Published by Haunted America
A Division of The History Press
Charleston, SC
www.historypress.net
Copyright 2017 by Jim Miles
All rights reserved
First published 2017
e-book edition 2017
ISBN 978.1.43966.273.1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940952
print edition ISBN 978.1.62585.948.8
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.
INTRODUCTION
I have been gathering materials about paranormal Georgia since my teenage years, and that was some time ago. Over the past ten years, I have labored on a daunting project: collecting a ghost story from each of Georgias existing 159 counties, plus two counties that went bankrupt during the Great Depression. My wife, Earline, and I crisscrossed this huge state to record firsthand ghostly encounters, search hundreds of old vertical files at libraries and scour two hundred years of Georgia newspapers and magazines, as well as every book relating to Georgia.
For these booksHaunted North Georgia, Haunted Central Georgia and Haunted South GeorgiaI have found stories dating from the present back to prehistoric times, always looking for unique stories with unusual details and largely avoiding the more common ghost tales. Some of the longest stories are from the least-known and least-populated Georgia counties, while several of the shortest originated in the crowded counties around the big cities. These books are about all of Georgia, from rural to metropolitan. Think of this as state folklore, from the remotest past of Georgia to the present.
These books will appeal to those intrigued by the supernatural, as well as to anyone who embraces the entire Georgia experience and desires to learn a piece of folklore from each of our many small counties. Readers will learn that ghost tales are universal, varying little between regions, centuries and cultures.
My long manuscript has been divided into three books, organized geographically. Georgia is generally divided into three regions. North
Georgia is the mountains; Central Georgia is the piedmont and fall line, which connects the cities of Columbus, Macon and Augusta; and South Georgia is the coastal plain, including Savannah and the coast. These regions are geographic in nature, but here we pull North Georgia down to include Metro Atlanta and Central Georgia is extended farther south simply because the coastal plain is so large. Each book contains roughly equal numbers of counties.
As you read, consider Georgia as one large community and not as isolated parts. During your next break, head for a region that you arent familiar with and get better acquainted with our people.
BALDWIN COUNTY
THE MEANEST MAN IN GEORGIA
The Breedlove-McIntosh-Walker-Fraley-Scott-Tate Mansion, located at 201 North Jefferson Street, was home to the meanest man in Milledgeville, at least according to Katherine Scott, a resident of the house who wrote the story ten years before her 1988 death at age ninety-three. She considered Samuel Walker to be one of the few entirely wicked men I ever heard of. He married thrice and outlived each wife, inheriting considerable estates from each.
This strange, wicked and ruthless man seemed to have loved only two things: roses and Alice [a niece], Scott continued. His son, Joe, he disliked and distrusted. The boy was sent to Mercer in Macon, where he was to study law. When the school closed due to a typhoid fever epidemic, the boy returned home sick. Despite his illness, Walker immediately dispatched him to oversee Boynton, his plantation across the Oconee River. Joe returned three days later, extremely sick, but Walker, considering illness to be a character flaw, dismissed him to bed.
Walker ignored the suffering boy. Near the end, a feverish Joe struggled to the head of the stairs and told his father that he was dying. Walker ordered him back to bed, but Joe collapsed and fell down the stairs to his death. Within a week, Walkers wife and niece had also died.
Many people believe that Joes death is reenacted every night. Whether that be true or not, Scott wrote, often in the night we have heard a dull thud such as the boys head might have made striking the step. Certain it is that someone goes up and down the steps at night. Another haunted spot is the northwest bedroom, where the boy, Sams third wife and her little niece were so ill. There is still a feeling of pain and grief.
The meanest man in Georgia, Sam Walker, lived in the Tate Mansion in Milledgeville. The house is haunted by his neglected son. Earline Miles .
For a Georgia magazine article, photographer Charles Rafshoon set up a camera on the stairs, timed to expose an infrared frame at midnight. The camera captured the fuzzy outline of what is thought to be Sam Walker. Rafshoon felt an icy chill when he saw the image on the negative.
Scott once claimed that an Atlanta reporter hightailed it out of here in the middle of the night when Sam shoved a chifforobe across his room. He didnt even bother to say goodnight, and I havent heard from him since. Of the ghost of Sam Walker, Scott reported, Ive heard and felt him around me too many times. After Scott fell and broke a hip and was released from the hospital, she was placed in the bed where Joe suffered before his death. Night after night I had the feeling there was something black and formless standing in the doorway. The room would be saturated with an overpowering feeling of sadness and grief.
The Georgia magazine reporter spent a night at the house, sleeping easily through a rainy evening, but then came the presence. Sometime in the middle of the night the tassels of the beds canopy sway as though in an evening breeze, he wrote. The unseen presence of something crosses the room, and there is a loud crash on the staircase. Shortly before dawn, there is another crash.
Morning revealed Walkers mischief. A portrait of General Thomas Harrison, Oliver Cromwells aide and a relative of Scotts, had been thrown from a wall and smashed on the floor. The support nail and wire were left in place and undamaged.
One night, as Scott and her longtime companion, Frances Lewis, slept in the house, they were awakened by a terrible sound. Alarmed that a burglar had broken in, the ladies called the police. I went with them, Scott told Charles Salter, the Georgia Rambler from the Atlanta Journal Constitution (September 10, 1978), and we found a very fine, peacock fan that had been taken from a temple in China and sent to me by an Army officer friend years ago. She had framed the fan, and now it was shattered to pieces. Scott believed that vandalism was committed by Miss Sue, one of six children of Peter J. William, the man who built the house.
