Way back in frontier days, the area that would become known as east Tennessee was like a highway to the west, with many settlers coming over the mountains from North Carolina. Horses and wagons loaded with families and all their worldly goods would pass through the area as they made their way to Nashville, Kentucky, and other places.
One of these families stopped for the night near Surgoinsville, camping under a large white oak. That was a big mistake.
That night a notorious outlaw, John Murrell, happened upon the sleeping travelers. He and his gang murdered them, along with their dog as it tried in vain to protect them.
As the years passed, people in east Tennessee began to report seeing a strange apparition. It was a dog, an unusually long dog, which would chase wagons that came through at night. Sometimes Long Dog would actually jump up into the wagon and look around, as if it was searching for someone in particular.
One young man, Marcus Hamblen, thought those stories were a bunch of baloney. This 18 year-old didn’t believe in ghosts, and wasn’t afraid of Long Dog. In fact, Marcus bragged to his friends that if he ran into the “ghost dog” he would
Just knock it in the head, skin it alive and tack it up on the side of my barn.
Pretty soon, young Mr. Hamblen would get his chance.
One night he had been to a party and was walking home by way of that old white oak tree. As he passed the tree, he saw Long Dog come out of the tree’s shadows and run towards him. And Marcus saw that this dog was definitely different from any other dog he had ever seen because it emitted an unearthly glow, which scared the young man. But he was determined to keep to his word.
As the dog got closer, Marcus grabbed up a fence rail and took a swing at Long Dog, landing a clean lick on it. Or so Marcus thought. The rail went right through the dog as if it wasn’t there. And the dog kept coming. So Marcus Hamblen got going.
Marcus ran as fast as he could away from Long Dog, but the dog kept up with him. At one point, Hamblen had to sit down and catch his breath, with Long Dog just sitting right there patiently waiting for him. Once he was able, Marcus started running again, this time losing Long Dog.
The young man and the ghost dog would run into each other from time to time, and Marcus grew to look forward to seeing Long Dog, something he did for the rest of his life. As Marcus later told his friends:
You know, I hope that dog has found the master who he was looking for.