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People of the hills love a good ghost story. And there’s just something about the high ridges, deep forests, and crow-black nights that encourage an aged, gray-headed grandpa to gather the young’uns close and see just how much he can spook them before they try to close their eyes and sleep.

The Dark Corner has hatched its own share of these terrifying tales. There’s one that the Dark Corner’s favorite son, Rev. J. Dean Crain, used to love to tell on himself. In fact, he wrote about it in his 1914 autobiography called “A Mountain Boy’s Life Story.”

Sometime before this incident, one of Crain’s young friends had been brutally murdered, and his body dumped into the Tyger River. Although he didn’t elaborate on the crime, we can safely assume this murder had something to do with bootleg whiskey. They usually did in those days. 

The young Crain, well before his Christian conversion, had been somewhere he shouldn’t have been, and the nightfall beat him home. He dreaded the dark journey, but he finally set off. His route would take him across one stubbled field after another and through a couple of dark woods. He also remembered he had to cross the river close to the spot where his buddy’s bloody body had been found. 

The moon was his dim lantern that night. Trudging along, his imagination began to play games with him. He swore he heard approaching footsteps behind him. His pace quickened, as well as his pulse. A dog barked in the distance, startling him even more. As he came to the river his soul was chilled by the sound of its constant roar. He knew a foot log was close by, but he didn’t figure he had time to look. Just then, a fallen branch, caught in the Tyger’s swift current, flip-flopped down the stream close by, making the sound of hurried, splashing footsteps. 

Crain jumped into the water and made haste to the other side. 

Not long after he emerged onto the other bank, he heard a lone voice shout out, “Who is that?” He didn’t bother to answer. 

Crain wrote, “I had on an old Macintosh overcoat with a cape on it. The tail of that coat stood out straight behind. I said, ‘Crain, you are not doing your best.’ Looking back, I found the coat tail straight, and I said, ‘Now, Crain, you are going home.’ When I got home, I went in the room where Pa slept and said, ‘It has turned a little warm.’ He said, ‘Yes, to a fellow that has been running.’”

Memories of that night lingered long with the great preacher. Hardly superstitious and not much given to ghosts and other such nonsense, he still wondered who it was that called out to him that dark, spooky night for the rest of his life. Probably just a nocturnal moonshiner who thought a revenuer had discovered his distillery, he assumed. But then again, you just don’t ever know.