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Spooktacular Story Entry No. One
SPOOKY TOWN - 10/24/2008
By John Riedesel
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Even in these modern times, the Low Country of South Carolina can evoke feelings of mystery and dread. The traveler who strays from US 17, the Coastal Highway, especially at night, may start in fear and wonder at the huge, twisted live oaks wearing their drapes of Spanish moss like funeral shrouds. What secrets do they hide, standing watch over the tidal wetlands? In the 1870s, superstition ran high in this region of marshy backwaters between Charleston and Savannah. The slave culture had produced fearful manifestations of the spirit world, and white society was rife with stories of hauntings by dead Civil War soldiers. My great aunt Lavinia grew up 50 miles from Charleston on Edisto Island in this atmosphere of dread and superstition. Her parents, George and Abigail Nix, had been rice planters in ante-bellum times. The war had ruined them economically, but they struggled proudly to subsist on the sale of timber and turpentine and products from the tidal waterways. They were hardly better off than their former slaves. The Nix family occupied the decrepit old plantation house, though their hundreds of acres of rice and indigo land had long since reverted to marsh. The dwelling was adjacent to the old Presbyterian church where, in more prosperous times, George Nix had been an influential member of the session. The family had its own above ground crypt in the churchyard cemetery, where several generations of Nixes lay in repose. Church and cemetery were framed by ancient, gnarled live oaks trailing long strands of Spanish moss. Lavinia had two siblings: an identical twin named Lorena, and my maternal grandmother Cora, who was several years younger. Lavinia and Lorena were inseparable. They seemed to know one another’s thoughts, and their father, George, doted on them. When the twins were seven years old, Lorena contracted a fever and, after a month’s struggle, succumbed to the ailment. Her death impacted the family greatly. George and Abigail were inconsolable, but Lavinia’s reaction bordered on irrationality. When Lorena’s body was taken from the church and moved to the family crypt, her sister grabbed at her, trying to pull her back. “She’s not dead,” Lavinia cried over and over again. “Lorena’s not dead!” Friends had to restrain her as the little inert body was placed gently in the crypt and the big iron doors were drawn shut with a bang and securely locked. For days Lavinia alternated between periods of ranting and withdrawn silence. She would hug herself, rocking back and forth, declaring, “Lorena’s not dead. She’s not dead.” About a week after the funeral, Lavinia’s strange behavior came to a head. One morning Tilly, the family servant, discovered that the girl was not in her room. A brief, panicky search found Lavinia wandering through the graveyard, her nightgown wet with dew, staring vacantly and babbling about seeing her sister. She insisted that a child’s whimpering had awakened her in the night. She was drawn to the open window overlooking the churchyard, where she saw in the moonlight the glowing figure of Lorena, clad in diaphanous garments, emerging from the crypt. The local doctor assured George and Abigail that Lavinia suffered from hallucinations brought on by grief for her sister. The visions continued, and subsided only when Tilly administered an herbal potion learned from her slave grandmother. A degree of normalcy returned to the family for about two years, until it was time to open the family crypt again. Lavinia’s Uncle Luther, who had lost a leg fighting with the 24th South Carolina Rangers against General Sherman at Summerville some 18 years earlier, finally succumbed to his war wounds at age 37. As Luther’s funeral procession neared the crypt, Lavinia was overcome with a sense of dread. The family unlocked the big iron doors and pulled them open on groaning hinges. Everyone froze in horror when they saw what lay on the floor of the crypt right against the door. It was the skeleton of a child, its hands grotesquely grasping at the heavy door and its head against the crack where a little light and air would have entered. At this revelation Lavinia gave up any hold she still had on sanity. Over the next few years she succumbed to tearing her clothing, cutting and burning herself, screaming uncontrollably, and even killing family pets. In desperation the family committed the now-adolescent girl to an institution, where she spent the rest of her life. In 1939, at age 67, great aunt Lavinia mercifully passed away in her sleep and was finally reunited with her sister. 7. http://www.thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/10552
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