Conversation with a ghost...


I was out in my all-terrain sport utility vehicle last week running up and down the mountain sides around Stoney Ridge for pure fun and I had an interesting experience which gave me an insightful glimpse into Tazewell County's past: I met a ghost.

I love to drive. I don't know why. And I especially love driving around back roads - usually with the windows down and the music up loud.

This particular afternoon was cool and a little overcast. I had just decided to divide my attention between driving and changing the cassette in the tape player. I rounded a curve on the gravel road as I put in The Complete Mercury Sessions by Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys.

And when I looked up, there he was.

I was startled. He was dead in front of my left headlight - no pun intended - and at first I thought I'd hit him. Later, after learning that he was a ghost, I decided that I probably had hit him - but that it hadn't done him any real damage, what with him being dead and all.

Several thoughts entered my mind at once as the banjo started on Pike County Breakdown...

  • ...had I hit him? I didn't feel anything. But it'd been awfully close.


  • ...what would my wife say? My all-terrain sport utility vehicle was actually her all-terrain sport utility vehicle - a 1996 two-door Ford Explorer that gets her across Stoney Ridge to her teaching job in McDowell County 180 some-odd days a year.


  • ...and why was he walking so far out in the road? Why did he seem so unconcerned with the incident?

Not realizing that I'd just run over someone who had already been dead for over 100 years, I stopped and got out to make sure he was okay and to apologize a little.

"Are you alright?" I asked. "For a second I thought I'd hit you."

He seemed very pale - something that I took at the time to be fright on his part.

"I guess I'm as alright as I was yesterday," he said.

I began to take in more of the physical details of his appearance. He was stocky, muscular, 50ish - but dressed somewhat strangely. His boots looked military to me and came up to just below his knees. He had his pants legs tucked into his boots. The pants were not denim; they were tan-colored and seemed to be cotton. His shirt was reddish, long-sleeved and the sleeves were rolled to about the elbows.

The copyright of the article Conversation with a ghost... in Appalachia is owned by Greg Cruey. Permission to republish Conversation with a ghost... in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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