The Ghost Who Rang the Gatehouse Bell
By Matthew
Once lived a man named Daniel Tucker. He owned the Litchfield Plantation three miles west of Pawleys Island, South Carolina in the late 1700's.
Daniel owned a giant mansion. The ownership was past down from generation to generation until 1904. Each generation was born with gifts and fortune, and these things lavished on them from the cradle to the grave.
The mansion stood in a grove of gnarled oak trees at the end of a deeply shadowed avenue of moss draped oaks. The Tuckers took ownership of the property in the eighteenth century. Daniel Tucker died in 1797.
Daniel Tucker left Litchfield to three sons: John Hyrne, Daniel, and George. John Hyrne became the sole owner of the property after Daniel and George died.
John Hyrne Tucker died in June, 1859. He left Litchfield Plantation to a son named Henry Massingberd.
Henry Massingberd married Manigault. They had several children. Henry studied physics and medicine like his dad.
Henry often left in the middle of the night to go to someone sick. This happened several times. When he got back home, he would tap the gatehouse bell with his riding crop. The gateman would let him in.
When he got to the mansion, he would sleep down stairs, so he wouldn't wake anyone up.
Dr. Henry Massingberd died on January 10, 1904, and was laid to rest in the cemetery at Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church in Georgetown.
One night shortly after Dr. Tucker's death, something mysterious happened. During the night, the bell at the gate suddenly ran as if a riding crop had tapped it. The bell echoed in the near the mansion. The people who lived nearby, half asleep, thought that Dr. Tucker had returned to his home from a call to a sickbed. That eerie incident was repeated each night thereafter. Many waited in dread for that one chime each night. When the bell rang, their fears rushed forward, but when it was over, their hearts would finally stop pounding their chest. Now the people around Litchfield Plantation can rest each night undisturbed, no longer
