Aunt Ethel's Haunts - Clearfield Kentucky, near Morehead in Rowan County, Ky.

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Aunt Ethel's Haunts

In addition to getting together from time to time with Cousin Fred and Uncle Bill and _his_ kid Ronnie Eugene and Second Cousin Billy R to caretake the old Enix Cemetery on a ridge out toward Holly Fork, I'm also a "member of the board" of the Stewart Cemetery in Clearfield, which as a job ain't at all difficult, once you realize you just have to every now and then show up with the rest of "the board" when we're told to. Then you stand around and listen to what Aunt Ethel wants you to do, and wait for that marvel of an Appalachian woman to get around to enumerating what your part of "do" will be.

A while back the local American Legion Post bought up most of the ground surrounding the cemetery. The board was called to meet Aunt Ethel and the Legion officers to find out what trouble, if any, she was gonna cause for their plans to develop the ground into a kind of "veterans' park. For their part, her reputation apparently preceded her, and the Legion guys weren't about to fight with her. They gave Ethel all the assurances she wanted, ceded some odd frontage here and there and otherwise at the end of the "meeting," had her smiling through an unseasonably warm winter day (remember those?).

Couple of us let dogs out of pickup trucks so they could romp around (the graveyard's got a chain link fence around it), and those who hadn't previously met had the obligatory "Who's your folks?" conversations. Once that was out of the way the Legion Post Commander explained in detail their plans for the property, including their intentions to let the Auxiliary use, at least for a while, the old frame house off on the edge of the property. Sooner or later they meant to knock the old place down and rebuild it.

At which point Ethel showed how easily an 87 year old woman who stands not more than an inch or two over four feet tall can take over a conversation. "Let me tell you boys something," she said, her voice raised. "When you all rebuild, don't you re-use the old foundation under that house. It's haunted and so was the house before it, they built that one on the foundations of the one before. You don't know all the trouble that caused."

I glanced over at Pete Somebody-or-other, an older guy standing next to me. Pete shrugged his shoulders and whispered, "I grew up here and I've _always_ heard that place as haunted."

Turns out Ethel and her family lived in the place in the late thirties, early forties, and had plenty of personal experiences she could --and would-- tell. And while they seem a bit "out there," you need to keep in mind Ethel is a sternly old fashioned Church of God type who will _not_ tell a lie. I don't think she was all that anxious, really, to trot out her tales about the house, but rather seemed to think she was obligated to tell the house's new owners what she knows about their acquisition.

There's nothing remarkable about the square frame dwelling, probably a four bedroom, with a second story. I learned the first house on the site was my great great grandparents, that Ethel could remember visiting it as a child.

While Ethel lived there, with Uncle Louie and their several kids, she frequently heard the sound of a crying baby or small child. She was never able to find a source for the noise, but says there was no mistaking it was an infant or toddler in distress. Georgia Fern, Ethel's sixty-something daughter, was a child herself at the time and recalls the crying as well. It seemed to have no specific point of origin, but always appeared to come from rooms where the listeners weren't.

The back door often opened of its own accord, and sometimes footsteps could be heard walking across the kitchen floor after the door swung shut again (which it always did). Georgia Fern remembers the door opening as well, and says, as does her mother, the knob *always* turned when the door opened.

Ethel told about one night Uncle Louie was off at a union meeting and she was at home with her visiting brother Arthur, whom I recall as a religious man, quick to deny things like ghosts or hauntings. Arthur was sitting where he could see the back door, and when it began to swing open he assumed someone was there and called out some "smart" remark like "Come on in if your nose is clean!"

Ethel told him, "Arthur there ain't nobody there. We can't keep that door closed."

Arthur snorted and said _he_ could keep it closed. After tightening the hinges with a screwdriver and checking to make certain the lock was securely installed, Arthur closed and firmly locked the door. He and Ethel sat at the kitchen table waiting --Ethel says "events" always happened twice, that any manifestation of "strangeness" was always repeated-- and within fifteen or twenty minutes the knob turned, the door swung open and then closed again.

Arthur went quite pale, according to Ethel, and told her, "Sis, I'm leaving, and I wish you'd come and stay at my house until Louie gets back."

Ethel declined her brother's offer, saying none of these spirits, or haunts, or ghosts, or whatever they were ever seemed to mean to hurt anyone, and she was more-or-less accustomed to the experiences.

She was once sitting with her sister Martha in the living room when they both heard the sound of something spilling onto the metal cabinet tops in the kitchen. Remembering a large box of rice stored above one of the counters, Ethel told her sister, "Martha, we've got a mess to clean up. A mouse has gnawed through that box of rice and spilled it all over the place."

In the kitchen nothing was out of place, and the box was whole. A few minutes later, back in the living room, they heard the sound again, and again found the kitchen as immaculate as Ethel always keeps it.

The house has a basement, where Ethel installed an old fashioned wringer washing machine. One morning when she had a load of clothes going she heard a loud rumbling sound like coal rolling down a chute to a coal bin. Thinking something had happened to her machine, Ethel hurried to the basement and found the washing machine humming along in good order. Fifteen minutes later she heard the sound again --the repetition of events she mentioned-- and again nothing was wrong.

Ethel remembers her grandmother telling that when she lived in the house originally on the site, sometimes she and my great great grandfather would hear the back door open, and footsteps would pace from the kitchen and into their bedroom. "Something" would lean over the bed, pant loudly three times, and then the "footsteps" retraced themselves to the door, which would open and re-close.

I had the distinct feeling there were a number of other stories Ethel could tell, but that she wasn't all that comfortable talking about the house...

Everybody is wondering what and where they all come from. Everybody is worried about where they'll go when the whole thing's done. But no one knows for certain so it's all the same to me. I think I'll let the mystery be.