Southern Belles Turn Dark: The Tale of The Black Sisters
- etickle1
- Mar 24, 2021
- 4 min read
If you can recall from my previous post, I am from an area that contains one of the most haunted asylums in America. Though this is not the only horrifying tale from this small portion of the world. The Tale of the Black Sisters are infamous in the area. In fact, when I was writing my previous post about Saint Albans I had shown the progress of that post to a friend and mentioned that I was writing about something from the area. To which she had asked if the post was about the Black Sisters. This got my wheels turning. I had heard of the Black Sisters before during my highschool years. It was that most joyous spooky season and the creative writing class and theater classes collaborated on tales (both fictional and nonfictional) for a ghost tour around town. One of these stories took a fictional spin on the tale of the sisters, so I never got the true story about what happened. Turns out this story was too gruesome to give to a bunch of high schoolers to retell.
Allow me to set the stage. Due to the failing health of the current headmaster of Montgomery Female College, the position and property were bequeathed to Martha Wardlaw and her daughters, Mary Snead, Virginia Wardlaw and Caroline Martin. According to stories, the sisters were always seen wearing layers upon layers of black clothing. Large hats and veils obscuring their faces. The sisters were also known to have strange practices as far as the college was concerned.
Consistent schedule changes, room rearrangements and the most terrifying of all, students witnessing them performing strange rituals within the halls and offices of the school. Some even claimed to have the sisters hovering over them while they slept, chanting strange phrases in languages they didn’t understand. These acts lead to a mass exodus of students from the college. The decreased enrollment mixed with Caroline’s mismanagement of money led to the college being shut down in 1908. The people of the town began to accuse the sisters of being witches and conspiring with the devil. To this day, people still claim that the ghosts of these sisters haunt the halls of the now old middle school. Chanting in the depths of the basement to complete their dark rituals, wandering the halls of their previous stomping grounds, and flickering lights when no one else is around. But these accusations are just hearsay and potentially paranoia spirling things out of control.
What really happened with these sisters to make them so horrifying? The sisters were accused of many things over the years, but the most terrifying of them ended up being true in the eyes of the law: manslaughter. During their time at the school, a man by the name of John entered the doors to enlighten young minds. Some say that Caroline enticed John away from his wife in order to have him all to herself within the halls, though the story varies depending on where you go. Regardless of how he got there, his life ended within the school grounds. He was found in his room, burned alive. His bed soaked in kerosine. No charges were ever filed, but people of the town believed that the sisters were to blame. This was the first of their murderous spree. The second incident occurred with Mary’s son, Fletcher. The boy had many escapes from the icy grip of death brought upon by his mother and aunts. He had survived being “pushed” from a train and nearly being crushed on the rails. He had also survived a near drowning on the school grounds. But much like John, he did not survive being burned in his dormitory. Once again, charges were never filed (at least as far as I’ve been able to find). At this point you may be asking yourself if the sisters were ever stopped. As the old saying goes, three strikes and you're out. The final and most disturbing act these sisters committed had happened after they had left the small town.
One year after the closure of the school, what became known as “The Bathtub Tragedy” occured. In New York, the young Ocey Snead Martin (Caroline’s Daughter) was found supposedly drugged with opiates and drowned in a bathtub. News of this incident made its way across the nation, shocking everyone who read it. Well… almost everyone. The southerners who had known the sisters prior to this incident were not at all surprised by the actions of these sisters. This was the final nail in the coffin for the sisters. All three were dragged to a courtroom in New Jersey to face trial over the death of Ocey Snead. Foul play was suspected because of Ocey’s multiple life insurance policies worth thousands of dollars. During the trial, Caroline pleaded no contest, freeing her sister Mary from facing punishment. Caroline had died in prison due to a mysterious illness. The final sister, Virginia, never saw the trial. She starved herself to death in the cell. Her body was taken back to the small town and buried in an unmarked grave in Sunset Cemetery.
The tales of the Black Sisters continue to live on in infamy. They made national headlines back in the day, but to all outsiders from the town the story has all but died off. Though within town, the sisters are brought up again every Halloween. It lives on as a part of the town’s history and will stay a dark stain upon its past.
Were there any tales of witches in your town? Let me know! And do you think the Black Sisters were witches, or just greedy criminals willing to kill to make their fortunes? Do they still haunt the halls of the old middle school, or are children spooked by the tales seeing things in the shadows that really aren’t there?
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