to accompany unwitting persons strolling the creek banks. On one occasion, a man rode his horse to the spot where the barrels of coins were said to have been rolled into the creek. Without warning, something jumped on the animal behind the rider. The man and his mount were so frightened that they ran in terror. In the midst of their flight, the ghostly form vanished into thin air. No other plausible explanation being available, that phantom is said to have been the ghost of a sentry assigned to protect Cornwallis’s cache.
During the Civil War, an unusual confrontation took place along the road near the existing bridge. A local man on foot came upon a stranger who refused to identify himself or to step aside so that the man could pass. Vexed by the stranger’s discourteous behavior and suspicious of his intentions, the man swung a heavy hammer at him, only to see it pass completely through the body of the intended victim. The stranger then cast a horrifying glare and displayed an ominous grin before vanishing before the eyes of the stunned fellow.
Many of the reports of supernatural happenings at Abbotts Creek have come from local opossum hunters. On occasion, woodsmen have become hopelessly lost during night hunts in the forests bordering the creek and have not been able to find their way out until the light of day. Few of these hunters have ever been willing to venture into the forests again because of the ghosts they witnessed. Expensive, well-trained opossum dogs have led these hunters to trees and barked furiously to signal that the prey was located. Alas, when the men climbed the trees, nothing was to be found. Time after time, trusted, faithful hunting dogs have thus chased the phantoms of Abbotts Creek.
One of the community’s most reputable citizens witnessed the terror experienced by his reliable opossum dogs, Cash and Means. As he rode toward his father’s home one evening, the young man followed his dogs as they were attracted to a persimmon tree near the creek. With a full moon providing light on the pitch-black night, the hunter saw what he perceived to be a plump, meaty opossum on a high tree limb. He tied his horse and quickly made his way up the tree, where he spied what he thought was a grinning opossum. But when he shook the “animal” from the limb, Cash and Means were stricken with fright. For the duration of the night, the normally fearless dogs refused to leave the sight of their owner. Once again, the ghosts of Abbotts Creek had deceived both man and animal.
Eerie noises have been heard here, too. Generations of area residents have been disturbed by the unmistakable sound of a barrel rolling down the bank and splashing into Abbotts Creek. These strange sounds have been heard at all hours of the day but are most often experienced at night. A well-known and much-respected local justice of the peace once hurried to the creek after he heard a barrel of coins rolling through the woods and bumping over rocks and stumps as it made its way toward the water. Rushing to the water’s edge, he expected to witness a splash or at least the resulting ripples. He saw neither. The venerable jurist noted that the strange occurrence caused his white hair to stand on end.
It has been surmised that the sounds of the phantom barrels are intended to frighten away those who would discover the treasure. On at least one occasion, the bizarre sounds accomplished their purpose. One summer day, a group of men who were either unaware of the ghosts or who did not believe the stories decided to go swimming au naturel in the creek near the site of the Revolutionary War crossing. No sooner had the bathers begun enjoying the cool, refreshing water than the ghosts started their mischief. Phantom barrel after phantom barrel came rolling down the hill with a thunderous roar. But none of the swimmers could see the source of the mysterious disturbance. So terrified were they that they scrambled from the creek, put on scant clothing, and fled from the area, never to return.
When Cornwallis crossed Abbotts Creek during the first week of February 1781, he surrendered to its waters the riches of his army in the vain hope of conquering the enemy. As fate would have it, he himself was subdued eight months later and surrendered his sword to a triumphant American army. In time, the general and his defeated soldiers sailed home to Great Britain.
Nonetheless, should you have occasion to visit the historic crossing at Abbotts Creek, beware of the ghosts of the men Cornwallis left behind. Even after the passage of so many years, these dutiful ghostly guardians continue to perform their assigned task. The king’s treasure thus continues to lie undisturbed in its eighteenth-century hiding place.
DAVIE COUNTY
Justice from beyond the Grave
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde
Over the last fifty years, as the television set has become an almost universal fixture in the American home, the popularity of the courtroom drama has never waned. From Perry Mason and The Defenders in the fifties and sixties to the myriad attorney programs on the current television schedule, these dramas have glamorized the lives of trial attorneys but have done little to present a realistic view of daily activities in the courtroom. Unlike the grueling tedium of real-life trials, the shows of this genre are invariably resolved by the appearance of a surprise or star witness out of the blue. Yet not even the incomparable Perry Mason—the most legendary of all attorneys on the screen—was able to win a case through evidence provided by a ghost. Nevertheless, that is just what happened in a celebrated legal proceeding in Davie County in 1925.
This true North Carolina trial drama has as its central character and its ghost Mr. James L. Chaffin. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Chaffin lived with his wife and four sons—John, James Pinkney, Marshall, and Abner—on a farm several miles from Mocksville, the seat of Davie County. In the summer of 1921, Chaffin suffered a serious fall that proved to be fatal. In the wake of his tragic death, his will—duly executed and attested by two witnesses on November 16, 1905—was probated at the courthouse in Mocksville. For reasons not specified in the document, Chaffin left all his property to his third son, Marshall, and made no provisions whatsoever for his wife or other three sons. Although the disinherited family members were chagrined and hurt, they could find no legal grounds to file a caveat to the will or to challenge its authenticity.
The Chaffin family seemed to be making significant progress in healing its wounds until the day in 1922 when Marshall died. Under the terms of his estate, all of the property he had inherited from his father—including the Chaffin farm—went to his wife and minor son. Though this disposition inflamed the family sensitivities, there seemed to be nothing that Mrs. Chaffin and her three disinherited sons could do. But things were to change four years later with the appearance of the ghost of James L. Chaffin.
The ghost of the family patriarch began manifesting itself to the second son, James Pinkney Chaffin, in early 1925. As a result of the spirit’s nocturnal visits over the course of several months, young Chaffin made his way to Mocksville in June during the busy farm season to file a lawsuit, in which he challenged the validity of his father’s will of 1905. By the time Chaffin v. Chaffin came to trial in mid-December 1925, the case had attracted the attention of legal scholars as well as laymen because of the strange allegations made by the widow and three sons.
When James Pinkney Chaffin took the witness stand, the courtroom was packed. He began his testimony by offering a rather bizarre tale: “In all my life, I never heard my father mention having made a later will than the one dated in 1905. But some months ago, I began to have vivid dreams, in which my father appeared at my bedside. At first, he did not say anything. He just stood there and looked at me with a sorrowful expression. He seemed to have something on his mind—as if he felt that, in his lifetime, he had done something wrong and wished that he could set it right.” The witness then expressed to the court his longstanding belief that his father had not done right when he left everything to Marshall. However, Pinkney had not initially equated that problem with the appearance of his father’s ghost. “It did not occur to me that this could be what was worrying him,” he testified. “I did not attach any importance to it.”
Then
