By Fred-in-Stein
Ready for a couple Bluffton ghost stories?
Here’s one you’ve probably never heard. I’ll share two versions.
Sometime in the early 1980s Rolland Stratton, longtime Bluffton resident, told me his version from memory. I wrote it down after hearing it, wondering if he was telling me the truth.
Then, in a dusty file folder in a forgotten drawer in third floor of the town hall – before it was renovated - I discovered the second version. It was beautifully hand-scribed in India ink, almost too faded to read.
Somewhere between the two versions lies the truth. Here goes:
Rolland Stratton’s version
For number of weeks, on moonlit nights, a ghost appeared in Maple Grove Cemetery. This took place one fall in the early 1900s.
The ghost came out of the ground, showed itself in the moonlight and slowly lowered itself back into the ground. It would move around the cemetery, repeating this action.
This sighting took place on many evenings. Crowds gathered at the Grove Street bridge to watch for the spectacle. No one, apparently, would go any closer to the cemetery than the bridge out of fear.
After several week of this excitement, the perpetrator of this hoax ratted on his cohorts.
The mastermind of the project was apparently George Combs, of all things, a Bluffton undertaker, who sold sewing machines and window blinds on the side.
He used a dark window blind with a skeleton painted on it with phosphoric paint that reflected in the moonlight.
His blind was mounted on a narrow board with pins at the end, so that it could be fastened to the ground.
The ratchet pull was removed from the blind. By hiding in the shadows, his two cohorts could push the board to the ground, throw a small stone over a low tree limb with a string attached and then slip back into the cemetery.
They hid back of the tree and pulled on the string very slowly. As they pulled, the blind unrolled upward with the skeleton flashing in the moonlight
After a number of flashes, they would creep into the shadows and repeat the operation in an other location in the cemetery.
Without a doubt, this was very effective.
However, the mastermind though this had gone on long enough. He called a Bluffton College student and explained what he was going on at the cemetery. He gave the student a pistol with blank shells and told him to be hero.
That evening a crowd was at the bridge with the college student in the group.
He announced that he was “going up there to see what this is all about.”
As he walked toward the gate several women on the bridge cried, “Bring that boy back, he will surely be lost.”
The college student walked about halfway into the cemetery and fired one shot in the air.
A voice from the cemetery screamed: “Don’t shoot, it’s Med Murray.”
The shooter replied: “Come out with your hands up.”
Med Murray did so. The other man, Dave Highland, however, ran for his life and was not caught.
This made Med pretty upset, realizing he was caught and Dave escaped. He was certain that Dave was hiding at his sister’s several miles out in the country.
Med called Dave and said that he was “out on bail” and that people were looking for him.
So, for the next four or five days each time a buggy approached his sister’s house Dave rushed out the back and hid in a raspberry patch, thus giving Med his revenge.
As an aside, Med Murray was one of Bluffton’s well-known Murray quadruplets. His brothers were Dode, Hod and Lloyd. John Murray is a grandson of one of the quadruplets.
Version 2
This version involves members of either the Bluffton High School class of 1903 or 1904.
Someone started a story that a white form had been seen on many occasions at midnight in Maple Grove Cemetery.
It was rumored to be the spirit of a deceased school “marm.”
When a young Bluffton girl asked George Combs if the story was true, Combs reported to have sworn that it was, and declared that he had himself seen this apparition.
His statement, as you can imagine, resulted in the formation of a posse of ghost hunters to Maple Grove.
That evening, the group arrived and walked among the tombstones. Sure enough, a white figure appears in a distant corner of the graveyard.
One of the young men in the posse apparently had doubts. He is said to have shouted, “I have a gun. We’ll see whether it’s a ghost or not.”
With this, the ghost is reported to have shouted out, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” and quickly disappeared into a nearby thicket.
Moral of this tale: Don’t mess around in the Maple Grove Cemetery at midnight unless you are ready for confront the ghosts of the BHS class of 1903 or 1904 chasing other ghosts.
And, I'm just kidding about the dusty file folder. Version 2 was told at the Bluffton High School alumni banquet in 1956. I happen to have a copy of the story.
And, watch out the thickets.
