Does the ghost of 'Miss Bonnie' still haunt the opening to an old cellar?

George 'Buster' Singleton

(For decades, local historian and paranormal investigator George “Buster” Singleton published a weekly newspaper column called “Somewhere in Time.” The column below, which was titled “Cellar was once an essential part of daily living,” was originally published in the Oct. 24, 1991 edition of The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, Ala.)

During the 1880s and into the early 20th century, the cellar was an important part of the farm and very essential for storing food for farm families.

Long before the ice box and the refrigerator appeared on the scene, the cellar was used to keep certain foods for the cold winter months ahead. It was also used to protect certain foods from the hot months of summer.

Almost every farm had a cellar. Some were placed in the ground under the house, while others were dug somewhere in the yard in a location where there was little or no traffic.

The huge hole was dug, and heavy logs were placed across the top and covered with boards or planks and a heavy layer of dirt. The top being at ground level, any times grass and weeds would grow over the top and the only way to locate it was by the door that lay almost flat on the ground.

The heavy door had to be pulled up and laid back at an angle so the cellar could be entered. Five or six steps descended downward into the cool air of the cellar. The walls of the cellar were usually made of brick or heavy stones. The temperature usually remained around 60 degrees year round.

Protect against storms

The cellar was also used to protect the family from summer storms that might rage across the countryside. Upon seeing a storm in the making, the family would rush into the deep cellar and close the door behind them. There, they would wait until the raging winds had stilled and it was safe again to leave the protection of the cellar.

There are known instances where a family would come up from the cellar after a storm to find their house destroyed or severely damaged. Families have been known to stay in their cellar for as long as two days or more because of storms.

Near where my grandparents started out as a young couple, there lived a family who had a very large cellar. I’m told that this cellar was supplied and equipped like no other cellar in the area.

The story was that at the slightest sign of bad weather, even a stray bolt of lightning, this family headed for the protection of their deep cellar. Most times when they went in, they wouldn’t return from their place of safety until the following day.

During the stormy months of late summer, this family spent many nights in the deep cellar they loved so much and depended on for their protection.

Miss Bonnie was an old maid, daughter of the old farmer who owned this unusual place. She never married because the story was that she had lost her lover; the man she was going to marry had been killed in bitter fighting during the closing days of the Civil War.

Miss Bonnie was a very beautiful lady for her age. It was said that she had long snow-white hair that she kept brushed and combed. Never a hair was out of place. Her neat gingham dresses were always well-pressed and looked as if they had just come out of a picture book of some sort.

Miss Bonnie liked to sit in the shade of a huge chinaberry tree that grew right near the cellar door. She would sit for hours in a straight-back, cane-bottomed chair and comb and brush her long, beautiful white hair. Many of the eligible men of the community had tried with no avail to court Miss Bonnie. Always her thoughts were of her lover who had fallen in battle.

But the years passed and time began to take its toll on Miss Bonnie. Her once beautiful skin began to show wrinkles, and her hair became less and less cared for. She would sit for hours on end under the huge chinaberry tree, staring into space as though under a spell of some sort.

In her hands was the last letter she had received from her fallen lover. Very rarely did she leave her chair by the tree, unless the weather turned bad or darkness covered the yard like a heavy blanket.

Left for supplies

One day in late August, Miss Bonnie’s aging parents harnessed up the horse to the buggy and started to the steamboat landing some miles away. They had made the journey many times to pick up the necessary supplies they needed. Several times they would spend the night with friends who lived near the river landing and return home the following morning; this was the plan today.

Very rare were the times when Miss Bonnie would leave her chair under the chinaberry tree and make the journey with her parents, and today was no different.

As the morning passed into the early afternoon, heavy storm clouds gathered on the horizon. Great bolts of lightning streaked across the western skies. The old chinaberry tree reeled to and fro in the rising storm. Heavy sheets of rain pounded the earth.

Miss Bonnie slowly left her chair and moved toward the cellar door. Some say that the heavy door would not open. The heavy planks that the door was made of had swelled from the heavy downpour of rain, and Miss Bonnie could not lift the door to enter the cellar and safety.

Miss Bonnie was never found; only her old chair gave any indication that she had ever been there. Her comb and hairbrush lay undisturbed in the old, cane-bottomed chair as though nothing had happened.

Miss Bonnie’s parents did not live long after her disappearance. The old house fell into decay; only a few rocks of the old chimney remain. The aged chinaberry tree, broken and twisted, still stands as guardian by the sunken door of the old cellar. On the ground beside the old tree are the remains of the old cane-bottomed chair.

There are those who say that on a clear day, if you look closely, you might see the ghost of Miss Bonnie, sitting in the old straight-backed chair, brushing her long snow-white hair or reading the last letter from her lost lover.

And there are those who say when the storm clouds cover the sun, Miss Bonnie can be seen trying every so desperately to open the swollen old cellar door, trying to reach the safety of the deep cellar that eluded her many years ago.

(Singleton, the author of the 1991 book “Of Foxfire and Phantom Soldiers,” passed away at the age of 79 on July 19, 2007. A longtime resident of Monroeville, he was born on Dec. 14, 1927 in Marengo County and served as the administrator of the Monroeville National Guard unit from 1964 to 1987. He is buried in Pineville Cemetery in Monroeville. The column above and all of Singleton’s other columns are available to the public through the microfilm records at the Monroe County Public Library in Monroeville. Singleton’s columns are presented here each week for research and scholarship purposes and as part of an effort to keep his work and memory alive.)