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Chapter One
The Girl Nobody Knew
At the edge of the city park in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, a white picket fence encloses a single grave. The metal marker above the concrete slab is inscribed,
"UNKNOWN--Hallowed and Hushed Be the Place of the Dead. Step Softly ... Bow Head."
Here is buried a girl, young and beautiful, whose name no one knows, whose story can only be pieced together with sketchy recollections, suppositions, and speculation.
Today the city of Harrodsburg cares for her grave, just as it has for more than one hundred and twenty-five years. And today children playing in the park pause beside the fence, read the flaking inscription and ask, "Whose grave is this? Who is buried here?" just as children for generations have asked. If these inquiring children are persistent in their questioning, this is the story they will hear:
Back during the 1840's, Harrodsburg was famous as a resort for fashionable summer visitors who came to drink the water from its mineral springs. From May until October, hundreds of visitors came to vacation in this middle Kentucky town: some came hoping to be benefited by the waters while others were attracted by the social life--the parties, banquets, plays, horse races, concerts, gambling, dances, and masquerade balls.
On a tree-shaded hill near the edge of town stood an imposing brick hotel, The Harrodsburg Springs Hotel. Dr. and Mrs. C. C. Graham, owners of the establishment, had spent a fortune developing their hotel into one of the finest in the entire country. Winding paths, bordered by shrubs and flowers, led to the mineral springs where guests could sit on curved benches inside the latticed spring houses as they shared conversations and drank the healing waters.
The hotel's ballroom was so large and so elegant and so famous that the simple remark, "I attended the ball at Harrodsburg Springs," was enough to establish a social reputation. The dining room was nationally known for its splendid meals, and service throughout the hostelry was unsurpassed.
But it was its ballroom which brought Harrodsburg Springs Hotel its greatest fame. Even during the daylight hours when the room was quiet and empty, its very size gave visitors a sense of grandeur and awe. And at night, when the mirrored walls reflected the graceful images of the bowing, gliding, whirling dancers, there was not a more colorful spectacle in all Kentucky.
Servants lighted the ballroom's crystal chandeliers and the lamps, more than one hundred of them, each night after supper. Then by the time the guests had changed into their evening finery, the Negro musicians, trained by Dr. Graham and outfitted by him in splendid uniforms, were at their places on the raised platform ready for the dancing to begin.
As the dancers took their places on the ballroom floor (many a romance flowered at Harrodsburg Springs), spectators sat in chairs along the walls or paused in doorways to
It was on such a scene of carefree pleasure that the heroine of Kentucky's story of mystery made her brief appearance.
Her story, as pieced together by recollections of people who were there and then handed down from one generation to the next, began late one summer afternoon, shortly before supper time. Many of the hotel's guests were seated in rocking chairs on the wide gallery exchanging bits of gossip and enjoying the easterly breeze that had just sprung up. They ceased their rocking and their talking when a carriage stopped at the entrance and out of it stepped a girl so lovely that afterwards the people who saw her arrive could never adequately describe her appearance.
"She had a glow about her, an ethereal quality," they would say. Or, "Her hair--it was piled on top of her head, and ringlets hung down around her shoulders, and it glistened with a golden sheen in the late sunlight." Or, "Such a smile she had--a smile of pure joy as though she wanted to share her love of life with everyone she saw.
Later nobody quite agreed on what color her hair really was or what kind of eyes she had or even how tall she was, but they all agreed that she was the loveliest young girl they had ever seen.
They noticed that she arrived alone, which was unusual in those days when ladies never traveled without an escort, and that she had only one piece of luggage, a small trunk which the carriageman took into the hotel before he drove away.
She registered, some observers recalled, as Miss Mary Virginia Stafford of Louisville, and she explained to the desk clerk that her parents, Judge and Mrs. Stafford, would arrive later in the evening. They, she added, would bring the rest of her luggage. She had come early so she would have time to rest before dressing for the ball, she said.
"I love to dance," she confided in a voice so sweet and enticing that a dozen or more young men in the lobby surged around her to beg for the privilege of being her escort for the ball.
She thanked each one graciously but declined their invitations. "I will save a dance for each of you," she promised as she turned from the lobby and went toward her room.
She did not come down to supper, and when she did not appear in the ballroom for the grand march, curiosity about her identity and her actions became intense. Some guests from Louisville stated that they had never seen the young lady at any social functions there, not even at church (they were Episcopalians and thought she had the unmistakable quality look of an Episcopalian), nor had they ever known a Judge Stafford in Louisville. They wondered if ---
Before the questions grew into insinuations and the insinuations into gossip, Miss Stafford (if indeed that was her name) walked into the ballroom. Walked is hardly the proper word to use, for she seemed to float in, caught up in the happy excitement of the music, the lights, the crowd, and the dancing.
Immediately she was surrounded by young men who reminded her of her promise to dance with them, and she danced with partner after partner.
Everyone at the ball watched her, and she was the chief topic of conversation. Even the people who were most skeptical about her background and most envious of her popularity admitted that they had never seen a young lady more beautiful, more graceful, more gracious, or more completely charming than she.
"I don't know whose daughter she is, but I wish she were mine," one matriarch remarked. And all around her heads bobbed in agreement.
At intermission the girl, accompanied by a covey of young gallants, strolled out into the summer night. She was silent as they walked through the shadows of the tall trees into splotches of moonlight. It was not the silence of rudeness or of weariness but rather a quietness sometimes induced by those rare times of total happiness when there is no need for words.
The night was heavy with the sweetness of honeysuckle and of late blooming four-o-clocks. Somewhere nearby a mockingbird sang. At the first notes of the bird's clear song, the girl stood still and lifted her hand for silence. As the song ended, she murmured softly,
"Oh, I am so happy! I wish I could stay right here always. Forever and ever ---
Then she laughed, caught the hand of the young man nearest her, and urged, "Come on! Let's hurry back to the hotel. I hear the music--I don't want to miss a single dance!"
Her companions recalled that her merriment increased as the night grew longer, and several of her partners heard her exclaim, "I wish the music would never stop, that the dancing could go on and on and on!"
Finally, despite those wishes, the hotel manager announced, "This will be the final dance of the evening. We hope you have had a pleasant time."
The girl glided onto the floor with her final partner. Then as the music neared its end, she suddenly collapsed in the young man's arms.
She was dead.
The death of anyone so young and so lovely would naturally have caused grief, but her sudden passage from life into death had a peculiarly poignant sadness for she, apparently, had no family or friends. The name she had used to register at the hotel was fictitious as was the other information she had provided the desk clerk. Her personal belongings gave no clue as to who she was. Hotel officials hoped to find something in her small trunk to help them establish her identity, but when they forced the lock, they found the trunk empty.
Newspapers carried accounts of the "girl who danced herself to death" and asked the help of readers in learning who she was. Hundreds of people came to Harrodsburg to view the body, still supremely beautiful in death, but no one knew her.
So, despairing of finding her family, guests at the hotel joined with the management in preparing for her funeral. The young men remembered how she had said, "I wish I could stay here always," and they chose as her burial place the spot where she had stood to listen to the mockingbird.
Her dancing partners served as her pallbearers, and the Negro musicians from the hotel played a funeral dirge. Roses twined with honeysuckle covered her casket.
After the funeral, the search continued for someone who knew the girl. Weeks, months, years passed, and her identity remained as deep a mystery as it was the night she died. And now, a century and a quarter later, her remains still lie in a grave marked "UNKNOWN."
The Harrodsburg Springs Hotel burned years ago, leaving few reminders of its former elegance or its historic past. But residents of that Kentucky city still report seeing sometimes, late at night, a young girl in an old-fashioned ball gown wandering around near the hotel site. She seems confused and distressed, people who have encountered her say, and she appears to be trying to talk, but no words are audible.
One of the last reported encounters with the lovely ghost came one night when a nurse, a resident of the area, was taking a midnight walk in the park. Her brother, a deaf mute, was ill, and she had been at his bedside for many hours. Other members of the family helped with the nursing chores, but since she was the only one who had learned to read lips, she was needed almost constantly.
While he was sleeping that night, she slipped out for a peaceful walk in the park. Near the *springhouse, she saw a figure in white approaching her. As the figure came closer, she recognized it as the ghost she had heard about so often, the ghost of the "girl who danced herself to death." The figure appeared to be confused and distressed, just as she had heard from others who had encountered the wraith, and seemed to be trying to talk. The nurse stood in the arc of light cast by an overhead street lamp until the figure came close enough for her to read its lips.
"I'm lost. Please help me. I was attending a ball at the hotel, but now I can't find my way back," the figure said, not making a sound.
"My dear," the nurse replied, "the hotel burned more than fifty years ago."
The specter threw her hands over her face and rushed, sobbing, into the springhouse where she vanished completely.
Copyright © 1971 Kathryn Tucker Windham. All rights reserved.
