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| 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 “In search of a dead lover: A
story of a Halloween wedding which never took place,” was originally published
in the Oct. 30, 1986 edition of The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, Ala.)
Picture yourself sitting quietly at the edge of an old, old
cemetery in the northeast corner of the county. The time is late; midnight has
just passed. An owl hoots in the edge of the woods not far from where you are
sitting. The hairs on your neck tingle. You ask yourself, why are you here?
Then you remember the story that you heard from an old man
shortly after you moved to the area and became interested in the local folklore
and ghost stories along the back roads and the forgotten communities of the
county. The story of the Searching Lover becomes vivid in your memory.
On that late October night in 1985, you became bored with
television and, to the dismay of your wife, took a thermos bottle of hot
coffee, mounted your trail bike and set off to see for yourself whether or not
the story was true.
You arrived at the cemetery just a few minutes before 10
o’clock. After hiding the trail bike in the weeds some distance away, you went
about fixing yourself a place where a complete view of the cemetery was before
you.
You quietly covered yourself with a military poncho liner
that blended in very well with the colors of late October. The waiting began.
The air all at once became quite cold. You pulled the poncho
liner closely around your shoulders. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have
brought someone else along for company. Or maybe waited until another time to
visit this place.
The owl hooted again, and, to make matters worse, a screech
owl screamed a few yards away. Your teeth began to chatter; the chill of the
night gripped you like a vise.
The gravestones in the bright moonlight cast ghostly shadows
across the small cemetery. Your legs ached from sitting in so cramped a
position. But you decided against any movement at the time.
You moved your eyes to the far side of the cemetery. You
noticed a tall grave marker that you had failed to notice before. Then you
realized that it was not a marker at all, but a tall man standing near the edge
of the clearing. Could your eyes be playing tricks on you? It seemed that he
was wearing a top hat, the type that was so common in the 1800s. You looked
again; the man was bending over a headstone as though trying to read the
inscriptions on the marble marker.
Your heart was pounding; you could hear each beat clearly.
You asked yourself again, why am I here? You had been in several tight spots,
but this one was different. The urge to run gripped your mind. But you fought
back with all your strength; you managed to calm down and sit still.
You looked again; the man in the top hat had moved to
another grave marker. He was bending over it, running his fingers across the
name chiseled in the stone. He moved on to another marker; his movements were
repeated. He moved slowly, again and again – each time bending over the
headstone; each time feeling the name carved there.
Each of his movements brought him closer and closer to the
edge of the cemetery and the place where you had chosen to hide.
You felt blood on your lip; you had bitten your lower lip
and not been aware of it. You felt no pain. Your heartbeat was deafening; it
sounded like a drum pounding.
With great effort, you looked again. The stranger in the top
hat had stopped. This time he was bending down, then kneeling beside a small
headstone. His hat was resting on the ground beside his left knee. His right
hand rested gently atop the grave marker. His head was bowed. Moments passed;
the taste of your own blood startled you. You slowly wiped your lip with your
hand.
The man in the top hat rose to his feet. You could see now
that he was dressed in fine clothing. A well-fitted frock-tailed coat hung from
his shoulders. He replaced his top hat.
He turned and looked directly in your direction. He seemed
to stare for a moment, as though looking beyond where you were hiding. He
seemed to be looking into eternity.
He turned and walked slowly toward the center of the
cemetery. He took one last look at the headstone where he was kneeling. He
walked into the shadow of a large headstone. I saw him no more.
With great effort, you stood up and felt your lip again. It
had stopped bleeding. You forced yourself to walk slowly toward the small
marker where the tall stranger had been kneeling. As the pale moonlight cast
its flickering light across the face of the headstone, you ran your fingers
along the writing, over the letters chiseled in the marble. You read these
words:
Sacred to the memory of
Susan Henderson
Age 19
Who departed this life
on the
31st day of October 1858
On the day of her Wedding
The owl hooted in the trees nearby. The story that you had
been told was true; you walked slowly toward the tall weeds at the edge of the
cemetery.
(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. 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.)
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