In northwestern Arkansas, near
Fayetteville, there is a lonesome valley -- a hollow, or as some in the region
call it, a “holler”. The story goes that in the early 1850s a couple from
Fort Smith decided to settle in the area after they married. The area is
steeped in the history of Arkansas. A
hill near the hollow is where the Native American Sequoyah invented the
Cherokee alphabet. According to the
story, on the night of their wedding, the couple were settling into their new
home, a modest log cabin. The young woman walked over to the dying fire
and stirred the coals hoping to warm herself in the late autumn evening.
As she poked at the fire, a spark leapt onto her wedding dressing and instantly
ignited. Horrified, and apparently forgetting the old “stop, drop, and
roll” technique, she ran from the cabin off into the hollow. The next
morning, the young groom found his bride burned to a crisp. Since this
horrific accident, people have reported hearing the ghostly screams of the
young bride echoing through the hollow, often on chilly fall nights. For
this reason, locals have referred to the valley as “Ghost Hollow.”
Despite its spooky name, Ghost
Hollow has been a popular hiking spot for years. Looking at old issues of
the Fayetteville Democrat, one finds scores of reports of church youth
groups, civic groups, and families traveling there for Sunday afternoon
picnics. That there might be anything dangerous about the area is never
reported. It seems that, although people have reported hearing the burning
bride’s screams at night, locals seem to think of it as just a fun
legend. Despite its grim history, David Walker, prominent attorney and
Whig politician, later built a house on the property. Ida Knerr purchased the property in the 1950s
and was well aware of the legends associated with the place, but she doubted
that the stories were true. She claimed
that the story was invented by locals who used the area for gambling
purposes. In order to discourage
outsiders from coming and catching them at their illicit games, the gamblers
invented tales about ghosts. Indeed, Fred
Starr, a columnist for the Northwest Arkansas Times wrote on August 21,
1940, about the local legend, lumping the story of the burning bride with a
legend of a headless bride, which had also been seen in the valley. Starr wrote that one local resident of the
area claimed that he was often awoke at night by the sound of horses galloping
from people trying to flee the chase of malevolent specters. Starr, however, doubted the existence of such
spirits.
As if the tale of the
headless/burning bride was not enough, there is also a Confederate cemetery in
the ravine, which has spawned its own legends.
The Northwest Arkansas Times reported
on October 28, 1973, that an anonymous resident who lived near the cemetery
reported seeing a statue of a soldier in the cemetery put down its sword during
a heavy thunderstorm and cover itself from the deluge. When the reporter became curious about the
story, the Northwest Arkansas Times
was lucky enough to receive a typed memo from a resident ghost from the area
named ”Jacob”. According to “Jacob,” he
roams the area because he is curious about humans. “This,” the newspaper reported, “is the penalty
imposed on ghosts of the first order by the great ghost council.”
It could be that our
modern world is too sophisticated for ghosts.
Ghosts are no longer things necessarily to be feared. They are trotted out at Halloween, and for
most of us, forgotten until the same time the next year. There is little mystery left in a world where
science can explain so much. Mr. Starr
noted this as far back as 1940 when he wrote, “Our country has become more
thickly settled with less territory for ghosts to stalk over. Perhaps our automobiles are having something
to do with the shortage of ghosts… There just doesn’t seem to be any place in
the set up for a modern world for honest ghosts.” Maybe that is so. We are no longer so moved by such
mystery. But, maybe, just maybe, if one
is lucky, one might stroll through a lonesome ravine on a cool October night
and hear the faint cries of a burning specter as she runs through the valley.
