Joe Tennis loves history. He also holds a special affection for Virginia and its folklore. A writer for the “Bristol Herald Courier” and a hiking columnist for “Appalachian Voices” in North Carolina, Tennis’ passion for ghost stories has resulted in a series of books: “Beach to Bluegrass” (2007), “The Marble and Other Ghost Tales of Tennessee and Virginia” (2007), “Sullivan County, Tennessee: Images of America” (2008), and a forthcoming work, “Finding Franklin,” that chronicles supernatural stories of the Old Dominion.
Dressed in a black cape, Tennis spoke about the legends he’s chronicled before an audience at Center in the Square’s History Museum of Western Virginia on October 24. “I wear the cape now at ghost tale readings as a way to kind of dress in black and come up with some sort of a motif,” he explains. As to why the South has spawned such a wellspring of shuddery lore, Tennis places the reason squarely on the Appalachian Mountains. They “have a mysterious quality to them. This is an exotic section of the country, it seems. It’s largely unknown–and even feared by city-dwellers. Hence, what makes you scared, or what you fear, or what you simply don’t understand, might make a ghost tale.”
One of the stories Tennis shared with his Center in the Square audience involved his alma mater, Radford University, and, of all people, Nostradamus. “We used to hear that legend when I was at the campus. They would say that Nostradamus had come up with some sort of a theory that the tallest building, or the building with the thirteenth floor in the valley where the river runs backwards, will fall, or something will happen to it.” To Tennis, this is “an example of some of the wild stories that can be told on college campuses. It’s probably just somebody reading a book and going crazy.”
The “ghost roosters” involved a man who staged cockfights and was later haunted by the spirits of the roosters he had killed. In this instance, there was a witness to the ghostly happenings – a man named Old Daddy Thomas. Tennis learned of the story from a gentleman who had met Thomas. “He told me the story that he called them ‘haint roosters’ [‘haint’ being another term for ghost]. He said, ‘Them’s a haint rooster,’ and he said that they came up and ‘We heard them ghostly roosters. . .We never saw any roosters but we swear, when that man was bit and buried, we heard the roosters as he was gettin’ buried.’”
One of Tennis’ favorite Virginia ghost tales concerns the “smoking ghost” of Honaker High School in Russell County. The school’s Principal, A. P. Baldwin, constantly smoked cigarettes, and people “have decided that those mysterious red dots that they see must be him smoking his cigarettes up in the gymnasium.”
The maternal side of Virginia’s ghostly heritage is represented by the Witch at Witch Duck Road, and the “Lady of the Lake.” The former, another Tennis favorite, was Grace Sherwood. Tossed into the Lynnhaven River in 1706, she was able to free herself; she was later incarcerated until 1714, and lived until 1740. Tennis always tells this story because he heard it growing up in Virginia Beach. “It’s just something that I’ve heard all my life. I love that story, and it makes a good story.” Set in the Great Dismal Swamp, the “Lady of the Lake” dates back approximately a century or more. “You can see these mysterious lights hovering above that lake at night and they can’t explain where the lights are coming from. People say it is fox fire, which is a natural illumination. This lady is floating along with her lover, and she can’t get to the other side. They see her in her canoe…and they see there are little fireflies in their lamp.”
When it comes to paranormal investigators, or “ghost hunters,” Tennis doesn’t dismiss them, instead viewing their efforts as complementary to his own. “I consider them to be researchers as much as anybody else who would be a witness to history.”
In documenting these stories of the Old Dominion’s supernatural folklore tradition, Tennis hopes Virginians will better understand this part of their history. “You do not have to go to Pennsylvania or Vermont or anywhere very far away to get good history, good stories, and good legends. You don’t have to look for ‘The Amityville Horror’ house to have a good story. I think the main thing, too, is to appreciate your history [be]cause I think so much of what I’ve done constantly is to always talk about the history behind the place, how the place took its name, [and] what happened there.”
By Melvin E. Matthews [email protected]
