The Witch of Lane Church

Down a long lonely road just outside of my town in West Virginia is an old church and cemetery. Called the Lane Church, the building is barely standing these days and it is not white anymore. The peeling paint hangs in strips and the stained glass windows are boarded over. People just didn't like that church.

It wasn't always like that. I can remember attending services there when I was a young boy where I jittered and jumped in my seat. Getting a smack from my Pa was almost expected and I never blamed him for that, but I could never tell him that the woman next to me would pinch me. Pa claimed there wasn't a woman sitting in our pew and after several whacks over my head; I knew not to argue with him. Nor did I tell him I had seen her playing a violin while standing near the church.

After church, the children had bible school where most of us drew pictures or whoever was the Sunday school teacher that day would read us a bible story from a stack of books that were always on the desk. Those were generally the good days.

However, if someone died, there would always be a big funeral service at the church, everyone would bring food for the dinner after the business of burying, and the family's wailing was done. The cemetery sat behind the church and during the summer, someone would mow it and clean up all the flowers that blew away from the graves.

Most of the headstones were so old, they tilted back and forth, with lichen covering nearly all of the names, but there were still several that were relatively new - meaning they were put there in the last fifty years.

Still, there was one section of the cemetery that no one really liked to enter, where several stones were missing or bits of rocks with initials carved into them would mark a grave here and yonder. The grass never seemed to grow there and many of the graves had sunk in - leaving big dips like ocean waves across the vicinity of the graves.

In one corner of that section was a huge five foot tall ornate headstone with a violin and bow on top, carved in intricate bas-relief. The name on the stone was that of Rebecca Emeline Lane, born 1846 died 1875, aged 29 years 2 months and 13 days.

Since we lived next door to the cemetery, my Pa told me to never go near that grave because Rebecca had been a witch and that every one buried near her were people who had died at the old Lane farm. In fact, the land the church set on used to be her land. After what happened way back when, the town folk had cleared off the land and built the church and cemetery.

Of course, at the time, I had no idea what that meant, but the tone of Pa's voice made me believe him and I never went near. He said Rebecca loved to play the violin and her daddy had gone into the big city out east and found her a good one. She would play it every evening and the sound of her playing could be heard for miles around.

He went on to say that Rebecca's daddy once owned all that lot of land. It was located right next to the town limits and some considered it a choice spot. When he died, the town people, knowing that only Rebecca was left, decided to take the land from her and annex it to make the town bigger. Seems some guy named Cas Tucker wanted to build a new saloon there and since drinking was the favorite pastime for many, the land was quickly taken.

Of course, Rebecca Lane was angry because it was her land that was stolen and she had her daddy's will where he had left everything to her. She ranted and screamed, but the town folks all laughed at her, knowing there was little she could do. One day, Rebecca went in front of the town hall, where the gallows had been built to hang horse thieves or murderers that were unlucky enough to be caught there. Climbing the gallows, she screamed at the people that she cursed them and that the saloon and its owner would never make a cent for as long as she lived.

Laughing, the town folks just pointed and jeered at Rebecca. Many of the children ran and pulled tomatoes out of their mothers' gardens and threw them at her. She just stood on those gallows and never said another word, only staring at the people who had surrounded her.

When they finally got tired of making fun of the woman, she climbed down from the gallows and went home. A few days later, someone rode into town and said the Lane farmhouse had burnt to the ground, but the whereabouts' of Rebecca was unknown. No body could be found in the smoking ruins of beams and logs; however, no one really looked that hard. Even so, it was still strange about all the drawings of weird symbols that were written in the dirt around the house.

Years went by and Rebecca was never seen nor heard from. No one ever bothered with the old Lane house and the people around there just figured Rebecca had up and left when she figured out she had lost.

Then one day, a local traveling salesman stopped in town and said he had met a woman on the way in and she was chanting over at the old Lane place. A couple of the men saddled horses and rode out that way to see who it could be. When they rode up to the ruins of the old Lane house, they found an old gray haired woman sitting on a stump holding a satchel to her breast, and there was a violin lying on the ground next to her.

The woman's hair was long and sooty gray and it covered most of her face, but one of them recognized the woman as Rebecca Lane, though he thought she had gotten real old real fast since she was only about 17 when she was last seen. This woman looked to be closer to a hundred years old, but he figured time just had not been good to Rebecca.

As they rode up to her, the woman stood up and pointed her finger at them. She told them in a gravely singsong voice to go to the town and tell them she was back. The men were order to say that anyone who had a part in taking her daddy's land was going to pay. Well, those men grinned at each other but they went on back to town and let the town folks know Rebecca Lane was home and that she was angry.

Mimicking how Rebecca had pointed and screamed, they told everyone what Rebecca had said to them. Very few ever remembered the curse she had put on the town because nothing had ever happened. Most of the folks just grinned, slapped the men on the back, and took them into the prosperous saloon built on the Lane land and bought everyone a round of beer. After all, they knew there was nothing to fear from one old woman.

It was later after midnight when the saloon burned down along with the owner Cas Tucker. He had always slept inside and, I think now, because he did believe Rebecca would come back. Someone spotted the fire and yelled for help. Every one came running, but no matter how much water the men threw on the fire, it just seemed to blaze hotter.

No one gave a passing thought to the return of Rebecca Lane the day before. Most of the men just grumbled about how they would now have to go over to Jake Peter's saloon where it was known that he watered all the liquor down and added rotgut to most of it. The beer he made himself and was barely drinkable, but there was little they could do about it now.

The next morning, a group of children ran to their mothers telling them that they had found writing in the dust around the saloon. The women called to their husbands and the entire group went to see. In the dust and ashes they could make out where someone had written, "Burn here with witch's fire, choked with ash a funeral pyre, once this is done, lay to waste, all that's left to drink or taste".

Everyone stood around shaking his or her head, not having a clue as to what the statement meant. Even so, Red Clayton, the town drunk, brought up the curse that Rebecca Lane had made and allowed how odd it was that the saloon had burned down the very day she had returned.

People murmured amongst themselves, until Ray Mowl who was the town sheriff decided Rebecca had probably started the fire to get even with Cas Tucker. He would go arrest her and bring her back to town to stand trial. She could think about her sins while she spent her few remaining days in jail. After all, after they held a trial on a charge of murder for the death of Cas Tucker and arson of the saloon, they would hang her from the gallows. The town folk agreed and two of his friends, Cyde Smith and Wert Wimer, saddled up and went with him over to the old Lane place to haul Rebecca into town.

The day went by and Sheriff Mowl and the two men who had gone with him had not yet returned to town. When his wife complained about how long it was taking to arrest one woman, the town folk decided to ride out and see what was taking so long. Quite a few stopped by home and picked up a rope, figuring that maybe they didn't need a trial anyway.

When they arrived at the Lane house, the first thing they noticed was the smoke rising from the cold ashes of the fire long ago. Grabbing shovels and axes, they began to clear the old rotten beams away from the foundation and it wasn't long before they found what was left of the sheriff and his men.

All three were so badly burned, that the only way the sheriff was identified was by the big belt buckle he always wore. The other two were never identified as being which of the two men because there was so little left. There was nothing but a few bones and scorched pieces of leather from their boots, so they just divided up the bones and leather into two piles and that was the way they were buried.

At the same time, a great gasp went up from the crowd as the men picking up the remains, also found bones underneath the dead men. Bones that appeared to be several years old. They were still lying next to each other, each bone in the right places, all in the shape of a woman's skeleton. Where the right hand would have been, they found the remains of a bow, the kind one would use to play a violin.

They had found Rebecca Lane. She had died in the fire the night the Lane house had burned down, thirteen years ago. Now they knew that the woman the two men had seen a few days before was actually an apparition, the ghost of Rebecca Emeline Lane coming back to fulfill her curse.

Fearing that she was not done with them yet, they decided perhaps they should bury her and apologize for stealing her land, by making her a fine headstone. The town folks each donated for the cost of the tombstone with the violin engraved upon it. They buried her in a corner of the cemetery, along with the men who had died because of the curse she had made.

Even now, late at night and on the anniversary of her death, I can still hear her playing her violin, the sound echoing along the mountain ridges. I can hear the sound of her laughter that seems to go on and on, raising every hair on my neck. Nevertheless, I never went into that cemetery ever again.

Rebecca Emeline Lane was home.