Spirit Branch Road on Gwynn’s Island brings spooky visions to mind.
The road got the name not from being next to the island cemetery, but from what happened at the waterside end of the lane, at a cove off Edwards Creek.
Judy Rowe, longtime resident on Old Spirit Branch Road (which is a turnoff from Spirit Branch) got the story from Addie Rowe. Addie was the mother of Julian Rowe, Judy’s late husband.
“Many years ago when we moved here I was told by my mother-in-law that the creek up here was called Spirit Branch. The story was that an old captain could sometimes be seen walking along the shoreline at night with a lantern. People would see the lights from time to time.”
No other story went with that, but it inspired the Rev. E. A. Lockwood, who also lived in the subdivision, to have Langley Deagle paint a sign of a headless man holding a lantern, Rowe said. When other residents insisted the night spirit was not headless, he had Deagle come back to paint a head on the body.
That sign hun...