Halloween approaches and the crisp fall air carries with it sights and smells of colorful leaves and ushers in the spirit, or perhaps spirits, of the season. Throughout human history this has been a time of year to wind down from the excitement of the warmer months and gather with friends and family, catch up on gossip and local happenings, and most importantly to tell stories. All regions and cultures have their own unique stories and beliefs that come with the season and Greene County is no exception.
Many of the notable hauntings in Greene County have been written about extensively, from the legend of Stovepipe in Rices Landing, the ghosts of Crow’s Rock and numerous hauntings in and around Waynesburg. These tales though are just a selection of the ghostly happenings that populate the fireside conversations in Greene County, but there are many more to give us chills on quiet autumn evenings.
Hiram was an old farmer who lived not too far from Pine Bank in Gilmore Township. A houndsman, he often spent his evenings with his faithful bluetick hound chasing raccoon throughout the hills of Greene County, but Wayne and Gilmore townships were his favorite haunts. Just north of Brave, Eddy’s Run, Wise Run and Phillips Ridge are a network of roads that are often referred to as ‘The Ridge’ by the locals, and has been a place common to hunters of every variety. ‘The Ridge’ was a place where Hiram could often be found listening to his dogs tracking and waiting for them to tree. In the fall of 1941, Hiram and a girlfriend of his loaded up a hound and went for a chase near Wise Run.
It was late fall, probably the early days of November and Hiram recollected that it was cold that night. Hiram and his girlfriend parked along the road, got their old hound, and turned him loose into the woods. The quiet evening had long been dark and the woods were still and, unlike a normal hunt, the silence remained unbroken. It seemed there were not any tracks to run in the area. The couple waited, hoping to hear their hound strike a trail; after some time, Hiram decided it would be best to collect his hound, and find another place to hunt where the tracking might be better.
Hiram set off into the woods, leaving his girlfriend behind in his truck, and called for his hound. He hiked through the woods, crossed a small stream, and started going up the hillside where it was likely the old bluetick hound would be found, and called for his dog even louder. He could hear rustling in the brush, and, hoping it was the hound, he began following the sounds eager to catch him quickly so he could move on and regain something of the night’s hunt.
He continued chasing the sounds but could not find his dog. Suddenly, the quiet night was broken by a woman screaming! It sounded like she was being attacked and her pleas for help echoed through the hills. Forgetting the hound and the hunt, Hiram ran as fast as he could back to the road. It took some time to get through the brush and trees and when he crossed the stream, the screaming stopped abruptly. Fearing the worst, he climbed the bank leading up to the road and found his girlfriend fast asleep with the hound sleeping beside the truck. Hiram shook his girlfriend, still in a panic, and when she woke, he questioned her. “Why were you screaming, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” His confused girlfriend replied, “What are you talking about? I wasn’t screaming.”
Hiram relayed the story to her, telling her how he was nearly on top of the hill and could hear a woman screaming in the general area of where they were parked. She thought he had gone mad and all he could do was wonder – if the dog was at the truck, what was the rustling he chased through the woods before he heard the screams?
Through the years, many tales of strange happenings have been shared about this general area. There are some who refuse to even drive on the road, citing experiences in the woods that they decline to discuss.
Many years ago, I had my own personal experience at those woods and a site nearby. It was in the late ‘90s and I was on a competition hunt being held at the Greene County Coon Hunters Association Club in Brave. It was a fairly small hunt that night with very few dogs entered and I found myself hunting with just one other gentleman and his dog. We drove up the ridge and parked on Eddy’s Run Road which runs parallel to and east of Wise Run. Our dogs quickly struck a track and worked down the hillside to Wise Run. We listened, and when it became apparent that they were going to cross the road and go up the hillside west of Wise Run, we got in our truck, drove down to Wise Run and saved ourselves a lot of walking. We got down there and found the dogs in a panic. They were running in circles on the road, looking visibly frightened, and barking aggressively towards the woods, but they would not leave the surface of the road. As soon as we stopped, both dogs ran to the tailgate waiting anxiously to be put back in their box. Being a competition with time rules and other formalities, we continued our hunt. We drove back to a different location along Eddy’s Run to resume our hunt. Again, we cut our hounds in the woods, but this time no track was struck. With time running short, we waited, but the dogs never barked.
Once time had run out and the hunt was over, we pulled out our tracking systems so that we could get an idea of where the dogs may have gone. Getting a strong signal, we followed it, and we were led directly to the new section of Phillips Cemetery, a fair distance away from where the Phillips Church once stood. The tracking systems were pointing right to the center of the cemetery, but there were no dogs to be found. We drove around trying to get a different angle on the situation, but no matter where we went, our trackers led us back to the cemetery. Giving up on technology, we began looking for our hounds the old-fashioned way, by searching areas and calling for them. Eventually, we found the dogs, just as we had before, running in circles on Wise Run, seemingly scared out of their minds.
We collected our hounds, ruminated on our experiences of the night, and went home. Could it have been a bobcat, or even a rogue mountain lion that Hiram heard so many years ago? Often times the cries of a bobcat or mountain lion can be confused with the sound of a woman screaming; or was it something else going on that has the ability to confuse GPS and radio tracking systems? We may never know, but, like many aspects of the oral history of our region, tales like this will often stick around and withstand the test of time.