Living in the Woods...
Ghost Stories on Grassy Creek Road
Doreyl Ammons Cain
The backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains breath stories. Stories that ride the moist air and settle into the imagination of people who live deep in the woods. The forests with their dark coves foster images that may or may not exist. I’m begining to believe that’s why our mountain heritage holds so many tall tales and ghost stories.
I always wondered why Grandpa Tom Ammons scared the pants off us kids with his ghost stories. Like when my sister Amy, my brother David and I spent the night at Grandpa and Grandma’s cabin. Their homestead sat high on top of Ammons Mountain in Tuckasegee, Jackson County. The trip up the mountain took about an hour and a half, some of it steep climbing, and began on Grassy Creek Road. Dark coves, rattlesnakes curled on mica shining rocks and eerie shaped shadows decorated the length of Grassy Creek Road in our fertile young minds.
Sometimes, on the way back from a 12 mile walk to Sylva, Grandpa would stp by our house and let us follow him up the mountain to spend the night. This began a Grassy Creek adventure I’ll never forget...
Grandpa walked bent over, with a limp, clicking his walking cane in the mica flaked, rocky dirt road. We clung around him like flies on honey as dark shadows made patterns across the road.
“Ya hear that?”
said Grandpa as he stooped and cupped his hand around his ear.
Stopping in our tracks we said in one voice, “No, Grandpa.”
“Ya hear that pat, pat, pat behind us? That’s a painter salking it’s prey,” he said.
“We don’t hear it Grandpa,” we said, voices qivering and words falling in a mixed jumble as we clung closer to Grandpa.
A few minutes later he said, “Ya hear that?” We stopped and listened in the soft stillness of the woods untill finally we heard the faint pat, pat, pat. Whether it was real or not, we didn’t know.
Finally our journey brought us to the fork in Grassy Creek. To the left the creek curved to Grassy Creek Falls wher the water roared as it cascaded over a hugh boulder.
“In the old days if a person messed up and got into bad trouble he’d be thrown over the falls,” Grandpa spoke through the spraying sound of the falls. Then, turning to the right, he started another story.
“See those old boards laying on the back side of the creek? That was where a purty young girl and her husband lived when they first wed. She brought her own piano all the way up Grassy Creek on a cart pulled by oxen. She loved to play music that everyone could hear floating through the woods. Then she got consumption and died right there. Her husband was so sorrowful he left and never came back.He left the cabin just like when she died and it fell down into those boards that’s left. Now on real dark nights the sound of piano music still comes through the woods... from right here,” he points to the weather worn boards.
“Grandpa, it’s getting dark now, we’d better hurry!!” said Amy as we edged even closer to Grandpa.
These stories and articles are copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any form electronically, digitally,
printed matter or by any other means without written permission from the author, Doreyl Ammons Cain.
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