TOP 5 Incredible Southern Graves (Must See!)

hey everybody it's robert and you're watching sidestep adventures now today's video is going to be pretty cool something a little bit different and very special so i've teamed up with three other youtubers adventure archaeology history seekers and modern goony and on today's video we did a virtual collaboration to bring you guys our pick for the top five most interesting southern graves so check this video out let me know which one was your favorite down in the comments and let's go [Music] [Music] joe what a chance you can hit my lightning again hey guys what were the odds the first time i got here and what about the odds the second time i got hit is up guys welcome back to adventure archaeology today we're doing something a bit different we're out at a graveyard at one of the creepiest grave sites that i've ever seen it's probably not a good idea that i'm out here while it's kind of stormy but i'll explain that in just a second today we're in childersburg alabama and we're at the childersburg cemetery this cemetery is home to a lot of older graves but one in particular has caught my attention and it also has caught the attention of countless other people across the nation william erbil was the son of reverend james barry kosper and him and his wife were actually out of edgefield south carolina so they moved down here i'm not sure exactly what time period that they moved here but they wound up in alabama and bill was struck by lightning at one point in his life and you may be kind of thinking well that's not that big of a deal that's not super weird people do get struck by lightning well bill didn't get struck just once bill was struck one time recovered and this was sometime between 1844 and 1919 when he died and then he was struck a second time now that's all that i mean that's weird incredibly weird that he was struck twice while he was alive here's his gravestone or what's left of it but what makes this story so interesting is the fact that once they put his headstone up his headstone was struck by lightning the family replaced it and then it was struck again so four times this man attracted lightning to him so i probably shouldn't be standing here especially considering it's raining and a little bit stormy today but the rubble that you see right here is what's left of those gravestones after being struck this was the original headstone down here that was the second headstone that was struck this man if i believed in luck probably had the worst luck out of anybody that i would know so much so this has caught so much attention that he made it into ripley's believe it or not into their archives so this is a nationally known story a lot of people don't realize that and a lot of people would not know that it was sitting right here in childersburg alabama so i appreciate y'all tagging along let me show you all this interesting bit of history and let's go check in with the other guys and see what kind of weird grave sites they found hi this is kelly from history seekers and this is our pick for the top five eeriest graves and the story of viola height in june of 1959 two human torsos were discovered a few hours apart in etowah and saint clair counties and body parts were found scattered in calhoun county all of northeast alabama cringed in fear two men were horribly murdered by shotgun blasts and dismembered by an axe causing an uproar and folks in all three counties it was two weeks before police were able to identify the remains they turned out to be 55 year old emmett harper and his 48 year old brother lee the men were killed about midnight on june 28 1959 so savagely that neither man could be identified for weeks a thirty year old woman by the name of viola hyatt was indicted on two counts of murder by a calhoun county grand jury police quoted ms hyatt as saying she shot the brothers in the face with her daddy's 12-gauge shotgun and then chop them up with an axe because they had abused her and deposited the remains all through three counties throwing a leg out here and an arm out there and rolling out two faceless torsos in different places during the investigation it was discovered that viola had been calling the brothers place of employment and telling their boss they were visiting their mother who was in the hospital and that they were not back yet that cast suspicions on her viola was arrested and sentenced to seven years in julia tuttweiler women's president in utmka her niece wrote that during the summer of 1959 her parents and baby brother went to pay a visit to her aunt jesse biola's stepmother she writes by the time viola was 30 years old i was young but remember viola viola pointed to the radio with the tip of a large red butcher knife she was holding in her hand let's listen to the news to see if anybody we know died she spoke in her flat rural alabama draw after some crackling and static the reporter's voice was clear there were no deaths reported in that neck of the woods after dinner viola told me that if i would go outside with her she had something she wanted to give me i took viola's hand that she offered and went out the front door but walked around the side of the house along the way i saw an axe with the blade buried in old stump that's where we chopped wood viola explained and sometimes chicken's necks i laughed merrily i liked her she had a manner about her that was relaxed and easy we're going to the trailer she said you wait right here and i'll be right back she instructed i inquired to why i couldn't go into the trailer with her i know you don't want to go in there it's a mess just wait right here she disappeared inside with the door closed i stood impatiently and looked around after a few minutes viola came back out with a brown teddy bear it had a sunny yellow ribbon around its neck here i want you to have this she said my boyfriend won it for me at the fair but we broke up so i don't want it no more she was smiling and her tone of her voice was very nice i took the teddy bear and thanked her i was thrilled it was my prized possession a few weeks later we were visiting with friends in woodland i had my teddy bear and i was telling them about how it was a gift from biola the woman said some unkind things about loyola but i didn't believe her it was while we were visiting that my parents heard about the body parts of the men that had been scattered all across three counties and beyond it was in the newspaper viola did it oh my word it was viola i heard these phrases and wondered what on earth they were saying about my friend on the drive home from the wilsons my dad took that teddy bear that viola had given me and threw it out the car window she remained very tight-lipped about what happened many believed she was protecting her father saying that he killed the brothers some say viola claimed that the men molested her and she could not take it anymore the real story is something that viola took to her grave when she died in the hospital in jacksonville in june of 2000 all she said in court was they did me wrong [Applause] all right guys the entrance to the cemetery you guys can tell this thing is super super old all these graves 1700s members of the original 13 colonies daisy was doing some research but i mean it just goes on and on and on crazy history and look some of these are not even there no more that's so sad now i gotta show you just show you this before i get into story time but you see there's no other headstones around here around her grave and if you guys can guess it that right there is eliza huger legend has it there's actually two legends that eliza was part of the congregation church back in the early 1800s the church found out that she was a witch and didn't kick her out of the church but they kind of made it uncomfortable for her and her family to actually come to the sermons and stuff like that now because i didn't kick her out of the church and she was still a part of it when she died her family requested that she'd be buried in the church cemetery now they fought this back and forth several times and they finally came to an agreement eliza can be buried in the church grounds however she's got to be segregated in the corner with a wall built up around her grave the wall was built here to keep her evil spirit in as well as other evil spirits and as you can tell there's nobody else buried around her at all the second story is that eliza had a very wealthy charleston family and when she got married she ran off to new orleans and became a lady of the night and her two brothers and the way her family does things they actually tracked her down found her and her lover and shot them both they brought eliza's body back to the church and here again we go back and forth of where eliza can be buried and they came to the same agreement if eliza is buried in the ground she cannot be buried nowhere near any of the christian graves and there has to be a wall built up around her and she has to be segregated in the corner of the church so here she lies as you can tell vegetation has grown up and rumor has it that this grave has been struck not once not twice but three times and i'm gonna get daisy to show you guys here in a second it actually has cracked the tombstone and rumor has it that it has erased her name but i think we can still see it if we go on the other side days if you'll come over here with me is that it says brother's sorrow now i'm basing off of this of common sense but if it says brother sorrow then i believe that the second story would be true and you guys are probably wondering why are there coins and hair bows on her tombstone well it goes back to being a witch these are sacrificial items that they need favors for or they say to pay her way into paradise because all the evil now these are recently new i don't know who put these up here but it's very eerie creepy feeling they say the wall has been falling down several times so they've actually had to rebuild it with the original stone my question is if she was buried here and they say that they killed her lover then where's her lover buried in it that's wrong i mean i don't know exactly so we have no clue what that is but daisy is there anything else on the tombstone that says otherwise i tried reading it and it's brother sorrow and then i ca dedicated to or dedicated this marvel to the memory of his sister and then i came beneath beneath it beneath it are doesn't make any sense and it's i can't tell beneath it are her oh beneath it are her remains this video is very weird and me and daisy are skeptical even reaching over the wall i i don't know guys you know people believe in ghosts we believe in spirits or whatnot it's just it's really eerie being here and i mean even even going to reach over but you see all the coins the hair bows there's a bracelet i don't know what this plastic piece is like a stone there's a couple stones so i would stick the camera over in there but i'm just i'm skeptical all right guys i want to thank you so much for watching definitely uh first of its kind if you guys like it let us know in the comment section but we hope you guys enjoyed it want to thank everyone who participated in this collaboration make sure you hit that thumbs up button drop a comment below subscribe to us if you haven't already and go check out the other channels and subscribe to them as well but as always guys it's matt and daisy signing out catch you on the next adventure you may be thinking this doesn't look like a gravesite we're at birmingham botanical gardens but i'll explain why we're here in just a second found that the people buried in the old red mountain cemetery are over a century old there was a period of time between 1888 and 1909 where the zoo and garden land was used as a pauper's cemetery the birmingham zoo is in that direction right over the hill is an incredibly beautiful area but what a lot of people don't know about this particular area is this was once a pauper graveyard there were 4 700 people buried here and today we're visiting a gravesite that is underneath the rose garden as beautiful as this rose garden is while they were putting it in they dug up at least three graves it's pretty eerie to think that just a little over 100 years ago ago around 1910 this was all graves now the interesting thing about this is i've done some research on it i do not know what they did with the bodies once they dug them up there's really no record so i don't know if they reburied them or if they went and had them cremated i'm not for sure most of the graves were unmarked so as far as you can see this was one large graveyard so pretty eerie to think about if you're ever visiting the birmingham zoo or the birmingham botanical gardens think about the people that were once buried here because there is nothing left to remember them by you would think they would at least have a sign up to say in remembrance of very very sad hey everybody it's robert with sidestep adventures and i'm out here with jd from the history underground and today we're going to show you a pretty neat tombstone that's right behind me so let's not waste any time let's take a look at it right now all right so immediately you see this this is a pretty pretty unique stone we often don't see stones like this and if we look we look closely at it you may notice it is in the design of a circus tent there's a really tragic story that goes along with this stone so on the front of the stone it says erected by the con t kennedy shows in memory of their comrades who lost their lives in a railroad wreck near columbus georgia november 22 1915. you can see the top of the gravestone here people have been leaving changes a little memorial for the people buried here right here it says this stone was created in 1916 by ellage and norman monument company edward wise allen foreman on the back the epitaph reads will not forget thee we who stay to work a little longer here thy name thy faith thy love shall be on memories label bright and clear and when or worried by the toil of life our heavy limbs shall be will come and one by one lie down upon dear mother earth with thee so hey guys so now that you've seen the grave let me tell you a little bit of the back story this is actually a mass grave here of all the remains that they could find of at least 24 people who were killed in this train wreck i've also heard that it's a mixture of human remains and also animal remains here because everything was kind of blended together by the fire so what happened was the conti kennedy circus train was leaving columbus and collided with the central of georgia passenger train both trains were going 30 miles an hour and ran straight into each other the impact was so bad that both of the train engines fused together there were no injuries on the central georgia passenger train but the circus train which was i believe all the cars were like made of wood um they just burned and lots of lots of people and animals lost their lives in this very very tragic wreck it was actually the fault of the conductor of the passenger train that left when he wasn't supposed to leave here and it's really it's a fascinating piece of area columbus georgia history i've actually tried to find the site where the two trains collided i haven't been successful in in pinpointing it yet but uh definitely a very tragic story here and growing up for years i heard that there were wild cougars around this area and black panthers and the story was always they had come from a circus train wreck really yes yes and um you know i don't know how true that that was that they actually came from this circus train wreck but uh it's pretty fascinating to see because i learned about this years after hearing the story about the uh the the wild black panthers um coming from the uh coming from a circus train wreck this this is kind of like the this is fertile ground for all kinds of urban legends it really is because it's such a crazy story yeah it's such a tragic very tragic loss of life with all of these circus workers who are just trying to go to the next show and uh through you know the complete accident they they lost their lives horribly right before thanksgiving too yeah all right i hope you all have enjoyed hearing just a little bit of this history here i think this is some really fascinating local history in a cemetery and as jd said just a minute ago if this monument wasn't here the the circus tent monument wasn't here you'd never know this story and it probably would have been forgotten to time so i hope you enjoyed this video don't forget to like share and subscribe and i'll see you on the next adventure you

Channel: Sidestep Adventures

Views: 133,514

Keywords: abandoned cemetery, ghost stories, haunted places, top 5 graves, top 5 spooky, spooky graves, man struck by lightning, history seekers, history underground, sidestep adventures, adventure archaeology, haunted cemetery, we found a cemetery, abandoned places, urbex, top 5 ghosts, top five, daily top 5, haunted, ghosts, cemetery, grave, forgotten cemetery, southern history, american history, strange history, hidden history

Id: Jou6_v8kRts

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020