Bristol Man Met A Ghost And A Horse Thief At Cemetery

I am well aware that many of my readers love ghost stories. I like to keep everyone happy, so will here present one.
But first, true to my real mission, I will give a brief history of the old cemetery around which this story centers.
What is now known as the Sharrett Cemetery is located along Elm Street high on a hill that rises near the end of Mumpower Park. This cemetery began in 1837 as a burial site of the Nathan Worley family who lived nearby.
The story has long been told that Nathan Worley and his wife chose the location on a Sunday afternoon and before the next Sunday came, a family member was buried there. Some of the old Worley monuments remain, but they are almost illegible.
Since several large wild cherry trees stood there, this burial ground was long called Cherry Hill and, for some reason, there was a time when it was called Walnut Grove.
This was rather confusing in that another larger cemetery of the same name exists further up Beaver Creek near Exit 7.
It was finally renamed Sharrett Cemetery for families of that name who lived nearby. The first burial that I attended in Bristol was that of a Mr. Thomas in the spring of 1954. I have gone there many times since to study the tombstones and to see what bits of history I could attain from them.
Like most cemeteries, ghost tales have also been connected to this one.
In early 1954, Old Dad Thomas (no connection to the Mr. Thomas previously mentioned) told me that when he was 21 years old (1878), he got to “courtin” at Sarah Shreve (locals pronounce the name Shrevey).
She was a daughter of one whom he called Old Man Baz Shreve whose home was at the end of Big Buck Ridge, at the approximate site of what is now Mountain View Cemetery.
But Old Man Baz didn’t approve of the courtship and finally ordered young Mr. Thomas to leave and never return. A week or so later, Baz Shreve unexpectedly died. He was buried in what was then still called Cherry Hill Cemetery.
Soon after that, young Mr. Thomas resumed his courtship with Sarah Shreve. He did tell me that soon after he resumed this courtship, the widow Shreve, who was then about twice his age, began to give her daughter competition. She offered to marry him immediately if he wished.
He went on to say that he still preferred Sarah. Be that as it may, he tarried one night at the Shreve home until well past midnight. Then, he started riding home on a horse named Jubal. The moon was full and shining bright, so bright that Dad Thomas declared that he could have read the Bristol News by it (the Bristol News was a popular Bristol newspaper at the time).
His road home passed right by old Cherry Hill Cemetery. He admitted that he was a bit nervous about this, so as he neared the cemetery, he spurred his horse into a fast trot.
Once even with the cemetery, the horse froze in its tracks and began to tremble. It was then that Thomas saw a man dressed in black rising up from the newly made grave near the cemetery gate. That man began to come quickly toward him, though it did not seem he was taking steps but that he was skimming along above the ground.
Thomas tried desperately to make the horse run, but the beast would not budge an inch. By then, the ghostly figure was reaching up for young Thomas, and it was easy to be seen that this man was Old Baz Shreve.
Thomas jumped backward from the horse, whirled around and raced back up the road. He said he didn’t take time to straighten up until he was in front of the Sam Millard house (present home of Ed and Linda Stout on Kingmill Pike). Later that night, he walked back to Bristol using a route far from the cemetery.
The next morning, he went back to search for his highly prized horse. He found the tracks where the horse had stood but none leading away from the spot. The horse was never found. It seemingly had vanished.
Old Dad Thomas closed his story by saying that it had seemed he had met a ghost and a horse thief too!

BUD PHILLIPS is a local historian and author. He can be reached at (276) 466-6435.