The Witch of Buena Vista Slough

A Haunting near Buena Vista Landing

by Dale Cox

A bizarre series of events along Buena Vista Slough (then called Sugar Mill Creek) terrified residents in Florida's Chattahoochee River valley more than 140 years ago.

October 1877 was a time of growing optimism in eastern Jackson County. The violence and strife of Reconstruction were finally over, the local economy was improving, and riverboat traffic was once again booming on the Chattahoochee River. Sugar Mill Creek flowed from a collection of small springs past the remains of the already ruined mill that gave the stream its name to join the river near today's Parramore Landing.

The lands along its low ridges were well-suited for the production of cotton, corn, tobacco, and other crops, and the harvest was good that fall. Most of the farms were small, and the families who settled near the creek in the years after the Civil War included whites, blacks, and Native Americans. All worked the land or cut timber to make their livings.

Things seemed peaceful as everyone worked and waited for the first cold snap of winter and "hog killing" time. No one, however, expected what happened next:

Buena Vista Slough now covers the original Sugar Mill Creek.

A Witch! The people about Sugar Mill creek in east Jackson are all alarmed about a witching at Godwin's spring on Thursday night last. Highsmith, an elderly Negro man, says his family was asleep by the fire when an unseen witch started to pelt his cabin with stones and brickbats. Thinking it was irreverent pranksters or Republicans he took up his shotgun and rushed into the yard only to witness a piece of lime rock rise from the ground and dash itself against his chimney. - Marianna Courier, October 1877. 

Godwin's Spring, where the incident supposedly took place, is now underwater at Godwin Lake, the head of the slough that extends north from Buena Vista Landing on the backwaters of Lake Seminole. The spring and the small creek that it and a few other springs headed was inundated when the Jim Woodruff Dam was completed in 1958.

Buena Vista Landing as seen from the slough.

Stories of witches or other unseen forces that threw rocks, bricks, and other objects against the sides of houses were relatively common in the 19th century. The best-documented case was the Edgefield Ghost in South Carolina, but the best-known was, without doubt, the Bell Witch of Tennessee.

People in that day usually blamed such instances on witches, although today they are often said to be the result of "poltergeist" activity.

More from the Witch! A witch seems quite begrudged with the people above Bellview on Sugar Mill creek. Brickbats, rocks, crockery and tools fly about. Dogs howl without ceasing. Bells sound at midnight. The rattle of dragging chains distinctly heard. Birds that speak. A creature like a dog with the head of a cat! If but half the stories are true then the good citizens of that vicinity had best revisit the methods of Cotton Mather of old Salem! - Marianna Courier, October 1877

The two brief articles are the only known written accounts of the paranormal "outbreak" that shook the Buena Vista area of eastern Jackson County in 1877. Earlier generations had vague memories of the incidents and told of how their parents and grandparents met for weekend-long brush arbor "preachings" and "camp meetings."

Like the Edgefield and Bell Witchings of earlier generations, this one also slowly faded away.