(TRUE STORY) During
the Civil War, a Confederate Bushwacker was killed during fighting at the
southern edge of Avilla, Missouri. When
he was found months later half covered in fallen leaves and snow, his rotted skull had a large bullet hole and his
body had deteriorated to a putrid skeleton.
Instead of burial, the town citizen militia hung the head from a tree as
a warning to other enemies, near an old road leading past an apple orchard into Avilla. The gastly tree became know
as the "Death Tree" and the skull
hung for over a year from a tree limb for all to see. The tree is said to have stopped producing fruit and large
numbers of black crows made it their constant perch. The skull and corpse mysteriously disappeared at
the end of the war, and as far as anyone knows the body was never buried (no one knows what happened to the skeleton).
(LEGEND) Since that time a restless, headless phantom has been seen by locals over the past 150+ years
roaming the fields surrounding and sometimes in Avilla after dark, and he seems most active on
cool autumn nights (he was killed in the Fall, and some believe it was on All Hallow's Eve, but no one knows the date for
certain). The ghost has always been
described as a lurking, headless shadowy figure in a long duster and an antique
firearm slung on his back. The phantom
bushwacker sometimes stands and searches with outstretched hands but generally
tries to avoid detection by crawling or lying low to the ground, and he has
also been seen carrying objects in his skeletal hands.
My friends and I nicknamed him “Rotten Johnny Reb” when I was
growing up in Avilla and I have glimpsed this apparition twice. My friends and I managed to shine a strong flashlight
on
him one time and the beam went through like he was transparent, before we ran
away frantically (he strikes fear in everyone who views him). It has been rumored that if you can find
that very old Apple tree, under certain light conditions you can see the object
of the phantom's relentless search (and possibly send him back to the other
side). The tree was reportedly at the edge of an apple orchard but I have heard that the actual Death Tree was
a "hedgeapple tree" (osage orange, which was used as "fences" at that time) and not really an apple tree, and some very old
ones do exist on the roads leading to town.
