Kentucky Hauntings (3 page)

Meanwhile, the renewed energy of the storm woke Hattie Peterson. She heard the kitchen door banging in the wind, so she got out of bed and rushed to the kitchen. One look at the open door sent her hurrying to check on Danny in his room. She knew what she would find. Her son was gone. His bed was empty. She ran into the kitchen.

“Lee, wake up!” she yelled. “Danny's gone!”

Lee pulled on his pants and hurried from the bed to the kitchen. One look at the chair beside the door told him what had happened.

“He's gone after that knife!” he told Hattie. “I've got to go look for him.”

“How will you find him in the woods in this storm?” she asked.

The answer to her question came from the darkness outside the door. Lee and Hattie both smelled the strong scent of fresh cedar right outside.

Lee grabbed his coat and lit the lantern. He opened the door, and the light showed a small pile of shavings right there by the door, with a thin trail of shavings leading into the woods. They were cedar shavings like the ones Huley Stanton whittled.

“Wait here,” said Lee. “I'll find him now. I have some help!”

Lee followed the trail of shavings into the woods for a few minutes. Then they led him off the main path onto a smaller path that was seldom used. Soon he heard Danny crying.

“Danny!” he called. “Where are you?”

“Here,” Danny answered, whimpering now.

The sound was close. Lee looked around, trying to locate the source, when he saw what had happened. He ran over, lifted the limb, and checked Danny for injuries. His ankle was sprained, but otherwise he was unhurt. Just for an instant, Lee felt the presence of Huley Stanton beside him. He breathed a silent thank you to the whittler, picked Danny up in his arms, and carried him home.

Danny had to rest and stay off his ankle for a few days. He was feeling restless and bored one day when his mother came into his room and told him he had a visitor. He was surprised to see Mrs. Stanton.

“I have your knife for you, Danny,” she said. “Your mom says you can't use it yet, but I am leaving it with her for you to use later. I brought you something you can use now, though. I found something that Huley whittled, and I know he would want you to have it.”

She handed Danny a wooden puzzle that he had seen Huley whittle at Harmon's store. In his mind, Danny could see Huley clearly. It felt like Huley was actually there.

It was many years before Danny used the knife to whittle. Each time he picked up a piece of cedar, he thought of the trail of shavings his dead friend had left that stormy night to save his life.

When we were young, as the time to burn the tobacco beds drew near, we recall hearing warnings to take care to keep the fire from spreading and for everyone to keep away from the flames so our clothes would not catch fire. The Cravens family, the Foley family, and Mr. Bray and his two sons were the ones who usually helped Roberta's dad. One of them told this story one night, but she can't say exactly which one because one story usually followed another, and she was so eager to listen that she did not always notice the transition.

Burning tobacco beds was an event most families enjoyed on the farm, but few people now would remember taking part in it, as it is now part of Kentucky history. Some farmers probably burned tobacco beds well into the 1970s. Up until that time, Kentucky had a lot of burly tobacco growers. Before modern methods took over, farmers grew their tobacco plants in a bed that was 8 feet by 50 feet or 8 by 100. To prepare the beds, they were first burned for weed control.

Long winters often left storm-damaged limbs and brush lying around everywhere. These were gathered, placed in piles, and burned like a huge bonfire over the area where the beds would be. This burning could be a family event or a neighborhood gathering. All help was welcome to carry the limbs and then to watch the fire and keep it from spreading.

The flames from the burning beds always looked spectacular against the early spring night skies. When the flames died out, the farmers raked and spread the ashes and let them cool overnight. Then they mixed the tobacco seeds in the ashes and sowed them in the beds. A cotton cloth was used to cover the beds, and the seeds were left alone to grow. When the seedlings reached a height of eight or ten inches, the farmers transplanted them in the fields. The introduction of methyl bromide and the ability to gas the beds pretty much eliminated the need to burn them. Before that happened, burning tobacco beds occurred every year.

 

The Grayson family looked forward to tobacco-bed burning each year so they could turn the process into a family bonfire. Faye and her younger sister, four-year-old Ruby Jean, always roasted marshmallows on long sticks as the fire died down. Ruby Jean was fascinated by the flames and loved to stand close and feel the heat on the chilly spring nights. The family constantly had to warn her to stay at a safe distance, but her parents or sister often had to pull Ruby Jean back from the flames.

One night, as the Graysons were burning their tobacco beds, an unexpected wind whipped up the flames. Ruby Jean was standing near the fire when the flames shot out and caught the dress she was wearing. The little girl did the one thing she should never have done. She ran, frightened and screaming, through the field with the wind fanning the flames.

“Drop down and roll,” screamed Faye, running after her little sister. “Stop running!”

Mr. and Mrs. Grayson ran after both girls, but by the time Ruby Jean stumbled and fell to the ground, her burns were severe. There were no modern burn units back then, so Ruby Jean died that night.

People in the neighborhood say that the spirit of the little girl lives on, though. They declare that she returns on the anniversary of her death. Some swear that they have heard her scream and that they have looked out the windows to see a fiery light streaking through the field where she was burned. Most people refrained from burning their tobacco beds until that anniversary night had come and gone.

The Graysons never used that field for tobacco beds again. Neighbors said that each year, on the anniversary of that dreadful night, the family would go inside, close the doors and windows, and never look out. It was said that they spent that time praying for the tragic little girl.

There were several teachers in our family and circle of friends. We loved the stories they all told, but Miss Sullivan was a favorite. She had a practice of ending each school day with a story. Storm stories were especially interesting because we had to deal with storms all during the school year. We could relate to these true tales.

In the days of one-room schoolhouses, there were no phones, no radios, and no TV sets in schools to give severe weather alerts. The teacher had to be her own weather forecaster. If a threatening storm approached in the morning, the teacher would keep the students at school and continue with the lessons. She knew that a morning storm was likely to blow itself out by the end of the school day. The little one-room schools were as sturdy as most of the students' homes, so it was safe for them to stay at school until the storm passed. However, if a bad storm approached in the afternoon, the teacher had to consider a different plan of action so her students would not be caught out in the storm.

There were no school buses in those days. All the children lived within walking distance of school, and walked back and forth from home to school every day. The distance might be a mile or more for some children, so the teacher had to take that into consideration when storms were approaching. The storms that came up in early or mid-afternoon would sometimes turn into all-night rains, or at least rain that lasted beyond the regular time for school to be over. The parents and the teacher didn't want students walking home in the storm, so the teacher had to judge whether or not to dismiss school early to allow each child time to reach home safe and dry.

One midafternoon, a particularly bad-looking cloud loomed up without much warning. The teacher looked out the window and decided that, unless they all wanted to be stuck at school until after dark, she should let the students go home immediately.

“Boys and girls,” she said, “I want you to listen to me carefully. A very bad cloud is moving this way. I believe you can get home before this storm hits, but you must hurry as fast as you can. Get your things now and run. Don't stop to play. Hurry!”

The students grabbed their books and lunch buckets (yes, buckets, because most students carried their food to school in little buckets that originally contained syrup), rushed out the door, and scattered in all directions. The teacher picked up her purse and some papers to grade that night and headed home herself, leaving the schoolhouse door unlocked as she always did.

One little boy had just reached the dirt road that led through the fields to his house when he realized he had left his arithmetic book at school. He had been having trouble with fractions, and his father had insisted that he bring the book home every night so they could study together. He didn't want his father to be angry, so he stopped and thought about what to do.

He looked at the darkening sky, but the main cloud still seemed to be in the distance. He knew the teacher always left the door unlocked for students who arrived early in the morning, so he decided he would go back. He hurried back to school, ran inside, snatched up the book, closed the door behind him, and dashed off for home as fast as he could.

Unfortunately, the little fellow misjudged the storm's speed. By now the storm had reached the boy, and the wind was whipping the limbs of the trees up and down furiously. He felt the cloud open up and saw a wall of rain heading right toward him. He clutched his book and wondered how he could keep it dry in the downpour. Just then he passed a hollow tree standing by the side of the road. The rain had reached him now, so he squeezed himself and his book into the huge hollow trunk.

The boy had been warned about trees like this. They were called widow makers because they often blew down in storms and killed the men who took shelter in them, leaving their wives widows. He did not heed the warning that day. He only thought of shelter from the storm, and that tree offered the only shelter available. The situation quickly turned tragic. A blast of wind uprooted the tree, crushing the little boy beneath the trunk as it fell.

The unbearable pain he was feeling brought darkness, so the boy wasn't aware that the storm soon stopped and that his father and his neighbors were looking for him. He lived long enough for them to find him and for him to tell them why he had gone back to school. He never knew that his arithmetic book had somehow remained dry and undamaged.

School was dismissed for the boy's funeral. When classes resumed, the teacher and the students missed the boy very much. They thought of him every day when they looked at his empty desk. The days came and went.

Then one day another storm headed for the school. The teacher was trying to decide if she should let the children leave when a student gasped, “Look!”

Everybody looked to where the boy was pointing. There stood the ghost of the little boy with his book under his arm, pointing toward the door.

The teacher took that as a sign that the storm was going to be bad and that they should all hurry home. She told the students to go. Remembering the fate of their former schoolmate, they wasted no time getting home. It turned out to be one of the worst storms of the year, but they felt that the ghost boy had saved them.

Until the school burned down mysteriously in a storm a year later, the ghost boy became a dependable weather forecaster. He didn't come in ordinary rain, but he always appeared if a storm was going to be dangerous.

Stories about cattle drives are common in the history of our country, but stories of turkey drives are rare. We were lucky to hear the personal stories of our grandfathers, Louis Franklin Simpson and James Milton Rooks, who participated in some of the drives.

Milton said that the turkeys sometimes had their own ideas about where they wanted to go. The men would take the family dog along to help control the turkeys, but it wasn't much help. The gobblers would spread their tails and fluff up their feathers to look bigger, and the dog would be intimidated and just stand and bark.

When the turkey drovers were settled at their campsite for the night, Lewis Simpson would lead them in an evening of music, storytelling, and fun. He passed on one of those stories to us.

Turkey drives took place in the nineteenth century in the Midwest, the South, and even New England. Basically, cattle drives and turkey drives were the same. They were intended to get the livestock to market, and the journey was sometimes long and difficult. Louis always felt that turkey drives were more difficult than cattle drives. The cattle might become spooked and scatter in all directions, but they always stayed at ground level with the drovers, so they could be reached and rounded up. That was not the case with turkeys.

According to Louis, the turkeys were harder to control. They might be spooked by anything. Howling or barking dogs, rifle shots, paper blowing in the wind, or unseen things like engines or people talking often made the turkeys take flight. They might end up on the tops of buildings or in trees, out of reach of the drovers. At that point, the turkeys were in charge. It was often impossible for the drovers to coax them down to continue on their way. Most of the time, the drovers simply set up camp where the turkeys had chosen to roost or take refuge from whatever frightened them.

The turkeys usually lived off the land, enjoying a diet of grasshoppers, nuts, plants, and the like. Drovers sometimes brought along a wagon filled with shelled corn, just in case the land did not provide food.

One late afternoon, a turkey drive approached a small town in south central Kentucky. Louis Simpson's old bluetick hound was taking a nap when he was disturbed by the drovers herding the turkeys down the road. He sat up and gave a couple of sharp, loud barks before deciding that this matter did not really require his attention. He lay back to continue his nap, but the turkeys flew into the highest tree seeking safety.