Published by Haunted America
A Division of The History Press
Charleston, SC 29403
www.historypress.net
Copyright 2015 by Michael L. Bricker
All rights reserved
First published 2015
e-book edition 2015
ISBN 978.1.62585.111.6
Library of Congress control number: 2015945065
print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.585.1
Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the individuals and families who have called old Winston and Salem home. Their histories and stories told on dark, windy and scary nights have been priceless in bringing this haunted history project into existence. I would like to thank posthumously John Levin Brietz and Robert Turner of the Brietz and Turner families. Thank you to Mr. Frank Jones and Mr. Roy Thompson. Their stories and the facts behind them kept the old-timers grounded as they spun their tales of ghosts, haints and the supernatural. I appreciate the use of the facilities of the Forsyth County Public Library and the use of the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel newspaper confirmed much of my facts and superstitions for this haunted project. I also wish to thank Banks Smither and the fine staff at The History Press for providing me the opportunity to present these new stories to the city and beyond.
MAPS
The maps arranged in this section are part of a larger Birds-Eye View of the Twin Cities, Winston-Salem, NC 1891 map by Ruger & Stoner, courtesy of the Library of Congress:
The Central District of Downtown Winston in this section of the Birds-Eye View map includes Main Street, Liberty Street and Trade Street, all at Fourth Street. The number 1 building is the Courthouse at Main and Fourth Streets. The number 32 building is the Browns warehouse. This map contains the locations mentioned in .
The southern part of Salem and the town of Waughtown are shown in this section of the Birds-Eye map. The road to Waughtown continues in the right upper corner to the town of Waughtown (note the smoke stack). The Salem Mill (note the other smoke stack) is located at the bottom/middle of the photo. The locations in are contained here.
The Winston Graded School number 7 and the first neighborhood of Old West End are visible here. The Broad Street Baptist Church is shown across the street from the Efird mansion. This map section contains the locations mentioned in .
The congregational town of Salem, East Salem, is shown. Home Moravian Church is shown, along with the Central Square. Sidewalks to the upper right of Central Square lead to the Gottlieb Schober homeplace. This section of the map corresponds to .
The right of the photo shows Bank Street or Paper Mill Road, the road to the Paper Mill Settlement. The upper left of the photo is the haunted suburb, the 600 block of South Poplar Street. This map section includes places referenced in .
The crossroads, mentioned throughout the book, contained the official dividing line between Salem and Winston. This section of the Birds-Eye View map contains the locations mentioned in .
INTRODUCTION
Why a haunted history book of Winston-Salem, many friends and residents may ask? As a researcher, historian and author with a solid base in local history, I felt a book of this genre had to be written. In Winston-Salem in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my first childhood memories were formed on dark evenings listening to ghost stories told by the old-timers, as the adults called them, in my neighborhood mom-and-pop grocery store, located at the original dividing line between Salem and Winston, North Carolina. The Green Front Cash Store at the corner of South Broad Street, formerly the Old Shallowford Road of colonial days, and West First Street, formerly North Street of the early Moravians, was built in 1926 by John Levin Brietz. Three blocks south, in the 400 block of Broad Street, Mr. Brietzs early Moravian family settled into Old West Salem in 1836, occupying the largest local farm/plantation before the Civil War period. The old-timers who frequented the store often reminisced of Mr. Brietzs tenure as proprietor of the store in the 1920s while conjuring booger stories related to them as youngsters in the old establishment, not much different than those told to me as a youngster in the 1950s and 1960s.
By 1958, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Turner were the proprietors of the Green Front Cash Store, having purchased it from Mr. Brietz in the 1930s. At the Turner store between 1958 and 1965, I continued to hear these whoppers, as the Winston Salem Journal newspapermen Frank Jones and Roy Thompson called them. While listening and compiling these supernatural stories and events from the old stores patrons in written notes, my hope was to find more historic and concrete evidence of them.
Mr. Brietz, the builder and owner of the Green Front Cash Store circa 1925. This store was where the tales were spun.
In researching and authoring five books on Winston-Salem and Forsyth County history, I have unearthed strange and unusual stories along the way. By matching my ghost notes with the research from my previous books, Haunted Winston-Salem was born. Tales of haints, boogers, ghosts and beyond are presented while addressing questions such as these: Were the colonial roads and Indian trails of the Piedmont actually blazed by non-human creatures? Why did Southsides early settlement of Waughtown often frighten the Moravians of early Salem? Did Old Scratch, the devil, actually come for an alleged wicked lady who lived only a stones throw away from the Green Front Cash Store? Does the apparition of an old tobacco wagon still roll the streets of Winston? These questions and many others will be answered. If truth really is stranger than fiction, our readers should not be disappointed. World-renowned author C.S. Lewis once remarked about his personal search for good and evil. He stated, There is no neutral ground in the universe; every inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. So, if that is the case, let us begin our own journey into the unknown.
