CourierFeature The Haunting of Dean Hill

Here we are, just two days before the spookiest day of the year… Halloween. Do you know any scary stories you can tell while sitting around the campfire? If not, then I have one for you. The main story centers around a plane crash that occurred on November 10, 1932. It happened high on a ridge in an area called Dean Hill. For those of you who don’t know about the place, it is a community in the northern part of the county near Kempville. (Don’t feel bad, my first trip there was just the other day, specifically for this story!) It gets its name from the Dean family who use to own more than two thousand acres in the hills and valleys there.

A few weeks ago, I decided to write a ghostly story and, when I asked around, most everybody told me I ought to do one on Dean Hill. So here we are. I wasn’t sure where to start. Then I remembered my friend, Connie Dyer (a teacher at SCHS), lives on Dean Hill. At least that is what’s written by her name in the phone book! But, before I got in touch with Connie, I ran into her sister, Jessie Goad (a secretary at their sister-in-laws law firm). Jessie told me I was right, Connie did live on Dean Hill Road and so did she. In fact, the family’s farm joins the farm where the crash occurred. She also told me that their father, Mack Holliman, would be THE person to interview for this story. Their grandfather, Esker Holliman, was there that fateful night and saw everything.

Where did they need to go? How were they going to get there? What would they find? The dogs didn’t let up. They continued hunting. Soon, they came to a stop, thinking they’d treed an animal when, in reality, it was a taillight from the plane that was hanging from a limb. Sam and Vestel had found the plane crash site. They found what had made the sputtering sound.

Over the years, Esker told his only boy, Mack, about what he saw and what he did in the aftermath of the county’s worst tragedy. I’m sure nobody in Dean Hill who was alive at that time ever forgot about the strangers who lost their lives right in their back door. As the years have passed, a spooky story has been passed along as well about what happens now. A ghostly story you might say.

Five Illinois residents were on that private plane, headed for the sunshine state. Elizabeth Hunter was on board with her two children, Robert, 4, and two year old Inez. (One report was that her husband died two years earlier in an auto crash). The pilot was a wealthy industrial engineer, Joseph F. Hirt. His wife came along, too. The group was headed to Fort Lauderdale to entertain guests for the winter. After taking off from Chicago, published reports indicate the plane touched down at an airport called Sky Harbor in the Murfreesboro area at around 5:15 p.m. that day. Their next stop would be Atlanta… but they never made it. Not even close.

Last week, I made the 30 mile drive from Chestnut Mound to sit down and speak with Mack and find out what he’d been told about ‘the plane crash’. “I was only two years old at the time and I don’t remember anything about it. But, in later years I spoke at length with my father and with Sam Bray and Vestel Clark (both deceased)… the first two men on the scene,” Mack explained.

Esker and his neighbor, Will Green (best friends and neighbors), were the next two people to arrive on the scene. “Daddy said they were very touched when they realized children were on board. The adults were dead. They were badly mangled. The little girl was still alive. They found her still in her mother’s lap. I’m sure that is all that saved her,” Mack said. “But I feel the elements probably contributed to her death, as it was cold and they were up there for quite a while.”

There was no 911 back then… no emergency team to come in and check things out. The men of Dean Hill were the only ones around on the dark and dreary night. What where they thinking? What were the wives and children thinking? These were hard working farmers. Men who were putting their lives on the line to help people they’d never met — people they had no connection to — people who were dead. They didn’t have flood lights to guide each other up the hill. They didn’t have cell phones or walkie-talkies to communicate and give directions. According to Mack, they just yelled at each other until the other one heard.

When the men came off the hill, the first house they came to was the home of a Mr. West. They had to get the people off the hillside. What would they do? The West family had the answer. He hitched horses to a ground slide and began the ascent up the slippery hillside.

What you are about to read is what the men told Mack. I got a real feel for everything as Mack and Connie took me to all the important places associated with the horrific crash. We talked inside his house and up on Dean Hill just feet from the site. I hung on every word and I could tell Mack enjoyed telling me what I’d never heard before — the story of Dean Hill and what makes it, well, haunted! Or at least that’s the tale!

It was a cool and misty night. A perfect time to go hunting. Sam and Vestel had left the comfort of their homes to go looking for possums and skunks, something they did regularly. Armed with their guns and faithful hunting dogs, the two pals set out on their mission like so many times before. Little did they know, their dogs would find something horrible in the woods. They’d find death.

Sam and Vestel couldn’t see into the night sky. It was misty, remember. But they could hear more than just the wind and the sounds dogs make when they’re tracking.

The men heard a sputtering sound. Then it would stop. They figured it had to be a plane. But what was happening up there? They had to know that something wasn’t right! Then the plane crashed. Don’t you know the sound was horrific? But where did it crash? Was it a few hundreds yards away, or miles away? Remember, these men were high on a hill. Of course they were familiar with the property, but sounds bouncing off the hills can be deceiving.

Think about it. On this night, a handmade slide, used to carry everything from watermelons to tobacco, was an ambulance and the Dean Hill residents were the EMTs.

“There were no bulldozers back then. No four wheel drive vehicles or four wheelers. The slide was all they had. The victims were put inside the West house before being taken to the funeral home. Originally, I recalled being told the baby girl died at the West house. Then I went to see Sam’s daughter, Louise Bray Holland, who lives down the road from me in the Bagdad community. She informed me the baby only stayed there for a while before being taken to the home of John Leslie “Les” Hackett,” Mack said. Lana Reece Kinslow grew up hearing about the plane crash, too. John Leslie was Lana’s grandfather, the owner of Hackett Funeral Home in Kempville. He was among the many residents who helped that night.

“My mother, Reba, was 8 years old that year. She told me she remembered the baby girl being brought to their house. She said she remembered it because she asked if she could keep it? The baby died there the next morning. To this day, I don’t understand why it was not taken to a Nashville hospital. Maybe it would have lived,”

Lana said. “And, of course, my grandfather kept the bodies in his funeral home until the families came for them. I lived in Kempville until my mid 20s and it has been a story everybody talked about and will continue to talk about. It was such a tragedy.”

After reading this, what do you think is the “scary story” of Dean Hill? You guessed it. That you can hear the baby crying.

Both Mack and Lana say they’ve heard such a ghost story all their lives. Have they heard it? Is it really there? Does it have to be a cool and misty night in November before you hear it?

Being the journalist I am, I decided to check this out. I joined the Holliman family’s annual hay ride up to Dean Hill which was on October 25th. I checked the weather that morning and, low and behold, the forecast was cool and misty!

What would I see? What would I hear? Anything? Nothing? While everyone was sitting around the bonfire, making those marshmallow treats, I ventured over into the woods (the place Mack and Connie pointed out to me) and suddenly, for no reason, I stopped in my tracks. There was silence, then I heard

Oh,