Category: Odd Noises

From eastern Kentucky comes this story.

A little over a hundred years ago railroads were being built to carry coal out of the mountains and on to markets in the northeast. The railroad companies were only interested in those lands for their railroads that allowed them the easiest and cheapest access over and through the mountains and valleys. In one particular place that land happened to hold an old graveyard.

The railroad company bought the graveyard, which was located in Maysville, so the bodies located there would have to be removed and reinterred elsewhere. The work started and proceeded apace, until the men doing the work came upon the potter’s section of the yard.

For those who don’t know, a potter’s field was where the poor and destitute of the community were buried. In this particular graveyard, that area was located in a plot of land with poor clay soil that was very hard to dig. But dig the men did, and they started unearthing coffins.

They came upon one coffin, got it partly dug out, then went to tie a rope to it to help in pulling it up. As they did, a knocking started coming from within the coffin! The workers dropped the rope and jumped out of the old grave as fast as they could, scared out of their wits.

The knocking continued for several minutes, growing fainter and fainter until it stopped.

They stood around, trying to figure out what in the world just happened. Soon one of them spoke up.

“It’s the banshee, sure,” this man said. “Banshee in the coffin, there.”

The other men were having none of it.

“Nonsense. What is the banshee?” one of the others asked the first man.

This man, an old Irish immigrant to Appalachia, told the men:

“In my country it is the banshee that comes to warn you of danger and trouble.”

Pretty soon the bossman came around and told the men to knock it off and get back to work getting those bodies out of the ground. When they hesitated, he himself got down in the hole and adjusted the ropes around that coffin. They all then started pulling and tugging at that rope til the coffin was back up on top of the ground. All during this time that sound continued.

“Knock, knock, knock.”

Slowly the sound faded until it stopped. The bossman took one of the spades and opened the lid of the coffin to see if they could figure out what was causing that sound. Inside they found the body of a man, wearing a red shirt tucked into his pants, which were tucked into his boots, and wearing a black felt hat. Nothing loose was found that could account for any knocking sounds on the coffin.

What was doing the knocking remains a mystery to this day, unless you believe in banshees.

Roan Mountain is one of the higher peaks along the Tennessee-North Carolina state line. It’s covered in a stand of spruce and fir trees, as are most of the other tall mountains in the area. It also has the world’s largest natural rhododendron garden, which you can see as you hike the Appalachian Trail, which crosses the top of the mountain. Roan Mountain also contains mystery.

As settlers poured over the mountain into what would become Tennessee, they noticed that the ever present winds that blew there made a sort of music. It was said that if you stood at the top ridgeline, in just the right place, you could hear the sweet sound of singing voices emerging from the wind.

Some folks said the sound was that of an angelic choir. Others said quite the opposite, that these voices belonged to demons and those souls crying out in agony from the depths of Hell itself.

These stories gained a much wider audience after the Civil War, thanks to a Union colonel.

Colonel John T. Wilder had noticed that fancy hotels had been going up in North Carolina after the war, to cater to wealthy people from the North looking for fresh air and gorgeous views. He decided that you couldn’t do better in the fresh air and views department than the top of Roan Mountain, so he took advantage of the new East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad, known as the Tweetsie Railroad, with its ability to provide transportation for guests and built the Cloudland Hotel.

People flocked to the Cloudland Hotel and they, too, heard the music. One story goes that a visitor to the hotel took a hike into the woods on the mountain and soon found himself in the middle of a thunderstorm. During the storm, he heard not sweet voices singing but a spine-tingling moaning noise coming from the winds around him. He thought to escape all this by ducking into a nearby cave. Then things got worse.

The howling and moaning didn’t stop. In fact, the voices were soon joined by visions of tortured, beaten bodies floating in the air around this young man. Their screams got louder and louder as the visions got clearer, until the man finally passed out. When he came to, all was calm again, but he found that his clothes were ripped up and had become white as snow, leading him to be convinced that he had seen a vision of Hell and damnation.

Whether the voices on Roan Mountain are from Heaven or Hell, you can experience them yourself through an easy drive to the top of the mountain and a hike along the Appalachian Trail. Enjoy, if you dare.