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Many years ago, there was a mean
and ugly woman who lived alone in carefully guarded
seclusion near the banks of the Yazoo River. Nobody
knew anything about her, but they loathed her nonetheless.
They hated her so much they didn't even give her a name.
It was rumored that on stormy nights she would lure
fisherman into her house, poison them with arsenic,
and bury them on a densely wooded hill nearby...this
was her hobby, but although many people suspected her
of these evil diversions, no one was able to prove anything.
Then one late afternoon in the autumn of 1884, a boy
named Joe Bob Duggett was passing by her house on a
raft when he heard a terrible, ungodly moan from one
of the rooms. He tied his raft to a cypress branch,
ran to the house, and looked through a window. What
he saw chilled his blood and bones. Two dead men were
stretched out on the floor of the parlor, and the old
woman, wearing a black dress caked with filth and cockleburs,
had turned her face up to the ceiling and was singing
some dreadful incantations, waving her arms in demented
circles all the while.
Joe
Bob Duggett raced to his raft, floated into town, and
told the sheriff and his men what he had seen. They
got a horse and buggy and sped to the old woman's house...They
smashed down the front door, but were unable to find
either the dead men (who have never been found to this
day) or the demented old woman. They climbed the stairs
to the attic, opened the door an inch or two, and caught
sight of several dozen half-starved cats, all bunched
together and gyrating in their wild insanity. Two skeletons,
which were never identified by the sheriff's office,
dangled from a dusty rafter. Fish bones littered the
floor, and the smell was unusually pungent. The sheriff,
his deputies, and Joe Bob stood there transfixed, finally
banging the door shut when eight or ten of the cats
tried to get out.
Then
from the backyard they heard the sound of footsteps
in the fallen pecan leaves, and from an upstairs window
they saw the old woman sneaking away into the swamps
which abounded along the River. "Stop in the name
of the law!" the sheriff shouted, but the old woman,
who as Joe Bob Duggett would later tell his grandchildren,
looked "half ghost and half scarecrow, but all
witch," took off into the swamps at a maniacal
gallop. They followed in hot pursuit, and a few minutes
later they came upon a sight that Joe Bob remembered
so well he would describe it again, for the thousandth
time, on his deathbed in the King's Daughter Hospital
in 1942. The old woman had been trapped in a patch of
quicksand, and they caught up with her just seconds
before her ghastly, pockmarked head was about to go
under. But she had time to shout these words at her
pursuers: I shall return. Everybody always hated me
here. I will break out of my grave and burn down the
whole town on the morning of May 25, 1904! Then, as
Joe Bob also described it later, with a gurgle and a
retch the woman sank from sight to her just desserts.
With
the aid of pitchforks and long cypress limbs the authorities
were able to retrieve her body. The next day, with the
wind and rain sweeping down from the hills, they buried
her in the center of the town cemetery, in a cluster
of trees and bushes, and around her grave they put the
heaviest chain they could find---some thirty strong
and solid links. "If she can break through that
and burn down Yazoo," the sheriff said, more in
fun than seriously, "she deserves to burn it down".
The
years went by, the long Mississippi seasons came and
went, and the town forgot the old woman.
On
the morning of May 25, 1904, some twenty years later,
Miss Pauline Wise was planning her wedding. As she entered
her parlor to show her visitor some gifts, she discovered
a small blaze. Suddenly a strong wind, unusual for that
time of year, spread the fire to adjoining house. From
Main Street the fire spread to all intersecting streets
and soon reached the residential section. The roar of
the ever-increasing flames, the confusion of terrorized
thousands, the hoarse shouts of the firefighters, and
the sound of crashing walls made a scene of awesome
horror that remained a fixed picture in the memory of
eyewitnesses as long as their lives lasted. Many fine
homes were destroyed, and every bank, every physician's,
lawyer's and dentist's office, every hotel and boardinghouse,
every meat market and bakery, the newspaper and printing
office, every church, clubroom, and lodge room, every
telephone, telegraph and express office, the depot,
the post office, every furniture store, every hardware
store, all but one livery stable, all but one drugstore,
every barbershop, every tailor shop, every undertaking
establishment, and, in fact, nearly every business necessity.
The
next day, after the murderous flames had consumed themselves,
several elder citizens of the town made a journey to
the grave in the middle of the cemetery. What they discovered
would be passed along to my friends and to me many years
later, and as boys we would go see it for ourselves,
for no repairs were made, as a reminder to future generations.
As if by some supernatural strength, the chain around
the grave had been broken in two.
This
immense and grievous tale alone would have been enough
to make us woefully mortal Yazoo boys susceptible to
the ghostly presence in our midst as we grew up in the
1940s. But on still, cold nights in the fall, as the
mists whirled and eddied out of the delta, and the wind
whistling and moaning from the woods made our hearts
pound in fear and excitement, we had other things to
remind us that this was unusual country to have been
born in." (Good Old Boy by Willie Morris)
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