Just looking at the pictures of young Mary Evelyn Ford's grave feels a bit unnerving, with a series of interlocking white crosses forming a fence around a pit of gravel and the bars appearing unnaturally bent in some places. Then you hear the alleged backstory -- a mother and daughter both accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake in 1916, with the mothers charred remains being carried to a far-off location while the daughter was buried in a steel-lined coffin covered in stone and encased in crosses to prevent her escape. Some have claimed to witness tiny footprints appearing in the gravel, or even a young ghostly figure trying to escape the gravesite. Kid ghosts, as we know, are the creepiest ghosts. While stories about the gravesite go back decades, and naturally increased in detail with the growth of the internet, there's not much evidence that anyone was burned at the stake for witchcraft in the area in 1916: even back then, that was generally big news. Mary Evelyn Ford really did die a tragic young death, but the stated cause of death is peritonitis, an inflammation of the stomach lining. It's amazing what a truly unnerving gravesite can do for the imagination -- we still wouldn't want to be near it at night.
