An article in The Vidalia Advance, dated October 12, 1921, recounted the ghostly and ghastly tale once told by John C. Calhoun, the seventh vice president of the United States, serving from 1825-1832. In the article, the author, T. Larry Gantt, recounts how the South Carolinian statesman believed in the supernatural and would often share those stories with others. Calhoun was often a visitor of the author’s great-grandfather, Judge Gantt of Greenville, SC. His father told him about a story that Calhoun once shared.
Calhoun said that when he was serving as a senator before the days of the railroads and when travelers made long journeys on horseback, he traveled to Washington and spent the night with a friend in Virginia. Calhoun wasn’t the only visitor of this friend and was to share a room with another guest. Their host told them that if they heard any movement about the house that night, not to worry that he was expecting his son, who was returning from Oxford College.
In the middle of the night, Calhoun was awoken by the other man he’d been sharing a room with shaking him. The man was frantic. The man said:
“Great God, Mr. Calhoun! Just look in the window, for there stands a young Blank (the name of their host’s son) with his throat cut from ear to ear and blood dripping all over the windowsill.”
An hour clock struck, and the men noted the time. Mr. Calhoun assured him that it was only his imagination and not to speak of it with their host. But the man couldn’t sleep after witnessing such a terrifying sight.
At breakfast, the men noticed that the boy had never come home. The men said their goodbyes and mounted their horses. Before leaving, someone informed them of the horrible news. Their host’s son had stopped at a barroom on the road home and got into an altercation with a drunken rowdy. The man had slashed the boy’s throat in the same manner as his apparition had appeared the night before. They further found out that the boy had been murdered at the exact hour that his specter appeared at the window of his father’s house.
If you enjoy dark history, check out The Greenbrier Ghost.
