(dramatic orchestral music) (spooky music) - [Narrator] It all happened right here on these tracks.

A ghost light.

At first, nobody believed it.

Trains would be running to Magee.

They'd see somebody trying to flag 'em down at night, least they'd see the lantern.

An old coal-oil lantern, swinging on the tracks.

(footsteps crunching) The doctor was going to meet a patient.

Finding the shortest way to get there was to take the tracks.

(slow, labored breathing) (train rattling) (footsteps crunching) (slow, suspenseful music) (slow breathing) (train rattling) (intense music) They said he was on the clear track.

Old Doc must have got confused 'cause he ran off the clear track and onto the one across the way.

(train horn blaring) (train rattling) (slow, suspenseful music) Well... in the '20s, they started seeing that ghost light out there on the tracks of Beauregard.

They'd brake real hard and stop the train.

But then there wouldn't be nothing out there.

Nobody at all.

Nothing.

- In Mississippi there are many, many ghost tales.

Every part of the state has a tale peculiar to its own history, to its own atmosphere.

Up in the Delta they tell a different kind of tale from the tale they tell along the Coast.

But they're all splendid tales of the supernatural.

I'm Kathryn Tucker Windham, and for a little while I'd like to share some Mississippi ghost tales with you.

(slow music) This is Waverley, located between Columbus and West Point, Mississippi.

This home was built in the mid-1800s by Colonel George Hampton Young.

It was abandoned for more than 50 years, until in 1962, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Snow, Jr. purchased the property.

- I had no earthly idea that we had a ghost in the house.

We had lived here for about two years.

The house had looked real ghostly with all the bats and birds and things when we first started restoring.

But never dreamed of having a ghost until we were here, I suppose, at least two years.

And one morning about 10:30 I was cleaning a room upstairs when right at my feet this angelic little girl's voice very sweetly said, "Momma, Momma," close enough that I could have touched it.

And I assumed that I had heard a bird, never dreaming that it was a ghost.

And the next day this happened, and then consecutively it began to happen.

Every day, and not in the same room, and not at the same hour.

Until after a few days of that I knew that we had a ghost because I have reached down to feel, to see if there was something there, and there was nothing, but the voice was coming from right at my feet.

And this went on and on for several years until one day we discovered that something, oh, about three feet long, was sleeping on a bed upstairs in a bedroom that was slept in nightly by our then high school son.

Made up in the mornings.

And this would appear early in the afternoons.

It was on top of the spread, and it was always gone by night.

So when I called it to the family's attention we started watching it.

And then one day we decided that we'd go up there and just wait and watch and see what happens when this disappeared.

Because when there was no weight on the bed the indentation was not there.

Nobody was playing a trick, there was no dog or cat in the house.

So one day we sat in there all afternoon.

And a little after 4:30 late one evening, right before our eyes, the bed just straightened up, the side of the bedspread wrinkled, and now it was gone, and we didn't hear a thing.

And the only thing we saw was the movement of the bed.

But she continued to call, and she continued to sleep on the bed.

And then one day after this had been going on for years, instead of her sweetly calling, she raised her voice and she screamed real loudly, "Momma, Momma, Momma," about four or five times.

And that time really was the first time that it absolutely sent cold chills all over my body.

I stopped dead in my tracks and I answered her.

And I asked if I could help her and she didn't say a thing.

So I said again, "I really want to help you "if you'll tell me what I can do," because this child needed help and wanted to help.

And she didn't say a thing.

And she never called the next day, and she never called again after that day.

And she did not sleep on the bed again after that day.

- You were not the only member of the family who heard the ghost, were you?

- One daughter heard it, and she had gone to bed, she was about 17 at the time.

And she jumped from the bed and ran in there.

They had thought I was kidding all through the years.

And she said, "Mother, I heard that little girl, "she's calling you, did you hear her?"

And I said, "No, you were probably going to sleep "and just dreaming."

Usually she called in the daytime.

Occasionally she had called me at night, though.

And Cindy said, "No, I heard her."

And she was in tears at 17.

And I had to go and sleep in the bed with her that night, she was so frightened.

Of course, people that have made a study of this and do believe in these things say that once the house is inhabited by a friendly ghost that the ghost remains.

But I assumed that she was gone until the most ironic thing happened a few weeks ago.

This couple from Scotland came here.

They knew nothing of Waverley or the ghost.

They rented a car at the airport in Atlanta, drove over to see Waverley 'cause they saw it in a guidebook, and we made the tour.

And after they went upstairs and came back down this lady looked at me and she said, "You have a spirit in your house."

And I said, "Why do you say that?"

And she said, "Because I can sense a spirit."

And when I went upstairs and walked into the first, the door of the first room up here, back up here on the left, then I sensed a spirit in that room.

(slow music) - The story of the little girl ghost at Waverley is sad, pathetic.

But there are other kinds of ghost stories.

Let's listen to one of those.

(owl hooting) - [Narrator] Mr. Roald Tweeter heard there was a sound old house 'tween Beaver Dam Creek and Hot Coffee.

(slow, suspenseful music) He heard that the place was haunted, and knew that anybody could have it who wanted it.

Mr. Roald's wife's place leaked and was rotten in top and sills.

He wanted to find her a better place.

So he wasn't scared to go to this old haunted house where they say a crazy man stabbed his wife and quarrelsome mother-in-law to death.

That evening it was raining.

Things are always scary at night when the weather acts up.

He walked into the front room of the old, empty house and lighted a lamp.

Took a seat to wait for the ghost, or whatever it was.

It wasn't long before something made the lamp go out.

Mr. Tweeter sat in the dark a few minutes, lit the lamp again, and it went out again.

He lit it for the third time and it kept burning.

But then the front door creaked wide open.

(door creaking slowly) At first he just sat there looking at the door.

Then he decided he better shut it.

Soon as he sat back down the front door started banging back and forth.

With this, Mr. Tweeter spoke to the ghost or whatever it was.

"You're as bothersome as my mother-in-law," he said.

But this was a mean ghost, and the worst was yet to come.

Up in the attic chains began dragging back and forth.

And someone or something started kicking a bucket around in a terrible fashion.

(bucket clattering loudly) Mr. Tweeter laid down on the bench, trying to ignore the noise 'cause he, he's tired, needed sleep.

Just as he closed his eyes he heard the back door creak open.

He looked toward the rear door of the house and thought he saw some sort of a hairy face.

It looked almost like a wolf's face, he thought.

He sat up again to play a harp that he carried around most of the time.

He'd always heard that wolves didn't like music.

As he played and stared towards the back door, the front door started bangin' back and forth again.

Well, that was all Mr. Tweeter could stand.

He dropped his harp to the floor, ran out the front door with a slam that could be heard for half a mile.

And as Mr. Roald Tweeter made his way back home through that dreary night, he remembered it was two women that had been murdered.

And he realized that the ghost was a woman, and a mother-in-law at that.

(owl hooting) - Vicksburg is an old river town.

And any time you find an old town on a river you will find unusually good ghost stories.

There are many ghost tales here.

But the story we're going to explore is the tale of Judge and Mrs. William Lake.

Happened in 1861.

And they say that the ghost of Mrs. Lake is still here in Vicksburg.

(slow piano music) - [Narrator] Perhaps all ghosts are sad beings.

But the most sorrowful ghosts of all must be those trapped by love.

Those so broken by a love suddenly and cruelly shattered, they have not been able to overcome their tragedy in human life, nor leave it behind upon passing the portal of eternity.

(clock ticking) (clock chiming) - Sir, I challenge you to a duel!

(clock chiming) (clock ticking) (gentle piano music) (gate creaking slowly) (slow piano music) (water splashing softly) - [Narrator] She stays, ghostly, a watcher and a waiter, wandering the halls of her home.

(clock ticking) (slow piano music) Still she waits, her perfume still drifting through the rooms of the old house.

And mirrors, mirrors shatter by the force of her sad presence.

And sometimes at night, her footsteps sound as she treads the old oak floors.

Still she lingers, caught after life in the tragedy of her living days when fate pierced her eyes with a vision of sorrow.

Will she finally go?

Will she ever find her last release?

Or will she stay... attached forever to the home of her joy and her sorrow.

- One of the charms of the ghost tale is that you do not have to believe in ghosts to enjoy hearing a good ghost story.

It was back in 1966 that Jeffrey first came.

I was alone one afternoon when I heard heavy footsteps going down the hall.

And the door to my son's room opened and slammed.

And I thought my son, Ben, had come home from college.

But when I called, no one answered.

And when I got up to see, there was no one there.

Then a few days later the same pattern of footsteps and of slamming door was repeated when my daughter Dilcy was at home.

And I looked over to see if she were hearing the strange sounds, and her eyes got big.

She looked at me to say, "What is it?"

And just at that instant our old cat named Hornblower waked up out of his sound sleep.

He jumped down out of his rocking chair, arched his back, and the hair stood up around his neck, his tail got stiff, and he says, "Yow!"

and he went tearing out of the room in terror.

So we thought perhaps we did have something there.

Something that we called Jeffrey.

And no one has ever been afraid of him.

It's a joy to have Jeffrey there, because it's so convenient to have something to blame everything that goes wrong on.

But Jeffrey's arrival did make me become more interested in all sorts of ghost tales.

(birds chirping) This is an old, abandoned hospital.

Once one of the busiest hospitals in all of Mississippi.

Many lives began here.

And many lives ended here.

But now it's the home of pigeons, of memories, and of ghosts.

- [Narrator] Having heard rumors of screeches, screams, and hauntings in the empty building, I asked permission to spend a couple of nights in the old hospital with the hope of writing a story for a local magazine.

(suspenseful music) Although I admit to being an avid ghost hunter, I really didn't expect to find anything as I explored the abandoned structure.

Most of the stories had originated with the first guard to work the graveyard shift after the hospital had been evacuated.

"I didn't hear anything at first," he had told me.

"But then I started hearing doors slamming, "and water running."

On the east end of the fifth floor where the operating and recovery rooms were located, he said he'd sometimes heard screams.

Always a different pitch or volume.

I knew, of course, that sometimes your mind can play tricks on you.

That, for instance, what might sound like a baby crying from the empty nursery could be nothing more than the frightened howling of a stray cat echoing along the lonely corridors.

(suspenseful music) Knowing that my imagination was at work didn't keep me from being startled by the unexpected flutter of a bewildered pigeon trapped in one of the empty rooms.

Nor did the knowledge that the blood was fake keep a chill from running up my spine when I came across the remnants of a recently staged survival drill.

And, there seemed to be no logical explanation for the guard's story of the time he was sitting in the office when he sensed something behind him.

Turning around, he found himself face to face with a middle-aged woman.

To put it in his words, "She was all rosy, even her gown was pink.

"It scared me at first, "but I figured she had wandered over from the new hospital "through the tunnel between the two buildings.

"When I ask her if I could help, "she went straight to the main doors "without speaking a word.

"I followed her, and, so help me, "she walked right through the glass and disappeared."

(slow, suspenseful music) Still, except for a slightly mysterious feeling that one gets in any empty building, I experienced no frightening occurrences.

I heard no noises.

I saw no ghosts.

But, based on the stories I'd heard, I decided to give it one more whirl.

On my second night I made the rounds with a guard I'll call John.

John, too, had heard things, including the rubbing together of stockings, like nylon, around one of the nurses' stations.

At 4a.m.

we boarded the elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor where our next check-in position was located.

(slow, suspenseful music) When the elevator stopped and we stepped out, we were on the fifth floor.

I ask John why we had stopped there.

He was shaking his head and about to speak when we heard a door slam.

We froze.

Then a second, and a third door shut, each a little farther down the hall.

Finally, it sounded as if a heavy door on the east end opened and closed.

This was too much for John, who began banging frantically on the elevator buttons trying to get the doors to open.

Then the slamming started from the other direction and came toward us, fast.

John screamed that this was my fault for stirring them up.

We argued for a moment about investigating.

Then, the noises stopped.

We listened for what seemed an eternity.

No more noises.

(slow, suspenseful music) Once we were breathing halfway normally again, we decided to look around.

But, despite the fact that we scoured the entire floor, we didn't find anything.

I didn't argue this time, and we went back to the first floor office.

We had just turned up the radio real loud and sat down when the lights went out.

We both leaped to the door, half expecting and half dreading to see a rosy lady come strolling down the hall.

Then the lights came back on.

But, no lady.

Perhaps the slamming doors can be explained by the wind.

Or the fact that the whole building vibrates when the old heating system cuts in.

On the other hand, perhaps the first guard is more right in explaining that the place is just as haunted as it can be.

After two nights there, I still don't know.

And that's what I wrote in my story.

- There have to be three people involved in telling ghost tales.

First, of course, there has to be the ghost.

And then there has to be someone who has an encounter or an experience with that ghost and tells about it.

And then there has to be the listener.

But it doesn't stop there.

For then the listener tells someone else, and that person tells another person until the story spreads and grows and becomes a part of our folklore, becomes a legend.

And from those legends come the vast treasures of stories that Southern storytellers tell.

Those marvelous ghost tales that are preserved from one generation to another by the tellers.

(slow music)