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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-09-16 22:05:44+00:00.
Every small town has its own little quirks, legends, shit like that. Blackshear isn’t any different, coming straight from a near lifelong resident, and there are plenty of weird things that you learn to not mess with early on. Unfortunately, I was a stupid-ass kid at one time, and my stupid-ass friends enabled a lot of things that, in hindsight, should have gotten us killed.
Of course, we probably deserved it. We were pretty mischievous back in the days before we had the money to do anything and had to make our own entertainment. It didn’t take long to learn our lessons about what was safe and what wasn’t, though.
The first thing you’ll need to know is that Blackshear is a small town in the heart of Southeast Georgia. The old Okefenokee swamp is right nearby, a bunch of old trainyards mean there’s always something rolling through, but otherwise it’s a tiny place, all things considered. Plenty of old buildings along the main street, pretty small population, and definitely still learning to leave the antiquities of the south behind. Especially when I was growing up, because being a queer kid who didn’t know much about who they were wasn’t easy there.
That’s what led me to my little friend group. Evie, Nick, Avery, Chris, and a few others like Erin and Sarah. Other than Chris and Nick, we were all in the same graduating class of 2012. Nick was a grade below us, and Chris was my best friend and neighbor who was about two years older. All amazing people, but we didn’t always make the best decisions when it came to self-preservation.
One of our favorite places to hang out was the park. It wasn’t much, just a small playground, a couple of picnic tables, and a swing set. But it was right smack in the middle of town, easy enough for all of us to meet up with the most minimal of transportation. Which was a good thing because I was the only one with a damned car, and everyone else was a freeloader. Nonetheless, every Friday after school got out, and even after graduating, we would all meet up to just shoot the shit and let off steam from the week. Then we would figure out where to go from there, often staying out until the morning hours despite having work the next day.
Right next to the park is one of the town’s most famous landmarks- the old Hanging Jail. That’s what everyone called it, at least. It was finally made a historic landmark back in 2020, with the state of Georgia even putting money forward to restore and maintain it. Though I don’t know if they would have done that if they knew what was in the place.
I’ve had two experiences here. One as a small kid, only ten years old. The next was nearly a decade later at nineteen.
Before I knew what it was, my stupid self just thought it was a jail cell suspended in the air. Yeah, the real thing is definitely much worse.
This place isn’t huge. It was built in 1894, brick and steel that’s still there today, though in much worse shape. It’s two stories, with the bottom being holding cells and the jailer’s desk. The top floor was where it got the reputation from. I’m including one of the historical pages on it so you can get a better picture, but there’s a cell up on the top floor for the more long-term occupants, and one solitary tower that juts out higher than the rest of the building. That’s the interior gallows.
One small, white door opens up to what amounts to a very toll closet. It extends above the jail, a noose hanging from the ceiling, and a drop down from the initial door. The idea was that any criminals deserving of the noose would walk through their final door with the rope on their neck, dropping into the empty space below. Then, the jailer and everyone else could avoid seeing the terror in the condemned person’s eyes by just shutting the door until the deed was done. Impersonal and effective, the American way.
Granted, there was never a hanging recorded in the entire history of the jail, which was shut down in favor of a larger police department right across the road and a separate jail just down the highway in the mid-1900s. Then the place was allowed to fall into disrepair over the years, with broken windows and rotting boards becoming the trademark of it. Despite all that, nobody ever put forward to take the place down, and the town continued to evolve as it decayed in the center, gathering graffiti and dust.
Now, with all that in mind, even without any hangings actually happening in it, you’re about to say ‘What the fuck’? Because the school system here has one hell of a way of teaching history.
In third grade, we took a “local civics” field trip. What that meant was basically taking a bus down to the courthouse on Main Street and making our way down from there. We went into the courthouse, saw where the cases were heard, visited the police department, the post office, then stopped off for sack lunches in the park before heading back to school. Overall, pretty boring for a bunch of kids who just wanted to trade Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
Now, I don’t believe that the teachers wanted to fuck with us, but they definitely wanted to give us a scare considering it was early October at the time. Actually it was the day after my birthday, now that I think about it. God, that just makes it worse in hindsight. Happy birthday, have some childhood trauma!
So one of the last stops on the tour was a piece of Blackshear history- the fuckin’ Hanging Jail. Now, seventy ten year old kids in an old, rotting building doesn’t seem like the best idea to me now at thirty years old, but hey, it was 2003, shit was weird. They paraded us into the small first floor, the old police chief accompanying us in and telling us the history of the place. The old cells were rusted, and the smell of mold is the most prominent memory I have of the place. Sebastian, one of my best friends through middle school, was joking around about something stupid, but all I can remember was the chill when we entered.
It wasn’t even cold out, we were barely into what we refer to in the south as “Fallse” or False Fall, where the temperature starts to cool off to a lovely seventy-five degrees high instead of the feeling of sweat on Satan’s ballsack that permeates most of the year. Still, when we stepped into the hanging jail I felt my bones chill, despite how warm it was. There was no reason for it either, considering this place was so old there was no ventilation other than the broken windows, with heat and mosquitoes coming and going as they pleased.
We listened to the little spiel of the chief before they led us upstairs, which again, seventy ten year old kids in a rotting jail that wasn’t structurally sound on the best days was certainly a choice. There, the chief told us about what they used the gallows for (again, we were TEN) and opened the door to the chute so we could see.
Now, I don’t know if the noose was left up intentionally, but good lord it was swinging around like there was a cyclone going in that closet. The next few minutes are something I still haven’t forgotten two decades later.
”…so when someone would get hung, they would close the door after they push them in. Then, they would just go about their business for the rest of the day, and take them down later!” Chief said, miming pushing someone in before slamming the creaky door shut. Then, as he talked about coming back for them later, he opened the door again.
There, now slowly swinging back and forth was a body, neck bulging out from around the old, moldy rope that was suspending it. He was probably middle-aged, balding with wisps of dark brown hair falling over his face and ears. His mouth was open in a scream that didn’t have any air to make it audible, blood crusted around where the rope was digging into his pale blue skin.
The part I remember the most though is his eyes. Bulging out of his skull against the pale face, a disgusting yellow with red fissures jutting from the edges, threatening to pop and escape their prison. I’m sure he was supposed to be dead, considering the state of his skin tone and the crusting blood, but I saw his hands and feet jerking sporadically, like he was still trying to escape his damnation.
I started crying right then and there, freaking the hell out and melting down. I swear, the next week didn’t allow me to think of anything else. Every time I closed my eyes, the only thing I could feel was his bulging eyes staring me down, almost looking right through me through time.
Nobody knew why I was melting down. One of the teachers had to walk me out to get some fresh air, and I was almost to the point of puking from nausea. I thought I was going fucking crazy at only ten years old because nobody else seemed to notice the hanging corpse when chief opened the door. My teacher called my mom to come pick me up when we got back because I was… I don’t know, terrified doesn’t even seem to do it real justice when it comes to how I felt in the moment.
I told my mom about what I saw and she just shrugged it off as an overactive imagination, not that she was happy about the school taking us in there in the first place though. I had nightmares all night, thinking that the body was going to come get me at any moment, or that I would open my closet to get dressed the next morning and be face to face with him. But nobody believed me.
The next morning was one of the first times I ever spoke to Evie. She came up to me a...
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