Skip to main content

Elleck’s Song: Haunted Historic Jail, Lawrenceville, Georgia

Elleck reached across the rough-hewn table and gave his wife’s hand a squeeze. His gentle touch softened the weariness around her beautiful eyes and Betsy returned his gaze with a shy smile. Suddenly, they heard a noise, a terrible noise, a sound that made their blood run cold. Elleck saw terror spring into Betsy’s eyes as their shared gaze turned into a silent prayer: “Please, please let the evil pass us by just this one night.”

The door to the kitchen house burst open and in stormed the man who owned them, Colonel James Austin—drunk, ranting, belligerent, swearing, accusing. Elleck’s attempts to calm him only enraged Master further. Master grabbed Betsy, proclaiming that it was time to take what belonged to him. Betsy screamed and before he could stop himself, Elleck tore Master off of her and threw him to the floor.

As Betsy fled, the full force of Master’s fury turned towards Elleck as the drunkard swore revenge. With Master lurching after him, Elleck raced out of the kitchen house. If he could just find some place to hide until Master fully succumbed to that demon liquor, Elleck would be safe, for Master usually remembered nothing the next day.

Master staggered to the main house, grabbed his cavalry sword and began his search. Finding the Kitchen House empty, Master went to Elleck’s quarters. As Master broke through the door, Elleck scrambled up the little ladder to his sleeping loft, pulling it up behind him. Unfortunately, Master able to grab the last rung, pull the ladder down and unsteadily work his way up, all the while screaming his murderous intent.

There was not enough room in the loft to stand but that did not keep Master from wildly swinging his sword. Elleck was trying to dodge the blows when the sword lodged in a roof timber and Elleck was able to grab Master’s hand. As Elleck struggled for control of the sword, Master lost his balance and fell backwards, crashing onto the floor below. There was a terrible silence. . .

Master was dead. But Elleck did not run. On that awful night of October 10, 1848, Elleck walked to the Gwinnett County courthouse and sat on the steps all night long so in the morning he could tell the sheriff what had happened: how his Master, Colonel James Austin, one of the richest men in the county, had been killed but it was in self-defense. Elleck is one of only two enslaved men ever to be put on trial in Gwinnett and the judges found him “guilty” and Elleck was sentenced to be hanged.

Old haunted jail Lawrenceville Georgia

The sheriff brought Elleck to the jail, threw him in a cell and locked the door. Knowing it was a terrible miscarriage of justice, Elleck broke off a metal slat from his bed and started to chip his way out of the solid concrete wall of his cell.

Unfortunately, people on the outside could hear a tapping noise and alerted the sheriff. When the sheriff saw what Elleck had done, he was enraged. He chained Elleck to the floor; chained him by his wrists, chained him by his ankles, and left him there for three days and three nights. Elleck begged to be allowed to sit in a more comfortable position but his pleas were ignored.

To pass the time, Elleck sang to his beloved:

Oh, Betsy, will you meet me
Betsy, will you meet me
Betsy, will you meet me
In heaven above

On November 10, 1848, exactly one month after James Austin was killed, Elleck was taken from the jail to the gallows and hanged. But people swear his spirit never left the cell where he was so tightly bound for so long and in that old jail you can still hear him singing:

Betsy will you meet me
In heaven above

Lawrenceville, the county seat of Gwinnett is now part of metro Atlanta’s sprawl. Just off the charming, historic courthouse square in Lawrenceville, stands a squat, non-descript, concrete building. On the Lawrenceville Ghost Tour, you get to go inside that building—the old jail built in 1832—and see the barred doors and the metal beds hanging from the walls. If you look at the back wall of one particular cell, you will see about half way up, an uneven indentation, about a foot and a half across, about two feet tall, and about two inches deep. That indentation is evidence of the progress a good man, a desperate man, made in a futile attempt to escape a horrible injustice.

I have had the privilege of standing within the confines of those concrete walls and telling Elleck’s story hundreds of times on the Lawrenceville, Georgia Ghost Tour.

One time, while telling Elleck’s story, I sang:

Betsy, will you meet me
Then I heard echoed back me
I sang: Betsy, will you meet me—again I heard me.

I heard an echoing of the last note of each phrase I sang. I thought I must have imagined it but after I swung the heavy metal door closed and we were safely outside, a person on my tour asked, “Did you hear something weird? Someone else singing?” Everyone on that tour said ‘yes’, they had each heard the repeated reply.

I could go on for at least 10 minutes with a list of ghostly occurrences—hot spots, cold spots, photos of orbs, tugging at clothing, untying shoelaces, missing audio recordings, the key that will only turn if you ask politely, how pressing my left palm flat to the concrete wall filled me with almost unbearable sorrow—all unexplained incidents, witnessed in the jail by me, other Ghost Tour guides, or people on the tour. If I told you every detail, would you believe all those things actually happened?

That would be up to you. But I am certain that when I am in that old jail, the veil of time is just a thin, shimmering gauze and I am standing in the presence of Elleck’s spirit.

-THE END-

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

McDow Hole – Anatomy Of A Texas Ghost Story

  Spooky Texas legend of the McDow Hole, where ghost sightings of pioneer woman Jenny Papworth and her baby have long been reported.  Written by Bob Hopkins . I first heard the legendary tale of the Ghost of the McDow Hole in the fifteenth year of my youth. It was near Halloween in October 1975 when a friend related the tale of the ghost that haunts a creek bed in rural Erath County and naturally I believed every word of it in the twilight of an evening spent with friends telling ghost stories. I would again hear the tale over the years while living in North Central Texas. It wasn’t until my chance encounter of meeting an author of the legend in 2002 that my curiosity began to peak and like any good investigator I felt it my duty to dig deeper into the hundred year old tale of pioneer folklore to see how much of the story was true and how much was fabricated. I would discover many similarities in fact and fiction that I believed would leave any reader with the same curiosity t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mama Coon Coon: A Louisiana Swamp Folktale

  Now I’ll just bet that none of you have ever heard the story of Mama Coon Coon and the blue waters of the bayou, have you? Well, we know the story, and I think we need to tell it to you right now. Once upon a time, the waters of the bayou were black – as black as ink. Now, even though these waters were black, they were still filled with lots and lots of fishes, shrimp and crab. And all of the fishermen would wake up early in the morning, long before the sun had even come above the horizon, and they would cast their nets down into the deep, black water. And what a wonderful sight it was at the end of the day to watch those fishermen pulling in their nets overflowing with all kinds of fishes, shrimp and crab. Dulac Louisiana Bayou by  Clem . Licensed under  CC BY-SA 2.0 . Now all the fishermen fished early in the morning, with the exception of one fisherman – or should I say fisherwoman. Her name was Mama Coon Coon. You see, that is the name the local village children gav...
Post a Comment
Read more

Belle Boyd, Confederate Spy

  One warm spring day, I left my home in Washington, D.C. and took a long drive through the rolling, peaceful farm country in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. I worked in the city as a tax accountant, but most of my co-workers didn’t know about my secret hobby – I was a Civil War collector. Ever since I was a child, I had collected old Civil War books, maps, clothing, and in later years, weapons. Now as a middle-aged man, my interest had grown to what some would call an obsession. Although it’s hard to believe today, this peaceful Virginia valley was the scene of some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Driving through this historic land not only satisfied my hunger for history, but calmed my nerves far away from the hustle and bustle of home. Some folks say that ghosts wander the earth in places where horrible deaths took place, their lives suddenly ripped away from them before they knew what happened. So it’s no wonder that so many Civil War ghost stories come from the Shenandoah V...
Post a Comment
Read more