Stories Told and Stories Re-Visited: Grand Vue Storytelling Festival and Ikie's Tomb

I slept a long, long time last night/this morning.

Yesterday started early (4am) and ended late. It was a storytelling day and the venue was 3 hours away--and then we extended the day to do some exploring.

So much crowded into those hours!

• A beautiful drive north along the Ohio River,
• watching lights come on in homes and the night fade into day;
• storytelling in a hilltop park with awesome views in all directions; the happy faces and voices of hundreds of school children all eager to hear stories;
• seeing storyteller friends;
• a stop at La Barista coffee shop in New Martinsville for a supper of their delicious sandwiches (we shared a tomato and grilled cheese, and a turkey-cheddar-apple--wow!) and coffee;
• what we thought would be wild goose chase to find Ikie's Tomb again
• a stop at our favorite place in Ripley for Larry to have a well-earned beer after all that driving.
• home to pet the animals and sit out on the porch a little while to enjoy the cool night air.
• And finally to bed around 11pm.

The storytelling event was the Grand Vue Storytelling Festival, organized by storytellers Tom and Judi Tarowsky, with the collaboration of the park and Grave Creek Mound staff (a huge Indian mound located in Moundsville, WV). The park is on top of some steep ridges just outside town, and the views are glorious. Schools bussed children to the event, and we told stories on shelters and meeting rooms in various locations in the park. It was such fun! I miss the West Virginia Storytelling Festival that ran for almost 25 years, where I told stories in a similar event each year. It was good to get back into that energy. I have no photos--Larry took naps while I was telling (a good idea, since he was the driver and it would be a long day) and I was right busy.

Larry and I decided that we could use the opportunity of this trip upriver to go to Ikie's tomb again, if we could find it. I am working on a slide show to go with the ghost stories I tell, and I needed to re-take photos I took when a friend took us to the tomb about 7 years ago. I lost those pictures in a computer crash. All I could remember of the drive to the graveyard was where to turn off the highway, and a vague mental image of the road up into the remote cemetery.

Fortunately, Larry remembered a little bit more. He recognized a few things, like the bridge over Middle Island Creek, but neither of us could remember much more, except that it was on a gravel road. So we drove and drove for what seemed like miles (actually only 12 miles) and were wondering if we'd ever even find our way back when we came to the Meadville Mall. This place we remembered! It is pretty far back in the country, and you'd sure need to know where you were going to find it. Talk about your oldtime country store--this is it. I didn't take a photo of the outside--this is from their Facebook page.

But I did take pictures of the inside, and it's just what you might think such a store would look like.

This is the kitchen, where they serve meals and offer pickup orders.

The young man working at the store looked puzzled when I asked for directions to Mount Welcome cenetery, but when I mentioned a tomb there, his eyes lit up. "You mean Ikie's Tomb!" Yes! He knew exactly where it was and drew us a rough map of how to get there. We had a great conversation about the story of Ikie and he added a few details I had not heard before. "You need to talk to my Dad," he said, "he knows all about it." Indeed I do! We got two of the biggest ice cream cones I've ever seen, packed full of Rocky Road (fitting for where we were going) for me and Dutch Chocolate for Larry. Yum. We will be back, for sure, and soon I hope.

The young man's directions were spot on. The gravel road was rough and narrow, with grass growing in the center, but with the map and our memories we finally found what we were looking for. The rutted dirt track leading to the cemetery meant getting out and walking up.

Along the way...

and finally the cemetery. How sad and maddening to find that almost all the stones were knocked over! Who would do such a thing??  Four-wheeler tracks gave evidence to how it was done. Made me so angry.

Fortunately, the graves of Ikie and his grandparents and other family were undisturbed. There, looming in the background, is the tomb. You can read the story of this unusual grave on my past blog--just click here.

The tomb had a window, which was later knocked out by vandals,

and a door which was closed up at some time. I'm not sure when or why.

A date over the door is hard to read, but I believe it said 1906, the year Ikie died, or possibly 1907, the year the tomb was completed and his body moved into it.

Inside the tomb--the roof was deliberately collapsed years ago, after Ikie was re-interred in his new grave, to prevent Satanic and other weird rituals from being performed in there. Apparently there had been some of that previously.

Inside the tomb.

Larry looking in the window, standing on broken rubble from the collapsed roof.

The shards and pieces on the ground show that the roof must have been quite elaborate. I would love to see a photo of the tomb as constructed.

Inside the tomb:

The trough into which Ikie's body was laid and covered with formaldehyde, then covered with glass--so you could look in the window and see him floating there:

The sun was sinking fast as we made our way back to the van.

Goodbye, Ikie. I'm sorry I didn't have flowers, but now I know the way we can go back again to visit.

It was one of those days that went on and on, and that I didn't want to end. When we finally went to bed, sleep was immediate and deep. The kind that comes of a day well and happily filled.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Forgotten Places, Remembered Tales

"Would you like me to take you to see Ikie's tomb?"

Would I! The story of the little boy who died from eating bad ice milk has been following me around for two years. I've read everything I could find on the topic and even viewed census records and cemetery records seeking more information about this strange tale.

It's not that he died. Sad enough in itself. It was his burial that haunted me. Why would a mother put her child in a concrete tomb and place his body in formaldehyde with a glass cover over the top of the concrete "casket"? And put a viewing window in the tomb? And keep his toys in there, and a rocking chair? Was it true that there were other children who died that she placed in stone jars and also covered with formaldehyde so only their faces were visible? Who was she? What happened to this woman whose grief must have turned her mind to strange avenues?

Frank and I agreed that today was the day to make the trip to Ikie's burial place. According to the legends, he was actually buried three times: once in a casket, then disinterred and moved to the tomb, and then, when the tomb was opened and vandalized, into his final grave. Frank's mother and grandmother told him stories about Ikie's tomb and he shared those with us as we drove to the site.

I knew only the name of the cemetery, and once I made a meandering journey hoping to stumble on it along the way. No wonder I did not find it; the cemetery is far back in the hills and requires a 4-wheel-drive to get there. But it was worth the trip. The beautiful, lonesome ridge had views for miles. There were steps that probably once led into a church, so long gone that only a few concrete blocks and a piece of tin spoke to its existence.

Graves were scattered over the hill, some only sunken divets in the earth with no marker to tell who rested there. Many were of young people and babies. It seemed that for every stone that marked the grave of someone who had attained an age over 50 years, there were four for those who had died younger. A sober reminder of the hardships of early life in this area that remained a frontier for years after the West was being settled. Here Frank examines a child's stone in an overgrown section of the cemetery.

The tomb itself was...how to put it? It moved me in unexpected ways. Trees broken in this past summer's derecho storm formed a casual arch across the trail leading to the tomb, and to one side we could see the remains of a campfire left, perhaps, but Halloween visitors.

So many thoughts swirled, so many questions. Why had they put it on top of this hill?

Who had put the iron around it when the concrete began to crack? Who had sealed the door with concrete? Why were there two longer trenches in the vault beside the space where Ikie was laid?

What was the truth of why his body was eventually moved to a traditional grave?

So many questions. I wondered about his family and why they had moved away, and who maintained this site. Some day I will return, and until then, I will be pondering the questions left by one little boy's death.

Frank had many other places to show us and as we traveled his stories colored and peopled the landscape. Here is where his grandfather's farm had been, land gifted to the grandfather by two elderly ladies who had no heirs. He was shocked at the gift, but it was a godsend to this man from a large and struggling family. Here is a place where Frank camped when a boy, building a fire in the fireplace and getting his deer just out the back door. Here is the church he attended as a boy, and here is a church, now abandoned, that his grandmother used to walk to for services, a walk of three miles across rugged hills. Here was where the brine plant was, a business that employed 20-25 people in its time, shipping the salty water from brine wells to places unknown for uses unknown. Here was a friend's house, and here is the friend's grave. Here is the mass grave of a family of five who perished together when their home burned to the ground. Here is the house that was featured in a movie in the 1970's. Here is a little town whose name changed for no reason. Here is where men dynamited a hillside so that a creek would flow straight instead of in its natural curvy route, and here is where they built a mill in the blasted out hole, a place now called "The Jug." Here is the mansion where a doctor lived, crumbling now but remembered by Frank as a fine home in its heyday. Here is where a slave girl drowned her master's daughter, and here is where the slave was hanged for the deed.

Stories, stories, stories. Stories of lives lived and ended, of boom days and hard times, of farms and country stores and bridges that once were and homes that still stand. This is the true stuff of history, the foundations of these hardy communities and people. I sought one story but came home with more than I can count. We arrived home as the sun set behind our West Virginia hill, and I came here to my computer to record what I saw, what I remember, and what I want to share with others. In my mind I see a lonely tomb, an abandoned church, a gnarled and twisted tree standing guard in a high cemetery, and I hear the voice of my friend, making it all come alive once again in his stories.



Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.