Terrifying Tales: Pruitt’s Chain

In June of 1938 in eastern Kentucky a man by the name of Carl Pruitt discovered his wife in bed with another man. Enraged he grabbed a chain and strangled her to death. Her lover managed to escape.

Afterward feeling remorse, he then took his own life. He was buried in a separate cemetery then his wife. 

A few months later several residents noticed a chain growing in the shape of a cross on Pruitt’s headstone.

Soon after, a series of strange deaths occurred in connection to this gravestone.

A group of teenagers entered the cemetery to check out the strange growing chain. One member of the group in an effort to impress the others threw stones at the marker—as he and the rest left the cemetery his bike went out of control and sped down a hill.

He slammed into a tree head on. When his friends caught up they found him dead, not from the impact but from a chain that was wrapped around his throat—he had been strangled.

It is said later the mother of this boy went to the cemetery with an axe and proceeded to try and chop it down in a rage. Later the same day as she hung at her wash to dry—the clothesline snapped—she was found later dead with a chain encircling her neck.

Oddly, the Pruitt tombstone was found not to have a scratch on it.

Another victim was a local farmer who shot at the tombstone with his shotgun. Afterwards he bragged it now had several holes in it. Within the week his wagon crashed and his body was found with a chain wrapped around his throat.

Again, the tombstone had no signs of damage.

A policeman sent from Louisville to investigate the farmer’s death joked with a fellow cop that he did not believe the chain stories and then he made fun of the grave.

As these two officers left the cemetery they noticed a glowing light coming from the stone. As they drove away this light followed them. The skeptical officer sped up and ended up crashing their car along the narrow road.

His partner survived the crash uninjured but the disrespectful officer was thrown from the car and strangled to death by a chain that the other officer discovered wrapped tightly around his neck.

Another local farmer named Arthur Lewis told his wife that he was going to put an end “to all the nonsense.” He took a sledgehammer to the cemetery and broke the Pruitt headstone into pieces.

People who lived nearby stated they heard his swings and then a harrowing scream. When they went to investigate they found Lewis lying near the cemetery gate—he had been strangled to death by a chain.

Once more the headstone was in place with no signs of damage.

Now frightened, the relatives of the deceased buried near Pruitt’s grave had their loved ones exhumed and moved to other graves.

The Pruitt grave then lay untouched until 1958 when a strip-mining company covered the grave--its location today is unknown.