Dottie Rambo Killed

Strictly Observing: Ghostly encounter with Joe Tennis

By ZACH COOLEY/Columnist

My wife is a huge fan of the TV series Ghost Hunters.  “If I could make a living off of ghost hunting,” Emily often says.  “I would love to do it.”  When my wife and I began exploring the different and historical tourist attractions, she became very intrigued when I told her of the supposed paranormal activity that has taken place at these local landmarks. According to the latest book by fellow newspaper columnist Joe Tennis of the Bristol Herald Courier, the state of Virginia is chock full of ghost stories and haunted history.  A wonderful read that is both breezy and gripping, Haunts of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Highlands briefly touches on 36 sites spanning the Blue Ridge Highlands region of the Commonwealth.  Each entry would make any “ghost hunter” want to travel there for a personal investigation. Two sites from Wythe County made the cut.  First was Virginia City, formerly known as Dry Gulch Junction.  If you have read my columns over the years, you know that I was an avid supporter of the Virginia City renovation done to the once third-largest attraction in the state.  It just seems that this place, which has the potential of being a major tourism draw for the county, is cursed with a very unfortunate string of bad luck.  When Interstate 77 diverted traffic from Dry Gulch Junction in 1972, owner Stuart Kime passed away later that year.  Left in the hands of his son, Ron, who still runs the lookout and country store at Big Walker Mountain, tragedy would strike again.  On July 15, 1979, a 27-year old Dry Gulch performer was killed instantly while spreading sand across the railroad tracks and accidently slipping under the moving locomotive.  The next season, an entire season of concerts, featuring such country music acts as Dottie Rambo, Jim ”Ed” Brown and Helen Cornelius, were rained out.  There was even snow at a show.  Left in financial run, Ron and his wife, Dee, were forced to sell the attraction on October 22, 1981, leaving it as an actual abandoned ghost town for nearly 20 years.  In 1999, Jeanne Davis and Michael Hill reopened and rebuilt the attraction as Virginia City.  Tragedy would strike one final blow in 2005, when Michael, in an effort to save an ATV from rolling over a bank, would suffer a muscle strain that eventually developed into a fatal heart aneurysm.  After three years of attempted resurrection, the attraction was shut down and abandoned once again, as a buyer was never found to do the property justice.  “If you sit quietly on the porch,” said former manager Connie Janowski.  “You’ll hear all kinds of noises in these buildings.”  These include unexplained scratching and screeches.  According to Jeanne Davis, the spirits could even be helpful, as lost tools would suddenly turn up on the porch steps.  I spent many evenings at Virginia City, including playing a jailed talking skeleton in a haunted house.  Although I’ll admit it’s a dark and spooky place at night, I never experienced anything strange there. The other Wythe County site, which I have not seen, is the Major Graham Mansion in Grahams Forge.  Built sometime after 1840 for Squire David Graham, an overly wealthy supervisor of forges and iron furnaces that expanded the county, the Mansion is named for his son, Major David Graham.  Now listed on both the national and state historic registers, this landmark was originally named Cedar Run.  It is believed that the Grahams, a cold and stern family, haunt the massive structure as well as an orphan and slaves.  Voice recordings have been made of supposed spirits saying such things as “Get out,” “What’s your name?” and “I don’t play that tune.”  Faces, shadowy figures and strange lights have also been seen within the confines of this massive structure.  Pressure is said to have been felt in the basement where shackled slaves were once imprisoned.  Slave haunts at the Grahams Forge property goes back before the mansion itself existed.  In 1786, fourteen years before Squire David Graham was born, two slaves were hanged for murdering their master, Joseph Baker, who lived in a log cabin where the mansion now stands.  It is said that their spirits still roam the land.  Some also conclude that the spirit of Squire David himself haunts the mansion, walking the halls, looking at old photographs, angered that he had to leave his castle behind.  After J.C. Weaver acquired the building and began to restore it, tales of the haunting of a young orphaned girl named Clara began to circulate.  Allegedly, though no one has ever proved her existence, Clara was kept hidden from Squire Graham by his daughters, Bettie and Emily, who kept and tutored her and other children in a second-story classroom during the Civil War.  Finally, in 2007, while on a tour of the mansion, one boy challenged a ghost to appear.  He and the other tourists saw a chair move on its own and a mounted deer head fall off the wall, which sent the group clamoring for the door. There are also a few other places I’ve been to that are mentioned in the book such as the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, the Lyric Theater in Blacksburg, and the Wilderness Road Regional Museum in Newbern.  While I had no personal ghostly experiences, I’ve certainly heard stories of people who have.  Some places I read about in Tennis’s book made me want to pay my own visit, such as the Davis-Bourne Inn in Independence and the Wolf Creek Indian Village in Bastian.  Believers and skeptics alike will appreciate the contents of this must-read for its local historical content.  Tennis will be signing his new book at the Rural Retreat Public Library on July 30.

CMT : News : Gospel Legend Dottie Rambo Killed in Tour Bus Accident

The Missouri Highway Patrol is continuing to investigate a Sunday morning (May 11) tour bus accident that claimed the life of gospel music legend Joyce "Dottie" Rambo, 74, of Nashville. Six other people in the bus, including her manager, were injured when the 1997 Prevost bus crashed into a guard rail and an embankment around 2:20 a.m. on Interstate 44 near Mount Vernon, Mo. At the time of the accident, the singer-songwriter was traveling to a Mother's Day performance at a church in North Richland Hills, Texas. Rambo began her gospel music career at age 12 and eventually wrote more than 2,500 songs and won a Grammy in 1968 for her album, The Soul of Me . Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007, she was inducted twice into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame -- as a solo artist in 1982 and with former husband Buck Rambo and their daughter, singer-songwriter Reba Rambo, as the Rambos singing group in 2001. Her new album, Sheltered , is scheduled to be released this summer. Her songs have been recorded by Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Barbara Mandrell and many others. She and Parton recorded a duet for the title track of Rambo's 2003 album, Stand by the River .

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