On a point of land just below my home is a very old cemetery.  This cemetery contains the graves of some Civil War soldiers who died during the Jones’s raid. It is said that one of these soldier was killed after being captured by the Yanks. This gallant Confederate soldier fought long and hard before being shot in the leg by some unidentified traitor. He was then taken prisoner, loaded on a wagon, and started on his way to prison.

Now a certain Yankee caption had seen his brother shot down by this soldier and hated him for it. He set out in pursuit of the wagon, caught up with it, and like the lowly Yankee dog that he was, placed a bullet through the rebel’s head, killing him instantly. The reb was buried in the cemetery previously mentioned and was forgotten.

Some years later, however, the Yankee captain moved to Monongah and began courting a girl from Watson. To get to this girl’s house, he had to ride past the cemetery where the soldier was buried. On the first night that he passed the grave, he heard a loud rumble and then that blood-curdling rebel yell. Looking up toward the cemetery, he saw the soldier he had killed, seated atop his coffin, riding it over the hill toward him.

The ex-captain gave a scream, wheeled his horse around, and ran for home. The ghost followed him only as far as the mouth of the hollow, there turning back to his grave. This went on for months on end, until one night some of the captain’s friends found him shot through the head with an apparently very old and previously used bullet.

Now these men had heard the captain’s story and also knew that the bullet had never been removed from the dead rebel’s head. They quickly went to the graveyard and opened the dead man’s grave. They found there, to their horror, that the bullet was gone from the reb’s head and in his hand was a still-smoking revolver.

From that time on, the wild rebel scream has never again echoed through the hollow, nor has the dead soldier ridden his coffin over the hill. However, to this day, the hollow where this took place is still called Coffin Hollow, and I can still show you the grave of the dead rebel.

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