Epitaph

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It was dark and raining.

Clarence Stevenson left his boss’s Ford running when he got out of the car. He quickly looked around to make sure he was alone. Then, he walked around the car, opened the back door and pulled Mamie Thurman’s mutilated corpse from the back seat.

Wrestling it to the side of the road, Clarence grunted as he pushed the body of a woman he’d once considered a friend into a gully and watched it disappear into a bramble of blackberry thorns.

He thought she’d never be seen again.

He was wrong.

For more than eighty-five years, there have continued to be mysterious, unexplainable sightings of Mamie Thurman beside that desolate spot of mountainside highway.

Mamie Thurman’s story is one of scandal, adultery, deception, injustice and brutal murder in the small, coal-mining town of Logan, West Virginia.

Those who know her story will tell you that her murderer was never found, and she’ll continue to walk that lonely road until justice is done.

But, after more than eighty-five years, is there any hope of finding the truth about who was responsible for Mamie Thurman’s death? Or, is the truth just one of many dark secrets buried in the West Virginian soil?

The G.C. Murphy Building. The infamous “Amour Club” met on the second floor.

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In the 1930s, it was widely accepted that the Ghost of the Buckhorn walked a mountain highway in the Alleghenies near Altoona, Pennsylvania.

In 1938, an encounter with the Ghost of the Buckhorn made the front page of the Altoona Tribune and it inspired two weeks of nightly ghost hunts.

Dozens of reports came in of those claiming to have seen her. Some said that they’d given her a ride from the top of the mountain to the “Devil’s Elbow” where she vanishes. Others said they actually got out of their cars and chased her over the rough, mountainous terrain. But, she was always too fast to be caught.

By the time the story was laid to rest, she had been seen by hundreds of school children.

By the 1970s, the sightings had migrated north from the Buckhorn mountain to the Wopsosonock or, as locals refer to it, the Wopsy.

Their stories are very similar: a young woman, either going to her wedding or her honeymoon, was involved in a tragic accident at a sharp bend in the mountain road known as the “Devil’s Elbow.” Now, she waits beside the highway — sometimes with a lantern, other times with a cigarette — forever attempting to get back to the life she’d just begun.

Folklorists disagree whether the Ghost of the Buckhorn and the White Lady of Wopsy are two ghosts or one legend that has migrated over the years.

This week, we dig into the legends of Pennsylvania’s pair of roadside spirits, the Ghost of the Buckhorn and the White Lady of Wopsy.

Photo: The Devil’s Elbow on the Buckhorn Highway near Altoona, Pennsylvania.

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There’s an isolated highway just north of Walhalla, South Carolina. It runs through Oconee State Park in the westernmost part of the state, and it boasts a dozen waterfalls and gorgeous views of the Piedmont as it ascends toward the Blue Ridge Mountains.

According to the legend, in the 1950s, a plane trying to make it through a thunderstorm to land at the nearby Greenville airport crashed into the mountainside just a few yards off of the highway. The wreckage of the small, single-engine aircraft was found but the pilot’s body was never recovered.

But, that doesn’t mean that no one has seen him since then.

Drivers, campers, and even a Baptist minister have all reported encounters with him. And, the details of their stories are always the same: On a miserable, rainy night, a man in a black raincoat is offered a lift. He asks to be let out at Moody Spring and, then, disappears into vapor as he steps out of the car.

But, is this the ghost of the missing pilot? And, if so, who was he?

We offer answers to that question this week as we dive into the legend of the Man in the Black Raincoat on Highway 107.

Photo: Highway 107 through Oconee State Park, northwest of Walhalla, South Carolina.(Source: Flickr | Doug Kerr)

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Between 1916 and 1936, a narrow railroad underpass near Jamestown, North Carolina, was the most dangerous spot on one of North Carolina’s most-traveled roads.

In 1921, one local paper wrote that, on rainy or foggy nights, it took “stunt driving to keep a car under control, and if by skill or luck the driver can control his own car, he is yet at the risk of every other on the road.”

In 1936, the highway commission completed work on a new underpass, 160 feet to the north of the old structure. They’d straightened the road, eliminated a few dangerous curves, reduced the grade of the approach to the new underpass and altogether eliminated two hills that had, previously, obstructed drivers’ views of oncoming traffic.

But just two years later, in 1938, newspapers were reporting the ghost of a young woman at the old underpass.

Now known by locals as “Lydia,” she has been the fascination of local ghost hunters for generations.

In 2015, a local researcher claimed to have finally found the story of the woman whose death, he believes, is behind the Lydia legend. But, did he find the right woman?

And, if not, who is The Girl at the Underpass?

Photo: The tunnel through the abandoned Southern Railway underpass in Jamestown, North Carolina. In use from 1916 to 1936, the tunnel was the site of numerous fatal car accidents. (Source: Facebook | City of Jamestown, NC)

Lydia’s Bridge Mystery Haunts Jamestown via WFMY News 2

North Carolina Ghosts and Legends by Nancy Roberts

Ghosts of the Triad: Tales from the Haunted Heart of the Piedmont by Michael Renegar and Amy Spease

Looking For Lydia: The Thirty-Year Search For The Jamestown Hitchhiker by Michael Renegar and Amy Greer

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Part ghost story and part history, Epitaph aims to find the people behind familiar and not-so-familiar hauntings, explore their stories, and find out why they’re coming back to us.

Welcome to Epitaph.

Drawing: The Greek Stoic Philosopher Athenodorus Rents a Haunted House, by Henry Justice Ford, circa 1900. (Source: Wikipedia Commons | Public Domain)

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