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| George Buster Singleton |
(For decades, local historian and paranormal investigator
George “Buster” Singleton published a weekly newspaper column called “Somewhere
in Time.” The column below, which was titled “Memories of old man Robertst,”
was originally published in the March 6, 1997 edition of The Monroe Journal in
Monroeville, Ala.)
I often wonder what the youth of today would do if they had
to entertain themselves as we did when I was growing up. No one had a flashy
automobile to cruise around town in. If one was lucky, their family perhaps
owned a horse or a mule on which the youth could travel around on when the
animal wasn’t being used for plowing in the fields.
I grew up near an old farm that had been owned by an old man
by the name of Roberts. A few days ago, I journeyed once again to the old
grown-up and abandoned house place and farm yard of old man Roberts. Mr.
Roberts had been a soldier during the dreadful fighting of the Civil War and
had worn the uniform of the Confederacy. In the bloody fighting around Lookout
Mountain, he had received a serious wound in his right leg. Due to the serious
nature of this wound, his leg was amputated just below his right knee. Unable
to continue as a soldier for the Southern cause, this almost disabled man was
told to go home by his commander. Slowly, the wounded Rebel made his way back
to Marengo County, Ala.
Slowly, he began to try and rebuild the life that he had
left that day he left to join the cause of the Confederacy. Slowly, the
crippled Rebel began to construct a log house of sorts, there on the farm which
he owned. As the log structure slowly began to take shape, the crippled Rebel,
in his spare time, carved himself a wooden leg from a small piece of timber
that had been left over from the construction of his two-story log house.
The years came and went as the old soldier struggled to dig
a meager living out of the ground there on the small farm. Stories passed down
through the years tell how the old Rebel soldier would walk the floors of the
upstairs bedrooms and hallway during the hours of late evenings and early
mornings. The stories tell of hearing the thump of his wooden leg as he
struggled toward the stairway that led down to the back porch of the kitchen.
Then one day, the thump of the old man’s wooden leg was
heard no more. Nearby neighbors found the old Rebel soldier sitting in front of
the huge stone fireplace in an upstairs bedroom. Sitting there in a huge wooden
rocking chair, as though asleep, the old man had departed this life.
Prior to his death, the old Rebel had let it be known that
at his death, he wanted to be buried out in the corner of the front yard under
the shade of a huge chinaberry tree. His wishes were granted; he was laid to
rest there under the large shade tree that he had rested under man times. His
lonely grave was marked by a small granite marker of a Confederate soldier.
Those that fell heir to the old soldier’s property would let
sharecroppers live in the huge log house and work the land for a portion of
their earnings made off their yearly crops. Several families moved in only to
stay for short periods of time; many leaving without staying to see their crops
sprout from the soil. The story began to circulate around the farm community
that during almost all hours of the day and night, the sound of the old man
with the wooden leg could be walking around in the upstairs bedroom and out in
the upstairs hallway that led to the stairway. The stress was so great on the
families that had moved there, they would move away immediately, leaving behind
their newly planted crops.
For a number of years, the old log house stood vacant.
Outside in the corner of the yard, under the large chinaberry tree, the lonely
grave of the old Rebel soldier, waited unnoticed there in the tall weeds of the
unkempt yard. The small headstone leaned drunkenly to the side, marking the
final resting place of the Rebel soldier with the wooden leg.
Nothing remains of the old log house today but a pile of
rotted timbers. The two chimneys of rough stone now lay in two huge piles that
seem to speak from another time. The huge chinaberry tree that once sheltered
the grave of the old Rebel has long since fallen in decay. The huge rotted
stump stands as a silent sentinel, as if standing guard over the final resting
place of the old man buried there. And, across the neglected grave, the many
decayed limbs from the huge chinaberry tree lay as a rough protective cover
over the small granite marker.
As I stood there at the corner of the grown-up yard, many
memories came to mind. I remembered how, as young teenagers of the farm
community, we would gather together and make our way to the old Roberts house.
Always, we would sit in the lower hallway, or dogtrot as it was called, and
listen for the sound of the thump of the old man’s wooden leg in the upstairs
hallway, as the ghost of the Rebel soldier slowly made its way toward the
stairway that led down to the back porch. No one in the group ever waited to
see if they could see the ghost of the old Rebel coming down the stairway.
Always, as the thumping sound reached the top of the stairs, youngsters, almost
frightened out of their wits, would race away, either on horseback or running
on foot as far away as possible from the ghost of Mr. Roberts.
Always, if a youngster visited relatives of the farm
community there, they were always escorted to the old Roberts house to have the
living daylights frightened out of them when the ghost of the old Rebel soldier
walked across the floor of the upstairs rooms and hallway. We, that lived in
the farm community, always saw to it that those that visited always left with
the memory of a visit to the Roberts house. In looking back at those times of a
country boy, it seemed that the ghost of the old man with the wooden leg might
have enjoyed the visits as much as those of us who came there.
Standing there, looking at the piles of rotted timbers and
rough stones, I thought of the time when this young lady from the city came to
visit relatives of the farm community. When asked if she wanted to go to the
haunted Roberts house, she stated that she didn’t believe in spirits or ghosts.
On a Saturday afternoon in early October, the group made their way by horseback
toward the old abandoned house. Hitching our horses to the front porch of the
old house, we sat down in the hallway or dogtrot of the bottom floor. This
young lady continued to try and make fun of those who said that they had heard
the sounds of the wooden leg walking across the upstairs floor. She informed
her country cousins that she was above believing such silly stories.
Then, a few moments of silence settled across the hallway.
Then, as had happened many times before, the sound of loud thumps began to
slowly make their way across the upstairs room and out into the upstairs hall.
This young lady turned a chalky white color. Jumping to her feet, she ran to
the edge of the porch and jumped out onto a horse that was tied there. Laying
across the saddle and screaming as loud as she could, she and the frightened
horse raced across the field nearby. Never again would this young lady agree to
go near the old abandoned house again.
Perhaps, somewhere around the crumbled old house or where
the chinaberry tree once stood, the ghost of old man Roberts still waits.
Perhaps somewhere in time his spirit waits to return and rebuild once again the
haunted house that was his.
(Singleton, the author of the 1991 book “Of Foxfire and
Phantom Soldiers,” passed away at the age of 79 on July 19, 2007. A longtime
resident of Monroeville, he was born on Dec. 14, 1927 in Marengo County and
served as the administrator of the Monroeville National Guard unit from 1964 to
1987. He is buried in Pineville Cemetery in Monroeville. The column above and
all of Singleton’s other columns are available to the public through the
microfilm records at the Monroe County Public Library in Monroeville.
Singleton’s columns are presented here each week for research and scholarship
purposes and as part of an effort to keep his work and memory alive.)
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