mile it was an inch deep. The way-worn path beneath our feet was of the
same appearance as the forest slopes, all seeming one open wilderness,
with nothing but occasional blazes on the scrub-oak tree trunks to mark
the path of descent. Tabal needed nothing of the kind to find his way.
So familiar is he with the whole range that, in the darkest night he
could reach the valley without a wandering footstep. After two hours of
slow travel the snow lay shoe-mouth deep, and the bitter wind, as it
swept across the ridges, chilled and buffeted us, until, half frozen,
with wet and benumbed feet, exhausted by ten miles of wading, and
bruised by falls and slides, I felt my strength giving way. It was then
half-past four by my watch; the snow was a foot in depth, and still
falling.
“Only three mile further,” said my companion, when he noticed how I was
lagging in my pace, “and we’ll fetch up at Ramear’s cabin. Cheer up,
man, an’ in a few minutes we’ll be all right, I ’low.”
With this encouragement I quickened my footsteps and struggled on.
Another mile had been slowly reeled out behind us; we had left the ridge
and were in a hollow or cove, when a cabin suddenly appeared before us.
The place was one of the wildest and dreariest of the mountains. On one
side rose a forest of balsams; with somber foliage covered with the
white mantle of the storm; almost perpendicularly upward it trended.
Tangled laurel spread over the bottom land, and interwoven with the ivy,
hedged the banks of a stream fresh from its sources. On the other side a
rocky bluff, crowned with snow and clad in evergreen vines, loomed up
like the crumbling wall of some ancient castle, with its summit lost in
the veil of the falling snow.
The cabin was jammed into a niche of this wall some twenty feet above
the path we were following. It was a log hut of the humblest
pretensions, tottering from age and decay on its rock foundation. In
the shadow of the precipice, most gloomy it appeared, with its
snow-burdened roof, moss-grown front, rough-plastered log chimney, and
doorless entrance opening into a black interior. It looked to have been
deserted a score or more of years, and its surroundings, unkept by the
hand of man, by Nature were again being trained into primitive wildness.
A cataract came pouring down by the cabin’s site. A regular ascent of
steps led up to it through the laurel.
In spite of the place’s uninviting aspect, I welcomed it as a safe
refuge from the storm and the night. Tabal seemed not to see it, and was
plodding steadily ahead a few feet in advance of me.
“Hold on!” I called. “Here is a shelter for the night. No need of going
further.”
He turned with a strange expression in his face.
“For God sake, don’t stop hyar! We must go on. Nothin’ could hire me to
stop in thet ’air shell.”
His set determined way of speaking, together with his words, I could not
at that time account for, and without waiting for an explanation,
replied: “Stop here we must, in half an hour ’twill be night,” and
pushing through the snow-burdened laurel, in a few steps I gained the
cabin door.
A violent hand was laid on my shoulder that instant. My blanket was
almost torn from my grasp, and I reeled backward, with difficulty
rescuing myself from falling.
It was Tabal who had thus struck me. Taken by surprise at his
uncalled-for action, I could but listen to what he said.
“Come, come, we must make tracks from this place! You’d better die in
the snow a peaceful death than be toted away by hants. Thar be a power
’o hants hyar. I’ve seed ’em an’ seed blood, blood! on the floor and
nary man in the settlement but what’s heerd ’em. Don’t for all ye love
in the world, don’t stop hyar, but foller me and in two mile we’ll be
at Ramear’s.”
As he finished his excited remarks, with one hand still on my shoulder,
he was standing partly in the cabin; while I, puzzled at his
extraordinary statement, and with the earnest, almost desperate, manner
in which he urged me to leave the spot, had sunk down on a half-rotten
log that lay across the doorway. I really could have gone no further if
I had wished, and instead of what I had heard from him awakening my
fears and strengthening me to travel on, it aroused my curiosity to
remain and see upon what his superstition was based.
On making known to him my exhausted condition and determination to
remain, an abject terror overspread the mountaineer’s face, and for
several minutes there was a struggle within him whether to stay and
brave the well known horrors of the place, or to expose his cowardice by
leaving and pushing on alone in the darkness and driving snow. The
latter alternative did not hold out very bright prospects, and in spite
of professed superstition, mountaineers dread nothing much more than
being called cowards. Meanwhile I laughed down and shamed his fears, and
the bribe of a half gallon of “moonshine” completed the business.
The gloom of the continuing storm, and the rapidly approaching night,
rendered the gorge almost destitute of light. Every minute it grew
darker, but objects about the interior of the cabin were still
distinguishable. There was but one room, with rotten board floor,
strewed with the mouldering leaves of several autumns, and grown with
moss along the edges of the walls. Fungi choked the interstices between
the logs, and over them snow had sifted, and fallen in streaks upon the
floor. An unboarded window opposite to the solitary door looked out upon
the grim, stony cliff that rose not ten feet away. A fire-place, filled
with snow, was at the end of the room, and over three-fourths of the
apartment was a loft, rather shaky in appearance.
We scraped the snow from the hearth; Tabal, under my instructions, tore
off a pile of well-seasoned boards from the loft floor, and soon a
crackling fire brightened and cheered the interior of the cabin. My
companion was now more at his ease, and spreading our blankets, we laid
down with our feet to the grateful fire.
As I spread out my blanket I noticed a pool of fresh blood, fully two
feet in diameter on the floor by my hand. I covered it instantly,
fearful that Tabal might see it. How did it come there?
“Tabal,” I said, “tell me now what you meant by this hut having ghosts
or ‘hants’ as you term them; and why do you think it so haunted?”
He responded with a long story which I will make short: The cove had
been cleared thirty years before by Cummings, a denizen of the
mountains. One night when he was on a spree in the settlement, his wife,
in a crazy fit, hung herself to a cabin rafter. Cummings, with his
household property and progeny, deserted the premises, and for many
years the cabin remained unoccupied, until a party of hunters made a
night’s lodging there, and in an altercation a man named Gil True was
instantly killed by an enraged companion. Strange sights and sounds were
connected with it after the first death, and more after the second.
Every superstitious old woman told some terrible tale about it, until it
had become known throughout the country as the “haunted” cabin.
After this narrative the train of thoughts which it awakened and the
strangeness of my situation prevented me from going immediately to
sleep, and hours elapsed before I was in the arms of “Nature’s fond
nurse.” Tabal’s regular snoring I suppose put me in that condition.
How long I slept I know not, but I awoke with a start. Terrible,
blood-curdling cries, like those from a woman or child in distress, came
from the end of the room opposite the chimney.
The fire was still blazing, and by it I saw that Tabal was awake, lying
half raised from his blanket, and with eyes fixed on the back of the
room, was intent on listening. Several piercing cries, with intervals
between, rang out, and the last one had just died down, when there was a
sound of some heavy body falling on the roof, a rumble, then a terrific
crash, after which all was darkness, blackest darkness in the room.
Successive creakings of the cabin, and sputterings and hissings from the
fire-place ensued.
I attempted to call out but could not.
I leaned over and reached, in the darkness, for my companion. He was not
there--nowhere on his blanket, which I felt still unrolled. I groped
around the room.
Nothing!
The room was deserted, and I was alone in the haunted cabin.
I leaned out of the door. It was as black outside as in. Again I
attempted to call, and then my voice broke from me. The halloo rang out,
echoed along the cliff, and instantly seemed swallowed by the night; but
no answer came.
With these efforts courage returned, and I stepped back into the center
of the apartment. As I did so, I heard a fall on the window, then one on
the floor, and the pit-pat of feet sounded plainly as something brushed
against my legs, and shot with sudden velocity out of the cabin door.
“What else,” I thought; “what other unaccountable things were to happen?
Tabal was right; the cabin is haunted.”
I drew out a large clasp-knife from my pocket, opened it, and retreated
to one corner of the room. I stirred not, scarcely breathed. For hours I
stood there, as rigid as a statue. Again the foot-falls resounded
through the room; again a fall on the window by the cliff--then
death-like stillness again intervened.
In the black, unbroken silence, I heard nothing but the action of my
heart, thumping, thumping, till it seemed it would beat the breath from
my chest, and all the while I was, in vain, seeking a solution for these
mysteries of the night. Where was Tabal? What caused the blood spots,
the horrible cries, the crash, the fire’s extinguishment, and the
foot-falls?
Gray light began to sift in. It grew stronger, brighter, and the light
of morning filled the room. Black objects assumed regular outlines,
became distinct, regained their natural shapes, and everything around me
was revealed. There lay the tumbled blankets; the fire-place filled a
foot high with snow. I started. The crash and following darkness were
explained. A snow slide off the cliff had struck the roof and then
fallen down the chimney.
I went to the door. A man’s footprints long and far between, led from
the door-step down through the laurel. Tabal had disappeared in that
direction. I expected to see footprints besides those of the
mountaineer,--the footprints of the owner of the footfalls in the
night,--but none were there, at least, no human tracks, but, instead, in
the snow were prints like those of a dog. What did this mean?
I ran to the window. The same impressions were on the snow-covered sill,
and then beyond on the near ledge of the cliff. Some animal had entered
by the window, rushed through the cabin, and then re-entering, had
retreated by the same way to the cliff. That it was a wild-cat or
panther I was convinced; and this conviction was strengthened when my
mind reverted to the cries, which were similar to those made by the cat
species.
The whole mystery seemed cleared up. The wild, rugged precipice held on
its face a den of panthers; the cabin was another retreat of theirs,
and the bloody pool on the floor was the mark of some recent feast.
Gathering up the blankets I followed in Tabal’s footprints for half a
mile, when I met him coming towards me with the settler he had remained
with during a part of the previous night. My appearance to him was like
one raised from the dead. We returned to the cabin, and my conclusions
were confirmed by their immediate affirmations that, “nairy varmint but
a painter hed made them tracks, an’ they ’lowed the cabin mought not be
hanted arter all.”
Soon after this night’s adventure, a systematic hunt was organized; and
in the chase four panthers which had had their hereditary den in the
cliff’s face were killed. With this slaughter all reasonable fears of
the cabin’s being haunted vanished, and now it is made the usual
rendezvous for hunters driving bears or deer in that locality.
* * * * *
“Wal,” exclaimed one of the Federal court witnesses, “thet’s a blamed
good way to git red o’ hants!”
“Now,” said Upson, directing his speech toward me, “we would like to
hear from you.”
“I have no personal experience to relate,” I replied, “but can tell you
something, similar in nature to your story, as it was told me by an old
resident of Graham county.”
Immediately there was a hearty invitation extended me to begin; so
without ceremony I preluded what follows with the announcement that the
tale was the one of
THE PHANTOM MILLERS.
Three years ago, while taking a tramp through the wilderness of the
Santeetlah and Unaka mountains, I stopped for a few days with an
intelligent, elderly farmer on the bank of Cheowah river. One pleasant
afternoon, during the time of my visit, I took a ramble with my host
over his extensive farm. Through the cool woods, upward along the
roaring stream, we slowly walked for probably half a mile, when suddenly
the rough wagon-trail we were following led away from the river; and,
looking through the thick undergrowth in the direction where with
redoubled roar the waters still kept their way, I saw the outlines of an
old building.
“What ancient looking structure is that?” I asked, pointing toward it.
“That,” my companion answered, “is a worn out mill.”
“Why,” I returned, “this is the first mill I have noticed on the river.
It does, in fact, appear dilapidated; but, looking at the heavy thickets
and tall trees that stand so close to it, I should think that at the
time it was abandoned it might have been in pretty good condition. See,
there’s a tree apparently fifteen years old thrusting its whole top
through a window, and the casements that are around it are not yet
rotted away.”
“You are a close observer,” said Mr. Staley, “but, nevertheless, we quit
running that mill because it couldn’t be worked.”
“Why so?” I asked with interest.
“Because it was haunted!”
“Haunted! A haunted mill!”
“Yes, sir; the subject is one I don’t like to commence on, but I suppose
now you must hear it.”
“Yes, by all means, but wait first till I see the mill.”
I pushed through the tangled thickets under the scrubby oaks, and a
minute after stood before the structure. It was a mill which even at
this date would, if new, have been suited to a more open country. The
side that faced us was farthest from the river. One door, up to which
rotten steps led, and two windows, through one of which the tree before
mentioned, spread its heavy limbs, were on the front. The siding was
falling and hanging loosely in places from the upright timbers, and the
entire structure was fast becoming a skeleton, for all the clapboards
had been torn by the wind or thievish hands from the three remaining
sides. The roof, in part, had fallen in, but had been caught by the
shaky stringers of the upper, half-story floor. The spot on the river
bank was peculiarly suited for a mill site. The channel of the stream
above was rock bound, the banks being steep and narrow. Just before it
reached the mill the body of waters compressed into an impetuous volume,
shot over a fall of twenty feet. An outlet had been blasted through the
solid rock close by the side of the fall, and a wooden race set up
leading to the mill. This race had long since disappeared, worn away by
time and water. The old wheel, though, hung in its place beside the
structure almost under the fall, and above the mad waters, boiling and
foaming below.
Going around to one of the sides, we managed to clamber in and on the
plank floor. There was half a partition through the center, forming on
either side two rooms, each about 20 X 25 feet in dimensions. The
mill-stones were yet in place, but the hopper and grain bins were
missing.
We seated ourselves on the floor at the back side of the building, and
with our feet hanging over the green, rotten wheel, with the thin spray
of the cataract now and then touching us, and the turbulent river
sweeping onward below, he began as follows:
“When I came here from Charleston, South Carolina, and settled, in the
spring of 184-, the first thing I found necessary, after building my
house, was a mill. As many families, apparently, lived in these valleys
then as live here now. I was compelled to go to Murphy, a distance of
eighteen miles, to get my flour and meal, or take my grain to a
primitive hopper, two miles below on this river, and wait a day for it
to grind a bushel. Either was an exasperating procedure. This site
seemed the best adapted one along the river. The race was formed, a
foundation laid, and, by the aid of a temporary saw, enough lumber was
gotten out to finish this mill complete by the following summer.
“Well, time went by; the mill run smoothly, and with it I managed to
make enough to keep my family. One morning, however, on entering here I
saw that the wheel, which I left running for the night, in order to
grind out an extra amount of meal, had stopped, while the water was
still pouring on it. On examination I found the dead body of a young
man, a farmer, who lived on the slope of Deer mountain, hanging fastened
to the lowest paddle of the wheel. All that could be learned of his
untimely end was that he had left home for an evening’s trout-fishing
the day before. He had undoubtedly fallen into the deep, swift stream
above; had been drowned; swept through the race down on to the wheel;
and, his clothes catching on the splintered paddle, he had hung there.
“A short time after the last sad occurrence, a neighbor’s boy fell
through the trap door and broke his neck. Superstitious people then
began to whisper that a spell was on the place. They had had, as yet, no
ocular demonstration of what they imagined and reported, but such was
the influence that my mill was avoided at night, travelers beating a new
path around it through the forest. Of course, this talk had no effect
upon me, and in fact I rather liked it, for, as far as I was able to
perceive, it kept a class of indigent mountaineers away from the mill,
whom I had reason before to suspect of grinding their corn
surreptitiously at night.
“But in the spring of 1861 something really strange did occur. My
youngest brother was one day with me at the mill. I had left him inside
here while I had gone some distance back into the woods to get a
second-growth hickory. Probably half an hour had passed and I was
returning, when just before coming in sight of the mill I heard angry
voices. One voice was that of my brother, the other I could not
recognize; neither had I time to consider, for suddenly the report of a
fire-arm sounded in that direction. I hallooed loudly at the moment I
heard it, and at the same time came out of the wood. A comparatively
clear space, with the exception of a few large trees, was between me and
the mill. I saw no one near but my brother, and he was leaning partly
out the front window there, where now grows the red maple.
“‘Halloo! what have you shot?’ I shouted.
“There was no answer.
“The day was growing terribly dark. Black clouds, heavy with moisture,
were filling and piling deep the entire face of the sky between these
circling mountains. The lightning had not yet begun to play, but it
would not have taken a prophet to tell of its speedy coming.
“I was somewhat surprised at hearing no return to my salute; and as I
drew nearer I noticed that his face was deadly pale. I ran up the steps.
I caught hold of him. He had fainted. I laid him in the doorway. My
first thought was that he had been shot by some one and was in a death
faint. I tore his shirt open, discovering a small red mark under the
nipple. Five minutes after he was a corpse. But where was he who fired
the fatal shot? I had seen no one, and in vain I looked around the mill.
“Meanwhile the storm burst with appalling fury. One of the first flashes
of lightning struck a monarch ash, whose decaying stump stands just over
there, not thirty feet from the mill’s front. In some manner it struck
the tree and ran down its bark, then cut through its base, or struck the
bole at once; for the whole body of the ash fell with a resounding
crash. I was knocked down and blinded for an instant by the electricity.
It was the hardest rain that has drenched these mountains since 1840.
All night long it continued, and I remained in the mill with my dead
brother.
“It must have been past midnight when, in the pitchy darkness, I heard
hoarse cries, hollow shouts, and groans, that seemed to proceed from
without the mill, but which swept through the open rooms with chilling
and horrible earnestness. The building shook in the wind and storm; the
doors rattled on their hinges; the cataract’s roar increased with the
swelling flood; but yet above all these deafening sounds, at intervals,
rang this muffled voice. I must confess that I laid it to the
supernatural.
“Morning and calm came together, and with the first streaks of light two
of my farm-hands appeared. The storm had made a havoc before the mill.
Lengthways, and down the center of the road the ash had fallen, the body
of the tree lying close against the base of that great hollow oak you
see still standing. We carried the body home. Who had killed him was the
unanswered question on every one’s lips. Well, we buried the
mysteriously murdered man in the old churchyard down the river, and the
day after I went on business to Murphy. As fortune would have it I was
just in time to be drafted into the Confederate army. I had only a day
to spare to go to my house and return.
“The occurrences of that stormy night had unavoidably kept me away from
the mill, and on my flying visit home before taking a long departure, I
had no time to go to it. My wife told a strange story of ghostly cries,
strange flames and apparitions which had been heard and seen at the mill
for two nights by one of the farm-hands and a neighbor. Nothing could
hire any of the men in the neighborhood to go near the place, even in
the daytime. The description of the sounds coincided singularly with
what I had heard. Having no time to investigate, and thinking these
fears would wear away, I left orders for one of the hired men to run
the mill during my absence.
“Four years passed, and I had returned from the war. What changes had
taken place is not my intention to relate only to speak of the mill. The
fears of the mountaineers had caused it to be abandoned. The one whom I
had designed to work it had wholly disregarded my orders. By a train of
petty circumstances connected with this man’s refusal to run the mill,
together with the superstitious ideas of the people, all the
mountaineers began to take their grain to the lower “corn-cracker.” This
course was not adopted by all until several of the more venturesome ones
had actual, unexplainable encounters with ghosts at my mill.
“A few days after my return I went up to look at the forsaken place. I
found the underbrush rather heavy, fair-sized trees springing up, the
old ash lying undisturbed where it had been struck down, and
consequently the old road was lost. Everything within the mill, though,
was in excellent condition. What struck me as curious was that the mill
appeared never to have stopped running; for the stones were not mossed
in the least, but on the contrary were still white with flour. The floor
was also white, and a close observer would at once have declared that a
supply of wheat had been ground there that week.
“‘Jist so,’ said an old neighbor who was with me. ‘In course these hyar
stones never quit runnin’ at night, ez I tole yer; but hit ain’t no
humin bein’s ez runs ’em. Many a night I’ve cum up the new road over
yander, an’ stopped an’ shivered as I heered the ole wheel splashin’
round, seed lights an’ seed yer brother standin’ right hyar at this
winder, I’ll swar! Why didn’t I sarch into the matter? Didn’t I though!
But the hants all fled when I cum near, and nuthin’ but an owl hooted
overhead; an’ one night I war knocked flat by some devil unseen, an’
next thing I knowed I woke up a mile from hyar. Ye don’t catch me
foolin’ round sich things.’
“He went on to tell how the meal, which he had ground in the daytime,
had made persons sick, and also helped to stop business. That night I
determined to watch the ghostly millers in their midnight toils. A man
named Bun volunteered to stay with me. Just after dark we came up here
and ensconced ourselves in a close thicket near the fall, and about
fifty feet from the mill. The hours passed by monotonously. It was late
in the night, when suddenly, above the dull roar of the fall, I heard an
owl’s hoot up the river road. This would not have attracted my
attention, had not another hoot sounded at once from down the road, and
then another came from just before the mill. Nothing further was heard
to these calls, which I deemed were signals; but, a few moments after, a
light flared up in the mill, and through the unboarded side we saw two
figures in white garments.
“‘Let’s steal out of this,’ whispered Bun, in a trembling voice. ‘Didn’t
I say it war ha’nted?’