“God-a-mighty!” shrieked Phronie, “he ain’t dead! Craig Tolliver ain’t dead!” She leaped from the chair and ran fast as her crooked old limbs would carry her, shrieking as she went, “Craig Tolliver ain’t dead!”
Some say it was just the notion of an old woman gone suddenly raving crazy, though others, half believing, still tell the story of the winking corpse.
The House with the Green Gables
About halfway between the thriving, up-to-date, electrically lighted City of Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, with its million-dollar steel mills, and Grayson, the county seat of Carter County, Kentucky, there stands on the hillside a few rods from the modern highway U. S. 60, a little white cottage with green gables.
Within a mile or so of the place unusual road signs catch your eye. White posts, each surmounted by a white open scroll. There are ten of them, put there, no doubt, by some devoted pilgrim. There is one for each of the Ten Commandments. You read carefully one after the other. The one nearest the point where you turn off on a dirt road that leads to the white house with the green gables reads
| Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. |
You leave your car at the side of the dirt road near U. S. 60, and go on foot the rest of the way.
You wonder, as you look at the beauty of the well-kept lawn, the carefully planted hedge and cedars, the step stone walk that leads up the sloping hill to the door, at the silence of the place. As you draw nearer, you wonder at the uncurtained windows, neat, small-paned casements with neither shade nor frill.
You learn that the place has stood untenanted for years. Truth to tell it has never been occupied. Some call it the haunted house with the green gables.