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Urban
Legends, tall tales,and more unexplained
of the Ozarks
by Ed
Crabtree
With
the month of October, some of us turn our
attention to that yearly event when little
ghosts and goblins arrive on our doorsteps
asking for treats in lieu of tricks. But
others are drawn to the telling of ghost
stories as well as subjects of the
unexplained, subjects the older Ozarkers
were reluctant to discuss.
Although
the paranormal is a favorite preoccupation
for some year round, at Halloween the
media brings into our homes a multitude of
horror movies, some of which are absolute
fiction while others are based on wives
tales or urban legend. Tall tales and
ghost stories abound throughout the United
States, and the Ozarks is certainly no
exception. Virtually every community has
some haunted place, or some sort of
unexplained happening that is a favorite
subject around campfires in the summer, or
in front of a comfortable fireplace on a
cold Ozarks night. The audience being
spellbound by the story related to them
from someone who "knows" of someone who
had the misfortune to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time and suffered the
consequences.
Halloween
mischief itself has even become legendary,
we have heard reports of the days when our
Fathers and Grandfathers were young, and
thought it great fun to swipe someone's
buggy and place in some improbable
location such as on top of a local
structure, the town railway depot being
one favorite of pranksters. Another
legendary tale tells of some local old
gentleman that had two out houses, each
year the boys would turn one over and
right the outhouse turned over the
previous year, a variation on that tale
has the pranksters moving the outhouse a
few feet backward so that the unsuspecting
owner of the privy might fall into the pit
normally found under the house of
convenience while making a necessary trip
in the middle of an Ozarks dark Halloween
night. Obviously this would not be fun for
the intended victim to fall into the
contents of what is normally found under
the outhouse.
Halloween
mischief aside, the Ozarks has so many
colorful folk legends and ghost stories,
and amazingly enough, many of these can be
found right on the internet. As more and
more writers learn how to self publish
their short stories on the web and more
research into our culture is posted, the
probability of finding tales about your
specific region of the Ozarks, increases
exponentially each day. For instance
several months ago we were trying to find
some information on Camp Winoka and the
legend surrounding it, and we failed to
locate anything on the Internet regarding
this favorite urban legend. Today you can
find several websites with relative
documents on the estate, for instance in
an article entitled; The Springs Of Greene
County By Loring Bullard (1) we find the
early history of the site;
Some
of the early spring-endowed, park-like
areas in Greene County were privately
owned. The Winoka Club, founded in
about 1890 as a hunter's club, was
located along the James River, south of
Springfield. One of its early owners
was Dr. Shepard. The club featured a
number of springs, including the one
Shepard considered to be the county's
largest, Big Boiling Spring, as well as
a group of ten beautiful springs in a
small, narrow canyon--the Cotton Gin or
Roaring Springs. These springs were
diverted into sculptured pools and
fountains in addition to providing the
lodge's drinking water supply. Later,
spring water was used to fill the
swimming pool. A fire destroyed the
lodge in 1977 and today the remains of
the once prestigious Winoka Club are
barely
discernible………..
But
in a web document on the Springfield
Greene County Library (2) website we find
a list of frequently asked questions
regarding local lore, one of which being
the legend surrounding the old Winoka
Club. The document "What Is Winoka Lodge?"
gives us the following information;
The
Springfield-Greene County Library
receives frequent questions about "The
Camp where Girl Scouts were murdered
along Lake Springfield" or "along the
James River." After a search for a
campsite matching that location, staff
discovered that Winoka Lodge is the
site in question. Located near Lake
Springfield, near the interchange of
Highways 60 and 65, Winoka Lodge was
owned by the Schweitzer family in the
1920's and used as a summer home. The
name "Winoka" means "Great Spirit".
Stories have circulated that Winoka
Lodge is haunted, but this is
unsubstantiated. The lodge's remote
location along Lake Springfield and
numerous unused buildings on the
property may have resulted in a
mistaken attribution to an incident,
which occurred near Locust Grove,
Oklahoma. Three girl scouts were
murdered at a Girl Scout camp near
Locust Grove, Oklahoma, on June 13,
1977, and the campsite closed
permanently the following day due to
that incident.
So were the reports
of this terrible crime in Oklahoma, the
basis for rumors and urban legends
surrounding Winoka in Springfield?
Also in these same
FAQs (frequently asked questions) on the
Library web site one can find the truth
regarding the old Sheedy Estate, a.k.a,
the Albino Farm.
Countless
numbers of those of us who grew up in and
around Springfield remember being drawn by
the legend, north along National Avenue to
Greenlawn Cemetery which was scary enough,
then out into the country to the Albino
farm and nearby Hatchet Man bridge. Now a
careful study of these type tales reveals
the fact that just about every community
has a story about some old bridge where
the hapless motorist careless enough to
drive across the haunted structure late at
night, will certainly suffer some dire
consequences. The stories all tell of a
murdered corpse being found near the
bridge or perhaps a ghostly apparition
that manifests itself just as some young
couple happens to be driving across the
bridge. But the Albino Farm tale seems to
be unique to Springfield.
With
each passing generation the various
unfounded legends have evolved around the
old Sheedy Estate, many as a result of a
one-time albino caretaker. Due to the rare
genetic trait of albinism a lack of skin
pigmentation making the victim of this
trait appear ghostly white and sometimes
sensitive to sun light, stories have
emerged telling of this caretaker only
coming out at night. To this day there are
even reports of strange lights on what is
left of the once sprawling estate, much of
it now having been developed into
subdivisions. On a dare many a young
person, have made their way after dark out
to the estate, and once there, become
victims of their own imagination, thinking
that hey had been witness to some sort of
unexplainable phenomena. In retrospect
many of us now feel that it was totally
stupid to do what we thought then was so
totally cool, that of driving past the
estate with our dates and scaring them
half to death. What makes these places of
legend so attractive? Is our natural human
curiosity, or our preoccupation with
obtaining answers to such basic questions
such as the meaning of life itself and
what lies ahead of us on the road of life
when that path enters that great unknown
region after death.
Yes
the Ozarks has its share of colorful
legends, and people whose eccentricities
caused them to bear the stigma of public
rumors and suspicions. One such person was
Miss Jeanne Wallace, also known as the
Mountain Maid of Roaring River. A native
of New York City who grew up and trained
as nurse, Miss Wallace established a
homestead in 1892 overlooking Roaring
River, near Cassville Missouri. Apparently
she was a gifted clairvoyant, as published
reports tell that the trail leading to her
cabin was well worn by those seeking her
advice. It is said that if one lost a
personal possession, you could seek out
Miss Wallace who would tell you of the
location of the lost item. (3) The legend
has it that Miss Wallace's father was born
with a "sixth sense" which leads into our
next "old Wives' Tale, that of a child
being born with a veil over its
face.
In
the process of researching material for
The Message Tree I have interviewed many
individuals that were life long residents
of these old hills, many of which had
strange and unusual tales. Ghost riders
and wagons that can be heard traveling
along the road, but not seen, animals that
will not drink from waters said to be
haunted, (see The Ghost Pond of Reeds
Spring, (4) ) as well as other reports of
paranormal happenings too numerous to
mention here. But one that piqued my
curiosity was the story that some tell of
being born or knowing someone born with a
veil over the face. Everyone tells that
the veil or caul marks the infant, as one
who will grow up to demonstrate
extraordinary skills of wisdom or perhaps
even display physic abilities. In
actuality the veil or caul was a piece of
natal membrane that had to be removed from
over the newborn infants face so that the
child could take its first breath. Some
people would preserve this material out of
superstition, going so far as to dry the
membrane and then keep it as a family
memento, some folks were even said to have
placed the dried veil in the family bible.
Objective researchers would probably say
that a child born in this condition was in
no way marked in a paranormal sense, any
more so that a child born with webbed
toes, and extra finger or some other
genetic trait that only occurs once in
several thousand births. So is this just
another colorful rural legend, or do you
know someone who was born with a veil and
seems to have a "sixth" sense.
Veils
and cauls were among those subjects, that
until just a few months ago, the
researcher could not find information
regarding such on the Internet. Another
topic of the paranormal not found in the
archives of the web until recently is that
of "Feather Crowns."
Remember
those wonderful old feather pillows that
every one had before the days of store
bought polyurethane nightmares? In the old
days when it was common for folks to be
allowed the dignity to pass away, in the
familiar surroundings of their own home,
after the body had been removed for
burial, someone had the task of removing
and cleaning of the bed fixtures, such as
the sheets and pillows. Sometimes a loved
one of the recently deceased would find a
feather crown in the pillow. Often the
family of the deceased would tear the
pillow apart to see if their loved one had
gone to heaven, as a variation on the
legend has if that the "crown" was wove by
an angel.
Resembling
a ball or perhaps a bird's nest, those who
have seen such say that nothing so
beautiful in its intricacy could happen by
pure chance, but only with some sort of
divine assistance. However naysayers claim
that these occur naturally, probably due
to the feather pillow not having been
"fluffed" correctly.
You
may ask, "Well Ed, what do you believe of
all the tales of the Ozarks?" And I would
have to admit that in public, that I might
take the position of the objective
researcher, always looking for a plausible
explanation, but in private, I would tell
you that I am like a lot of other
Ozarkers, that although skeptical of the
paranormal, you certainly won't find any
of us in one of the haunted places of the
Ozarks on a cold dark night!
sources;
(1) The
Springs Of Greene County By Loring Bullard
http://www.watershedcommittee.org/publications/springs_of_greene_county/life_of_leisure.htm
(2) What
is Winoka Lodge? http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/faq/files/lhwinoka.cfm
(3) Jeanne
Wallace, Mountain Maid of Roaring River
(from "Stories of the Ozarks" by Irene
Horner) http://www.cswnet.com/~sschmitz/carrstory.html
(4) The
Ghost Pond of Reeds Spring, By James F.
(Jim) Barrett http://www.themessagetree.com/july2001/ghostpondjuly2001.html
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