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The Crouse Ghost of 1943
Did You Know? 250 Years, Celebrating One Community XXXVIII. Crouse Community History & Photo Project / Mona Ramsey October 28, 2026
Crouse Community History & Photo Project
Photos Courtesy Crouse Community History & Photo Project
Residents of Crouse have long gone all out for Halloween. This year, as Crouse prepares once again for a night of Trick or Treating, we turn to a ghost story that has been part of local memory for more than eighty years. In March 1943 the Gastonia Gazette and then the Lincoln Times carried the account of a haunt that, according to Farmer Woodrow Carpenter, had been visiting his household since the previous June. The story that follows is drawn directly from those newspaper reports.
A bit of genealogical background on the farmer. Woodrow Wilson Carpenter was the son of Eli Hoke and Genelia Helms Carpenter. He was married to Bonnie Mae Ledford, daughter of Gaither and Bunnie Dobbins Ledford. We have been unable to determine the location of the Carpenter house, but from census records we have determined that it was located near a Lincoln/Gaston County line possibly off of St. Mark’s Church Road as the mailing address on Woodrow’s 1940 WW II Draft Card reads, Crouse, Gaston County N.C. Sometime before the 1950 census the family had moved closer to the Bessemer City area, Bonnie had divorced Woodrow and remarried, leaving him to raise their children Buford Lee, Bobbie Dean, Alfred, and Leonard
Many People Have “Seen and Heard” Crouse Ghost Declares Farmer Gastonia Gazette by Hoyle Phillips and J. Norman Young 4 March 1943
We have never placed much credence in stories of spirits of the spine-tappin, chair-rattling variety, but no man with any measure of imagination could sit and listen as we did to Farmer Woodrow Carpenter of Crouse relate as bizarre a tale of the supernatural as we have ever heard and not have his convictions somewhat shaken. No setting could have been more appropriate thatn the dreary, foggy night we picked to investigate reports that an elusive spook was making almost regular nocturnal visits to the Carpenter household, which it had all but completely upset. On Tuesday evening we sat before a flickering fire and watched the oil burn away in a wick lamp while Mr. Carpenter told us of a haunt that came in all the ghostly glee to pester them at the most unexpected times. This spook according to Mr. Carpenter, has frightened the wits out of his wife, upset his five small children, and “scared the Hound” out of the family dog. No one could doubt the sincerity of Farmer Carpenter’s words with which his wife agreed in every detail.
“The Thing made its first appearance in June of last year,” we were told, “and has been coming back pretty regularly ever since.” When asked if It scared him, Mr. Carpenter said, “Yes, It scared me so bad that I moved out and rented the place to Arthur Whitesides, a colored man, so that he could look after my stock for me. We told him that the place was haunted,” he added, “but they agreed to move in anyway. There were six in the family.” Shortly thereafter, he told us, the colored man’s wife said that if she saw that Thing she would “es’ walk up and talk to it.”
Before very long the negroes were up to see Mr. Carpenter at a house to which he had moved nearby to tell him that wouldn’t be staying in the house any longer.
Didn’t Speak To It.
“Have you seen the haunt?” Mr. Carpenter asked, they told him they had and Mrs. Carpenter said to Whiteside’s ife, “I thought you said you would talk to It if you saw It. Did you?” The colored woman replied, “No’m, I didn’t talk to It, but I don some pow’ful talkin’ to my Lawd!”
Mr. Carpenter said that he had to take the family back to the 48-acre farm to take care of his stock then because he couldn’t get anyone else to rent the place.
Our questions about the “ghost” and the family were most readily answered. We asked Mr. Carpenter’s age and he told us he was 40, and when questioned as to whether he were a Christian, he said: “Yes, if I was not a God-fearing man, I would not have been able to hold up under the strain. “Living under the dread of waking in the night and seeing the Thing standing by his bed was the hardest part of the ordeal, the man told us, he said the “noise doesn’t bother us so much any ore.”
No Explanation
We asked Mr. Carpenter if it were possible that somebody might be perpetrating the noises in an effort to frighten them and he quickly answered that this was nothing that could be explained so simply. “I have laughed at the very thought of such a thing as spirits,” he said in a soft-spoken drawl, “but now I’ve quit laughing. I kept this thing secret for a long time,” he said, “but when the neighbors started seeing It I decided to tell all I knew about it in an effort to get an answer as to what it might be. The “Thing,” he went on, “will knock on the wall, race up and down behind the ceiling, bang the doors, and make a hundred and one other sounds that can’t be described.”
“Doesn’t it seem to try to talk?” we asked. “The only thing that we have heard in that way,” he said, “is a sound exactly like you hear when you slaughter a hog and the blood gurgles up in its throat or something struggling for breath.” “Has It ever been seen” we asked. “Several have seen it,” we were told. Rev. Frank Grigg, who lives on Route 3, York, S.C., and who preaches up here at Anthony’s Grove, and his wife were down here one day while we were trying to catch them a chicken. Mrs. Grigg and Mrs. Carpenter were in the preacher’s car at the house and we men were down at the barn. The woman folks saw it and shoved down on the horn. By the time we got there It was gone, and Mrs. Grigg who had said also that she would try to talk to It, was almost past talking. They heard It since.”
Can’t Describe It.
In answer to a query as to what It looked like, Mrs. Carpenter said that she couldn’t describe It clearly because there wasn’t much to describe. Through her description the only form that we could imagine would be a floating wraith-like mist about the size of a man with a face as dark as a thunder cloud and then, according to the Carpenters, It sometimes takes a form about the siaxe of a nine or ten-year old child. “There is just no sure way It can be pictured, “Mr. Carpenter said, “Once,” he went on, “Mr. Grigg, the preacher I told you about, was standing in the front yard and something brushed his leg as if it might be a dog, he kicked out at it. But there was nothing there. And Adam Dellinger, of Cherryville, had the same experience. Once I thought I’d take my shot gun after It,” the story continued, “but the more I chased the sound around the rooms the louder and more terrifying they grew until I final gave up.’
“What does the dog do when it sees It?” he was asked. “He runs all around in the open baying and howling just like he was trying to tree and then stops and starts backing up with his hackle raised,” he answered. “It seems that when the dog runs into It and tries to drive It off, he’s just barking and growling at the wind.”
It’s Not D.T.’s
Some people believe it, we were told, and some don’t. “Some might think it’s caused by drink, but it isn’t,” Mr. Carpenter said “I have not touched a drop to six years. I try to live close to God and nothing like that has got me seeing things. This is something that I can’t explain, and anyone is welcome to come and stay until It comes and satisfy themselves that there really is something here. It has been here only once or twice in broad open daylight and one of these times was yesterday morning. But it hardly ever fails visiting us at night.”
Mr. Carpenter and Odas Ledford of Greensboro, his brother-in-law, was sleeping in the car outside one night when the house was full of company and the Thing almost scared the life out of him. “I can’t get kin folks to come and stay,” he said, “even my mother left.” His mother is Mrs. Jenelle Carpenter. His father has been dead nine years. Many others, he claimed have been scared away by It.
“I’ve been trying to sell the place,” he told us when he was asked why he didn’t leave, “but I sure hate to. “You see,” he went on, “I’ve lived here all my life, except the few weeks we were away when the Thing came and once before for a short time, and I sorter hate to leave. I had to come back since the spook came because my stock and crops were here. My father built the place, but I guess I’ll have to sell and get out about fall whether I want to or not.
Kept Watch.
To keep from preventing Mr. Carpenter from going to bed we elected to sit in the two empty rooms in the 5-room house and keep watch. He invited us to build a fire and stay as long as we liked. If you have never had occasion to spook hunt then you can’t realize how long and tedious the hours can grow, what with recounting long told ghost stores and horror tales and all. But we stuck it out until near the middle of the night and watched one of our party fall asleep, and the fire died down and no ghost. We called Mr. Carpenter to give him back one of his lamps, which burn continuously now, and he said, “When I wouldn’t care if It does come it looks as if It stays way on purpose. I wish you’d stay all night. I feel safe where there’s other folks here. It may come the minute you leave, and it’s hard for us to sleep with that Thing around.” But we had to disappoint him. We had a day of work ahead and not far off. Maybe we’ll hunt the “hant” some other time…maybe. Perhaps this particular one is allergic to total strangers. We don’t know.
The original story was picked up by The Lincoln Times and published in their March 8th 1943 edition. Following that publication the Lincoln Times ran the following in their March 11th 1943 edition.
THRONGS VISIT CROUSE WANT TO SEE “GHOST” (by Hoyle Phillips and J. Norman Young in Gastonia Gazette)
Were there such a thing as a Local Ghost Union one of its members would most certainly be called to task working overtime should it try to “ha’nt” the huge crowds of the interested and the curious that have beaten well the path that leads to the home of Farmer Woodrow Carpenter of Crouse where, it was said, a “spook” had turned up in all Its “Sunday best.”
Reports from Crouse say that since the appearance of a story in the Gazette of March 4 (and The Lincoln Times, March 8), in which Mr. Carpenter was quoted as saying that “a ghost came to my farm the first time in June of last year and has been coming back pretty regularly ever since” and stated his desire for more human companionship, the little road to the farm has been overtaxed by many in reach of the pages of this newspaper, going to satisfy themselves as to the reality of this “precocious apparition.’
Saturday night the S.R.O. sign, figuratively speaking, was hanging on the door of the house where Mr. Carpenter and their five small children live, with the yard full of people awaiting a glimpse of the “Crouse Ghost.” As those who grew impatient with waiting left the house others came continuously to take their places, with the last visitors leaving near the crack of dawn on Sunday morning it was said.
To the oft repeated question “Why doesn’t It come if It is going to?” came the equally repetitive answer, “If it did come nobody would be able to see or hear It with all this mob milling around and making noise,” reports said.
More than eighty years later the house where the Carpenters lived is gone and to date we have been unable to determine its location but the newspaper accounts remain as a record of a season when a farmer’s story of a Thing that knocked, raced behind the ceiling, and sometimes took the form of a mist or a child drew crowds to a farm road in Crouse. Whether the haunt was ever explained is not part of the record. But the papers captured is the fear, the curiosity, and the late-night watch that turned a private household into the center of a very public ghost story, one that still fits Halloween in the community where it was first told.
Sources:
· Hoyle Phillips and J. Norman Young, “Many People Have ‘Seen and Heard’ Crouse Ghost Declares Farmer,” Gastonia Gazette, March 4, 1943.
· Lincoln Times, March 8 and March 11, 1943.
· Family and location notes compiled for the Crouse Community History & Photo Project.
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