The “Bone Yard”
In his 1956 book, The Living Past, Lee Beam Weathers related the history of Trade Street in Shelby before cars and trucks and paved roads.
“The ‘bone yard,’ which was the area now known as Trade Alley back of the stores along Lafayette Street, was the hitching space for Shelby’s early traders. Farmers from as far away as Spartanburg came to trade at the stores and swap guns, dogs, and knives. Often the mules they drove were too old and weak to make the long trip home, so they were abandoned and had to be shot. It was the presence of these carcasses that gave rise to the name ‘bone yard.’
With covered wagons in which to sleep and their cooking utensils tied on the side, these traders presented a scene of the woolly West. At night they built fires, played their violins and banjos, and those who could, danced and sang to the tunes of their folk music.“
According to Mr. Beam, the city of Shelby paid Sam “Coon” Magness $5 to haul dead animals out of the bone yard.
Capernaum Cemetery Ghost
In 2000. Cassie Tarpley wrote a story for The Shelby Star about Waco Baptist Church having evolved from the old Capernaum Baptist Church. The following is an excerpt:
“Certain things surrounding the history of Capernaum/Waco Baptist Church may be sketchy–an exact list of charter members, how the congregation dealt with the Civil War, just who the ghost may be, that people say haunts the old church site near White Oak Creek. Otherwise, for a 158 years old, the church boasts a fairly complete record of who did what, where, and when. “A black man named James Williams, who was good friends with my dad, told the story of a ghost that goes down behind the cemetery and goes across the creek,’ said long time member Horace Lutz. ‘Supposedly, James saw the ghost on several occasions, and it carried a light. He told me that story many times.'”
Kadesh Church Ghost
From Cookin’ Curin’ and Wiregrass Wit, edited by Virginia DePriest, Shelby, NC; 1983. A project of the genealogy class at Cleveland Technical College.
“When I was a young boy, around 1890 to 1900, the following story was told to me: “A man riding a horse passed by Kadesh Church one night and saw a mother and her daughter come walking from the graveyard to the road. He had known them well before they passed away. The woman took the horse by the bridle and stopped it. She called the man’s name and said, ‘Come and go with us.’ This invitation frightened him and his horse grew nervous, but then he watched them as they went up to the church door, which flew open and they disappeared. He hurriedly left the scene and went home.”
~ Wilbur Baber
“All the people in the Kadesh Church community are familiar with the ghost tales surrounding their church. Several people relate their experiences of hearing the organ in the church being played when no one is there. These stories are not just tales, even the church minister, meditating in the church one night, heard the beautiful organ music, others who were more afraid of ghosts, left the community.”
~ author unknown
This excerpt from NC Ghost Guide provides the background to the story of the Kadesh Church organ:
“Sometime after WWII, a fellow who worked for a highway construction company lived in Casar with his wife and nine-year old daughter, and played the organ for the local Methodist Church on Sundays. For one reason or another–perhaps he was going fishing–he brought home a few sticks of dynamite from work and stashed it in his basement. He kind of forgot about it, and one chilly evening went out with his wife to dinner with friends, leaving their daughter at home by herself. Well, the furnace malfunctioned, and while this ordinarily wouldn’t have a been a big deal, the dynamite happened to be stored nearby. The house was blown completely apart, and they were only able to find little pieces of his daughter scattered about the neighborhood. He was devastated, of course, and the music he played at her funeral, while beautiful, chilled the mourners in the church to the bone. He never went back to church after his daughter’s service, and died a few months later, a broken man. I was told that you can still hear the organ music from time to time and, independent of the organ playing itself, the little girl appears in the graveyard, still engulfed by the flames of her house.“
“Knobby”– Casar’s Sasquatch
Excerpt from Sasquatch Tracks:
“In the winter of 1979, several residents around Carpenter’s Knob in Cleveland County, North Carolina, reported a series of unusual encounters with an unknown, apelike animal. Among the early sightings were those reported by Minnie Cook, an 88-year-old resident who claimed that she observed the animal after she emerged from her home to learn what kind of animal had been disturbing her dogs.
Over the next several weeks, “Knobby fever” would strike this rural portion of Western North Carolina, with many other residents reporting sightings of a large, roughly six-foot-tall apelike creature that both walked on its hind legs and on all-fours.”
The Webb Road Bridge
Many tales are told of strange things happening on this bridge–usually involving an apparition of some sort.
The Lovers Lane Apparition
Sometime in the late 1970s, a girl was killed by her boyfriend on this dirt path that was once known as “Lover’s Lane.” Rumors spread that her ghost haunts this road, which was just a short connector road between N. Lafayette St. and Scottsdale Dr. in Shelby. The road was never paved and is now barricaded.
How to Kill Warts
About 1960, this author had a wart on the back of her hand. It had seemingly popped up and just would not go away. One Sunday evening, her aunt and uncle were visiting. They would come often on Sundays to have supper and watch Lassie and The Ed Sullivan Show. Uncle Rush was a old farmer who was well known in the Fallston and Beam’s Mill area. He had lots of old stories and always told them in the thickest of Southern accents. This particular evening he told of a cure for warts.
“Gitch you a penny and rub it on the wart. Then hide the penny, and don’t tell nary a soul whur you hid it.”
She did–and low and behold, the wart disappeared. (Note: Pennies of copper were minted until about 1982. Copper is a known toxin to algae and various parasites in aquaria. Connection?)
Speaking of Southern accents, there is an interesting paper about its origins–and another about its trend toward extinction.
Cleveland County History 