Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Sometimes you get a chance to combine two of your favorite things. It’s how peanut butter cups were invented. It’s why Superman and Batman team up so often. And, in my case, it’s a way to combine dogs and ghost stories, both of which I’ve enjoyed since I was little.

Let me begin by introducing you to the concept of a “graveyard dog.” The graveyard dog has been a common theme in folklore for centuries. Also sometimes known as a “church grim,” the legend involves a dog, usually but not always dark-colored, who haunts a single cemetery. It will protect the cemetery, but not go beyond the borders. The graveyard dog is very rarely an actual dog; it tends to be a ghost of someone, generally the victim of a murder or tragic accident, or perhaps the first person buried in that cemetery.

Stories of graveyard dogs are all over the place, though New England seems to be a big area for them. Fear not, however, because of course we have graveyard dogs in Clinton County, too. Why do you think I’m writing the big buildup here?

I stumbled on an old article in my archives entitled “The Phantom Dog.” It’s undated and uncredited, but it sounds like the kind of thing Henry Shoemaker would have taken an interest in. And it’s the right area—The story takes place in eastern Wayne Township.

There was a boy named Jake. (So far, plausible enough. Based on these old legends, half the kids in the county were named Jake at one point, including the girls.) Jake’s dog had died, and he was upset about it, as who wouldn’t be? So a nice old couple in the Pine Station area gave him a new dog. Jake hiked over to their house to pick up the dog, and was so grateful to them that it was almost dark by the time he quit thanking them and headed home.

A lot of the time, these stories leave clues as to where they supposedly happened. This one mentions the boy and his new dog walking over the railroad bridge across the West Branch and along the railroad tracks before going past a cemetery, which means it almost has to be the Stamm Cemetery. Between the railroad tracks and the river along Old Riverview Road, the Stamm Cemetery was founded by Jacob Stamm in about 1883.

As they walked past, the dog stopped and refused to go any further. There was a white fog coming from the river, and a huge white dog came out of the fog and walked along the railroad tracks. Clearly, this dog was not a real dog—It was a ghost.

Jake grabbed his new puppy and ran home. When he got there and told his parents what had happened, his mother told him that an innocent man had been hung there years ago for a crime he hadn’t committed. He appeared sometimes as a man or deer, but mostly as a dog.

Interestingly, something like this story appears in Homer Rosenberger’s “Mountain Folks,” in the story “The Church Yard Ghost.” From an interview with local citizen Frank Edgar, Rosenberger is very specific that it’s the Stamm Cemetery that is haunted by a ghost shaped like a dog, deer, or man. The only real difference is that in Rosenberger’s book, the man hung himself. According to the legend, there was a church on the property once, but because of the haunting, they couldn’t keep it there—First it was struck by lightning, and then torn down.

The most interesting thing about this legend is how easily it dovetails with actual history. The Ebenezer Evangelical Church stood on the property in 1874, but burned down twenty years later. The second attempt at a church was torn down in about 1910 and some of the parts sent to Sunbury.

And the graveyard dog? You never know. Maybe he followed the remains of the church to Sunbury, and is now haunting out there. Or maybe he’s still here in Clinton County, haunting the cemetery by the river. Maybe I’ll go out and take a look. If he follows me home, can I keep him?