Jeepers Creepers

 Today's post...

More interesting tombstones!

Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed was the first and only woman hung in the state of Illinois. Is she the White Lady of Baker Cemetery? Is she even buried there? Was she even guilty, or is that why she still haunts her grave? There are more mysteries about Betsey than facts.

The ghost of the White Lady is a supernatural archetype, who manifests herself in nearly all cultures, dating back centuries. Southern Illinois is no exception. Elizabeth “Betsey” Reed of Baker Cemetery, near Palestine, Illinois is the most recent White Lady story in the limelight of southern Illinois. She’s even got her own biopic. There are those who believe that as a witch, she cast a curse which is still doing damage in both Crawford and Lawrence county today.

Granted, the people saying that are usually paranormal pundits on the internet, who if they landed in southern Illinois, with our spotty cellphone reception, intense heat and humidity and mosquitoes that could pack away a small family, would turn and run back shrieking to more populated areas. 

The ghost of the White Lady has been said to be seen more than once.  She was seen running across the hallway of an inn a thousand years old in Glastonbury. White men have been seen as well, even more clearly and frequently. They don’t get the publicity because a woman in white is more romantic of a story. 

There's a documentary on Elizabeth “Betsy” Reed, who was hung there in the nineteenth century, and as the White Lady haunted the cemetery where she was buried. 

A man was hunting along the edge of the woods there, and stumbled across a small square stone that had the initials ER carved on it. It’s obviously old, obviously hand done, just as you’d expect from a poor settler family in the 1840s. 

But there’s always a mystery with Betsey. There is no old stone for her husband. In the records of Baker Cemetery of 1944, he doesn’t exist. Though on the edge of the woods, in all fairness, maybe his stone hadn’t been discovered. And perhaps the new one replaced it. Who knows?

The new stone is edged in pennies of people coming to pay their respects. 

The White Lady has said to have been seen walking among the tombstones. As Betsey is believed to be buried here, and she went to her death in white, it’s assumed that’s who the White Lady is. But that’s a guess. 

This is a graveyard that’s been in use for over 150 years. The earliest markers were of wood, and likely why Betsey’s husband had no marker. Those are long gone. But all these people had stories, and any woman buried here could just as easily become a Lady In White as Betsey. 

Is this unknown marker the grave Betsey's husband? Or Betsey herself? No one really knows - but those who have said they have seen her wandering through the cemetery believe she searching for something. 

The epitaph that screams “witch”

It’s a relatively common epitaph throughout the world, “As I once was so you are now. As I am now soon you will be. Prepare for death And follow me.”

It’s so well known that there’s a famous retort to it … “To follow you I’m not content, until I know which way you went.” 

The epitaph dates to at least the fourteenth or fifteenth century in Europe, and you find it fairly often along the east coast of the United States. But the further west you go, the less you see it. By the time people were pushing west in numbers, the epitaph was out of fashion. Still, you do find it here in the midwest, as well as cropping up further west and south.

 Ghosts make for a good scare, but they’re unpredictable. You need an entity you can call up, to dance around the grave widdershins, just like they did back in the old days to summon … the witch. 

Most epitaphs talk of the deceased and that’s it. This inscription speaks directly to the person reading it, a warning from beyond the grave. That’s a powerful connection for anyone with an imagination. 

And so the poor young lady buried beneath this stone becomes a witch.

The grave of Elizabeth Budd-Graham is somewhat of an enigma to Tallahassee residents and visitors. Rumors of her witchcraft make the grave a popular destination for anyone visiting Tallahassee’s Old City Cemetery, making it the most visited grave in the whole cemetery.

In 1889, the real Elizabeth Budd-Graham passed away when she was only twenty-three (23) years old. She left a husband (Alexander Graham) and two young children. Elizabeth was the daughter of David and Florence Wilson. She was born in 1866, married Alexander in 1887, and then died in 1889 from heart disease.

Her grave is a sumptuous example of funerary architecture. It’s a tall obelisk with ornate carvings, surrounded by a low stone wall. The stone is grey French granite with the vases being granite. It would have been one of the more expensive tombs in Tallahassee in the late 1880s, showcasing her family wealth and esteem. It also follows the popular funerary design of the 1880s, making it a great example of funerary of the Gilded Age. Her obituary can be read here

The epitaph is from a passage from Edgar Allan Poe’s Lenore:

“Ah! Broken is the Golden Bowl.

The spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll!

A saintly soul

Floats on the Stygian River;

Come let the burial rite be read

The funeral song be sung;

An anthem for the queenliest dead

That died so young

A dirge for her the doubly dead

In that she died so young.”

The rumor of Elizabeth being a witch was not begun until decades after her death. There is no extant documentation that associates Elizabeth with any witchcraft. Yet the theory is that she is a ‘double-dead white witch’ who bewitched a wealthy man into marrying her, and when she passed he built this elaborate tomb to her. This is mostly from the poem on the tomb and the gravestone face direction.

Believers of Elizabeth’s witchery claim that Poe’s poem alludes to her power via a few of the lines. The lines “the spirit flown forever” and “floats on the Stygian River” are meant to imply that a witch’s spirit is unable to ‘cross the Stygian River (of death)’ and is trapped between life and death. The line "for her the doubly dead“ intimates that a witch must be killed twice while “the queenliest dead“ refers to a witch being ‘Queen’s of the Dead.’ Most likely, the inscription came from a popular poem and nothing else.

The gravestone does face west, which believers of Elizabeth’s tie to being a witch point out as a sign of disgrace. The claim is that all Christian burials face east. This is untrue; her grave does face west but this is not a sign of ill-respect. Many other tombs in the cemetery also face west as it was once quite common. The motif at the top of her obelisk denotes “no cross, no crown” which is actually a sign of good standing and respect.

The Bell Witch

FORMERLY PANOLA COUNTY, MS 

 At first glance, this looks to be just another old, mostly neglected cemetery on a ridge top way out in the country.

There’s some newer head stones way up front, and even some relatively fresh flowers. So evidently, some people are buried here that folks alive today still remember.

Back in the older section of the cemetery are graves from the late 1800’s. A lot of the head stones have been vandalized. Some of the single slates broken in two, obelisks toppled from their bases.

In the midst of these older stones is an obviously newer stone, but it is for an old grave.

For a lady who lived to be 82 years old. Born in Robertson County, Tennessee in 1806.

Now, thanks to some kind folks from the historical societies in that part of the state, I know that Elizabeth Powell’s maiden name was Bell. There are a bunch of Bell’s buried around her.

And I also know that people didn’t call her Elizabeth, but Betsy. Betsy Bell. The name alone may ring a bell if you know anything about early unexplained events in Tennessee.

This Betsy Bell was a central figure in the infamous Bell Witch hauntings that took place in Adams, Tennessee from about 1817 until 1821.

The Bell family was supposed to have been subjected to the supernatural tormenting of Kate Batts in the forms of knockings on the walls, voices, and even physical torture, as with the case of Betsy, who was often punched and scratched and had her hair pulled.

Betsy married her former school teacher Richard Powell, and later in life when he died, she moved to what was then Panola County, Mississippi, to live with other members of the Bell family who had moved here. When she died in 1888, she was buried in the family plot on this forgotten hillside.

Well, almost forgotten.

Many, many years ago, someone stole her original headstone and took it home as a souvenir. It was replaced with this one. With the sentiment carved on the bottom, hoping all of Betsy’s afflictions are over.

More tombstones to come in future posts!