HurstNation.com

In the spirit of Halloween, I am posting a couple of stories sent to me by Alan Murray. This one is by Alan and ran in the Independent Appeal on 10/31/2002.

Is Purdy a real Ghost Town? By Alan Murray Staff Writer

In its heyday in the mid-1800’s, Purdy was described by A.W. Stowall as “a place with beautiful streets, costly houses, rich gardens, aromatic flowers, brave men and noble women, pretty girls and playful boys … picture of perfection.”

Purdy featured a college, theatre, hotel, law offices, eateries, taverns, and the typical assortment of stores and businesses one would associate with a growing, thriving town of that era. David (Davy) Crockett even made the first speech in the new courthouse in 1831. No one doubted that Purdy, with so much going for it and being the county seat of McNairy County, would continue to prosper and remain the cultural and economic center for the area. But that isn’t what happened.

A decision was made, no one is sure why, to keep the railroad out of Purdy. Perhaps the citizens feared that the noisy, messy trains would spoil their idyllic community. For whatever reason, the railroad was kept out and Purdy’s fate was sealed.

Purdy also had a darker side.

The infamous Colonel Fielding Hurst, whether because of the murder of his nephew and mishandling of his invalid mother by Confederate troops or his zealous Unionist views, left death and destruction in his wake all across west Tennessee. Hurst hunted down and killed six of the Confederates responsible for his nephew’s death and used their heads as mile posts along the roadside. He ransacked, looted and burned towns as far away as Jackson.

Purdy was not spared his wrath. He burned many homes and businesses in Purdy. Those that escaped burning soon relocated along the railroad. The county seat was eventually moved to Selmer, and in the blink of a eye, Purdy became a ghost town.

The old stage road, now deeply sunken and choked with trees, is still there. The road was the main artery between Memphis and Nashville during the 1800’s, and crosses McNairy County roughly east to west. In one place, the road passes quite near one of the two graveyards in Purdy. In this area, several unexplainable things have happened.

Mr. Wallace Hurst, now deceased, was a lifelong resident of Purdy. He believed there were ghosts there, and after listening to him, you would begin to believe as well.

This is the story Mr. Hurst told to me, as best I can remember it.

Wallace worked at my grandfather Virgil Murray’s sawmill when I was a boy, and later worked with my father off and on when he and his brothers needed help logging.

He told me about sitting up one night during a bad thunderstorm. Wallace’s wife had died some time before and was buried in the graveyard just down the road from his home but, as the lightning flashes lit up the area bright as day, he saw his wife walk up the road from the graveyard.

When she got to the mailbox, she turned toward the house, waved and, with an especially bright flash of lightning, disappeared.

My grandfather had told me scary stories as a young boy, and they always seemed just that: scary stories. I don’t remember any of them scaring me in quite the same way Wallace’s story did. I also got the impression that Wallace’s story wasn’t one he told often.

My uncle, John Ross Murray, was logging by himself along the old road just north of the same graveyard about 20 years ago. He saw something that he says changed his life. John only told this story to a very few people, until he agreed to let Billy Wagoner print it in the Community Shopper (now the Community News) of Adamsville, almost five years later.

John had picked up his chainsaw to begin trimming some treetops. He pulled and pulled the starter rope, but the saw failed to start. Disgusted, he tried to crank his tractor to bunch some logs, and it refused to start. Same for his log truck. None of his equipment would crank.

He sat down, since there was nothing else to do, and caught a glimpse of something moving up the old stage road. As it drew closer, he could see that it was an old covered wagon with the canvas off, being pulled by a pair of mules, one black and one white. A man and woman sat on the front seat, there was a little girl standing behind the woman, and a little boy sitting on the tailgate of the wagon. There was a cow being led behind the wagon and a little dog running along beside it. The people were dressed in old fashioned clothes, the women with bonnets that hid their faces. John said they came by him close enough that he could smell them.

Thinking it was a local family of Mennonites, he waved to them. They acted as if they didn’t see him and continued up the old roadbed. As they passed by him and over a hill, he realized that the road ahead was blocked with treetops he hadn’t yet cleared. When he went to tell the people that the road was blocked, they were gone. Tracks and all. Not a trace of them remained. After they were gone, his equipment began to work again. He finished loading his logs and left and returned with his brother and a friend, but were never able to find any evidence of the wagon’s passage.

John says that he’s been called crazy and worse because of what he saw, but others believe. Two men working for the TVA on the watershed lake just west of the graveyard saw the wagon too. They left and refused to come back. Frank Hurst also claimed to have seen the mysterious wagon, and there are rumors that others have seen it as well.

There are other stories about Purdy and the surrounding area. You don’t get many of them first-hand.

I remember hearing one about a young couple who was parked in their car at the same graveyard. They kept hearing what they thought was someone tapping on their car window. Thinking it was a friend playing a joke on them, they looked out to discover it was the boots of a hanged man striking the window as he swung from a tree limb (a slave named James Ervin was hanged in Purdy in 1860).

Just a few miles east of Purdy, the old stage road passes through the community of Good Hope, where it met with roads from Crump’s Landing, Pittsburgh and Hamburg. A friend of mine told me a story that his grandmother, Hassie Rowland, told to him. She said that when she was a little girl, she remembered riding in their mule-drawn buggy with her daddy after dark along the Good Hope Church Road. When they got to a certain place along the road, where the old stage road crossed, a ball of light would come out of the woods and race around the mule’s feet, frightening the mules badly. She told him it was all her daddy could do to hold onto the reins and keep the mules from bolting.

These are a few of the local ghost stories I remember. I hope I’ve told them correctly, and my apologies to anyone I misquoted.

Do I believe in ghosts? I’m not sure. During the light of day, it’s easy to brush off stories of haunts and phantoms, but at night, alone in the woods near Purdy, I’m not so sure. But don’t listen to me, you can go and see for yourself.

Just don’t go at night, and don’t go alone.

*Note: Unfortunately, not everyone who visits the old graveyards in Purdy is looking for ghosts. Vandals have heavily damaged the north graveyard, and both are littered with dumped garbage, beer bottles and other unmentionables. For safety’s sake, and to avoid any confusion as to motives, please only visit these places during daylight hours, and don’t leave anything behind other than footprints. Also, a special thanks to Billy Wagoner and Ms. Nancy Kennedy for their excellent research and articles about Purdy and its history and ghosts, which were used as reference material for this article, and to John Ross Murray.

Filed under: Ghost Hunters, Haunted, Ghosts, Ghost of Fielding Hurst, Col. Fielding Hurst, Purdy