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Witnessed but Unexplained: Four American Ghost Stories
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19613 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
3,344 Words |
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Peggy Robbins
Peggy Robbins, a Tennessee native, is a free-lance writer
living in Gulfport, Mississippi. Over the past three decades,
she has written extensively about American heritage and
military history. |
Ancient Chinese wisdom teaches that "strong men tremble and stumble in the presence of the spirits, and bold, unwary men may die; wise men, frightened, tormented, saddened, or joyed, must learn to accept the mystery of the unexplained." The four American ghost stories retold here--of a pretty ghost, a cruel witch, a singing river, and an army of the dead--are reliably witnessed but unexplained. Each has its place in the development of the nation. Each, believed true, has taken on a life in folklore. Shall we accept them?
The prettiest ghost in America
Col. William Byrd, writing in late 1727 from his Virginia plantation to the Earl of Orrery in England, commented that matrimony "thrives so excellently" in Virginia that "an Old Maid or Old Bachelor are as scarce among us and reckoned as ominous as a Blazing Star." One of the "most antique Virgins" was his beautiful daughter Evelyn: "Either our young fellows are not smart eno' for her, or she seems too smart for them." But there was good reason why Evelyn, then nineteen years old, was not interested in any of the "young fellows" the elder Byrd wished her to consider; the colonel knew that reason, but he undoubtedly did not realize that his daughter was in a decline that would culminate in her eventual demise. Ten years later she finally died of a broken heart.
It was customary for wealthy colonial planters to send their children to Europe to be educated. Colonel Byrd himself, before age nine, had been sent from his American frontier home to England to study under noted educators while being watched over by Old Country relatives. He had returned to Virginia only after attaining "a happy proficiency in polite and varied learning" and "the polish for which he was afterward noted." From Evelyn's birth, it was taken for granted that she would be educated in like manner.
In December 1717, Colonel Byrd and his family were visiting in England when his wife died unexpectedly. Upon his return to Virginia the next year, the colonel left nine-year-old Evelyn behind to continue her education. There she grew into a charming beauty and later was presented at court, where she met and fell in love with a young nobleman, Charles Mordaunt, the grandson of the Earl of Peterborough. Under most circumstances, this would have delighted Colonel Byrd, but the Byrds were staunch Protestants and, as the colonel soon learned from his confidants in London, Mordaunt was an ardent Roman Catholic. Byrd positively refused to allow his daughter to marry Mordaunt; any Catholic was unacceptable to him. On his
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