The Deranged Story of the Crowders (1883, Ozarks)—The Family That Buried Its Dead Beneath the House

The Crowder place sat seven miles west of Piney, Missouri — eleven acres of good red clay, an old well, a swaybacked mule called Saul, and a kitchen built, in 1871, over a stretch of ground the family never speaks of again. In 1883, Reub and his sister Linny begin to notice that the mule won't set foot on the east corner of the yard. The well water starts to taste like old stone. The corn on the east field stops mid-growth in May and never moves again. The floor of the kitchen begins to breathe. By November, Reub decides he cannot wait until spring to find out what is under the boards. What he finds is seventeen stones — eleven of them his own family's names. This is one of the long-form tales from Macabre Forgotten Tales, told the way it came to me, with the parts I cannot verify left where they were found. If this story stayed with you, there is a piece of local folklore of your own somewhere in a kitchen drawer or a phone call to your grandmother. Send it in. Some of them, on the slow winter nights, become the next story I tell. Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. The Crowder family, the Piney crossroads, Brother Whitfield Tate, and all characters and events described are imagined for the purposes of this telling. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to real places in the Ozarks or elsewhere, is unintentional. #AppalachianHorror #FolkHorror #OzarkHorror #RuralHorror #FolkTales #MacabreTales #AmericanFolkHorror #OldHorror #OldStories #OralHistory #AmbientHorror #SleepHorror #LongFormHorror #CampfireStory #CrowderFamily1883 #WellHorror #CabinHorror #BuriedHorror #TheCrowders