Richard Brown interview with Dorothy Reagin, Carter Kindred, and Emma Hill

The John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archive recordings contains unedited versions of all interviews. Some material may contain descriptions of violence, offensive language, or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. There are instances of racist language and description, particularly in regards to African Americans. These items are presented as part of the historical record. This project is a repository for the stories, accounts, and memories of those who chose to share their experiences for educational purposes. The viewpoints expressed in this project do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Atlanta History Center or any of its officers, agents, employees, or volunteers. The Atlanta History Center makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in the interviews and expressly disclaims any liability therefore. If you believe you are the copyright holder of any of the content published in this collection and do not want it publicly available, please contact the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center at 404-814-4040 or reference@atlantahistorycenter.com. Please note that this recording contains a story about racial violence against a Black man during the Civil War. In this recording Dorothy Reagin, Carter Kindred, and Emma Hill tell ghost stories from rural Georgia. To start, Carter Kindred shares a story about a haunted house in Monroe, Georgia, where a doctor hung a real skeleton during the Civil War. Then at minute 1:03, Dorothy Reagin tells two humorous stories that take place in a cemetery. Next, at minute 1:44, Emma Hill tells a Civil War story from Lithonia, Georgia. Upon learning that a local Black man wanted to move north to join the Union Army, a group of white men chased him down, then beat and killed him. The man was said to haunt the shallow grave in which he was buried. Carter Kindred shares the final story at minute 3:00 about a farm in Monroe that he recently bought. During the Civil War, Union troops killed a Confederate soldier who was hiding on the property; he was buried on the property, and Kindred claims that his ghost can still be heard walking through the house. Dorothy Dot Reagin (1924-2003) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Oscar McAlpin (1893-1971) and Claudia McGuffey (1900-1982). In 1935, the family moved to Stone Mountain, Georgia. She married Jacob Calvin Reagin (1917-1997) and they had one son, Randy (1954-2017), and one daughter, Sheila (approximately 1950- ). Emma Hill (1923-2017), one of Jacob Calvin Reagins cousins, was born in Atlanta, to James Thomas Reagin (1884-1963) and Ada Lou Kelly (1889-1981). She later moved to Lithonia, Georgia, and married Frederick Leon Hill (1921-1981). Additional biographical information has not been determined. Richard Brown Nov, 26, 1973 Folklore JOO GHOST TALES IN THE LITHONIA AREA INTRODUCTION My initial area of collecting was the Lithonia area, but I ended up branching off into a nearby town of Monroe, Georgia, Also, one Lithonia woman's tales were set in Stone Mountain, a tovm very close to the Lithonia area .. I was surprised not to find more material concerning ghost tales, although, as I mentioned at the close of this paper, I wasn't able to get all that was avilable to me, If I were to do future projects, I believe I would choose a wider area of folklore for collecting, CARTER KINDRED's SKELETON STORY There's one story about the old home we bought at Monroe, Georgia, They say that this, this farm was owned by Dr, Adams, and he lived, of course, during the Civil War and was a doctor for the country people, All the people in around Monroe and Grad dis community, they say that he used to have a skeleton of an actual body hanging upstairs in this one room and all the people that are grown now used to be ,kids living in the home said that they would never venture into that room. That's it, CARTER KINDRED'S STORY OF REB.i!:L SOLDIER'S GHOST On this farm at Monroe that vie purchased about eleven years ago, the old people around there tell the story of when Sherman marched to the sea, They say that a Confederate soldier was running away from the lines of the Union troops, and he tried to hide inside the house, rather Mr, Adams tried to hide him inside the house, The Union Army caught him and shot him right inside the kitchen. They had to drill a hole in the floor, the hole is still visible, for the blood to run out, They buried him in the family cemetery, the John Adams cemetery, which is still on the place and his grave is there today, But what the oldsters tell is that you can still hear at night his footsteps walking through the house, And a lot of them won't come around the place at night, DOT REAGIN's STORY OF C.EMETERY One day there were two men sittin' in Stone Mountain Cemetery by a picket fence under uh 'ickry nut tree, They were counting 'ickry nuts. They were dividing 'ickry nuts. Two men came along and heard them, Thought they were talking about them and they said, "you take one and I' 11 take one, you take one and I'll take one", and it scared them and they went runnin off. DOT REAGIN'S STORY OF HER BROTHER AND THE CEMETERY One night, my brother, Howard, was walking along the cemetery road, They lived down below the house, lived down the road by the cemetery, A car came along and two boys asked him if he wanted a ride, He said, "Hell no, I'm in a hurry," EMMA HILL'S STORY OF NEGRO'S SPIRIT This all happened during the War between the States in the area of Lithonia, A southern nigra wanted to go north to join the Union Army, and the white men in the community didn't want him to go so they chased him down and killed him, And uh, the people that lived close by saw that he wasn t buried and went up and put him in a shallow grave and covered his face with leaves to keep the sand from getting on his face, And people could hear him hollerin' for miles around after they had beat him, Today, people can still hear him hollerin' . !vly mama went by there when she's a little girl after dark, She heard him hollerin, cryin and she got real scared, And there was muscadine growin on the grave, and nobody wanta eat any of the muscadines for a long time, Finally, somebody got brave enough to cut the muscadine vine down and we can still hear ttam hollerin' at night, RANDY REAGIN'S STORY OF THE TRAIN DEPOT GHOST Well, it was a long time ago, sometime around the time when my parents were still young, when they were young children of my grandparents. My father heard it a lots while he was growin' up, about the ghost and all, and I'd figure that I've heard it from enough people myself, not includin' my father. A long time ago, when it happened, they was building some kinda water storage tank near the train depot and it was really a bigger one than they've ever had around now. You know how you can come from Monroe down 138 and get on ol' Klondike Road? Well, anyway, that's direction you would have come to hafta see this thing, the tank, best. Headin' west, I guess, I dunno, Anyway, there's one pretty woman livin' down a piece through the country, kinda in a valley sorta, but not really a valley, It was more like a slopin area, sorta, Anyway, this woman was the best, best lookin thing around and there were three men that really did like her a lots and two of them were older and one was younger. It's said that the young one had a better chance of gettin this woman but she kept on seein' all three of these One of the older men was mean as could be, had killed his first wife but everyone had been too scared to do anything about it, so people just sorta left him alone, The other one was real quiet, never said nuthin', and no one really knew much about him, It was knovm, now, that the mean one hated the guts out of the young fellow because he was so yo1..u1g and all, Well, one night, some men were out fishing late an they thought they saw something strange in deep water near the bank. A couple of them caine back next mornin' and found out that it was the young man at the bottom of the lake, They pulled him out from the bottom and fotLTld him clutching a large rock under his shirt and jacket, Ya know, just kinda holdin' a big flat heavy rock next to his chest, sorta, undernearth his clothes, sorta, None of anyone around the area could figure out what happened unless he killed himself and that was a strange way to kill yourself, ya know, Some people thought the man was too scared the mean old man was after him, so he drowned himself, Anyway, a few days later, there was this giant hail storm and the water tank was damaged somehow, The quiet man, who helped build the ol' tank climbed up it one evening with a bi-Ir heavy hammer, that could barely be lifted by a normal man, He was a strong one, and he used it hammer out busted areas of the tank. He had to be careful because the tank was full of water from the heav::,, rains and all and he didn't want to fall Well, it seems that no one kmm about the quiet man s giant strene;th and how he was able to swing that long heavy hammer like it was a. stick. He made a giant, loud racket with this ol' hammer and everyone frcm m:ii.les around heard him working, The pretty lady climbed onto the roof of her house and watched him work from the distance, The mean man was at the lady's house and really got jealous and upset and stormed into town with a lot of fight and hate. He had to walk and when he got there, it was really late and the hammerin' had stopped and everyone had gone to bed. The ol' mean one got nervous at the quiet and climbed straight up the steps of the tan.k until he got to the top. He foimd the quiet man stretched out on a board asleep, Now, the quiet man had a sling around his back that he strapped the hammer to when he climbed up the steps to the top of the tank, The mean one took the hammer, rolled the man over on his stomach, sort of, and strapped the hammer to the sling, He then hit him on the head to make sure he was out cold and then rolled him into the water, The next morning, several people gathered around the tank to look at its nice repair work. The .mean man was there with the other tovmsfolks. One man climbed to the top, looked down into the water and all around, smiled and came down again, The mean ol' man couldn't understand why he said nothing of the body at the bottom. So, as quick as soon as everyone had left, he climbed up to look and the body wasn't there, He couldn't figure this out, but he decided to forget about it. That day, all the men in the town boarded up the top of the tank because it was almost overflowing vd th water from the rain. A few days later, the mean one married the pretty woman, That night, after the marriage, a loud, banging noise came from the tank, like someone was swinging a big hammer, Everyone from miles around woke up and came to the tank, The sound came from the inside, the loud banging noise. From then on, every night, the hammering would start, and scare everyone too death, The mean ol' man's pretty young wife sat every night on the roof watching the tank as it banged and crashed and everything and would never stay with her husband at night. This finally drove the mean ol' man crazy, and one day they found him at the bottom of a lake, clutching a large rock next to his chest, RANDY REAGIN'S TALE OF THE TRAIN TRACK GHOST Well, this also happened a long time ago and this old conductor or switchman or whatever those guys are that work' with signal lights are. He was a real old fellow, gettin' ready to retire the next day and him and his family was all happy and all, So, he had to work that night, his last night on the job. Well, it happened that two trains somehow got on the same track headed for each other, ya know, and they were really coming fast. The ol' man saw them headed for a crash and ran to a side track, switched rails somehow or another to have one of the trains go on another track, He stood on this other track and his foot wedged and caught somehow and he knew it but he st.fill took his lantern and somehow signaled the train to go full speed so it would get on the track before the other one hit, The train barely missed the other one by s~edin' up and it hit the ol' man. It's been said that sometimes you can see the ol' man walking up and down the tracks near Lithonia at night waving his lantern. SUMMARY Some of these ghost tales have historic backgrounds to them where some of the others only have just a local backdrop, such as Randy Reagin's tales. Dot Reagin's story about her brother and the hickory nut story both have humorous endings. Mrs, Reagin's story about the hickory nuts is very similar to a South Carolina folktale about two men dividing fish in a graveyard, I ran into that tale when I was doing my motiff report and recognized it when Mrs, Reagin told me her story. Randy Reagin's stories were not put on tape because I didn't have access to a recorder at the time, The facts of the stories are just as he told them, but I'm sure I wasn't able to get his speech pattern and his regional accent correct as I could have with a recorder. This research project was very enjoyable, mainly because I v,asn 't confined to a library or a mass of books. For the most part, gathering information and talking at length with people was very pleasant. One of my main problems was running into deadends concerning sources of information, A great deal of time was spent trying to find certain people who supposedly had wealths of material, This limited the amount of my material to a certain extent, Another problem concerned me being unaccepted because of my appearance, Randy Reagin's grandfather had a lot of material but he didn't like talking to "long hairs". Randy's stories are two of his grandfather's stories that he was able to remember, GEORGIA FOLKLORE ARCHIVES CATALOGUE COLLECTOR nanent" address and phone number: - ter and year: \ 0,J\ \ql-J ,. ~o\\l :Soo description of contents: 2J~os+ ~\,, c-.... ''lJ'\.. . l. fl GEORGIA FOLKLORE ARCHIVES CATALOGUE LOCATION , where research done: \J "- \l'-l \o ,r community: l, .\-lo,;, of origin of folklore recorded (if different from ,t location of informant): ,f informant(s): Dc:,-1:- Q.,.~o"' I :tor's name: \::::.c~,~Q \~coc.o,, ,r, year, and class: {, \ \ I 'l ~t 3 II I A PDF transcript exists for this recording. Please contact an archivist for access. Professor John Burrison founded the Atlanta Folklore Archive Project in 1967 at Georgia State University. He trained undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in his folklore curriculum to conduct oral history interviews. Students interviewed men, women, and children of various demographics in Georgia and across the southeast on crafts, storytelling, music, religion, rural life, and traditions. As archivists, we acknowledge our role as stewards of information, which places us inaposition to choose how individuals and organizations are represented and described in our archives. We are not neutral, andbias isreflected in our descriptions, whichmay not convey the racist or offensive aspects of collection materialsaccurately.Archivists make mistakes and might use poor judgment.We often re-use language used by the former owners and creators, which provides context but also includes bias and prejudices of the time it was created.Additionally,our work to use reparative languagewhereLibrary of Congress subject termsareinaccurate and obsolete isongoing. Kenan Research Center welcomes feedback and questions regarding our archival descriptions. If you encounter harmful, offensive, or insensitive terminology or description please let us know by emailingreference@atlantahistorycenter.com. Your comments are essential to our work to create inclusive and thoughtful description.