nd legs and tail and a face like a man and it walked to the
fireplace and lifted the lid off a skillet of 'taters what sot there and
came to my bed and raised up the cover and crawled in and I hollers so
loud it wakes everybody. I tell 'em I seed a ghost and they say I crazy,
but I guess I knows a hant when I sees one. Minerva there can tell you
'bout that haunted house we lived in near Marshall jus' after we's
married." (Minerva says, 'Deed, I can,' and here is her story:)

"The nex' year after Anderson and me marries we moves to a place that
had 'longed to white folks and the man was real mean and choked his
wife to death and he lef' the country and we moved in. We heered
peculiar noises by night and the niggers 'round there done told us it
was hanted but I didn't 'lieve 'em, but I do now. One night we seed the
woman what died come all 'round with a light in the hand and the
neighbors said that candle light the house all over and it look like it
on fire. She come ev'ry night and we left our crop and moved 'way from
there and ain't gone back yit to gather that crop. 'Fore we moved in
that place been empty since the woman die, 'cause nobody live there. One
night Charlie Williams, what lives in Marshall, and runs a store out by
the T. & P. Hospital git drunk and goes out there to sleep and while he
sleepin' that same woman come in and nigh choked him to death. Ain't
nobody ever live in that house since we is there."

Anderson then resumed his story: "I 'member when war starts and massa's
boy, George it was, saddles up ole Bob, his pony, and lef'. He stays six
months and when he rid up massa say, 'How's the war, George?' and massa
George say, 'It's Hell. Me and Bob has been runnin' Yankees ever since
us lef'.' 'Fore war massa didn't never say much 'bout slavery but when
he heered us free he cusses and say, 'Gawd never did 'tend to free
niggers,' and he cussed till he died. But he didn't tell us we's free
till a whole year after we was, but one day a bunch of Yankee soldiers
come ridin' up and massa and missy hid out. The soldiers walked into the
kitchen and mammy was churnin' and one of them kicks the churn over and
say, 'Git out, you's jus' as free as I is.' Then they ramsacked the
place and breaks out all the window lights and when they leaves it look
like a storm done hit that house. Massa come back from hidin' and that
when he starts on a cussin' spree what lasts as long as he lives.

"'bout four year after that war