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CHAPTER 1
HEART OF APPALACHIA
Cumberland Gap — Sugar Run — Powell River — Josephine — Wise — Breaks — Cedar Bluff — St. Paul
The Last Rebel
Cudjo's Cave — Cumberland Gap, Lee County
Deep below the earth, Confederate warriors scratched their names in a dark cavern at the Cumberland Gap, captured by what one artilleryman called "the most gorgeous and weird scenery imaginable." As many as sixty men left signatures — in candle smoke — on the cavern's walls and ceiling. But one, it's believed, might have also left behind his spirit.
Virginia makes its last reach to the west at the Cumberland Gap — a natural notch on Cumberland Mountain where it was once thought that America's greatest Civil War battle would be fought. Confederate general Felix Zollicoffer was sent to fortify the gap as early as 1861. Later, as the war lingered, some surmised that any invasion — by the North or South — would come through this cut in Lee County at the border of both Tennessee and Kentucky.
For forty-four months, the Union and the Confederacy played a game of wait and see. Soldiers — wearing both blue and gray — stripped beautiful Cumberland Mountain of its coat of many colors. They knocked down forests so that limbs and logs would not block gunfire. But, what these soldiers may have really fought was boredom. Four times the Cumberland Gap changed hands. All the while, soldiers probably panicked because poor roads made it hard to re-supply the barren site with food.
For storage, troops turned to the crevices of the cavern — the Soldiers Cave — on the Virginia side of Cumberland Gap. Hundreds wandered into this world of wonder, fascinated by the formations of stalagmites and stalactites. Colonel James E. Rains of the 11th Tennessee Infantry bragged of the cave in an 1862 letter to his wife, saying, "There are towers & statues, pools of clear water, beautiful arches, & splendid chambers ... It is perhaps the most beautiful cave in the world."
Long after the war was over, a section of this subterranean system became King Solomon's Cave when it was developed for tours in the 1890s. Then, sometime after 1934, a tunnel was dug to link the Soldiers Cave to King Solomon's Cave. After that, the entire cave system won a new moniker — Cudjo's Cave, for a novel of the same name by J.T. Trowbridge, released during the war in 1864. In that book, Cudjo and the other characters explore a large cave in the Cumberland Mountains and are amazed, as Trowbridge writes, by "the vastness of the cave, the darkness, the mystery, the inky and solemn stream pursuing its noiseless course."
Darkness and mystery remain part of the modern tours of the real-life Cudjo's Cave — unlike earlier years, when the roadside attraction was illuminated with dozens of electrical lights. For decades, commercial tour brochures in the mid-1900s advertised the unparalleled beauty of this place, where "calcite crystals scintillate like millions of glittering diamonds."
Rangers of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park now call this Gap Cave and lead tours with just flashlights and helmet bulbs to light the way.
It is in this darkness, some rangers say, that a leftover looms: the bearded face of a Confederate officer, hovering back and forth between the two main channels of the cavern. This ghostly man appeared to join a cave tour during September 2009. Inside the cavern's Music Room, the spirit briefly showed his countenance to John Gillenwater, a seventeen-year-old ranger, who recalled, "I never thought there was a ghost — until I saw that."
About a week later, John Gillenwater and another young ranger, Lucas Wilder, showed off Cleopatra's Bathtub, a shallow pool, while leading a middle-aged couple on a typical tour. Lucas took the lead but was soon taken aback when he noticed what appeared to be disembodied legs, running in the distance.
Slightly shaken, Lucas marched on to the Music Room. He sang his usual mournful version of Long Black Veil, demonstrating the dynamic echo of the cavern. Then he climbed the forty-four steps of the Ultimate Thighmaster, a steep set of often-slick stairs. Lucas held his head down to maintain his balance.
Looking up, he froze in fear.
"There was a man sitting at the top of the steps. He was looking straight at me," Lucas said. "I was scared to death when I saw it. I was just ready just to fall off."
This man was stout. He wore a Confederate officer's jacket with two button rows on the front, a colored strip down the side of his pants and boots that stretched about halfway up his calves. He had no hat, Lucas said, but he did wear a beard — unkempt, gray and stretching to the center of his chest.
Lucas saw the man for about four seconds. "He didn't look dead," Lucas said. "His eyes were hollow. There was no eyeball that I saw. It was more like just a hollow eye."
Comparing notes, Lucas and John later realized they must have — separately — seen the same thing: a ghostly Confederate officer with a scraggly beard. "He was a big guy," John Gillenwater recalled. "I didn't get the feeling that he was there to hurt anybody."
Possibly this Confederate officer had signed the wall of the cave with graffiti, but his name was erased when the Soldiers Cave was connected to King Solomon's Cave in the 1930s. And, perhaps now, the rangers say, that's why the last rebel roams, back and forth, letting his weathered face be known inside that deep, dark cave at the Cumberland Gap.
Echoes of War
Sugar Run, Lee County
At thirteen, the coal miner's daughter raced, tearing off with her aunt and a family friend — breath-heavy, her long hair flapping in the breeze. This girl — nicknamed Sis — followed an old, familiar path across a ridge between Fleenortown and Sugar Run. But as the aunt and the friend climbed over a fence, Sis went under — just to be different.
That's when she heard it: the ground shaking, men screaming, horses running and great gobs of gunfire. It sounded just like a battle was going on!
This Lee County area had been spotted by Civil War skirmishes. Fights erupted over which side should control the Cumberland Gap, and that sparked a battle for nearby Jonesville in 1864. A few months earlier, the Lee County Courthouse at Jonesville went up in flames, having been torched by Union soldiers in 1863, hardly more than a few hills from this ridge.
On this spring day, in 1953, Sis heard what appeared to be the echoes of war. It lasted twenty seconds — or, just enough time for the girl to go under the fence and get off the ground.
Standing up, all was silent. The shaken girl ran ahead to her aunt and friend.
"Did you hear that?" Sis asked.
"Hear what?"
"A battle," Sis said. "There were cannons. It sounded like wagons were rolling so close to me, I thought I was going to be run over."
"No," one said, laughing. "We didn't hear a thing."
Again, on another day, this girl would cross the ridge and follow that old, familiar path. But never again would she climb under that fence and put her ear to the ground.
Standing on the Rock
Powell River, Wise County
One old-timer simply called Sally "fat — in a family way." Still, others were more polite, saying Sally was heartbroken: her beau had gone away and now so would she.
Sally had once lived in the wilds of Wise County with her father, where the Roaring Fork meets Canepatch Creek. But she had moved on, around 1900, and that's when she had toyed in the troubles of love.
After a while, Sally grew despondent — and so sad that one night she left her sister's house in her nightgown and ran to the Powell River.
Carefully, Sally's sister followed Sally's tracks — right to a rock at the river. There, it was decided, Sally had taken a fatal leap at a swimming hole in the woods of Wise County. A diver soon retrieved Sally's body, but it was not the last time, some say, that Sally would be seen — or heard.
One night, some boys — knowing nothing of Sally — went down to the same swimming hole. There, they noticed a crying girl, dressed in white. She stood on a rock, lifted her arms to heaven and plunged into the river. This girl popped out of the water, like she was drowning. And one of the boys rushed over, reaching out to help. But then, he would find, there would be nothing to grab.
On later nights, more continued to hear howls at what became known as Wise County's haunted swimming hole. Others, too, said they could see the ghost of Sally, standing on the rock and her arms lifted to heaven just before taking yet another final plunge into the Powell River.
Song in the Breeze
Country Cabin of Norton — Josephine, Wise County
Kate Peters Sturgill practically breathed the ballads of the ancient Appalachians. She was a natural-born mountain musician, a quiet lady and sweet. She sang in churches, wrote songs and kept her guitar tuned to the tone of her own voice.
Born in 1907 at a Wise County coal camp called Josephine, Kate played piano about as soon as she could talk. She married a coal miner when she was a teenager, and she had children. She also had her music, and she knew that music was best when it could be shared.
Kate played in a string band in 1927. Then, in the dark days of the Great Depression, she made plans for her community to gather and hear songs, winning help from family and friends to construct Josephine's Recreation Center.
Built in 1937, this quaint cabin rose beside a mellow stretch of the Powell River. Eventually dubbed the Country Cabin, the pole log building was the site of square dances, games and fast-fiddling music. It would, in time, become no less than an institution, and, in 2001, spawn a successor: the larger Country Cabin II, standing near the original cabin, not far from Norton; the place offers regular Saturday night shows that have become an integral part of the Crooked Road: Virginia's Heritage Music Trail.
Only, Kate would not know any of this — at least not in life. The Country Cabin lost its original purpose by World War II, hardly more than a few years after it was built. No longer a social gathering place, it became a mattress factory and also a rental home, tucked beneath a bevy of pine trees. By the time of her death in 1975, Kate must have felt like at least one dream had been dashed — or that she had stopped strumming a song before its end.
In 1978, the cabin's original intent was resurrected. It again became a place to clog and a gathering spot for people to make both apple butter and music. At least twice, too, it's believed that Kate returned — like a song in the breeze.
A longtime Country Cabin supporter noticed Kate's spirit one night in 1980. White light surrounded her ghostly form — sitting on a bench, with her arms crossed, watching musicians perform on the original Country Cabin stage. Kate's ghost stayed for about three minutes, it's told, and not much later she appeared again outside, this time at a homecoming festival. Of that second time, like the first, it's said Kate again wore a grin, apparently happy that old mountain music could be shared.
Curse of the Coffin
University of Virginia's College at Wise — Wise, Wise County
Not everyone — or maybe not anyone — could afford a casket at the Wise County Poor Farm. This was, after all, a home to the homeless, the unfortunate — and, yes, a few wayward women. For years, poverty-stricken souls of Wise County lived, died and were buried here.
Now, in the afterlife, these souls — restless in spirit, perhaps even before death — have seemed to appear again.
For years known as Clinch Valley College, the University of Virginia's College at Wise moved to the grounds of the poor farm when the school was established in 1954. Then, as the college grew by 1957, it was deemed that more space — on Cemetery Hill — would be needed to erect new buildings. That meant moving graves, some from the poor farm and others from a private plot.
At first, college officials had no idea how many graves had to be moved. Estimates grew continually, starting with an initial guess of forty and eventually climbing to the reality of moving more than one hundred.
Today, some believe, not all graves have been found — and the remains of some lost souls could lie on Cemetery Hill beneath Zehmer Hall and the nearby John Cook Wyllie Library.
Librarian Anne Duesing worked in the basement of the library one night during 1997. And as the clock approached 1:00 a.m. she heard footsteps — mysterious footsteps. The librarian called the campus police. Then she bravely decided to follow the stepping sound. Slowly, she eased around a bookshelf. And then she saw it: "a white skirt swirling around. I didn't see the body," she said. "I just saw the white skirt. I just saw it going!"
This frightened librarian checked out of the library. And after that she swore to stop working so late, realizing that she must have witnessed the lady in white, an apparition previously reported by a custodian. It's believed to be the spirit of a woman whose grave was not found or, perhaps, one who resented having her final remains removed.
Wakes on the poor farm were routinely held at Crockett Hall, a stone structure standing since 1924. This handsome building took its name from Sam Crockett, who played a key role in establishing the college. It was once a residence hall and later became campus offices. Yet, in the days of the poor farm, it also morphed into a morgue: caskets would be opened, and the living would pay tribute to the dead. Still, some coffins were not buried but used again — over and over.
Charles Lewis discovered one such pine box in 1975. It had presumably stayed in storage for decades in the basement of Crockett Hall until Mr. Lewis, a theater professor, needed the prop for a production of James L. Rosenberg's The Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch.
Mr. Lewis was not superstitious — just a stickler for making sure all props were accurate, even a tiny casket. But perhaps this prop — this portal of the poor farm — should have stayed put.
That coffin had not been in the building a week, maybe, when students took note of an elderly gentleman dressed in old clothes wandering around the back of the theater building. "Everybody was seeing the same person, but he was not a person — not a theater patron, not a friend of anybody. People began seeing an elderly gentleman, especially in the hallway," said Jewell Worley, one of the college's drama students. "And so he became the ghost of the theater building that was associated with having lost his coffin."
Some say that coffin — what many just called the Box — would move by its own accord. The creepy casket still remains a valued prop in the college's theater department, though no one knows its true history: how it was used, if it was used or even if it might have once been buried. Theater officials do resist getting rid of it, though some also believe in a certain curse of the coffin: come into contact with it, it's told, and you may be afflicted with some bodily harm — perhaps a spirit of the Wise County Poor Farm.
Gone but Not Forgotten
Breaks Interstate Park — Breaks, Dickenson and Buchanan Counties
Richard Potter climbed to the rocky pitch of Pine Mountain as early as 1821. He was an herb doctor. He built a log cabin for his wife, Teenie, and their ten children. Mr. Potter also grew particularly famous for making applejack, and, it's said, he had a habit of offering each overnight guest a glass of peach brandy.
By the time Mr. Potter died in 1882 at age ninety, he had acquired most of what is now Breaks Interstate Park — the home of a grand canyon at the northern end of Pine Mountain. By morning, clouds hover here along the Kentucky–Virginia border in a gorge, where the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River chews boulders for breakfast. At midday, tumbling waters stay shrouded with the misty sprays of the river's tortuous course. Come suppertime, Pine Mountain's endless run of rocky ledges disappears — first from fog and then into darkness when the sun dissolves over Kentucky's western horizon.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Haunts of Virginia's Blue Ridge Highlands"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Joe Tennis.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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