appeared to be older, maybe in her 60’s or 70’s. There was also transparency to her. The home could be seen through her, yet she was opaque enough to be perfectly made out in the photo.  I freaked.

My skeptic thought at first “double exposure,” but this was not a film camera. This was digital, there would be no way to double expose it. I was at a loss for an explanation. I kept the photo for years, unable to explain it and showed it around to friends, who equally had no explanation to offer. Eventually the photo was lost. I made an attempt a few years later to go back to the residence to see if I could reproduce the photo but to no avail. The home had since been torn down the rest of the way and all that existed in that location anymore was woods.”

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It is a shame that photo was lost to time. In the end, people will believe what they want to believe, and folks will forever remain spooked by swirling fog, glistening in the moonlight and cold shadows cast by tall, weathered tombstones in centuries-old graveyards.

I refuse to dismiss any claim of supernatural encounters, but I also reserve the right to be a skeptic. For a number of years, Duke University offered undergraduate and graduate degrees in Parapsychology and maintained an Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) lab on campus, conducting wide-ranging research, some of which was funded by the CIA. After three decades, Duke shut down the program. One day, maybe I can gain access to their archives and see what evidence professors and students gathered over those thirty interesting years.

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Resources:

1. Pallardy, Richard. “Vlad the Impaler”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vlad-the-Impaler. Accessed 12 March 2023.
2. Vicksburg Daily News, October 24, 2021, Staff Reports (https://vicksburgnews.com/the-vampire-house/)

Cahill Mansion/Gregory House – Gulfport

by Trista Herring Baughman

In an area known historically as Handsboro, overlooking Bayou Bernard, once sat a white, three-story house facing a circular drive called Cahill Mansion, built in 1915 by William Stewart. 

Although it was ordinary in appearance, many claim the house was haunted. 

From 1915 to 1941, various families inhabited the home. The Air Force leased the house in 1941 for use as a non-commissioned officer’s club. An unscrupulous sergeant ran the establishment and brought in gambling and prostitutes until his superiors caught on. 

This image was published in an article in The Sun/The Daily Herald circa 1981. 

If you grew up in Gulfport’s Bayou View neighborhood in the ’50s or ’60s, chances are you’ve heard stories of the house. 

In 1957, Dr. Kendall Gregory and his wife, Ginny, moved in (along with their children from previous marriages and a couple from their own.) Mr. and Mrs. Gregory did not take their children’s accounts of hauntings seriously until they experienced it themselves. 

 In a 1981 article in the Sun Herald, Ginny is quoted as saying, “My first feeling upon moving here was simply one of not being alone.”

Strange noises, such as grating sounds and screams, often prompted Mrs. Gregory to wear earplugs to muffle the terrible sounds. Other unnerving things happened to the Gregory family–mysterious cold spots, glowing figures, falling light fixtures, rooms that could not be painted, and unexplained footsteps in the night. 

Perhaps the most shivery tale of the old mansion occurred on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Blood later determined to be human, dripped from the draperies and was smeared on the house’s windows. 

Another story tells of one of the Gregory children throwing his jacket on his bed after school and it bursting into flames. For more detailed accounts of the hauntings, click here. 

The Gregorys soon considered bulldozing the house and subdividing the property. Locals who knew the house’s history went seeking their own spooky experiences. Trespassers vandalized the property. 

But the story doesn’t end there. In a rather bizarre event, in late 1969, a Baptist minister who claimed to have psychic powers conducted a seance inside the home. Dr. David Bubar of Tennessee said he spoke with the spirit of a girl who had been forced into prostitution. The young girl’s name was Flossie, he said. Bubar also said she had been forced to have an abortion and was later murdered. 

Witnesses heard Bubar say in a strange voice, apparently channeling Flossie’s spirit, “He shot me. I’m sick. I’m corroded. My body is full of holes.” During the seance, Bubar mentioned other spirits from the World War II era. A report from the Daily Herald was in attendance and witnessed a table move several feet across the floor, moving according to instructed directions. 

Bubar predicted the house would burn. And burn it did, on July 18, 1970. Firefighters attempted to put out the blaze at 10 Kimball Drive but were not successful. According to the Daily Herald, the flames originated on the house’s second story, where another seance had taken place the evening before. 

When Bubar was told of the fire he was, “delighted that the place burned down”. He said it would free the “poor, unfortunate entities trapped there.”

Fast forward five years. Bubar was found guilty on four federal charges connected with a fire that destroyed a rubber products plant where he had once worked in Connecticut, which he had “predicted” would be flattened in an explosion. 

The charred remains of the mansion were torn down in hopes it would release the spirits trapped there. In 1989, a new house was built on the property. No word yet on if it’s haunted. 

Have you heard stories about Cahill Mansion or experienced creepy things on the property? We’d love to hear from you. Send your reports to msfolklore@gmail.com. 

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Sources: 

1. https://www.sunherald.com/latest-news/article111165252.html#storylink=cpy
2. http://hauntedhouses.com/mississippi/gregory-house/

Terror in Taylor, Mississippi

by Trista Herring Baughman

Taylor, Mississippi, population 298 as of 2020, is a small (4.1 square miles) town in Lafayette county, seated near the top of the state. Once home to the Chickasaw tribe, it was later founded in 1832 by the son of a Revolutionary War Veteran, John Taylor. Back then known as Yokona Station.

In the following years, the town saw homes and churches built, its railroad completed, an invasion of Grant’s army during the Civil War, and later Reconstruction. In 1907, the name officially changed to Taylor. 

Taylor suffered many tragedies: the worst trainwreck in the state, fires, yellow fever, and boll weevils. Though considered a declining small town by 1970, the town has persevered, thanks, in large part, to farm life, restaurants, and the arts.

Taylor’s past, although rich, may seem pretty average on the surface. But not everything is as it seems. 

For years stories of strange creatures lurking in the woods of oak and magnolia, stalking the town’s inhabitants, have surfaced. These creatures are known to the locals as the dogmen. They are said to have driven a local family from their ranch in the late ’40s. 

Dark Waters’ recording, linked above, recounts the story of the Lockett family as told by Edward Lockett the third; he mentions Chickasaw and Choctaw legends of the dogmen, but I haven’t found written documentation of this. I have not yet researched extensively.

The story goes (and I’m paraphrasing for those who didn’t listen to the aforementioned audio recording) that the Lockett family bought a large piece of land to farm from Chickasaw. For a while, things went well, but then the family decided to provide timber for the local sawmill.

The loggers began working.

Soon they started to feel uneasy, as though someone or something was watching them. 

They claimed to see fast-moving figures that followed them. Then, one of the men went missing. All they found of him was a piece of bloody clothing.

It wasn’t long before attacks began on the family home. Growling and howling creatures surrounded and smashed into the house on more than one occasion.

The family tried to protect their farm and kill the beasts. Armed with shotguns and rifles, the loggers attempted to help. Their attempts were feckless. There wasn’t one dogman, but many. 

Not unlike the werewolf and rougarou or loup-garou of neighboring Louisiana in appearance, these enormous beasts are described as wolf-like, covered in hair, but with the uncanny ability to walk on two legs.  

More men disappeared. The attacks continued. People in the town began to talk. What was happening at the Locketts’ farm? Were the Locketts murderers?

In a final attempt to save their farm, the Locketts set traps and hunted the dogmen. Once again, they were unsuccessful. 

Ostracized and defeated, the family deserted their farm and moved fifty miles or so away. Some say the dogmen still plague the town of Taylor and that the people of Taylor are reluctant to talk about it.

While not everyone in Taylor believes (or has even heard of) the terrifying tales, dogmen sightings are not exclusive to the town (see Google Maps’ North American Dogman Sightings tracker).

There was even a recent dogman encounter in the Australian outback. 

Growing up in the woods of Mississippi, I can attest that there are unknown, perhaps dangerous critters, in their depths. 

Are these sightings legit? Are they hoaxes? Perhaps well-intentioned citizens who’ve experienced optical illusions or the misidentification of some local animal? With so many sightings, it makes you wonder what is out there?

Have you seen a dogman or know someone who has? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment or send your story to msfolklore@gmail.com.

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Original post-July 2022

sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor,_Mississippi

2. http://taylorms.org/about/history/#:~:text=Founding,a%20mill%20on%20the%20river.

3. https://hauntedlocation.blogspot.com/2017/06/dogman-siege-of-locket-ranch-full.html

Franklin Cemetery: Gautier

By Natasha Mills

The Garden of Hope

Gautier Mississippi: The pronunciation of the name incites controversy amongst residents and visitors alike, so I wasn’t surprised in the least to discover a local cemetery that is equally as controversial.

Gautier is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi. It lies along the Gulf of Mexico, west of Pascagoula, and just like its neighboring coastal areas, Gautier is home to numerous paranormal sites. One such site is a cemetery known as the Garden of Hope. 

The first problem you may encounter when visiting the cemetery is finding its location. There isn’t an area listing that bears that name. But in the allocated spot, down a lonely, desolate road, you will find Franklin Cemetery. Some researchers have indicated that it is entirely possible that Franklin Cemetery was, in past days, known as the Garden of Hope. Regardless of the name, if the legends are to be believed and the location is correct, this resting place for the dearly departed is one of the most haunted cemeteries in the country.

The most oft-repeated supernatural story surrounding the cemetery is a tragic tale of murder. According to the tale, a local man traveled to work at Ingalls Shipbuilding in the late 1970s expecting to receive a bonus check. His wife and five children were waiting for him at a local motel. They were planning to use his bonus to put a down payment on their dream house. Instead of receiving a bonus that day, the man was laid off from his job. The story says that the man was so distraught that when he arrived at the motel that night, he murdered his family with an axe as they slept. He then walked into traffic where he was hit and killed by a passing truck. 

Some versions of the tale give the man the name Hal and one of his daughters is called Cheryl Anne. Most of the story versions place the father and mother in a “New Orleans style” tomb, but according to visitors to the cemetery, there is no such tomb in the graveyard. Most allege that there are several unmarked graves that could possibly belong to the family. However, none of the locals who were in the area during the time frame of the incident recall any such murders occurring there.

Regardless, stories continue to be told and ghosts claimed to have been seen. The most “sighted” ghost in this hauntingly tragic tale is a small girl of about 10 to 12 years, named Cheryl Ann, who is said to follow visitors through the graveyard. She appears to be a solid and very much alive little girl, eager to help people find whatever grave they are seeking. She even offers to hold your hand or carry flowers for you to place on the grave. She disappears as suddenly as she appears. Some reports state that she is often heard saying “Hope you’ll come back and see me soon.” Reports state that there have been many visitors to the site that have caught her likeness on camera, but my research efforts failed to uncover any such photographs.

Franklin Cemetery is also home to other ghostly legends. One such story tells of a man who climbs out of his grave and steals flowers from the headstones. He takes the flowers to his own grave and places them there. One version of the story tells of a mourner who complained that while at the cemetery, she was accosted by a man. He stole a bouquet of flowers from her hands. When the incident was investigated her flowers were located on the grave of a man unknown to her. His likeness was on his headstone and the woman identified him as the man who had stolen her flowers.

If that paranormal encounter isn’t enough to raise the hairs on your neck, there is the story of Bloody Sarah. Her name is reason enough for me not to want to discover her in the dark. Those who have encountered Sarah say she is seen walking through the grounds wearing a blood-soaked housecoat and fluffy white slippers. She has even been seen during daylight hours when it is said that she runs in front of passing cars. Drivers slam on the brakes and exit their cars thinking they have hit someone, only to be met with nothing beneath their vehicles. As the drivers return to their cars, her insane laughter can be heard.

There have also been sightings of orbs in the cemetery. Visitors have reportedly taken photos that show red ghost lights hovering above graves. They are said to fly high into the air and then dive back down. Again, my research failed to produce any such photos. Despite the lack of visual proof, people have claimed to have been chased out of the graveyard by the previously mentioned red lights.

Another spooky spirit said to haunt the cemetery is Gus, the grave digger. The tale states that Gus likes to help dig graves and is often seen by people who knew him in life. He has haunted the area since 1965. He is described as having dirty hands and knees but a smiling face. He is reported to leave the cemetery every day at 5pm heading for the area of the road where he was killed. Whether he was killed by a passing car or murdered, the story does not specify. It does however say that he liked to hitchhike and his ghost can be seen hitching a ride from passersby. Once someone picks him up, he looks at them and says, “You know, this is where I died” and promptly disappears, leaving the driver rattled.

One ghostly resident of the cemetery rivals even our first story of murder. This story revolves around a woman called Joanna. The story recounts that long ago, in the dark of night, Joanna followed her husband to the area of the cemetery. She saw him having a secret love affair there. Once she saw the two together she flew into a rage and murdered them both. Afterward, she shot herself in the head just inside the front gates. She has been known to chase visitors and even hit them. Those who have felt her angry fists say that they feel very solid.

The last, and certainly the most unbelievable tale of this garden of hope, is that of a grave that contains a coffin that has been cemented into the ground. The story says that contained in the coffin, wrapped in chains, is a werewolf. He is believed to be somewhere between life and death, trapped in his grave and begging to be set free. Visitors to the cemetery say they have heard him howling in agony from under the earth.

Is the Garden of Hope and Franklin Cemetery one and the same? Does the Garden of Hope even exist? If they are, and it does, is it really haunted by these lost and tortured souls? If you are in Gautier and you happen to find its location that is only part of your task completed. Franklin Cemetery is a privately owned property. Any visitor needs permission to enter the grounds. Should you be lucky enough to find the spot and enter, let us know what spooks you discover!

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Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautier,_Mississippi

https://vocal.media/horror/spirits-roam-at-the-garden-of-hope-cemetery

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.547470108605884.134569.489354544417441&type=3

https://www.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2015/10/does_the_haunted_garden_of_hop.html

These 8 Haunted Cemeteries In Mississippi Are Not For the Faint of Heart

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