There is no doubt that in 1916 a five-ton circus elephant was lynched from a 100-ton Clinchfield railroad crane car in the little town of Erwin, Tennessee. The details of the execution and the tragic events leading up to it, however, are clouded in nearly a century of oral tradition. From one retelling to the next, facts are distorted and embellished; legend, instead of truth, is often accepted as fact. This book is an attempt to bring together all the known facts about the hanging and to fill in with educated guesses the missing parts of the puzzle.
Charles Edwin Price is the author of numerous books of tall tales and folklore, including Demon in the Woods, Diggin' Up Bones, and The Infamous Bell Witch of Tennessee.
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