 HALLOWEEN HORROR – BURIED ALIVE IN CEDAR MILLS
CEMETERY! By
Natalie Bauman Around the time of Halloween, people begin to
think of ways to scare themselves and others, perhaps by attending a scary
movie. But truth can be more horrifying
than fiction. There was a very
disturbing article in the Denison Daily News on September 19, 1879 about a
nightmarish true story that occurred in Cedar Mills, north of Gordonville,
south of the River. Mr. Ed Perry visited the Chickasaw Nation in
1879 and related, according to the newspaper, a well authenticated story, which
he heard while stopping over-night at Cedar Mills. Several weeks earlier, a young man died in
the vicinity of the Mills, and there being no clergyman in the immediate
neighborhood, the friends of the deceased determined to bury him without
funeral services. It was in the evening
when the cortege took up the march to the grave which had been dug in an open
field. On arriving at the grave, the
coffin which had been carried on the shoulders of four stalwart young men, was
lowered to the ground and placed in the grave.
At that moment, a cry, proceeding apparently from the coffin, broke the
stillness of the night, the coffin swayed to and fro (the man inside the coffin
literally turning in his grave, as the saying goes) and then the pall-bearers
heard another cry from the coffin, more terrible than the first. The young men did not wait to hear or see
anything more, but fled in dismay from the scene. It was several days afterwards before they could
pluck up courage to return and cover the coffin with dirt. The supposition is, that the young man was
buried alive, and might have been rescued from his terrible doom, had it not
been for the dread and superstition of his companions. The only recorded young man I could find who
died and was buried at Cedar Mills at that time was P. C. Thompson, age
21. Born 24 May 1858, and died 7 Aug
1879. He was the son of one of the early
settlers of Cedar Mills, William and Orra Thompson. There were two other men in their early 40s
who died at about the same time, but I thought they would not be referred to by
the article as young men. If P.C.
Thompson is the young man in the story, he may have tragically left a pregnant
wife behind. In the same Cedar Mills
cemetery, I found the grave of the infant son of P.C. and S. F. Thompson, May
31-June 9, 1880. Many people have a fear of enclosed spaces and a
fear of the dark. There is nothing more
dark and confining than a coffin with no way out. Now, that’s scary. Let me know when Halloween is over! Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |