Audio
Ghosts in the Park
Transcript
Start of recording
Woman 1: “Yeah coming back to, maybe you know, Annie, one of the things that you heard about, um, were a series of spirits that walked the road. One is a headless man – do you know who that’s supposed to be?”
Annie Bates: “uh uh”
Woman 1: “Could it by any chance be the guy Mr. Davis mentions in the tape who was beheaded… at the mine?”
Annie Bates: “Did you listen to the tapes?”
Charlie Reid: “I heard about that. I heard about that.”
Woman 1: “Yeah”
Annie Bates: “Peet!”
Charlie Reid: “See I can’t remember – now… it’s coming back. I heard about that… Peet knew something about it.”
Annie Bates: [overlapping] “Peet and Otis was the ones that saw the woman come out the cemetery.”
Charlie Reid: “Yeah”
Annie Bates: “And they didn’t believe Peet. And Otis saw it one morning going to work… say she floated in the air. Said ‘help me, help me.’”
Charlie Reid: “Mm hmm”
Annie Bates: “And they saw that.”
Woman 1: “Okay… well there’s another one too that we heard about-”
Annie Bates: “But I heard ‘em say, but that used to walk – he used to walk, they said. Up and down something.”
Charlie Reid: “Mm hmm”
Annie Bates: “I – I’ve heard ‘em say that.”
Charlie Reid: “Yeah I remember that as a, as a kid.”
Annie Bates: [overlapping] “And then the guys that seen him is dead now. Now, like I said, my brother Warren probably could tell her more.”
Charlie Reid: “Yeah”
Annie Bates: “Cause Warren’s eighty years old.”
Charlie Reid: “I gave her the address, in DC.”
Woman 1: “Okay, the one in Alexandria?”
Charlie Reid: “DC.”
Woman 1: “DC, okay, yeah I’ve got to call him. Um, but the other one we heard about was that someone who gets in the car and rides with you-”
Annie Bates: “Yep, right there at the corner. Used to ride with Freddy Used to go down to Bates’.”
Charlie Reid: “I didn’t know about that one.”
Annie Bates: “Yeah… so he used to get on the car.”
Charlie Reid: “All I know is-”
Annie Bates: “So I don’t know.”
Charlie Reid: “those lights, beyond those – it – those houses aint had electricity in years and you could see a light shinin’ in ‘em. And I was told-”
Annie Bates: “Every night”
Woman 1: “Every night?”
Charlie Reid: “I wanted to show ‘em, Mr. uh, oh… Mr. Williams was his name?”
Charlie Reid & Annie Bates: “George Williams”
Charlie Reid: “house. And, a boy, they actually set fire to that house one Halloween; I know the boy that did it.”
Woman 1: “Wow”
Charlie Reid: “Because that used to be the scariest house on this road.”
Woman 1: “Hmm”
Charlie Reid: “But it’s gone now and I could – it’s - where that fence is, just around that curve here on the left-”
Annie Bates: [overlapping] “Where the new people built a house.”
Woman 1: “Oh, okay”
Charlie Reid: “You could see… lights and like somebody would be walking with an oil lamp in that house. And I saw that with my own two eyes.”
Woman 1: “Wow”
Charlie Reid: “That freaked me out.”
Annie Bates: “And it stayed cool right beside that house… it was cold in that spot.”
Charlie Reid: “Yeah, that was a scary, scary… It was more scary than this place, cause… that place, you could see that the lights… and you could always come back down the road [indecipherable] But, for us to get home, we had to crawl past that house. [laughs]”
Woman 1: “Oh okay, okay, yeah… Well do they have any idea who the person was – the woman who was floating?”
Annie Bates: “No, she comes out that Bates cemetery.”
Charlie Reid: “Um”
Woman 1: “Still?”
Annie Bates: “She’s a white woman. I’ve never seen her.”
Charlie Reid: “Have you talked to Sam Bauckman?”
Woman 1: “No”
Charlie Reid: “He is a good historical person for blacks, also around. He’s white but he’s – he used to be the ex-mayor of Dumfries and he, he was a caretaker, curator or caretaker, whatever, of Dumfries cemetery.”
End of recording
Description
Listen to an oral history about ghosts in the park from descendents of a park family.
“One of the things that we heard about were a series of spirits that walk the road. One is the headless man…do you know who that’s supposed to be? Could it by any chance be the guy that Mr. Davis mentions in the tape who was beheaded at the mine?” “I heard about that! I heard about that!”
Interviewee(s): Charlie Reid and Annie Bates Interviewer(s): Arvilla Jackson and Sue Taylor
Date of Interview: 6/20/05
Duration
2 minutes, 40 seconds
Credit
Justine Rothbart
Date Created
08/02/2011
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