Elizabeth was a beautiful young woman who one day told her father that she
wished to marry a man from a family her father hated. He forbade her to ever
see him again. One night soon after this he caught her climbing out her
second story bedroom window onto a ladder. He correctly assumed that she and
her young man were eloping, and in a rage, he sped across the room shouting,
"Very well, GO to your lover! But you'll never set foot in my house again!"
And he shoved the top of the ladder, with his daughter atop it, away from the
side of the house. The ladder toppled over into the yard, depositing Elizabeth
on top of a tree stump. Horribly, her neck landed across the upturned blade
of a double headed ax that was embedded in the stump. She was beheaded !!!.
The young man had tried to catch her, but was unable to stop the accident.
Her head rolled to a stop at his feet, and in the brief moment after decapitation
when the human head is still conscious, she looked up at him and mouthed the
words, 'help me.' No sound came forth, only a dreadful bloody gurgling. Upon
seeing this the young man passed out.
In a fit of fury, the father came screaming out of the house, and yanked the
ax from the stump. Using the opposite blade so their blood wouldn't mix, he
lopped off the unconscious boy's head, then buried the heads and bodies at
the four opposing corners of the hollow so the lovers wouldn't be able to
find each other in death. On certain nights, the young man's ghost is heard
calling Elizabeth's name over and over as he searches up and down the hollow
for his beloved.
Late one summer night I heard this frightening manifestation, and my Uncle was
right there with me in his yard, along with his friends who always helped him
prank us. They all seemed genuinely frightened, and although I suppose it's
possible it was some kind of trick on his part, I believe the story now. They
were all so spooked, I noticed one his friends' eyes were watering from fright.
If you would like to contact Bruce about this
story you may do so at the following EMail address....
The story of Elizabeth was told to me by an Uncle who liked to scare us with
spooky stories and the occasional prank, so for years I dismissed Elizabeth
as part of his shenanigans, even though he always became quite serious when
discussing the story, and insisted that it was a true tale. He said that he
heard this from an old woman he used to deliver papers to when he was a boy.
Both he and this old woman lived near the hollow where Elizabeth and her
father had lived, long ago.