The Ghost of Fenton Farley

     Fenton Farley, as far back as the local folks could remember, always said he would die on the day of  Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. And true to his prophecy, on December 21, 1953, he was accidently shot and killed by his brother-in-law while hunting deer on Backbone Ridge…or so they say.  

     Turner’s Gap is a peaceful little valley town cradled between Lodestone Mountain and Candlewick Hill. Sister Bessie Barton likes to say that “God just reached down with His mighty hands and patted out a pretty little valley like I pat out a pie crust.” Turner’s Gap’s only claim to fame was…well, they really didn’t have one, except that Arthel Wilburn played stand-up bass for a short time with Hank Snow and his Rainbow Ranch Boys. He told that he had to quit and stay home ‘cause his milk cow, Audrey, had stopped giving milk and he thought it was because she missed him.  

      The Country Corner Market was the gathering place for the local men folk, who would come by on a daily basis to sort through the local gossip, chew their Bloodhound tobacco, and play checkers. One of their favorite topics of conversation was Fenton Farley and his mysterious ability to see into the future and to converse with the departed. Fen, as he was known, could foretell the outcome of ball games, elections, raffles, and even the Cedar Hill Methodist Church bingo tournaments, and was right about 85% of the time. He liked to brag about correctly picking the winners of the ’47, ‘48 and ’49  World Series, always braggin’ that he had discussed it with “The Babe.” But he was always quick to tell you that he was “agin gamblin,” so he was very selective about who he shared his predictions with. His wife’s brother, Albert Earl Scroggins, was notorious for playing poker, rolling dice, even pitching pennies,  and to see him dragging in, probably flat broke, at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, was not uncommon. Needless to say, he was not on Fen’s prediction-sharing list, not by any stretch of the imagination.  

     It was common knowledge to all the folks in the Gap, and even some in the next county over, that Albert Scroggins didn’t want his baby sister to marry Fen. He was always quick to rare back and bellow out, “Ain’t no sister uh mine gonna marry no Farley!” But when his brother, Billy Joe, told him in no uncertain terms, to quit acting like a “Missouri jackass,” he decided to tone down and accept the fact that his sister would soon be Mattie Belle Farley.  

     Delbert Garvin, who had quit school and moved to Chicago to find work, was back in Turner’s Gap for the annual Garvin family reunion. On a  particular June morning, he had joined up with the locals at the Country Corner for their daily roundtable session.  

     Delbert: “Guess who I seen at church yesterday mornin’…Fenton Farley!” Just kinda slipped in, set on the back row, then slipped out.”  

      “You didn’t see Fenton Farley. His brother-in-law, Albert Scroggins, accidently shot ‘im up on Backbone Ridge. Killed ‘im, stone dead! They’s huntin’ deer,” Abe Stoddard replied.  

    Delbert: “I could’a swore ‘at was him. Looked bad… thin, pale, that gray color ye look when ye’ve smoked ‘bout all ye life. I hurried out after the service to speak to ‘im but he wuz gone. Didn’t see him nowheres.”  

     “I thought I seen ‘im , too,” added Ed Tittle, “foldin’ clothes down at the Load-N-Wash with Mattie Belle.”  

     There was a “hmm” or two and the men began to look at each other with raised eyebrows. That  morning session ended sooner than usual.  

     Rumors of Fen Farley sightings began to spread through the Gap like a Kansas grass fire. Shorty Ledlow said he saw him at the church softball tournament, Sarah Baskins said she saw him coming out of the Sandy Creek Bait Shop, and just when the local folks thought the situation couldn’t get any more bizarre, it did.  

     Somewhere around the end of November, Riley Southern and his nephew were taking care of that annual, dreaded task, cleaning the leaves out of his gutters.  

     “Es go son, ‘bout to get dark on us. Be careful goin’ down ‘at ladder.”  

     “What’s that up on the ridge, Uncle Riley, that  glowing?”  

     “At’s jest the moon risin’.”  

     “Well Uncle Riley, if the moon rises in the south, you must’a played hooky the day your teacher talked about the earth rotating, cause ‘at sure ain’t what Coach Watson told us.”  

     As the days passed, more and more sightings of the mysterious glow on Backbone Ridge were being   whispered around town. And of course, more and more speculating as to what it was began to surface…coon hunter’s lights, Boy Scouts camping out, and even a huge formation of foxfire. Finally, James Neal Pritchard, the Gap’s kind of unofficial mayor, suggested that two or three of the men get together and go talk to Sister Rosie Ola Horton, who was a kind of modern day soothsayer. She could count her Indian bear claw beads, and solve about any mystery that came up, once even helping the county sheriff locate a still that was puttin’ out poison moonshine. So they paid a friendly visit to Rosie Ola, and after exchanging the normal  and accepted niceties, the by-the-way question was brought up.“I guess you seen ‘at strange, glowing light that everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout, the one up on the ridge,” queried James Neal.“Yeah and I done counted the claws and I knows exactly what ‘tis. An ole wive’s tale has it that where a ghost lays down to sleep, the ground will glow until the next full moon. I seen it happen when I’s a little girl.”  

     Having no reason to disbelieve her, the men, not wanting to be rude, visited a bit longer, wished her well, and went on their way.  

     As the mystery’s apparent answer made its way through the Gap, it was naturally received with skepticism. “Oh phooey!  ‘At womern’s crazy, crazy as a Bessie bug, an I ain’t tha only one that thanks ‘at!” That response seemed to be the consensus and the Gap’s folks tried in vain to pass off the whole thing as “a figment of the people’s imaginations.” But the glow didn’t go away. Then something happened that put the strange glow talk out of mind for a while. Albert Scroggins had come up missing.  

     Word immediately went out that at daybreak on Monday, everybody that could, would meet in front of the Country Corner to lay out plans and organize a search party. Mayor Pritchard said he would contact Sheriff Dixon and the county rescue squad, Shorty Ledlow volunteered to contact all the folks that owned horses and ask them to help, and others were asked to round up needed equipment…lights, ropes, hack blades, etc. The plan was that if and when Scroggins was found, someone would ride back to town and ring the Methodist Church’s dinner bell 10 times, wait 30 seconds, then ring it 10 times again,  different from a fire alert. At 2:20 PM on Tuesday, the signal rang out. Albert Scroggins’ body had been found.  

      In the bottom left corner of the front page of  Friday’s Mountain Times-Ledger, was a small article detailing the incident:  

                                          Body of Missing Man Found

              After a day and a half of searching, the body of Turner’s Gap resident Albert Earl  Scroggins has been found and recovered from a location atop Backbone Ridge about two miles from town. No sign of foul play was detected. Sheriff Brady Dixon gave Ledger reporter Janice Motes a detailed account of the event:  “Scroggins’ body was located about ten feet or so from some sort of marking on the ground, something looking eerily like a cemetery plot. It was approximately 5 ft. by 10 ft. with rocks perfectly outlining a section of charred, slightly sunk-in ground. At the top was a large flat rock, I guess weighing close to 500 pounds, with a crudely etched date on it:  December 21, 1953 – the day of Winter Solstice.”   

      The cause of Albert Scroggins’ death was never determined.