You might miss Burnt House when passing through.
The community is small, but a ghost lurks in its history.
Delsie is still there, trapped in the memory of the burned inn.
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Can you tell a story in 140 characters (that's words, punctuations, and spaces)? Give it a try! Go to Susan's Stony River blog for details.
Burnt House is a cool ghost story! Only in WV would you find an entire town named for what later became a heckuva ghost tale!
ReplyDeleteSo true, Jason. The story is on my new CD and I think it's one of the best ones. Get your address to me so I can mail your copy to you :-)
ReplyDeleteProvocative beginning...but I think it's more than 140 characters. That's inclusive of spaces and all punctuation!
ReplyDeleteI really liked the ghost story of Burnt House on your new CD. I've been through Burnt House but I had never heard the tale. It was nice to finally put a story behind the name.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to know the history of why it burned down. Great post.
ReplyDeleteActually the house was in Clarksburg--
ReplyDeleted'OH! How did I forget there really was a "Burnt House WV" on the map?! I liked this so much---lingering someplace trapped by memory is haunting in all the right ways.
And I'm so happy to hear a West Virginia story!
SouthLakes, I relied on Microsoft Word to count the characters and according to it, there are exactly 140 in this story. BUT when I printed it out, there were actually 166! So, Bill Gates apparently can't count? Let me see if I can modify it to fit 140:
ReplyDeleteYou might miss Burnt House on Rte 47, but an eerie ghost lurks in its history.
Delsie is still there, trapped in the memory of the burned inn.
How's that?
Sounds great!
ReplyDeleteWhen I installed Word 2007, I noticed an 'additional' category under Word Counts which was characters(with spaces)...I'm still finding lots of quirks that make me miss the earlier versions. Pfft progress!
Just to reassure you (and everyone else), I'm not the character count police -- it just seemed "overfull" when I read it so I wondered!
But I like the revision even better - much more mysterious!
A real life haunted house!
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
Found you over at the birthday girl's blog!
I love ghost stories and this just makes me want to hear more. Well done!
ReplyDeleteThe beginnings of a novel. Very nicely done.
ReplyDeleteVery mysterious & creepy. Well done!
ReplyDeleteBill, The inn was built by Jack Harris about 1850 as a stop on the Staunton to Parkersburg pike. A traveling medicine show came through with a young slave girl was danced and sang. The inn owner's son fell in love with her and convinced his father to buy the girl. She came to live with them at the inn.
ReplyDeleteAfter a time, people in the area began to notice that peddlers were going into the inn but not coming out. A boy reported that he saw the son chopping the head off a peddler and dragging the body up a hollow. The sheriff was informed and swore out a warrant for the Harrises. they heard about it and left, headed west and changed their names. They left Delsie behind. one day the inn caught fire and Delsie perished in the flames. Afterward people passing the site would hear her singing or see a blue flame leap from the ground and swirl away.
A few years later, the Harrises were arrested for a different murder, tried and hanged out west. On the same day, a huge storm occurred over the village where the inn had been, and lightning struck the ground at the site of the burned inn. A huge ball of fire leapt from the ground, and formed itself into Delsie. People who saw it said they could hear her laughing as the flame drifted out of sight.
It's a good one to tell, and I think it's my favorite on my CD.
Peggy, the remains of the inn are gone, but I believe someone built a house on the foundation stones. People say that sometimes they can still hear the laughter of Delsie, and some say that a small blue flame stil occasionally shoots from the ground.
ReplyDeleteHope, I love ghost stories too, and I tell a lot of them. That's why the latest CD is ghost stories--and West Virginia is fertile ground for raising spirits, evidently because we have hundreds of such tales.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of that, Ofira. I tell it as a story, and actually have not even written it down except for the bit in my reply to the Old Fart. Many of my told stories are like that--in my head but not on paper or computer.
ReplyDeleteThanks, quilly! Writing these is very like writing poetry--taking a lot of words out, changing words, changing punctuation, until it's finally right.
ReplyDeleteWell as a former resident of the house that now stands there, it is very spooky. My ex husbands family owns it and while I was married to him I lived there and you could hear laughter all thru the night. You could even see her walking around like she still owned it every now and then. It is a very nice house insde though still preserved to fit the victorian age. I really enjoyed that house. Even after I was told the story about the house it just made you want to look a little more close at everything and sleep with one eye open.
ReplyDeleteGranny Sue,
ReplyDeleteMy father owns 32 acres in the hollow next to the one where the Harrises buried the bodies of the peddlers. When they excavated for one of the gas wells on the adjoining property to my dads, they unearthed several bodies. If there is anymore information on this event, I would greatly appreciate if you could let me know where to find it.My name is Brian Pence and my email is bpence36@yahoo.com. Please let me know if there is anything else you need or if there is anymore info that I can get on this. Thanks.
Brian Pence
I actually lived in the house after my grandfather rebuilt it. More than enough scary stories to tell of...
ReplyDeleteBurnt House is my hometown, great memories, family and friends, there’s no place like home !! Darriel Craig 11/27/72
ReplyDelete