Our Heritage

Ghost Stories on Grassy Creek Road

by 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 beginning 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 when my sister Amy, my brother David and I spent the night at their cabin. The homestead sat high on top of Ammons Mountain in Tuckasegee on the back end of 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 stop by our house and let us follow him up the mountain to spend the night. One trip such as 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 stalking it’s prey," he said.
    "We don’t hear it Grandpa," we said, voices quivering 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 until 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 Grassy Creek fork. To the left the creek curved to Grassy Creek Falls where 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 pointed to the weather-worn boards.
    "Grandpa, it’s getting dark now, we’d better hurry!!" said Amy, as we edged even closer to Grandpa.
    Slowly, then as we began the steep part of the trail, Grandpa suddenly stopped again.  "Hear that?" he said softly.
    "What, Grandpa?" We said together.
    "Hear that piano playing behind us?" Grandpa said as we all turned to listen and sure enough, it was piano music we heard.

     After an hour of stiff hiking we saw a light glowing in the distance. A gray planked cabin came into view with Grandma standing in front, waving to us. We three happily ran to her loving arms.
    After a dinner of giant biscuits, honey from Grandpa’s beehives, green beans and potatoes straight from the garden and fatback & pinto beans, we settled in around the rock fireplace. While Grandpa made shadow pictures on the wall, Grandma sit and smiled a lot.
    The shrill woman-like scream of a panther tore open the fire crackling silence.
    "Hear that painter scream... that reminds me of old Aunt Bertha. I recollect the time when she was left all alone..." and Grandpa’s voice rose in intensity as another ghost story went on and on, making our hair stand on end and chills run up and down our spine.
    We’d want to hear more when the last story ended, but Grandma shooed us up into the loft to sleep on corn shuck mattresses. Mixed with the rustle of corn shucks, the drone of voices below us soothed us to sleep into dreams of screaming panthers and a phantom piano player.
    Stories still ride the wind in the dark woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains. If you stop and listen, you just might hear one as it passes by.