The Haunted History
of Pine Deep - Continued
The ‘worse’ in
question certainly was something far more grim than any crop blight or
even the virus. During that summer and
fall seventeen people were brutally murdered in what authorities describe
as the “most savage attacks in our history”.
“Even worse than what our people did to
the Indians,” commented Job Hallowell, a tractor salesman
whose family has lived in Pine Deep since Colonial times, referring
to the mass slaughter of Lenni Lena'pe but settlers to the region.
The killings had happened in two bunches. In September
of that year, near the end of the month, the first five people
had died. At first it was the mutilated bodies of drifters that
were found, itinerant migrant workers who labored on the small
cattle farm of Ubel Griswold, who owned a spread tucked into the
hills. The drifters were sought by their friends after they failed
to show up for work, one each day. The bodies were in an indescribable
condition. Wild dogs were blamed for the killings, but after vigilante
groups had slaughtered nearly every dog in town, the killings continued.
Among the victims were Billy Crowe, brother of
Malcolm Crow, owner of the Crow’s Nest Craft Shoppe and one
of the most knowledgeable sources of local haunted lore. When asked
about his brother’s death, Crow said, “It was a great
personal tragedy for me. Not just because Billy was my brother...but
because he was one of those people whose light just seemed to shine.
When he was around everyone was having a good time. When he died...the
whole town became a bit darker.”
Also slain were members of some of Pine Deep’s
most prestigious families, including Stanley Guthrie, cousin of
Henry Guthrie; the farmer Ubel Griswold; and Amanda “Mandy” Wolfe,
the little sister of Pine Deep’s current Mayor, Terry Wolfe.
“I think about her every day,” said
Mayor Wolfe, looking very sad when asked to comment. “It’s
like I hear her voice...and sometimes I think I see her. She was
such an innocent little thing...it’s hard to imagine what
kind of monster would do that to her.”
Officially the murders were never solved and no
one was ever brought to justice, however the police did have one
suspect in the person of Oren Morse, an African American native
of Mississippi who, it was rumored, was a draft dodger. Morse,
a sometime Blues musician, did fieldwork on both the Griswold and
Guthrie farms, and was supposedly “friendly” with Billy
Crow and Mandy Wolfe and their friends.
Local rumors maintain that town fathers formed
a vigilante group and hunted Morse down to make him pay for his
crimes. Indeed Morse’s badly beaten body was found hanging
from a scarecrow post on the Guthrie farm. Unfortunately the body
was later removed and no one knows where or by whom it was buried.
Whether Morse was, in fact the killer --which
seems most likely-- the murder spree ended with his death. Since
then a local legend has cropped up in which Morse, now popularly
known as the Bone Man, stalks the cornfields along Route A-32 looking
for fresh victims.
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PINE DEEP – Here in America’s Haunted
Holidayland --the town Time Magazine once called “the Most
Haunted Town in America”-- things are really starting to
get scary as everyone in town gets ready for the big tourist invasion.
