October 24, 1976, Sherry Hale, The Daily News Journal
Do you believe in tales about the supernatural or do you think they are just silly stories conjured up by grandmothers and grandfathers to entertain the children? We may never know for sure if the spooky legends and ghost stories we hear about places are true, but they are always fun to hear, especially at Halloween-time when ghosts and goblins are on every corner.
Every locality has its share of legends and Rutherford County is no exception. There are many local residents who swear by things that go bump in the night, and many of them have good reasons for their feelings.
Spirits seem to be abundant in this area. People around Almaville Road have a restless spirit who supposedly roams the ‘hainted’ thicket on the Joe Gourley farm. Legend has it that the spirit of Lt. James Morton, a Revolutionary War veteran who is buried on the farm, didn’t go to rest and still walks in the thicket to keep an eye on his old place.
Another restless spirit resides in the Kappa Sigma fraternity house on North Maple Street. The ghost of a 45-year-old woman stays in the house, which was used as a hospital during the Civil War, Gary Thomas, a Kappa Sigma member said. He noted that this spirit especially lies to ‘hang’ around when parties are held.
“After a party the other night everyone had gone,” he related. “One guy went down to the barn when he heard a door slam upstairs, and there is not a door upstairs.”
The woman has also been sighted standing in a doorway of the house when no one was on the premises. A thorough search following the appearance turned up no one, Thomas said.
Pi Kappa Phi also has a live-in ghost, Alvin Brown, a PKP member, revealed. When the fraternity bought its house on Halls Hill Pike, members found a hangman’s noose in the closet. The story behind the noose is that a married man bought a house for his lover, but refused to leave his wife and family for her. The girl couldn’t take his rejections any longer and hanged herself in the closet. The lady spirit makes herself known to people by causing the florescent light to blink whenever it is in the room where the death closet is located, Brown said.
Female spirits seem to inhabit Rutherford County more than the ghosts of men. Another female ghost is said to be found around Nice’s Mill, Brown said. The legend behind this lady is that she caught her husband and his lover in a car at the mill, which was their rendezvous spot, and decapitated them with a long butcher knife.
In order to get the vindictive ghost of the wife to appear today, a ritual must be performed, which was the procedure the husband had done. Point your car towards the woods, race the engine twice, flash the lights three times, then cut off the engine. After waiting thirty-minutes to two-hours, a small blue light will appear floating across the fields. This is a warning from the ghost to leave. If you are brave enough to stay, the woman with her knife will appear and look in the car to see if she recognizes anyone. If she does, look out! She will try to get in.
“A friend of mine has scratches on his car when she did it,” Brown related. I have never seen her, but ones in my fraternity have been out there and two or three of them have had their cars scratched up.”
Another spooky female who resides in the county is ‘Monkey Woman’. One of the legends about this woman is that she was killed in a car accident on a bridge that crosses Stewarts Creek on One-Mile Pike. Part of the wrecked car is still in Stewarts Creek and she haunts it. Whenever couples have been stopped on this bridge to gaze at the moon cross this bridge, she is said to leap out from under the bridge onto the car.
The second legend about Monkey Woman takes place on Jones Road. The story goes that a woman was caught in radioactive fallout which turned her into immortal covered with long white hairs. She lives in a cave to protect her immortality, but gets out at night and roams neighboring communities looking for her lost child. She has been sighted walking on fence tops and lurking around barns. Monkey Woman doesn’t like to be bothered and will attack persons violating her privacy. Mrs. Kay Yates of Murfreesboro noted that she and some high school friends once had a close call with Monkey Woman.
“I didn’t see it because the trees were real tall and it was pitch black,” she related.”We had been sitting there a long time, when all of the sudden the trees started moving like there had been a wind. Then, we heard the loudest scream! It couldn’t have been human. We like to all had a wreck.”
Monkey Woman has been known to drive people living on the farm where her cave is located to move – very quickly.
“The guy that lived on the farm where she is packed up a left, and they asked him why and he said he woke up one morning and saw Monkey Woman looking in the window” Brown said.
Female apparitions have been almost everywhere in the county. Swamp Road has an interesting spirit that comes out with the rain. It seems that on a dark, rainy night, around 1940, a little old lady holding an umbrella appeared from nowhere and kept walking around the two curves on the road. That same night, big balls of fire were seen rolling on the fields. The woman hasn’t been seen since but who knows, she might decide to return the next rainy day.
Fact or fiction, the legends that exist in Rutherford County are interesting and a little bit scary. So, on Halloween night when you see innocent looking ghosts and goblins roaming your neighborhood, look again. They might be for real.