The Appalachian Trail tells the human story of those who came before us: Native Americans, frontiersman, pioneers, settlers, sharecroppers, hermits, and, of course, hikers. Their stories of life and death may be marked by humble graves, larger cemeteries, and memorials - or they may be lost to history. Hikers today may reflect on these deaths when viewing a memorial like the the one honoring hermit Nick Grindstaff, who "Lived alone, suffered alone, and died alone," passing a community cemetery that remains active to this day, or recalling one of the rare, but infamous murders that occurred on the trail.
When I hiked the trail, I unknowingly slept in a Smokies shelter where a hiker had succumbed to hypothermia years earlier, I camped 500 feet from the graves of Union soldiers in North Carolina, I weathered a storm that took the life of a nearby hiker at higher elevation, and I remembered Geraldine "Inchworm" Largay as I traversed the nondescript Maine woods where she lost her way and starved to death. I even discovered the body of hiker who had passed away peacefully in his tent. While these sobering experiences made me appreciate the fragility of life, none of them were disturbing in any spiritual way. Sure, there were guys hanging out at a couple shelters who made me uncomfortable enough that I decided to go farther before camping, and a few loud sounds in the night made my heart race. But the one and only time that I really felt creeped out on the Appalachian Trail was on Bluff Mountain in Virginia.
Bluff Mountain, near mile 796 on the Appalachian Trail and sometimes called Tower Mountain or Tower Hill, is haunted by the story of a little boy named Ottie Cline Powell. On Nov 9, 1891, shortly before Ottie's 5th birthday, all of the children at the one-room schoolhouse went out to gather firewood for the stove that kept them warm. But Ottie never returned. The community began searching almost immediately, combing the woods, but finding no sign of him. The day turned to night, and freezing rain began to fall. The search continued for weeks with no success. Winter came, and hope faded to despair. Ottie's small body was found on the top of Bluff Mountain 5 months later. This little boy had walked about 7 miles from the schoolhouse, much farther than anyone had imagined. Investigators concluded that he froze to death that first cold, lonely night, and that he had covered that remarkable distance in one day.
Some people report seeing the ghost of a little boy on the mountaintop, but when I arrived late on a dreary October afternoon after a long day of hiking and with the intention of camping, I saw only the heavy mist snaking through the branches of the almost-bare, skeleton-like trees. Yet I felt a distinct presence. Not a gentle little boy, but something ancient and unwelcoming. I was not wanted there, and I was not safe. So I pressed on and was thankful to find a small flat space tucked under some rhododendrons as twilight started to fade. It was just big enough for my tent, and I ate my dinner there in the dark, thankful to be off of Bluff Mountain.
Maybe it was simply my imagination running wild after hiking alone all day in the fog, but look at the picture at the top of this post, and imagine you are with me on my hike, just as I was imagining that I was in little Ottie's shoes that day over 100 years ago. Can you feel a malevolent spirit like I did? Wouldn't you also force yourself to keep going, farther and farther away, racing against the dark as I did? And don't you start to wonder, as I do to this day, if little Ottie went so far that day not because he was lost, but because he was running away from the same unseen presence all those years ago?
More information:
The Lonesome Death of Ottie Cline Powell - https://blueridgecountry.com/archive/favorites/ottie-cline-powell/
To visit Bluff Mountain and the Ottie Cline Powell memorial, park at the Punchbowl Mountain Overlook near milepost 52 of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and head south on the Appalachian Trail. You'll climb steadily - about 1200 feet total - as you hike about 2 miles to the summit.
Note: the memorial plaque has some unfortunate errors: Ottie disappeared in 1891 and was found in 1892, and the mountain was not known as Tower Hill until a radio tower was erected many years later.