Harris Hill Cemetery in Wilcox County features unique 'spirit cage'

Unique 'spirit cage' at Harris Hill Cemetery in Wilcox County, Ala.

Two days after Christmas, I received an e-mail from Vernon L. Johnson, who once lived on the Allenton Road near Pine Apple. Vernon said that school librarian Mary Finklea had sent him a copy of a column published in this space in late November about the McWilliams Cemetery’s recent addition to Alabama’s Historic Cemetery Register. In his e-mail, he encouraged me to investigate the historically significant Harris Hill Cemetery northeast of Oak Hill.

In our back and forth e-mails about this cemetery, Vernon gave me directions to the graveyard and also told me about a haunted house nearby. He said that when he lived in that area in the 1960s, there was an old house on the Allenton Road, on property adjacent to the cemetery property. This old house was once occupied by Laurel Jones and when he died, there were offers of free ownership to anyone who could spend an entire night there, Vernon said.

Vernon said that he also remembered hearing people tell tales of seeing an unoccupied rocking chair on the porch of the house that would begin rocking inexplicably at sunset. This spooky phenomenon was said to have been witnessed by many, giving the house an eerie reputation in the community. “Of course, we ran past that house when we walked from Mount Zion Baptist Church at night after church services or dances in the Sixties,” he said.

On Saturday morning, my young son and I loaded up in the truck and followed Vernon’s directions to the cemetery. For those of you unfamiliar with its location, this cemetery can be found up a dirt lane off the Allenton Road (County Road 24), about a quarter of a mile from the State Highway 21 intersection, north of Oak Hill. We got there around 10 o’clock in the morning, and I was very intrigued by what we found.

When we reached the end of the lane and the thick woods opened up to reveal the cemetery, I was struck by how much of it was hidden by yellow, winter-deadened sage grass. In all, I would say that there are about 50 graves there, and the lane divides the cemetery into two distinct sections. The section on the south side of the lane was contained mostly within of a rare “spirit cage,” the first that I’ve ever encountered in Wilcox County.

This “spirit cage” consists of a chain link fence supported by eight metal posts. The top of each post had been painted with light blue “haint paint,” which is believed to keep ghosts inside the “cage.” In all, about 10 graves were enclosed within this “spirit cage,” including members of the Young and Pettway families.

We went on to explore the north side of the cemetery, picking our way over patches of snow that remained from days earlier, and kept our eyes open for the grave of Laurel Jones, the occupant of the haunted house. While we didn’t find his grave, we did encounter the graves of members of the Andrews, Bowens, Bytherwood, Fore, Goodman, Grace, Green, Hall, Harris, Jenkins, Johnson, McReynolds, Minor, Montgomery, Moore, Perkins, Shorter, Smith and Taylor families. The only member of the Jones family we found was the grave of Arthur Lee Jones, a veteran of the Korean War who passed away at the age 26 on Oct. 2, 1959.

This cemetery has obviously been in use for a long time, and while there were many unmarked graves to be found, the oldest marked grave we encountered was that of Jesse Harris, who was born in 1859 and died in 1923. We also found a number of graves bearing Masonic and Eastern Star symbolism and the graves of several veterans. Also, while I can’t be 100-percent sure, I got the impression that there were a few graves in the woods outside the main cemetery grounds.

In the end, I appreciate Vernon taking the time to e-mail me about this old cemetery and for the information he supplied about the mysterious Laurel Jones house. If anyone else in the reading audience has additional information about the Harris Hill Cemetery or the Laurel Jones house, please let me know. Perhaps over time, we’ll be able to piece together the complete story of this historic cemetery and its spooky surroundings.