As a paranormal researcher, I sometimes stumble upon a story that just moves me in ways that I did not expect to be moved. This story is one that hit very close to home for personal reasons I'm really not going to go into detail about here. The following story has all the hallmarks of a classic ghost story, the main character dies a horrible death, in fact he is murdered outright by a gang of thugs, on Halloween night of all nights, and his vengeful spirit returns to the claim the life of his attackers.

It seems like the kind of story a best selling horror novelist would write, no doubt the book would become a New York best seller and in time be made into a huge blockbuster film that some Hollywood critic will heap piles of praise on. But alas, I'm not a best selling horror novelist, I'm just a simple country girl who loves the paranormal and has a knack of writing. Now before I go, this is oddly enough one of the least known and least talked about ghost stories in my town. I had to dig deep to uncover the story behind this haunting.

I'm not lying when I say that, I had to dig deep, it was like many in my adopted hometown were deeply ashamed of this killing and wanted to forget about it. But nobody can hide a good story and with a bit of snooping I was able to uncover enough facts to piece together what happened on that fateful night.

Now north of town, in the outlying suburbs of Benton, there is found a gully, Deer creek, a small creek that sometimes swells to the size of a mighty, torrential river after each rainfall flows through the bottom. Deer Creek is a tributary of The Big Black Rover. Deer creek empties into the Big Black a few miles above town.

Now, spanning this gully is an old wooden footbridge, the footbridge connects Mulberry Street with Chine Street. Halfway across this wooden footbridge one would notice a bundle of plastic flowers that have been zipped tied to one of the wooden beams that support the wooden railing. The bundle of plastic flowers marks the spot of a tragic murder that has forever stained the moral fabric of this town. Here one foggy, bitterly cold Halloween night some thirty something odd years ago, a confused, young man was killed because he refused to surround a bucket of candy he'd collected for his little sister who was sick in bed with pneumonia.

The name of that unfortunate youth was Sean Shoemaker, but to his family and friends he was often just called Sammy. Sammy at the time of his death was a freshman, he was fourteen years old and was attending Benton Academy. The old report cards of his I've somehow managed to recover and unearth in my research shows him to be a pretty good student who was rocking a solid 'B' average. He was also like I said before a freshman and seemed to have precious few friends. Sammy did however have a little sister whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And the few people I've interviewed who remembered Sammy always remarked that he was two things, the first one was he was a dotting big brother and the second one was he was a bookworm.

Anyway, like most ghost Sammy is said to appear annually on the anniversary of his murder at the halfway point of the old wooden bridge. Now I'm going to tell you two separate stories. The first story is the complete telling of the urban legend and the second on is what I'm going to assume was my personal encounter with the spirit of Sammy who might have bent the rules a little of his yearly tradition of appearing at the anniversary of his murder to drop in and say hello to a kindred spirit.

Now, in order to get the full story, because nobody in town wanted to talk about this, a rarity among Southerners who love to sit on the front porch swing, with a tall glass of homemade lemonade in one hand and a paper fan in the other and twiddle away the time telling old stories. Anyway I had to travel about sixty miles one way to the small village of Sharbrough's Landing. It took me about an hour to drive from Benton to Sharbrough's Landing, I had to pass through Yazoo City to get there. The village is located right on the edge of Yazoo County. Belzoni, the county seat of Humphreys County is right down the road and so is Rolling Fork, the county seat of Sharkey County.

Now with all that being said, the town is in the middle of nowhere, a tiny island of houses, small shops and one or two churches that is located in a sea of cotton fields, soybean fields, and corn fields. I'd traveled here to meet with none other than Melody Sharbrough who was the authoress of the popular “Melody of the Hearts” Series.

It seemed that Ms. Sharbrough had once encountered the ghost of Sammy one spooky Halloween night years ago when she first started writing the “Melody of the Heart '' series. And since she did not live in Benton she was the only one willing to talk about what she saw that night. In fact the encounter had made such an impact on her she had included it in one of her stories. It took me less than five minutes to find Ms. Sharbrough's House, a large, wooden, three story house located on a high bluff that overlooked a gentle, curving bend in the Sunflower River. A tributary to the Yazoo River. According to lore, riverboat captains used to land at the bottom of this steep bank to load up cotton that had been grown and ginned by the Sharbrough family.

The Sharbrough's were among the first to settle this area in the turbulent years that followed The American Civil War. Melody Sharbrough was one of the handful of still living Sharbrough's that lived in the area. Anyway, returning to the story. Ms. Sharbrough, like all good southern women, met me at the door and ushered me into the living room. She then gave me an impromptu guided tour of her old house, that she proudly said had been in her family for generations and had been among the first houses built in the village. After our little guided tour of her house we settled down into the kitchen and there over an ice cold coca-cola she started with the following story.

Now according to the legend there was a gang of three trouble makers that haunted the hallways of Benton Academy in the early nineties. Their names were Ronald ``Weasel” Clark, “Charles “Fox” Smith, and last but not least the leader of the gang Robert “General” Lee. All three came from the wealthier, more conservative families of Benton. And all three also looked like they stepped right off the pages of a Steven King's Novel. By that I mean they were all tall, lean, and muscular, they often wore tight form fitting blue jeans, tucked into high black leather engineer boots with big brass buckles, leather bomber jackets, and their short cropped hair was always slicked back with pomade. All three also belonged to Benton's now defunct chapter of “The Sons of the Confederacy”.

All three had the reputation of being bullies in Benton. But because of their families wealth and social, and political connections, the local law enforcement often turned a blind eye toward their antics. Including how they always seemed to focus their attention on one, shy, lonely little boy called Sammy Shoemaker. Sammy by all accounts was an feminine boy, which was one of the worst thing a boy could be in the early nineties in rural Benton.

While his peers enjoyed going out and tussling with each other, or spending their weekends hunting deer, turkey or rabbits, shooting shotguns and rifles, and generally being loud and annoying. Sammy by all accounts enjoyed staying inside and reading. While most boys his age, indeed most of his classmates, had their hair almost shorn to the scalp, Sammy wore his hair long and tended to keep it pulled back in a ponytail.

Now, nobody will ever say that Sammy was weak, in fact he was quite strong. You see at the time Benton had its very own Karate Dojo. It was opened as part of the “Karate Craze'' and has since closed its doors. I think it's a liquor store now. Anyway Sammy's mother had to enroll him there to learn some self defense moves since he was always getting picked on and his stuff was always getting stolen from him and the school seemed helpless to do anything about it, or just seemed content to let it happen. From what I've been told though, the training there was pretty hard and the instructor was pretty unstable too, and had something of a drinking problem. And the fees were pretty low too.

Anyway the fact that Sammy practiced karate painted an even bigger target on his back. And so, the three goons decided that Sammy needed to man up and taught a lesson. The fact that Sammy still watched cartoons and worse yet Japanese cartoons. You have to remember this was the era when many in Benton still considered China a communist threat and still remembered that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. And so Sammy, who was feminine, practiced karate, and most damning of all watched Japanese cartoons was not only seen as a weakling, but a communist pariah and a turncoat for loving Japan. It was clear to the trio that he needed to teach a lesson and it was up to these three golden old boys to do it. And so they decided to do it on Halloween night.

That Halloween was one of those rare Halloween's when the weather is cold, windy, and rainy. According to the story, tossed caution to the wind and decided to dress up as a princess for Halloween. After all he had the looks, a slender hourglass frame, soft, sandy brown hair, dark chocolate eyes, and puberty had yet to catch up with him, So his voice was still soft, mellow and still had something of a high pitch to it.

Now according to the legend. Sammy started collecting candy as soon as the sun had set and as soon as the full autumn moon had risen. He started his adventure on Croft Street, then worked his way down to Town Creek, then onto Wilson Street, then from Wilson he cut across the cornfields till he reached Mulberry street, by the time he had finished Mulberry street his little plastic bucket was overflowing with candy, and with one more street to go, he was sure to haul in a ton. And best of all his costume had fooled all, and many people thought that he was a she, a thoughtful big sister who was just collecting candy for her little sister who was sick in bed.

As soon as he had finished collecting all the candy he could from Mulberry Street he set his sights on China Street. Now he could have walked down Mulberry Street till he came to Berry Farm Road. Then he could have East on Berry Farm Road till he reached the turnoff to China Street. It would have been out of the way and would have added a good two miles to his hike, but it would have been a lot safer. But the winds were starting to blow hard now, and a thin sheet of ice was starting to form on the deep potholes that dotted Mulberry Street and frost was starting to form on the cattail crowded banks of Deer creek and Wilson creek.

And so Sammy decided to take his chances and walk down the narrow, dark footbridge. Full darkness had fallen and Sammy could barely see two feet in front of him. Halfway across the bridge he bumped into the trip. The trio had been hanging out on the bridge, tossing small rocks down into the creek below. Cursing their luck, they had been searching Benton all night for Sammy and had just about given up the chase when Sammy walked right into their mist.

What happened next has been unfortunately lost to time. But I'm going to assume there was a fight. But then again there might have been a fight. What happened though was Sammy Shoemaker was never seen alive again and his lifeless, bloated body was found the next morning tangled in the branches that lay at the bottom of the gully.

Once the body was recovered the town's coroner John “Big Boy '' Smith who quickly concluded his finding a few hours after the body was recovered. His closing remarks were as follows. “I'm going to say that the boy must have fallen off that old bridge when he was trying to cross it. The bridge was iced up and he must have slipped and fallen off the railing. The bruises and lacerations clearly came from the plunge off the bridge. Deer creek was swollen at the time and it's clear to me that the silly costume the boy was wearing at the time dragged him under the raging water. We must consider ourselves lucky that the strong current of the creek pushed his lifeless body up into the branches of those moss and willow trees that grew thick on the banks, and became tangled in the vines. Otherwise he might have been swept out into the Big Black River and his body would have never been recovered.”

A few days later Sammy Shoemaker was laid to rest in St. Mary's Episcopal Cemetery. Very few people attended the burial and fewer still attended the funeral mass that was held a day afterwards. And with that many people thought the matter closed.

A few nights later though the trio were joyriding around the old, gravel back roads of Benton, they were drinking ice cold beer and tossing the empty bottle at road signs, maybe they were still celebrating their victory. The trio were driving around in a nineteen sixty nine Dodge Charger that had been painted a bright orange and also had the Confederate battle flag painted on its roof. At the wheel was none other than Robert “General” Lee.

Then something happened. A bony, Phantom hand reached over Robert's shoulder and took control of the wheel. With supernatural strength the unknown, unseen force wrestled the control of the wheel away from Robert, as it was crossing a bridge, the car jumped off the railing of the bridge and plunged off the side and smashed into the rocks and water below. Robert “General” Lee was killed on impact. Charles “Fox'' Smith who was also in the front seat passed away before help could arrive. And finally Ronald “Weasel” Clark was transported to Mississippi Medical Center and admitted to what many of the doctors and nurses who worked there called “The Turnips and Cabbage Ward ''. The two Mississippi Highway Patrol officers who arrived on the scene though, once the bodies had been cleared away and the ruined remains of the car were towed to the junkyard noticed something strange laying on the ground. A small piece of pink cloth lay discarded on the ground.

Ronald “Weasel” Clark lingered on for three weeks before a phantom hand pulled the plug on his ventilator. The only clue left at the scene was a trail of wet footprints and a piece of pink fabric that had been left upon Ronald “Weasel” Clark's chest. About a week later John “Big Boy” Smith was found hunched over his desk in his office in city hall. His face was drained of color and his neck had been twisted all the way around. A tiny stream of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and trickled across his desk.

It was clear to all he had been murdered. But by whom, what living man could have the strength to turn his neck all the way around. There was no sign of a struggle and the windows had been locked and the wooden shutters had been locked too. The only clue was a set of wet footprints that seemed to appear out of thin air in front of the desk, the trail seemed to walk behind his desk and stop right behind where John “Big Boy” Smith had been sitting. A puddle of water could be seen by the chair and stranger still was the present of a square piece of cloth found resting upon his desk. The small, square piece of pink fabric that matched the one that had been found at the wreck that had killed “Charles “Fox ``Smith and Robert “General” Lee. And had also been found upon the lifeless body of Ronald “Weasel” Clark.

And normally that would be the end of it. But something happened. The following Halloween people started to report strange sightings on the old wooden bridge. Sightings that included colorful orbs of light that seemed to dance around the gully, ghost fire the local's called it Other times people reported seeing a phantom dressed in a tattered pink dress walking from one end of the bridge to the other. The phantom always started to pace back and forth, starting at sunset and always seemed to vanish at sunrise. It seemed the phantom was patrolling the bridge, maybe trying to prevent another death. And that is how the legend ends.

Now I promised a personal encounter with the ghost did I not? Well my encounter took place at the height of summer. I remember that day, it was hot, and even in the shade of an old oak tree you could feel the heat waves making your eyebrow's crawl. It had been about a week and a half since my interview with Ms. Melody Sharbrough and I decided to check out the bridge for myself.

Now, I live in the center of town if you will. I mean a twenty minute walk could take you to the bustling downtown area of town. Where both sides of the street were lined with thriving mom and pop owned businesses. But Mulberry Street and China Street were located on the fringes of town. I mean it honestly took me a good thirty minutes on bike to reach the foot of the bridge. The bridge at this point had seen better days, the wood was warped and had inch long nails sticking out.

The railing was almost gone, and chunks of it seemed to have broken off and was floating at the bottom of Deer creek below. Deer creek had almost run dry. And the stench was horrible, brown turds lay drying on the bank, used panties hung in the branches, and trash a good inch deep blanket the banks. What might have been once a picturesque landscape had been transformed into a living, breathing hell. As I stood there, rooted in the ground the sound of running water was heard and a moment later from a nearby drain pipe a fresh surge of brown and gray water came shooting out. Adding another layer of fifth to the already twisted and fucked up scene.

I decided not to risk it and instead laid my bundle of flowers down at the foot of the bridge. I closed my eyes, folded my hands together and started to pray. It seemed like the right thing to do, it broke my heart knowing the spirit of Sammy was trapped here, among all this decay, filth and utter misery. Even the houses that lined both sides of the room seemed run down, their front yards choked with weeds.

Decorated with cement blocks, rusting lawn chairs, the roofs starting to sag in. This was not the Benton I knew and loved, this was the other side of town, the side of town I'd been warned away from. The side of town nobody wanted to see. Here the poor and forgotten clung to what little hope they had. I sighed and stood up and hoped that Sammy could finally move on. Then something happen.

Before my eyes there appeared the phantom form of a small boy with sandy brown hair, he was dripping wet, he wore a tattered pink dress, his head was down, but slowly he raised it up and smiled at me. Once his eyes meet mine he vanished, never to be seen again. At least by me.

Anyway, I still have about four more to share with you guys before this volume of “Ghost stories and and Urban Legends of Benton: More Ghost stories and Urban Legends” is complete. So stick around. We have more bone chilling stories to share with you!