This is a local legend that I thought I would share. I guess you would call it a ghost story. It's different from most ghost stories in that anyone can go out on any day at any time and see the object of the legend.
Otterbein United Methodist Church can be found just off of State Route 22, a few miles west of Somerset, in Perry County, Ohio. Turn south on Otterbein road, and the church is a quarter mile or so from the highway. You can see the steeple even before you turn. It's just a small country church. The way the land was I couldn't really get a better photo without tresspassing, but it's not really much to look at. On the south side of the building is the cemetery. The older graves are in back. Most of them are from Civil War days or earlier. Some of them aren't in the best of shape, but that's due mainly to age. The cemetery iteself seems relatively well taken care of, considering. There are lots of yucca plants here. It must have been popular to plant yuccas is cemeteries in the past, because I don't think I've ever seen an old one without at least a few.
In the very back bottom corner of the lot one little grave stands off by itself. It's surrounded by a rail of wrought iron, and has been badly vandalized. A closer look reveals that it is the grave of Mary Henry. On the back of the shattered stone is the rusty mark of a horseshoe.
The story behind the rusty mark is this:
A man named James Henry couldn't make up his mind between two women that he wanted to marry. One night on his way home he fell asleep in his one-horse buggy and when he woke up the horse had taken him to the home of Marry Angle, one of the women in question. He decided to marry her, and gave her the horse for a wedding gift.
Later, Marry died in childbirth. Some time after that James decided to marry the other woman, Rachel Hodge. After they were married James gradually stopped visiting Mary's grave. One day James was visited by the caretaker of the cemetery, who told him that the mark of a bloody horseshoe had appeared on the back of his wife's headstone. The next day when he was working out in the barn the horse who had lead him to Mary's house that night had kicked him in the head, and he died.
According to some versions of the story the mark has been removed from the stone several times, only to return. Some even say that the stone has been replaced (more than once according to some), but the mark keeps coming back.
Some say that at times strange lights have been seen around the grave at night, and that a woman can be heard wailing in the dark. Even after supposedly killing her husband, and chasing visitors from the cemetery with lights and screams, someone still leaves flowers at her grave.
Is it true? The paranormal aspects aside, even the historical parts of the story seem to have been overshadowed by the legend, which has no doubt been embellished with each telling over the years. I have no idea what parts of the legend can be considered historically accurate. I'd like to meet with the Pastor and pick his brain, but it's likely that even he doesn't know the truth. I'd say that it's as likely as not that the whole thing was made up after fact by someone seeing the strange mark for the first time, as a lesson to respect the memory of the dead. If that's the case then it's ironic that the legend that resulted lead to so much vandalism of the grave that started it. We may never know. I guess the legend of the Horseshoe Grave will stay just a fun story to tell.
Thanks for reading!
Otterbein United Methodist Church can be found just off of State Route 22, a few miles west of Somerset, in Perry County, Ohio. Turn south on Otterbein road, and the church is a quarter mile or so from the highway. You can see the steeple even before you turn. It's just a small country church. The way the land was I couldn't really get a better photo without tresspassing, but it's not really much to look at. On the south side of the building is the cemetery. The older graves are in back. Most of them are from Civil War days or earlier. Some of them aren't in the best of shape, but that's due mainly to age. The cemetery iteself seems relatively well taken care of, considering. There are lots of yucca plants here. It must have been popular to plant yuccas is cemeteries in the past, because I don't think I've ever seen an old one without at least a few.
In the very back bottom corner of the lot one little grave stands off by itself. It's surrounded by a rail of wrought iron, and has been badly vandalized. A closer look reveals that it is the grave of Mary Henry. On the back of the shattered stone is the rusty mark of a horseshoe.
The story behind the rusty mark is this:
A man named James Henry couldn't make up his mind between two women that he wanted to marry. One night on his way home he fell asleep in his one-horse buggy and when he woke up the horse had taken him to the home of Marry Angle, one of the women in question. He decided to marry her, and gave her the horse for a wedding gift.
Later, Marry died in childbirth. Some time after that James decided to marry the other woman, Rachel Hodge. After they were married James gradually stopped visiting Mary's grave. One day James was visited by the caretaker of the cemetery, who told him that the mark of a bloody horseshoe had appeared on the back of his wife's headstone. The next day when he was working out in the barn the horse who had lead him to Mary's house that night had kicked him in the head, and he died.
According to some versions of the story the mark has been removed from the stone several times, only to return. Some even say that the stone has been replaced (more than once according to some), but the mark keeps coming back.
Some say that at times strange lights have been seen around the grave at night, and that a woman can be heard wailing in the dark. Even after supposedly killing her husband, and chasing visitors from the cemetery with lights and screams, someone still leaves flowers at her grave.
Is it true? The paranormal aspects aside, even the historical parts of the story seem to have been overshadowed by the legend, which has no doubt been embellished with each telling over the years. I have no idea what parts of the legend can be considered historically accurate. I'd like to meet with the Pastor and pick his brain, but it's likely that even he doesn't know the truth. I'd say that it's as likely as not that the whole thing was made up after fact by someone seeing the strange mark for the first time, as a lesson to respect the memory of the dead. If that's the case then it's ironic that the legend that resulted lead to so much vandalism of the grave that started it. We may never know. I guess the legend of the Horseshoe Grave will stay just a fun story to tell.
Thanks for reading!
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