My Memory Is Still Wandering in Butler Town

As I mentioned yesterday, just a store or two away was Hunts Ice Cream. Directly across the tracks cross the street as the crow flies was the Hunt's big regal white house (above). During the Civil War it was a hospital. About 1900 the famous rape and murder victim Mary Phagan's grandparents lived in the house.


When my father was a teenager he and his running buddies beleived the was haunted at that time.  In recent years a young family bought the house and moved into it.  The new owner made some renovations and even added a second level.  Not long after or during the renovations the house was destroyed by fire.

My father and his buddies also believed the 1848 House across the tracks near South Cobb Drive was haunted.  There are some recent stories to confirm it is haunted.  When the Bill Dunaway owned it as a restaurant some of the female employees claimes to have encounters with a bold flirty spirit.  Also several people have witnessed shaking chandeliers.

Then, probably about 1925. the 1848 House was empty.  My father spent the night in the house on a dare.  During the night he felt something lightly pull on his hair and he got the hell out of there. In the daylight they came back and where my father felt someone or something tugging his hair was a mass of cobbwebs, which was probably the guilty party. 

The house has history. It has bullet holes in the walls left over from the Civil War.  The first Mayor of Marietta, James Bolan Glover had it built.

Now that we are back over the tracks up West Atlanta Road I mentioned George's Restaurant.  Next door was a beer joint, which name may have been Don Re's.  When I was a preteen maybe 9 or 10 years old my uncle Osmo came down from Indiana once or twice a year for a while.  He had three sisters and a brother that lived in Marietta and he would come down and make the rounds visiting his siblings.  The sisters, including my mother, loved to see him come but thought he drunk too much, of course any drinking to them would be too much.  One time on one of his visiting sprees he carried me with him.  We got as far as the beer joint on West Atlanta Road.  We sat there for hours with him drinking beer and me drinking Coke and water.  Osmo also gave me a handfull of change to play the jukebox, which had a remote at each booth, which I thought was neat.

Needless to say,my mother was horrified that I spent a good part of a day in a beer joint.  Osmo always started a good fight when he visited and probably drove back to Indiana chuckling.