Image of Chain on Haunted Tombstone

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