Joe Bob Duggan, a youth, knew of these stories and her reputation. He was guiding his raft down the Yazoo one autumn night in 1884 when he heard moaning from inside her hovel. He steered toward her abode to investigate, then walked toward this place of horror. Carefully, he looked through a window and saw a sight that filled him with terror. Two dead men were lying on the floor and the woman was dancing about them, dressed in a filthy dress, arms outstretched in incantations.
Joe Bob ran back to his raft and guided as swiftly as he could toward town to tell the sheriff what he had witnessed. What he saw with his eyes confirmed the rumors he had heard. One account states the sheriff and his deputies rode to the hovel on horseback, while another declares they rode in a horse and buggy.
When the sheriff reached the house, he pounded on the door, but no one answered. The men broke down the door and entered the house. The corpses of the dead men Joe Bob had seen were gone. The group went to the attic where they found the skeletons of two men hanging from the rafters. Emaciated cats crept underneath the bodies.
They heard the sound of footsteps, crunching on the fallen leaves. They saw the old woman running towards the swamp area. The sheriff yelled at her to stop, but she paid no heed. Joe Bob would, later tell his children and grandchildren that she looked like a ghostly scarecrow and did so, even on his deathbed. By the time they reached the old woman, she had sunk into quicksand up to her neck. Her scarred, grotesque face was all that they saw. She shouted to them that she would return. Everybody in the town hated her. She would rise out of her grave on the morning of May 25, 1904 and burn down the town. With having uttered that, her head disappeared into the quicksand.
