Benton Academy has something of a checkered past. And that checkered past has given rise to a number of ghosts that are supposed to haunt its hall. One such ghost is the ghost of Greaser who is rumored to haunt the second floor of the school. His name has been lost to the flow of time, and only bits and pieces of his story have come down through the ages. I think this is the first complete telling of the legend. As the story this story has a beginning, a middle and an ending.

The beginning of this story is set in the early years of Benton Academy. Now, it's no secret that most of the wealthy families send their children here. They come here to learn the classics, and to receive a classical education. Students that graduate from Benton Academy are prepared to enter into the learned gentry of Mississippi. They go on to become doctors, lawyers and leading men and women of business. Heck I think even one went on to become an Episcopalian Priest.

Anyway not all of Benton Academy students come from the upper crust of the town. Some come from very humble backgrounds, some even come from the working class. One such student was a guy named Donald “Danny” Gordon. Danny as his friends called him was something of a laid back fellow. He was tall, standing at six feet three inches, skinny as a bean pole and strong as an ox. Danny often wore his hair that was pretty long greased back in a look called the “Ducktail” and he smelled of pomade.

I believe the teachers at the time must have been scared out of their minds when this towering giant appeared in their mist. Dressed in engineering boots, heavy denim jeans and a leather bomber jacket. He always smelled like oil and his fingers were always dirty with grit and grime buried deep in his fingernails. His folks came from the poorer side of town, they lived out in the sticks, out in the hills past Rebecca Bridge. Even people from Haunted Hollow seemed wealthy when compared to his folks. People like that tended to drop out of school once they finished the eighth grade. Once they finished the eighth grade they could get a job at the sawmill or work the docks.

But Danny wanted more out of his life than working the six to two shift down a Benton Cotton Press or Millers Sawmill. He wanted more out of his life than that, he wanted to become something. And his folks had scraped up enough money to pay the tuition of four years of private learning. According to legend they had even mortgaged the land they owned, including their house.

Now Danny worked hard, he even took a side job repairing cars down at the local auto shop, “Benton Auto” he always took a full class load. He cracked those books from six in the morning till six in the evening, and by his Junior year, he had managed to squeak by. According to the records I've unearthed, his grades were mostly “C's” and “B's” with a few token “A's” scattered about. He was rocking a solid “B” average. Good enough to pass, now I gotta say this Benton Academy grades hard. An “B” here would be like an “A+” in the public schools.

Anyway Danny did his best and kept his nose to the grindstone. And he passed his Freshman year, and his Sophomore year passed in a blur, then his Junior year something happen. According to the lore, he fell in love with a girl from the “Town Creek” Section of town. Now Town Creek is the money part of Benton, the houses there are all fine creole-style cottages that date back to the founding of the town, back when Benton was nothing more than a tiny riverboat settlement on the banks of the Big Black River. We local's call those days “The Hannah Landing” days because the town was supposed to be named after the first mayor's wife Hannah Potter.

Anyway, he fell in love with a girl named Sarah Elizabeth Potter. Now for those not from around here, there is something I must tell you. The Potter family is one of this area's finer families. Their family has been around these parts since the beginning.
The Potter family was one of the leading families of the town, they along with the Brewers, Crofts, Bells, Perry's and Whitmores had helped transform the town from tiny side settlement to thriving village. And according to rumors they even controlled the town. Now, it gets better Sarah Elizabeth Potter's uncle, Sherman Potter was on the board of directors, it was his land the school had been built on and it was his shop that had donated large amounts of money to the construction of the school.

Now, we don't know if Sarah Elizabeth Potter returned his feelings, but we do know the two were sweet on each other and the two exchanged letters. And according to what I can gather when he asked her out to the prom that spring things kind of hit the fan. Sherman did not approve of his niece seeing somebody that he considered below the social class of the Potter Family. Worst of all, the Gordon Family was Baptist and the Potter Family were Episcopal. Now allow me for a moment to explain that. In the South the Episcopal Church has always been the church of the bourgeois.

The church is often associated with opulence, while the Baptist church by and large has always been associated with the proletariat. Sherman did not approve of his niece seeing someone from the proletariat class, much less one attending Benton Academy, and so he used his power and connections to secure a spot for Sarah Elizabeth Potter at another school, an Episcopal School named St. Katherine's Episcopal Academy.

Anyway she was transferred out of Benton Academy two weeks before the Prom. Danny took the news really hard and his grades started to slip. Sherman Potter, seeing his chance to finish the young man off then convinced then Headmaster of the school Timothy Perry, a boyhood friend of his to put the boy on academic probation, this caused Danny to spiral and as a result he became very depressed. His grades kept slipping. Finally, Danny could no longer take it, one day, shortly after lunch. Danny did something he had been planning since prom. He tied a noose, slipped the noose around his neck. Tied one end of the rope around the railing on the second floor, then he climbed over and jumped. The fall was not enough to snap his neck, but his feet did not touch the ground and he hung there for ten long minutes, slowly straggling to death.

Nobody knows how long he hung there, though it had to be less than forty five minutes. He was discovered a few seconds after the bell rang marking the end of the day's lessons. Laughter soon turned to screams. At first people thought it was just a sick joke, that is till they cut him down. Now since that day, people have reported passing a gust of fridge air as they climb the steps that lead to the second floor, others report seeing a shadow dangling from a rope.

And still others report seeing the ghostly form of Danny, sometimes he hunched over a desk, other times he reported strolling down the hallways. Other times he reported smirking as he looked out one of the windows from the second or third floor. But what is certain, he does not rest peacefully in his grave.