by Thomas White
Shades of Death Road’s vague cult legends and the inspiration behind them do not need to be explained again. They do, however, provide another example of just how much the Satanic Panic affected folklore at a local level. The black SUVs, which seem to be a unique addition to the tale, are not unusual when one looks at a wider array of cult-inhabited roads in Pennsylvania and other states. Their reported presence was surprisingly common, and the fact that they chased you demonstrated just how dangerous the cults could be. Black SUVs became a frequent element in haunted road legends in the 1990s when sport utility vehicles became popular. They were apparently the vehicle of choice for cults in that decade.
The road’s most unique legends, and the ones tied to the most historically verifiable events, are those involving the phantom coal miners. Avella and the surrounding communities have been economically tied to coal mining since their earliest days. We need not explain that mining was brutal and dangerous work. It took a substantial toll on the miners and their families. People in the mining communities formed tight bonds as they struggled against mine owners and management for better wages and improved safety measures. Such struggles could turn violent. In 1922, one such labor dispute just over the border in West Virginia had a tremendous impact on the people of Avella.
On the night of July 16, a large group of union mine workers who were on strike gathered for a meeting in Avella. They normally worked at the Richland Coal Company’s Clifton Mine, just over the border in neighboring Brooke County, West Virginia. The mine’s new owners converted it to an open shop, and the Avella miners were determined to prevent nonunion workers from taking over. The men agreed to gather the next morning at the mine to forcibly prevent the nonunion workers from entering. At some point overnight, the owners of the mine were tipped off, and the company guards asked Brooke County Sheriff Harding Duvall and his deputies to come to the mine to keep order.
When the train carrying the nonunion workers arrived a little after 5:00 a.m. on the morning of July 17, the union workers were hiding nearby. Violence soon erupted, and the strikers set the tipple on fire. The tipple was later blown up with dynamite by company workers. By the time the riot ended, at least nine people, including the sheriff, were dead. Most of the fatalities were members of the union. The exact number of deaths has been disputed, as many workers were injured badly during the conflict and may not have died on the scene. Some of the workers’ bodies were never properly identified and recovered, either because they were burned or because, according to local traditions, they were hastily buried in the woods between the mine and Avella during the workers’ retreat. Although it cannot be proven, there is some speculation that a one or more of these miners may have died or been buried in the vicinity of Shades of Death Road.
Coal miners in Washington County around 1930. Courtesy of Duquesne University Archives and Special Collections.
The traumatic riot and its aftermath still resonate in Avella and the surrounding communities. It would not be a stretch to assume that this incident is the probable origin of the stories of ghost miners reported in the area around Shades of Death Road, whether there were actually any buried there or not. The ghosts are an echo of this tumultuous event that remains in both the community’s memory and in its folklore. Unlike some of the other tales associated with Shades of Death Road, there is no apparent legend trip ritual tied to the miners’ ghosts. One cannot easily “test” for their presence. Whether real or not, they are not reported to be especially interactive with visitors to the road. Instead, they are a shadowy reminder of the hardships, and often tragedies, that coal mining communities face.
The future of the legends and ghosts of Shades of Death Road is uncertain. Some new development has appeared at the two ends of the road, and a gas well has been constructed alongside it. It remains to be seen if this development will spread deeper into the woods along the road. The entire length is private property and posted with no trespassing signs, so be respectful and do not leave the road if you ever pass through. It is gradually becoming less of a liminal space. For now, though, enough of the creepy road remains to keep the ghosts alive in the mind of legend trippers.
AXE MURDER HOLLOW
ERIE COUNTY
One of the oldest haunted roads in western Pennsylvania is located in its northernmost county. Since the 1950s, residents of Erie County have heard tales of grisly murders and an angry ghost along Thomas Road in Millcreek Township. Though the area is more developed today, the once isolated road was a destination for legend trippers who sought out an encounter with its violent ghost. The land next to Thomas Road is commonly known by another name that matches its legends—Axe Murder Hollow.
Luckily for us, the legends of Axe Murder Hollow have been well documented by researchers like Stephanie Wincik (author of Ghosts of Erie County) and Robin Swope (author of Eerie Erie.) There are two main versions of the story (but many minor variants) that have been told over the years, and they both involve an axe murder. One version tells of a farmer and his family that allegedly lived on the road. His wife had become unhappy with their marriage and began seeing another man on the side. When the farmer finally discovered that she was cheating, he snapped. The farmer picked up his axe and chased his wife and children deep into the hollow, where he finally caught and brutally dismembered them. He then disappeared and was never seen again, possibly because he committed suicide. Since that time, his ghost wanders the road at night, desperately searching for his wife’s lover so he can dismember him as well. Wincik also recorded reports of other ghosts seen in the hollow—those of the wife and children. Disturbingly, their disfigured ghosts wander about, seemingly looking for their body parts that were scattered in the woods.
One of the significant variants of the farmer story that has appeared online cites the farmer’s daughter as the trigger for the rampage. In that legend, she secretly married a man that her father did not approve of. To make matters worse, the farmer’s wife had made a wedding dress for her daughter behind his back. Enraged by what he felt was a betrayal, he chased them both down and killed them with his axe.
The other main version of the legend, which is similar, was also documented by Wincik. This alternate account involves Gypsies that passed through the hollow many years ago. While camped there, the Gypsy king discovered that his queen had been unfaithful. In a fit of rage, he attacked her with an axe, severing her head. He then took the head and buried it near the intersection of Thomas and Sterrettania Roads. It is his angry ghost that haunts the hollow in this account.
Whether you believe it was a farmer or Gypsy king who committed the crime, the ghost is always thought to be looking for another victim. This has led to other legends cropping up along the road. One tale describes a young man and his girlfriend who drove out to the road one night to test the legend. When they pulled over, their car lost power and the lights went out. Hearing strange noises and gurgling outside, the couple feared the worst. After several tense minutes, the power suddenly came back on, and the headlights revealed pools of blood on the road in front of them. A variant of this story has the young man get out of the car to check under the hood and then mysteriously vanish. Strange noises are heard by the girlfriend. Finally, when the lights come back on she is horrified to see his body mangled and lying in the road in the beams of the headlights. Alternately, sometimes when the story is told, she finds her boyfriend’s body hanging from a tree above the car.
In addition to these tales of murder and dismemberment, the road supposedly has other strange features. Wincik wrote of a set of old steps near the location of an old farmhouse on the hill (presumably the home of the axe-wielding farmer.) The steps, which are no longer there today, were supposed to have bloodstains that never faded or washed away. If you walked them, there were supposedly thirteen steps going down, but only twelve going up. A strange atmosphere is also present on the side of the road where the farmhouse stood. Across Thomas Road, flowers bloom regularly, grass grows and birds and animals are heard. On t
he side where the murder allegedly took place, it is silent and lifeless, there are no flowers and the vegetation is weak or half dead.
Wincik reported that there were once three small bridges on or near Thomas Road that have been linked to the murders. You can pass over or stop on the first two bridges and you will be fine. If you stop on the third bridge, you will fall victim to the murdering ghost.
Axe Murder Hollow has had a fearsome enough reputation over the years, but as with many of our other haunted roads, the story is not exactly what it seems. Careful investigation by multiple authors and researchers has uncovered no evidence that an axe murder took place on or near Thomas Road. Law enforcement officials from the area have also confirmed this on multiple occasions. Did the stories arise simply because there was once a mysterious old house and a creepy hollow along the road? Though the area has changed substantially in recent years, the hollow and the road were at one time a liminal space, just beyond the densely populated areas. Like many legend trip destinations from the 1950s and ’60s, the axe-murdering ghost may have merely been an excuse for young couples to go out to this “lover’s lane.” It would only take one story, whether completely fabricated or just misunderstood, for the legend to take hold in such a location.
Certainly the other parts of the story sound like typical urban legends. The story of the couple parked in the car only to be frightened or murdered by a crazed killer (or, in this case, his ghost) is told in literally hundreds of locations around the country. We already saw a variation of this tale on Blue Mist Road, where the young man is lynched by the Ku Klux Klan when he leaves the car. In these stories, the killer is sometimes described specifically, like our axe-murderer or the famous Hook Man, and other times the threat is vague. (The Hook Man, if you do not know, was said to be an escaped lunatic with a hook for a hand who stalked young couples on lover’s lanes.)
No part of this car legend is factually true, but it still means something. Otherwise the story would not have resonated with so many people over the years. In this case, the real message of the story is simple: Do not go out and park your car in the dark with your girlfriend/boyfriend. Bad things can happen as a result! It was a morally loaded warning for teenagers in the 1950s and ’60s about premarital sex at a time when they were becoming more mobile and youth culture was being viewed as increasingly rebellious.
The legend about the bridges has a strong ritual element to it. It provides a specific place for the legend trippers to go and a specific action to take (stopping on the bridge) to invoke a supernatural response in the form of the angry ghost. While we have been unable to determine exactly when the bridge legend started, we suspect it may have become more common after the old house disappeared and it became harder to find the steps. It also provided a location for legend trippers that was not on private property.
We have not yet addressed the alternate version of the axe murder story that involved the Gypsy king. To many younger readers, it may seem bizarre that someone would suggest that bands of Gypsies once roamed Pennsylvania. In fact, there were many different groups of Gypsies that traveled the state, but they were not always well liked. Though their communities are not well documented, they do show up occasionally in the historical record. For example, in nearby Warren, a band of Gypsies arrived on April 12, 1927, only to be promptly escorted out of town by local police. The story was covered by a local paper. Then there was the funeral for a well-known Gypsy queen, Lena Miller, who died in 1921 south of Erie in the Shenango Valley. It attracted thousands of people, and her grave can still be seen at a cemetery in Hermitage. These are just a few examples of the Gypsy presence in Pennsylvania.
Since Gypsies were frequently ostracized and mistrusted, as we saw with the example from Warren County, it is not surprising that they would be linked to a horrible crime, whether real or fictional. If there was a specific event that tied Gypsies to Thomas Road that might have triggered the legend, aside from their simply camping there, it has been lost to time. Some have suggested that the Gypsy legend is actually of a much more recent origin. The road was home to a Hungarian immigrant family for many years, and even though they were not Gypsies, local teenagers decided that they were, or at least referred to them in that way.
The Gypsies have still been blamed over the years for vandalism that has occurred to cars parked along the road. Some legend trippers would wander into the woods to look for the murder house, only to return to find their headlights smashed, windows broken, etc. Of course, the vandals were not Gypsies, but most likely teenagers or some angry local resident who was tired of all the legend trippers coming to the area. There was even a “Gypsy House” along the road that was often confused with the alleged murder house but was in actuality just an old house.
So far the ghost stories and legends about Axe Murder Hollow have seemed to be simply urban legends. Sometimes though, tragic events end up tied to such legends, even if they did not initially cause them. These types of occurrences can add fuel to the legends or seem to confirm them. Unfortunately, Axe Murder Hollow was tied to a real murder that occurred in 1963. Robin Swope gathered the details of the crime in his book Eerie Erie.
Twenty-year-old college sophomore Mary Lynn Crotty of Erie went on a blind date with another young couple on January 19, 1963. Unbeknownst to her, the man she was meeting was already married and would prove to be very unstable. His name was Daniel Roy Biebighauser, and before the night was over, he would end her life. After visiting some bars, Biebighauser and Crotty ended up at his new house, which was empty because he and his wife had not yet moved in. After Biebighauser made unwanted advances, Mary said that she felt ill and asked to be taken home. Instead, he drove her to another location in Harbor Creek Township, where he choked her into unconsciousness and raped her. When she started to wake up, he strangled her to death.
A group of Gypsies near Pittsburgh in 1909. The well-known evangelist Gypsy Smith is in the center. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Not knowing what to do, Biebighauser put Mary’s body in the trunk of his car and left it there overnight. He made himself a suspect when he showed up at the Crotty family home the next day feigning concern about Mary’s sudden disappearance. When questions began to be asked about his role in the young woman’s disappearance, he drove out to Axe Murder Hollow and dumped her body in the woods. Attempting to hide the true cause of death, he cut her throat and stabbed her torso fifteen times. Then he left her clothes near the side of the road, hoping it would lead someone to the body. Biebighauser erroneously believed that he had made it appear that someone else had picked her up and killed her. The police brought him in for interrogation, and in less than an hour, he confessed to the murder. He then led police to the body, which had not yet been found. Biebighauser was convicted for the crime and sentenced to life in prison in May 1963.
If that story were not tragic enough, another nearby murder in the 1960s may have also contributed to the legend. In July 1966, the body of ten-year-old Christine Watson was found in nearby Walnut Creek. She had been playing with her friends near the creek when a stranger lured her away. A short time later, she was discovered with her throat slashed. It would take until 1989 for Eugene Patterson to be convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Unfortunate crimes like these—especially involving young people—have a tremendous impact on local legends. This is especially true once they are a generation removed, and the accounts of the crimes are told secondhand. Details and locations blur together, and a narrative is constructed in which these terrible murders that impacted the community evolve into “evidence” to support the urban legend. There may not have been an axe murderer, but these brutally real crimes overlap with the unproven and fictional elements of the story.
Today there is not much of the hollow left along Thomas Road. It has been replaced with new homes and community buildings. The property is private and a trip to Axe Murder Hollow does not seem nearly as ominous as it once did. It is often told today as a sh
ort, or kernel, narrative, without any direct firsthand experiences attached to the story. But because of the Internet, the legend will live on at least a little longer, as the recollections of those who went to the road are accessible in an electronic form. Ironically, like some of the other legends, this tale of the supernatural survives because of modern technology.
MYSTERY MILE AND MUDLICK HOLLOW ROAD
BEAVER COUNTY
Beaver County has a pair of haunted roads relatively close to each other and the Ohio River. We have chosen to discuss them in one section because of geography and a few overlapping elements in the stories. Our investigation will start with the road farthest to the west.
Between the boroughs of Industry and Ohioville is a stretch of road deserving of its nickname. Mystery Mile, also known by its official name of Kelley Road, has been the source of legends and reported supernatural phenomena since the 1950s. Like the other roads we are examining, Mystery Miles’s legends are often vague, but there is at least one strange effect that is unique to the location. Kelley Road runs for about two miles, but one mile of the road is thought to be more supernaturally active. It is the southernmost mile of the road that is usually thought to be the haunted section, though it does vary with some accounts.
