Subject: Legend, Ghost Story

Informant: Tye Griffith

Background/Context:

Tye: Well, Colonel Bailey was a colonel in the Civil War, and he got his head chopped off while in battle from his horse. Like, he was riding his horse in battle, and his horse ran him into someone’s bayonet.

Now around the ranch, which is on a big piece of land called Bailey’s prairie, in the fog you can hear the noise of the hooves of his horse with Bailey on it looking for his head.

Me: Is your ranch where the battle took place?

Tye: Yeah, it’s where Bailey died in battle. On what’s now the prairie.

Me: Have you heard the hooves before?

Tye: Yeah, I totally have. I was with my brother and his girlfriend a few years ago, and we were driving out by the prairie late at night, and we stopped somewhere to have a beer or something—I actually forgot what we were doing—but we thought we heard a horse running around. And then we started exploring and trying to see where the noise was coming from, because we don’t have any horses or anything. And the noise was like really distinctively a horse running around. My brother was trying to look macho in front of his girlfriend and started walking into the woods area and shouting like, ‘Hey! Is anybody there?’ but obviously we didn’t find anybody. It was just scary because we all knew the story.