The Restless Spirits at Waverly Plantation

Wavery Plantation Oaks

A loving husband had this unique Southern plantation home designed and built for his wife in the mid-1800s. But she tragically died, before Waverly Mansion, located in Clay County Mississippi was finished.

George Hampton Young was a colonel who moved from Georgia to Mississippi to establish a cotton plantation along the Tombigbee River.

Waverly Mansion--today.

Young and his ten children moved into their new home in the 1850s. He ran an impressive farm.

Waverly, besides providing large quantities of cotton had a tannery, lumber mill, gristmill, brick kiln, icehouse, gardens, orchards, and livestock. The plantation also manufactured its own gas, which was piped into the house to illuminate it.

Waverly has a unique architectural feature, not often seen in the South, a massive copula sits atop this home that affords the visitor a 360-degree view of the surrounding countryside.

This mansion also is known as one of the most haunted homes in the South.

The Young family maintained Waverly until the last of the ten children died in 1913. It then was left to slowly deteriorate.

Robert and Donna Snow fell in love with the old house and spent several years in the 1960s, restoring it to its original splendor. It was made a National Historic Landmark in 1973.

During this time, the Snow’s became acquainted with an assortment of ghosts that haunt Waverly.

The home today is run as a house museum.

During the Civil War several Confederate officers, friends of the Young family, recuperated from battle wounds at Waverly.

In one mirror from this period, a strange sight is seen. Visitors report a Confederate soldier standing behind them, only to turn around and find no one is there.

Colonel Young’s wife, who never lived in the house, is observed wandering through the second-floor rooms. She turns and stares at visitors and then slowly disappears.

Waverly family cemetery.

The Colonel himself is seen riding a phantom horse near the family cemetery. He is also seen walking through this graveyard and in the yard near the mansion.

The most active ghost at the plantation has been seen and heard by many tour guides and visitors.

This four-year-old girl is believed to be the daughter of a Young family friend. Her apparition appears so real that visitor’s on tours have tried to find what adults she belongs to.

Staircase landing.

She is usually spotted on the landing of the spiral staircase between the second and third floors.

It is believed that she died of diphtheria in the home during the Civil War.

This young ghost is also heard crying for her mother.

Another sound often noted involves many voices attending a dinner party—they are heard laughing and enjoying music in the mansion’s ballroom.

Here is a brief video about the young ghost, known as “Little Girl Lost.” The Snow’s daughter and another witness are interviewed.

The Witch of Yazoo

Updated book

This story was first made widely popular when Willie Morris * mentioned it in his book Good Old Boy published in 1971. 

Residents of Yazoo, Mississippi have passed it down for several generations.

According to the legend in the late 1800s an “old ugly witch” who lived along the Yazoo River was caught torturing fishermen, she lured in off the river.

In this tale, a young boy by the name of Joe Bob Duggett in the fall of 1884, while passing by the witches’ house heard loud screams. He peered through one window and to his horror, he saw two dead fishermen on the floor as the witch danced around them chanting.

He then alerted the sheriff and when the two arrived at the house they found no one home but they discovered two skeletons hanging from the rafters.

Hearing the witch outside they chased her into the swamp. By the time they caught up to her, she had fallen into quicksand. It was too late to rescue her.

As she sank deeper into the sand with her last breath, she cursed, “I shall return from my grave in twenty years and burn down the town.” Then she disappeared beneath the muck.

Glenwood Cemetery

When she was buried in Glenwood Cemetery heavy chains were placed atop her grave to ensure she stayed buried.

As the years passed, few remembered her threat—that is until the morning of May 25, 1904. What began, as a small fire soon became a raging inferno driven by what some described as fierce winds:

“The flames were said by witnesses to have leaped through the air, as if driven by some supernatural force.”

This fire destroyed 200 homes, and every business in Yazoo City. In all 324 building were damaged.

Old Main Street Yazoo City

It was said the fire started innocently enough in one young woman’s—a Miss Wise’s-- kitchen as she prepared food for her wedding later that day.

But since the force of the winds were such a strange occurrence for the area many believed it was the witches curse that spread the fire so quickly.

The Witches Grave with large chains.

It was exactly twenty years since she had cursed the town. A group of citizens headed for the cemetery and found that several of the large chains surrounding her grave were broken.

Today the locals still like to retell this story. Children in the town affectionately call the witch—The Chain Lady.

No one knows the witches real name, the original stone that marked her grave is long gone with only had the letters "TW" engraved on it—The Witch.

The heavy chains still surround what is known today as The Witches Grave.

The newer headstone that replaced the old one mysteriously cracked in half shortly after being placed on the grave. Even more mysterious is the heavy chains near the witches' grave have to be regularly repaired. It is stated because they fall apart shortly after they are fixed.

After publishing this post a reader, Joshua Ray Lancaster contacted me and shared a photo he took at the Yazoo grave in 2006. It appears to have a ghostly figure hovering near the witches grave. Here is his picture.

Click to enlarge.

* Willie Morris grew up in Yazoo City and when he died in 1999, he was buried close by The Witches Grave.

Horn Island: An Artistic Ghost

Horn Island

Horn Island, Mississippi, is located in the Gulf Coast area just south of Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

This Island is one of five Mississippi Barrier Islands that separate the Gulf of Mexico from Mississippi Sound.

Today the only thing left on this island besides tourists is the ranger station and the ghost of a famous artist.

From 1943 to 1945, the U.S. Army closed Horn Island to the general public. They used it for a biological weapons testing site until it was determined that it was too close to a populated area.

Most of the structures the army built were later destroyed by hurricanes, so Horn Island after this was reclaimed by nature.

Walter Inglis Anderson

Born to a prominent New Orleans family, Walter Inglis Anderson became a favorite painter in the thriving Ocean Springs’ art community.

Walter Inglis Anderson

Anderson experienced a mental breakdown in 1937 and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals from 1938 to 1940. He was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder or severe depression. 

Some doctors’ feel his illness was caused by recurring symptoms connected to malaria, others feel Anderson experienced depression caused by alcoholism.

Despite his illness, Anderson was an extremely prolific and creative artist. He became reclusive and loved to visit and camp on Horn Island.

He painted various wildlife and landscapes of Horn Island all in radiant watercolors from 1946 to 1965. His paintings are trendy today.

Varies watercolors by Anderson--he often painted
the island's animals and sea creatures.

Anderson died at age sixty-two, in 1965.

A Friendly Ghost

Many feel that Anderson didn’t leave his beloved island after his death. It is said that his ghost is the one seen on Horn Island.

Witnesses have reported seeing him “walking along the island’s beach carrying a messenger bag containing his paints and canvasses.” *

Several rangers who have been assigned to the island say they saw Anderson’s ghost and approached him. They all reported he smiled and waved at them before disappearing.

Anderson was known to camp for several days on the island during his visits. Some state this accounts for reports of campfires being seen along the beach.

When rangers have investigated the source for these fires --no trace of them has ever been found.

* An excerpt from Haunted Mississippi Gulf Coast, by Bud Steed

The Defiant Knight Company

“We stood firm to the union when secession swept like an avalanche over the state. For this course alone we have been treated as savages instead of freemen by the rebel authorities.”

--Newton Knight (petition to Governor William Sharkey, July 15, 1865)

Soon after Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States in November of 1860, Mississippi, led by slave-owning planters, seceded from the Union in January of 1861. 

However, not everyone who lived in Mississippi agreed with this decision. In fact, some Mississippians’ viewed the rebellious Confederate government as the invading body. This is the story of Newton Knight and his opposition to the Civil War.

Newton Knight was born in Jones County, Mississippi in 1837 when the landscape was still dominated by virgin longleaf pines stood, and wolves and panthers still roamed the land. 

In 1858 he married Serena Turner and moved to Jasper County to set up a homestead where they grew corn and sweet potatoes, and raised hogs and cattle. Newt worked hard and tilled the land himself. According to his family, Newt was a loving father who never drank or cursed.

When Mississippi seceded from the union most of the people in Jones County, Mississippi were poor farmers who did not own slaves. They did not care about their states right to maintain the institution of slavery. In fact, Jones County had the smallest number of slaves in the state.

Mississippi swept up in war fever didn’t take kindly to any southerner who opposed the war. Those who did were labeled cowards and traitors. In fact, during this time anyone who refused to join the Confederate Army knew the penalty was death. So many Mississippians joined against their will. 

Newt Knight reluctantly enlisted in the Confederate Army in the fall of 1861 but soon after he was furloughed so he could return home to see his father, who was dying.

In May of 1862, Newt enlisted as a private with his friends and neighbors into Company F of the Seventh Battalion, Mississippi infantry in Jasper County. They joined together so they could avoid a draft that would have sent them to serve with strangers. Years later Newt stated he only agreed to serve as an orderly so he could care for the sick and wounded.

During this time the Confederate Congress passed the infamous “Twenty-Negro Law,” which exempted planters who owned twenty or more slaves from having to fight. This law basically made sure that a rich man’s war was to be fought by poor men. 

Newt hearing that the Confederate cavalry had taken his families’ horses went AWOL in November of 1862. He made the 200-mile journey back to Jones County—managing to avoid capture by the Confederate patrollers who searched the roads for deserters.

Once home, Newt was shocked to find most of the farms in ruin. The war had taken all the local men—so there was no one to tend the crops, etc. The women of Jones, Jasper, and Smith counties were all struggling to feed their children. 

Things were made worse by the “tax-in-kind” system the Confederates had put in place, which allowed tax collectors to take what they wanted for the Confederate armies. Most of the animals and food stores and even the cloth the women used to make clothes for their children had been claimed. This left all these families to suffer.

“If something is not done by the legislature to open the corn cribs that are now closed against the widow and orphan, and the soldier's destitute families I know that we are undone. Men cannot be expected to fight for the Government that permits their wives and children to starve.”

         --A neighboring planter in Smith County warned Governor John J. Pettus

In May of 1863, the Seventh Battalion rushed into the Battle of Vicksburg. When Newt refused to go back into the Confederate Army, he was arrested and imprisoned. The Confederates tortured him and destroyed everything he owned—leaving his family destitute. 

Vicksburg was a six-week siege, which trapped the Confederate soldiers in a nightmare. After the Confederate’s defeat at Vicksburg, in July of 1863, many soldiers deserted. One soldier who walked home to Jones County after this battle found his wife dead. She had given what little food there was to their children and starved to death.

In August of 1863, the Confederates sent Major Amos McLemore to round up the deserters. Newt organized a company of men, approximately 125, from Jones, Jasper, Covington, and Smith counties to defend themselves against the Confederates. 

This group became known as the Knight Company. Newt, a tall, powerful man, who was known for his imposing presence, was elected captain. He was an expert with his double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun, and he proved to be a skilled and resourceful guerrilla war captain.

To avoid capture, the Knight men would disappear into swamp hideouts, called “Devil’s Den” and “Panther Creek.” They communicated with each other by blowing signals into hollow cattle horns. Sympathetic locals both white and black aided the Knight Company.  One slave woman by the name of Rachel supplied Newt with food and useful information.

Major Amos McLemore was shot and killed in the home of Amos Deason in Ellisville, Mississippi. Most felt it was Newt Knight who pulled the trigger. 

A storm raged outside as McLemore collapsed, his blood seeped into the pine floor in front of the fireplace, and no matter how much scrubbing was done by Eleanor Deason it would reappear every time it rained, or the wind howled. 

After many years of seeing the blood, descendants of the Deason family finally covered the wooden floor with new flooring. This covered up the bloodstain, but it can still be seen under the house where the blood came through the floor onto the rafters.

Today, the Deason house is said to still be haunted. On the anniversary of the murder each year the front door of the house bursts open without cause. The house was given in 1991 to the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

They began restoring the house, so it could be opened to the public—several members of the DAR confessed that they were too uncomfortable to stay in the home alone, day or night.

As for the Knight Company men, their fate was not kind. 

The Confederate authorities embarrassed by the defiance of Knights’ men determined to stamp them out. Most were caught, some were mauled by Confederate hound dogs unleashed to flush them out, others were hung, their bodies left dangling from the trees as a warning to others. In the end, many were returned to their Confederate units. But the authorities never caught Newt Knight.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, Mississippi was occupied by Federal troops. They called Captain Newt Knight into service as commissioner in charge of distributing thousands of pounds of food to the sick and starving people in Jones County. Newt was also sent to rescue several black children who were still being held in slavery in Smith County.

In 1875 Newt returned to his farm in Jasper County, he brought with him his wartime ally, Rachel, now a former slave. His wife Serena left, and he married Rachel. She bore him several children. 

Newton died in 1890, at the age of 85. Under the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 whites and blacks could not be buried in the same cemetery. Defiant to the end Newt requested he be buried in a simple pine box on a high ridge, next to Rachel who had died in 1889, overlooking his old farmstead. 

The inscription on his tombstone reads, “He Lived for Others.”