HAUNTED HOUSE ON UNION CHAPEL: A True Story

This story happened a half a mile from where I live in rural small town, Weaverville, nestled in the Appalachians. It’s a true very surreal happening that took place on Union Chapel. It’s haunted.I’ve witnessed swirling flickering sparkles at night where the house once stood an aura comes and glows often at nights.

Mary lived there for 9 years. She had her granddaughter with her the day I met her. Mary had stopped her older model brownish Ford along Union Chapel Road just before the road climes dead ended steep up rural Hamburg Mountain. Mary had just pulled into the gravel driveway where the old dilapidated framed house had once stood. The old rusty oil tank that stood silent guard - gone. Twin huge oaks belying the age of the place - gone. The old rusty tin roofed asbestos house had disappeared conveniently in the middle of the night about eight months prior. Poof! Gone. Some say Dork the builder wanted it gone.

Mary and her granddaughter, Brooklyn, were walking around nostalgically on the leveled out former house-plot just walking, looking, Mary remembering bout what went on here years back. Mary and her husband and children had “raised my kids in this old haunted house.” Mary offered, stretching her arms out wide visualizing the old place as if it still stood .

Mary is a grandmother’s age. Brooklyn is a young ten year old, articulate, enthusiast reader/writer.  Brooklyn loves monster and spirit themes, and Steven King Novels. Which is probably why she wanted to see where the old spooky house once stood. Mary’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Worthy still lives further up toward the top end of Union Chapel.

Along my walk, I had noticed the Fairlane parked and stopped to greet them.

“Hi there!” Just can’t resist meeting new folks. It’s what I do. Curious, I stopped to chat, kinda what my walks consist of. “How y’all doing today?” Besides I was wondering why someone would stop at this old nothing place.

Mary is divorced. “He left us a couple years afore me and the kids moved out this here house. And he has since passed away. You from around here?”

“Yep, just up aways (pointing toward) on Rabbit Ridge.”

“Well hello,” Mary chimed back politely shading her eyes with her hand. “I used to live here some years ago.”

“Wow! Don’t say!”

I explained what “I knew the old dilapidated place. And it’s sudden disappearance(Perhaps for reasons untoward).” And in return, got a very nice haunted house story.

“It was haunted.”

Mary was nostalgic walking around the now empty flat plot where the old house lay. Mary strolled around, staring at the ground as if to find something,  something on the ground where her house had stood - empty up till it vanished. “It, it seems so real!” What was she looking for?

Mary  described the old creaky house as a bit creepy, inhabited by “invisible spirits” that roamed about unseen but heard and felt in the day, but mostly at night. Window shutters would bang against the house in the still of night with no wind in sight. “Empty stairs creaked. Screen doors slapped in no wind. There were always flashes of shadows here and ne’re. It were kinda spooky living here,” Mary confided to a total stranger, whom she seemed to trust.

Continuing, “Remember those old spring/loaded shades? Well they would suddenly slap, slap, slap, slap up open at a lightening flash on storm-darkened stormy nights.” Mary flung her hands as if trying to quiet those shades.

Creaky old creepy wooden steps (Mary pointed two-handed, as if the steps were still there) creaking in the dark of night - all of us in our separate bedrooms. The startled kids, huddled under covers pulled over their heads, would bolt scared to death, into my bed for comfort. (mental note)

“Shadows like cars a passing by out front on the old gravel road, hauntingly cast light shadows cross night-darkened walls. But there were no cars passing.”

Attic hidden room with ladies clothes in it and canned goods which had no access, discovered when they cut a hole in attic wall to build a closet

“We referred to the ghastly ghostly creature as Monkey Man. I mean people talked a story of a scientist who experimented with monkeys and his house exploded.”

Hummm, I thought to myself. This sounds a bit like the legend of old man Legend along Union Chapel. Wondered if it was same creature? I shared a bit of Legend’s story with Mary. Brooklyn took notes.

“And there (Mary pointed) there down there by that creek there was an old dilapidated abandoned icehouse straddling the small stream.” Mary offered “I used to slide down the hill on cardboard when it snowed,” she recalled. “We use-da pet the horses in the field on the east side. There was a horse and a donkey named Annie.”(mental note, my Annie and me us-ta walk down and feed Mule Annie carrots)

“The house was definitely haunted,” Mary offered. “We heard footsteps clunking along the wide oak floor boards throughout the house, days and nights. And the curtains would move as if someone had just brushed by them, accompanied by a sudden coolness in the room. We all noticed seeing our breath on a mid-summer’s eve. And, and my God eerily a chill would come over during the day - along with those creeky footsteps up, up in the upstairs attic. It gave me the shivers. We never went up there!”

The house had white asbestos shingle-siding (which may account for its sudden nightly removal?) “The tin roof, with its long covered sloping tin-roofed porch was a pleasant respite.” It was heated with oil with an old rusty oil drum right there on the left side (Mary pointed like she could still see it there).  “There wasn’t a garage just a gravelly grassy drive, curved around the front porch where we parked our car.” Mary’s outstretched arms outlined where that old porch once stood the description as if she was visually embracing it.  “You know that old car would just start up by itself sometimes?”

Me, “Yes! Yes, I remember this place and the old house quite  well, having passed by on my daily treks.”

Memories of the old house resurrected by Mary (and Brooklyn’s presence)reframed the house before our very eyes. There it was, albeit special somehow in Mary’s eyes, heart and soul.

Walking around Mary spotted a piece of a broken plywood about a foot square. She recognized it to be from the basement. It had black hand-painted tool outlined drawings and a screw peg where a hammer and a large crescent wrench once hung. “Should I pick it up? I don’t want to do something I shouldn’t.”

“Sure,” I replied sensing the urgency in Mary’s voice to reconnect, perhaps to loose the grip of haunt that had haunted her. “It’s a piece of your memory.”

Brooklyn carefully eased a snail off the underside of the artifact, carefully so as not to hurt the creature. Brooklyn carried the artifact to her Grandmother’s car.

“Renters lived here albeit briefly last year no one got to meet them and they packed up a left, their whereabouts unknown. Perhaps they were squatters? Perhaps the ghostly resident scared them off. Perhaps he/she/it is still here???”

Mary tuned into that, “Hummmm? Really?” It seemed she had a plan in her head about this old place.

Where do ghosts/spirits go when their house is torn down, demolished, carted away? Are ghosts revengeful toward certain inhabitants and demolition crews. Some say they possess the people living there. Some say they forever possess the area where their house stood. “Were those lost souls still here today? The day Mary and Brooklyn and I crossed paths???

Mary and Brooklyn say they both have spiritual powers!!! They liked it when I told them that I sometimes do not know from whence the words of my writing flow. Brooklyn agreed, claiming she has the same feeling when she writes. They both agreed Union Chapel may be haunted still.

“You know the creature, ghost, perhaps even old man John Legend was our ‘ghost’. Who knows. But you know he/it never harmed us. Scared us a bit, but just co-existed with us after all. I wonder? I wonder I’d he was here today?”

As they drove off, I noticed Illinois plates. Vivid heartfelt memories and experiences of this old house drew them back, that and a visit to Mrs. Worthy.

I continued my walk home, entertaining the fact that Union Chapel may be haunted, the habitat for spirits. After all a number of strange things that have occurred here since I’ve been living up here on Dry Ridge Mountain, lend themselves to spirits about - along with the bears and mountain lions and bobcats that roam the woods where I hike. Perhaps those shadows I see out of the corner of my eye are Monkey Man darting about still (Could that be the grouchy old John Legend, legendary Ghost of Union Chapel, I thought to myself?)

It appears the spirits along Union Chapel want their stories told. I will do that for them.

*This old place was bulldozed and carted off. They say the equipment operator died unexpectedly a month or so later and the cleanup workers are nowhere to be found. And what about those tiny sparkly lights that dance there at night? And I didn’t catch how her husband died???

I never shared this with anyone, but as Mary and Brooklyn drove off that day, I thought I saw there car just fade away. Dissapeared? A secret I have kept until today. Who were the spirits? I dare to say without a chill running up my spine?

tom tenbrunsel

Carl Sandburg Writer 2023

Author’s Note: Flash non-fiction story

I makes one wonder if ghosts are real or are there spirits among us? Do they just go about doing their ghostly thing? And do they have the power to influence good and evil? We’re Mary and Brooklyn real? Or spirts wandering about looking for something?