Locals Carson Oakes, Max Hughes and Hudson Stahl stand with Dr. Barret Lessenberry outside a tent pitched in his front yard along South Green Street. The tent is being transformed into a haunted house.
(BRENNAN CRAIN/WCLU NEWS)
BY BRENNAN D. CRAIN, WCLU News
GLASGOW — An ever popular haunted house will make its return to South Green Street this year.
Dr. Barret Lessenberry and his crew of approximately 50 people are gearing up for a big return this year of the tradition that began over 20 years ago. It’s called “Halloween on South Green Street.”
This year’s theme tells the partial history of a mysterious cemetery along South Green.
Glasgow is home to several cemeteries that hold generations of those who’ve passed by death’s way. And while elaborate funerals with pomp and circumstance are still common today, burials were not too impressive in yesteryears.
“Of course, everybody knows about a burial in a casket,” he said. “In those cemeteries, that’s what happened. Before the casket, they just buried people in bags. They called them death bags.”
Once a corpse was ready to be buried, it would be placed in the death bag and lowered into the grave. Some bodies never made it inside a bag and were placed in the ground without any covering.
Tradition has it that those bodies buried without any covering would emerge from graves and come back to haunt children on Halloween. Lessenberry said that could happen this year.
“They had bodies disappear down in Glasgow on South Green Street many years ago,” he said. “And if those bodies – those evil spirits in those bodies – could touch another child, that child would have that evil spirit in them.
So the ones that came up had intent to do evil to children. That’s what’s going to happen this year down on South Green Street.”
Each year includes a different story with quite a few local ties. This year’s setup includes the graves of many recognized names in Glasgow’s history.
“It’s pretty fun. Everybody has fun. The people doing it have fun. I think most of the children that come have fun,” Lessenberry said. “We’ve had as many as 1200 to 1300 people come through it.”
Halloween along South Green Street is often a picturesque display of the season as children scurry up and down the sidewalks donned in costumes, orange and red leaves line the roadway and residents sit perched on their front porches to hand out candy.
The haunted house is free and begins shortly after dark the evening of Halloween. It is located at 1015 S. Green St.
“I hope we have a good turnout. I think it’ll be a little scary. We don’t want anybody to come down here and have their child touched by one of these evil spirits that’s come up from the dead,” Lessenberry said. “Other than that, we want to invite everybody down.”