Mr. Stanfield's Log House on the Corner brings back memories of the unexplained

A small town with big legends

When I was growing up in Blue Ridge, a small town in Botetourt County, Virginia, the roads near my home had no names, but now they do. When you travel down Route 460 East, you turn right onto what is now known as Blue Ridge Road. A block away is the corner, where if you go straight across and down, it's called Short Road. If you turn left or right, it's Colonial Road, named for the former elementary school a little over a mile away on the same road.

On the corner of Blue Ridge and Colonial Road, there used to be a house that was torn down in the early 1970s. I stood on that corner with other children catching the school bus in front of that house in the sixth grade in 1969. It may have been torn down a few years later.

Mr. Stanfield's house

This small wooden structure did not look much bigger than a hen house. It was boarded up, and I was told it only had two rooms. This had been the home of a Mr. Stanfield, who was long dead and gone before I was born in 1958.

My maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, used to tell stories about the corner being haunted at night. There were no street lights, so it was pitch black. She said that when you walked past Mr. Stanfield's house, you would feel hot breath blowing on your neck. She also told a story of a headless specter whose voice said, "I ain't got nobody."

I never processed whether she was joking or serious, but I don't recall anyone in my generation having any issues with the house or the corner. I walked to the store alone and with friends, and we noticed nothing strange. We went trick-or-treating and walked home from parties in the dark past the house, but no one in my generation ever reported any unusual occurrences.

Rattling chains

I recently spoke with an older cousin in her 80s who was reminiscing about her past in Blue Ridge. She spoke of parties and dances and having lots of fun. She told me that as a teenager, she and some of our other cousins had been visiting a relative who lived on the Short Road, and by the time they headed home, it was pitch black outside.

She said it was so dark you could not see your hand in front of your face. She said they heard what sounded like chains rattling as they approached the corner in front of Mr. Stanfield's house, and they ran fast to the nearest cousin's home.

A haunted location, or huge imaginations?

This happened over 70 years ago, but she recalled the event as if it were yesterday. She said she does not like the area because of the lack of lighting, and whenever she attends evening church services, she leaves before it gets dark.

I asked her if Mr. Stanfield was black or white since this was an integrated neighborhood. She said he was a white man who was often dirty and appeared black. This was probably due to his working in the brick kilns or the rock quarry, where the majority of men worked at the time.

Did someone follow my cousins in the dark that night and play a trick, or was something supernatural going on? A little over a block away, from the corner, is a house where two previous residents said they saw apparitions. In the front yard is a tree known as the hanging tree. It has been alleged that slaves were hanged on that tree, although there is no way to verify.

Eeerie goings on

Could the sound of chains have been related to slavery? At this point, we will never know. There is also a house at the top of the hill before you pass the church and turn the corner to the hanging tree home. This house, built in 1969, has always felt eerie to me, although I never saw anything. It did always felt as if I were being watched.

A woman who looked after the previous owner asked my grandmother about a man wearing glasses and smoking a pipe she saw in one bedroom. This describes my older cousin, who lived in that house with his parents and sat in a rocking chair smoking his pipe.

Others have claimed new tenants say doors open and shut by themselves. I spoke with the man who bought a house halfway between the lot where Mr. Stanfield's home once stood, just down the hill from my cousin's home. He said he never noticed any supernatural activity in the two decades he had lived there.

Home sweet home-not

The house I grew up in was in the lot next to this man's house and directly in front of my cousin's home. In 2021, I stood on the spot where my home had once been and experienced the eerie sensation that something was there and I was not welcome.

One day, I might check the county records to see who lived in the area centuries ago, and perhaps I might come up with some answers or not.