This is a story about a lady named Mrs. Creekfield who lived in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. She lived above Taylors Valley which is near Damascus Virginia. She and her husband lived near the old railroad tracks that ran through Taylors Valley.
One year, there was a rumor going through Taylors Valley that Mr. Creekfield had killed Mrs. Creekfield by cutting off her head. All that the residents of the Valley knew was that she disappeared and never was seen around the house anymore. Being mountain folk, with their prideful quirks, no one ever questioned old man Creekfield as to where his wife was. That’s just the way it was back in the mountains. Everyone kept mostly to themselves.
One morning, my Uncle Bill got up at 6:00 am to feed his horses and milk his cows. As he was going to his farm, he saw who he believed to be Mrs Creekfield walking down the railroad tracks carrying a dim small lantern in one hand and her head under her other arm. He thought it was a trick so he just forgot about it.
The next week he got up early and went to his farm and was going to cut hay and then he saw this woman again out in the field picking strawberries and she was carrying her head in her bucket. Now he was getting worried. So he told Mr. Dunn, the general store owner, about what he had seen. That’s when Mr. Dunn told him that he had also seen a lady behind his house, carrying what looked like, her head under her arm but that he hadn’t told anybody because he didn’t want people to think he was crazy. This confirmed to Uncle Bill that what he had witnessed on those early mornings wasn’t just something that he had dreamed up but that it really was someone and that it must be the Old Creekfield woman. The part that he couldn’t understand was how could she be there in plain site, walking and all of this, as a beheaded body.
Here is the story of one man who actually witnessed the frightful experience of seeing the Creekfield woman, “One morning as Roby Thompson and I were making our usual inspection of the tracks we saw something that I will never forget as long as I live. Our job was to make sure rocks or mud slides had not blocked the railroad tracks during the night. The fog was heavy as our motor car rounded the curve near hanging rock just south of Green Cove. Just ahead, I could faintly see someone walking right down the middle of the tracks. I told Roby to ring the bell as a warning that we were approaching. We were getting closer now and I could see a figure of a woman wearing a long white dress. She didn’t make any moves to get out of the way so I pulled the brake lever as hard as I could. The wheels began to slide and squeak on the steel tracks. When we came to a stop, I could see her standing in front of us with her arm stretched out as if she were holding back our motor car. This is when I noticed that Roby had fainted and that the woman had no head on her shoulders. As I looked down, I could see her other arm was wrapped around her bloody head. There was a faint smile on her face. The next instant she seemed to have vanished out of site. The hair on my head felt like it was standing straight up. After this, I’m sure that I set a new track record (excuse the pun) as I engaged the clutch on the motor car and pushed the throttle full forward. Poor Roby was just coming to and looking like a ghost himself, as we approached the rail siding switch at the Taylors Valley Station. To this day, I still can’t remember who operated the switch to allow our motor car onto the sidetrack”.
I could go on and on with more of this true happening however, it probably is best to let the Old Creekfield Woman’s fate remain a mystery for others to ponder and perhaps one day, as the story goes on, we will hear others tell of their encounters with her. As far as I know, she is still out there today somewhere wondering up and down the once railroad tracks, now the Creeper Trail.
by Bill Blevins
I wrote this story in the early 1970’s. My dad retyped it and emailed it to me with this note:
On Jan 31, 2011, at 6:28 PM, WILLARD BLEVINS <billblevins@comcast.net> wrote:
Bill, Momma was going through her ‘hope chest’ today and came upon this story written [in pencil] by you (no date on it)…
My grampy, Earl Ours, used to tell me about the Creekfield woman all the time. We used to hike on the creeper trail and he would always try to scare me :)
My Grandma & Grandad lived in Green Cove. I heard stories about her when we would visit.
In the late 1940s & early 1950s we use to go to Taylor’s Valley to visit our Great Grandmother, Lavina Thompson & our Aunt Delta Ball. Russell & Edgar Ball, our cousins, would tell us about the lady in white who would drop down out of the trees. Maybe that was Mrs Creekfield.
I really enjoyed reading this. Living in Konnarock most of my life, I’ve heard this for years. I shared it on FB. thanks for posting.