A Grand Tour of Southern Ghosts

“Peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghosts”—A Grand Tour of Southern Ghosts

The weather was raw and freezing on that fateful January day in a remote valley called Shelton Laurel in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The Civil War had been raging for two long years and the tensions among the hardscrabble farmers who eked out their existence in the valleys, coves, and backwoods of this beautiful, but harsh, landscape, had been heightened. Especially since Governor Zebulon Vance—himself a descendent of these mountain people—had ordered conscription for all able-bodied men into the Confederate army. Secession had been resisted by these strong people who worked their own farms here despite the eloquent pleadings of the refined plantation owners who owned, body and soul, the slaves who worked their farms in the flatter areas of the state.

Confederate troops poured into the Shelton Laurel Valley following a raid on Madison County’s seat, the small town of Marshall. Mountain men, desperate for salt, descended upon the salt stores there and carted away much of it along with some other loot. They had also looted a few homes including the home of Colonel Lawrence Allen where two of his young children lay sick with scarlet fever. News of the raid reached Col. Allen in Bristol, Tennessee and was quickly followed by the tragic news that his two children had not survived the fever. Colonel Allen and Lieutenant Colonel James Keith—childhood friends—marched into the remote valley in search of the men responsible for the raid.

Coming upon a handful of women, the soldiers brutalized them as they refused to reveal the whereabouts of their menfolk. Two elderly women were whipped while two younger women were hung by the necks until they were nearly dead. Another young woman was tied to a tree while her infant child was placed on the snow-covered ground just out of reach. Still, the whereabouts of the men remained a mystery.

The soldiers soon found some fifteen men—ranging in age from adolescents to old men—rounded them up and began marching their rag-tag prisoners towards justice in East Tennessee. After marching but a few miles, the men were stopped and Lt. Col. Keith ordered five of the men to kneel. One of the older men, 60-year-old Joe Wood, begged, “For God’s sake, men, you are not going to shoot us? If you are going to murder us, at least give us time to pray!” Sneering, Lt. Col. Keith ordered his men to fire upon the five pitiful souls. After the first volley rang out and the five dropped quickly, five more men knelt for the last time. Trembling and with halting words in a voice belying his youth, 13-year-old David Shelton pleaded for mercy. The soldiers fired anyway only wounding the boy. His body was riddled with eight more bullets. Within minutes thirteen men lay dead (two of the original fifteen had escaped the previous night).

While the volleys of the executioners’ shot rang out in 1863, the sound of the shots still resound to this day and locals still speak of the tragedy. In whispered tones they also speak of the horror that is still palpable at the site. Tales of ghosts here are not uncommon.

Perhaps no region of the United States can boast more ghosts than the Southeast. The Southern landscape is thronged with legends, lore, ghost stories, and actual paranormal activity that plays out among the live oaks and laurels, pines and palms. From the Mason-Dixon Line south in a crescent line to the Mississippi River, the South possesses a brutal and bloody history, a deep storytelling culture, and diverse and devout spiritual traditions which contribute to its haunted nature. In countless places like the Shelton Laurel Valley, tales of this violence are told and retold and become ghost stories.

Of any region of this country, the South arguably has the most violent past. Even before the Spanish Conquistadors hacked their way through the forests and native peoples of the South, barbarity and bloodshed built the Native American civilizations that originally existed here. Europeans brought disease, misery, slaves, and warfare that brutalized the exquisite Southern landscape. The Civil War brought mechanical murder to the South, baptizing the earth with blood. The sadness that descended on the land after the South’s loss in the war was channeled into bigotry that continues to rend the Southern psyche with hatred and violence. Despite this savage history Southerners developed a refined and diverse culture whose achievements have become marvels recognized worldwide.