Image of Chain on Haunted Tombstone

Posted: Mon, Oct 30, 2006

As a kid I was told many ghost stories by my relatives. One of my favorites was a tale told to me by my father about a haunted tombstone in a remote cemetery. The story goes something like this: a man was beaten to death by a chain. Shortly after the burial, an image of a chain appeared on his tombstone. Repeated attempts to remove the image from the stone were useless. The image of the chain was -in- the stone. Finally, the family removed the stone and replaced it with a new one. Soon after replacing the stone, the image of the chain appeared again on the new stone. According to the story, on the anniversary of the man's death the number of links on the chain changes. Each year a new link gets added or taken away.

The cemetery is located on the grounds of Bonds Chapel (see picture). It is a small country chapel located 10 miles West of highway 37 about an hour south of Bloomington. Bonds Chapel has been a constant establishment in the local community for ages. Bonds Chapel recently celebrated its 150th anneversary.

Having grown up nearby, I was first taken to see the tombstone when I was 10 or 11. Once the novelty of seeing the chain image first-hand waned, the thing that struck me most was how new the stone looked. The stone did not look like the other stones from the 1920's. This realization added credence to the story I had heard; the original tombstone had been replaced. Scared enough already, this was enough to send me back to the car.

Years later when my own son was interested in hearing some ghost stories, I naturally told him about this tombstone. Interested to hear more local ghost stories, we bought Hoosier Folk Legends. To my surprise, two versions of the haunted tombstone story were included in the book. Both of these versions were different than the story I had heard. One says that the man in the grave was a slave that had been beaten to death by his master. This seems extremely unlikely for two reasons: Indiana is well north of the Mason-Dixon line; and the man in the grave died more then 50 years after the end of the Civil War. The other version of the story says that the man was not killed by a chain, rather he killed his wife with a chain. This may be possible, but considering the man was only in his 20's when he died, we can only assume that he met an untimely end himself.

To connect the dots between my story, the stories in the book, and the actual tombstone, we made a side trip to visit the stone while visiting family a couple years ago. Here are some pictures from the trip:

Here is the stone from the front (name obscured)

View from the side - image of the chain is vertical with a horizontal bar running through it

Close-up of the chain

Close-up of a link

Comments

1. Oct 31, 06 07:01 AM | Steph Mineart said:

I bought this book several years ago, and there are similar stories about the image of the chain, but they're not from Indiana.

Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman
http://tinyurl.com/ymrqjh

It's also fun that the tale of the Screaming Bridge that Paul Coon mentions in the comments of our other ghost story also shows up in various places around the country.

2. Sep 26, 07 03:37 PM | cheryl conley said:

well, I grew up in Mitchell, we made the trip to count the links every halloween. My mother loves ghostys. LOL. I am trying to research this. this man died in Paoli, apparently. He was white so that takes care of the Slave story, but I really want to know how he died, and if he is connected to a murder some how. I'm looking into it the best that I can from Florida.

3. Jul 8, 09 10:29 PM | Dee said:

The story I was told is that this man came home from the war an alcoholic. One day he beat his wife to death with a piece of logging chain. Later that day he left home to go buy more booze, missed a curve in the road, and was decapitated by a piece of logging chain stretched across a lane coming off the road. I was just out there a week ago taking pics and found, when I downloaded, the same impression of a chain running almost parallel to the impression in the center of the side of the stone that appears in the above pic. This was not visible to the naked eye at all, and is not visible in older pics either.

4. Aug 7, 09 09:29 AM | alex swift said:

i went and saw this myself! i thought it was really cool but creepY!!!

5. Aug 7, 09 09:29 AM | alex swift said:

i went and saw this myself! i thought it was really cool but creepY!!!

6. Aug 7, 09 09:29 AM | alex swift said:

i went and saw this myself! i thought it was really cool but creepY!!!

7. Oct 19, 09 08:13 AM | Leah From Indiana said:

I also have been there several times and have
it on video. Very Interesting. I heard that the
tombstone was replaced once by the church because
of all the attention it was bringing,But the chain
appeared on the second tombstone as well.

8. Aug 26, 10 09:50 PM | Cheryl said:

We were there about 43 years ago. It seems like it is a different headstone. The one I remember was gray and the chain was wrapped all around it. The story we were told back then was there was a bar fight and the guy was beat to death with a logging chain and that one chain link would grow each year. When we saw it there were a lot of links.

9. Nov 1, 10 02:35 AM | LEE GAMES said:

I REMEMBER THIS AS A CHILD I GREW UP IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF INDIANA A SMALL TOWN BY THE NAME OF SHOALS. MY PARENTS HAD HEARD THE STORIE AND TOOK ME AND MY FOUR OTHER SIBILINGS TO SEE THIS. IT WAS QUITE INTERESTING WHEN I WAS A CHILD THE STONE LOOKED MUCH OLDER THAT HAS BEEN ABOUT 41 YEARS AGO. THEY HAVE PROBABLY PUT UP A NEW STONE BY NOW .I HEARD WHEN THE CHAIN RUNS OUT OF ROOM TO ADD A NEW LINK THEY PUT UP A NEW STONE. I ALSO HEARD THAT THE MAN THAT IS BURIED THERE WAS HUNG WITH A CHAIN FROM A TREE.

Image of Chain on Haunted Tombstone

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