Editor’s note: In the spirit of Halloween, we pulled this collection of spooky Brown County stories from the Oct. 23, 2013 issue of the Brown County Democrat for readers to enjoy again — or for the first time.
In the land of the Liars Bench, one might expect to find a wide and terrifying variety of local stories of the ghostly, macabre and haunted.
Not so.
When pressed during this Halloween season, longtime Brown County State Park naturalist Jim Eagleman couldn’t come up with a single ghost story.
Sure, there was the tale of the bloody river through downtown Nashville, but in Eagleman’s telling, it was the result of an irresponsible butcher, practicing poor disposal techniques. Gross, but not scary.
Longtime Brown County resident and artist John Mills was stumped, as was Norma Crouch of Crouch’s Market.
Stories in several books of local folklore — including an 8- to 10-foot-tall “watcher” in southern Brown County, or a ghostly hand crawling and scratching around in Ogle Hollow — could not be verified by local folks. No one had seen or felt their presence, or even heard of them.
But three local storytellers did come up with a few tales:
The transparent toddler
“Everyone always asks for stories about the jail,” said Julia Pearson, director of the Brown County Historical Society.
She tells visitors one, but it’s not a ghost story; it’s about an inmate who had his own key:
“He would let himself out in the morning, go to the sheriff’s farm, chopped wood, have dinner that the sheriff’s wife fed him, carry some wood in, carry some wood back and lock himself up.”
The Pioneer Village’s two-story cabin in downtown Nashville is where Pearson’s actually spooky story is set.
“In the cabin, there was a mannequin that had a mask on top of another mask. It was frightening. She had on a wig, and she was supposed to be a schoolmarm.
“And I heard a little girl screaming, and I apologized to the mother. I said, ‘Thank you; I’ve been wanting to move the mannequin.’”
“So, when this other lady showed up with her two little boys, I thought she was talking about the mannequin. She said, ‘No, no. That baby crib in the corner. Where did it come from?’”
Most of the collection pieces are from Brown County attics and cellars, Pearson said.
“There was a little girl’s spirit hanging in the crib looking out,” Pearson said.
“It frightened her and the children, and she sent her husband, and he walked around the perimeter of the room, and that child’s spirit watched him the entire way.”
Who was this ghostly child? Pearson says she doesn’t know. After all, many children may have slept in that bed over the years.
Gangster meets his end
In 1933, John Dillinger and his gang escaped from the prison in Michigan City, cutting a swath of bank robbery and murder across the Midwest from South Dakota to Ohio.
But his story isn’t the one that Brown County Historian and archivist Diana Biddle tells. This is the tale of James Jenkins, convicted murdered and escaped convict.
Dillinger and his gang hatched a plan to distract their police pursuers by ditching Jenkins, one of the more dangerous members of the band.
But Jenkins proved tougher than expected and managed to steal a car and make his way south to the dirt roads around a Brown County village, then called Georgetown, now Bean Blossom.
Biddle recounted what happened while some of the locals were getting together to investigate a man seen walking toward the town.
“(Local man) Ben Kanter was coming across the road, and he had a shotgun, and Herb McDonald was starting to get in the car, and he had a shotgun. Ivan Bond was already in the car.”
“James Jenkins comes around the corner of the store, and he says, ‘I’m having car trouble,’ and Herbie said, ‘Well, if you check out OK, then we’ll help you, but we’ve had some trouble in these parts.’
“At that point, Jenkins reached for a gun and shot Herbie through the shoulder. Ben Kanter was standing so close to James Jenkins that the barrel of his gun actually hit him in the shoulder, so he had to take a step back to take a shot. Then he blew the side of his face off.”
By most reports, Jenkins was actually killed in Bean Blossom.
“But nobody in Bean Blossom wanted to take credit for it, so they loaded him up in the car and took him over to Doc Murphy’s office so that he ‘died’ in Nashville,” Biddle said.
The locals may have dragged his body out of Bean Blossom, but some say the spirit of that desperate criminal still lingers somewhere in Bean Blossom.
Maybe on the site of the old general store, next to McDonald’s Shopworth, where Biddle’s family works. Or maybe in Kanter’s abandoned house in Bean Blossom.
Tale of the missing tank
This story comes from the era of World War II, as recounted by writer and tall-tale-teller Hank Swain.
“On a late autumn afternoon in 1942, Fred Harrington, vice president of the Marmon-Harrington Manufacturing Company, was spending the weekend in his Brown County cabin near Kelley Hill.
“A lowboy truck had just unloaded the new Army tank, and Fred gave the driver instructions that he was to drive the tank 12 hours a day for the next few days to test for faulty parts. Fred’s company manufactured the tanks for the Army.
“On Monday morning, Tyson Milo went to town in his wagon to pick up some groceries. As he was returning, he started to nod off. Reaching the hill, he spotted a tank coming over the crest.
“When his mules saw this growling foreign monster, they bolted, and Ty was pulled from his seat.
“He stopped rolling in time to see the tank make firewood out of his wagon.
“The explosion popped a bag of flour in the groceries and sent up a big white cloud coating the tank. He shouted down to Bill Lyon’s place yelling, ‘Bill! Bill! Get your gun! The Germans are coming!’
“By the time Ty got down to Bill, the tank was disappearing in the dust down Wallow Hollow. They decided to follow the tank tracks, since that was the direction Ty’s mules had run. As they went, their apprehension increased. Wallow Hollow Bog was the only place in Brown County known to have quicksand.
“The tracks ended at the bog, and instead of a tank, they found only Ty’s mules facing the mire. They searched and they searched, but that tank was never found — lost forever to the shifting sands of Wallow Hollow.”
