September 28, 2024 • 20 mins
The history of South Carolina has tragedy and horror beyond what most realize. In the small community of Lambertown stands a tree that once served a terrible purpose. It is the old hanging tree, and though the limb that once stretched across road has been removed it's memory remains.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, folks, this is Jonathan Poenix, the Carolina Storytellers, coming
to you with an important important message. Okay, this is
an adult podcast, so it shouldn't be listened to by children.
And if you're listening to this, I assume that you're
an adult. And if you're not an adult, that's bad
because some of the things that we cover on this
podcast are topics that really younger ages shouldn't be listening to.
(00:25):
There's murder, there's death, there's blood, guts, and core things
that really they don't want to be exposed to. So
as an adult, I'm gonna ask you to keep the
kids away, but I don't think every one of you
is doing it, So I'm gonna have to do something
to curb this behavior. If you don't stop, maybe I'll
tell your kids where sin is real address this, or
maybe I'll tell them where babies come from, or how
(00:47):
to get a hold of the Easter Buddy and the toothberry,
or maybe I'll just tell them why the mailman always
brings them birthday presents and why Daddy is really mad
about it. So remember, keep the kids away from the
adult material and enjoy the show. This is the Carolina Storytime.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
In the dark looks with shadows, creep stories rise as
the Kim far reads Jot, the voice of haunts it
through with every sale he bends off. Will Echoes whispered
to night Crossy by the fire light of Fierce t Lie,
(01:32):
the General letter storyteller Joan through the Spekchan of fas
in Fight, Fangels of darknessing Night and nights.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Of the Night, the lad sales of Frightened dread, every
heartbeat a path we shread, Bean.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Expanses, happy Storry. Hey, folks, welcome to the show. I
am Jonathan Phoenix. You're Carolina storyteller. It's great to have
you guys with me here on what maybe the last
Saturday of September by the time this one runs first
Saturday after of October. Either way, it's getting right into
(02:16):
the hardest spooky season. Now we have nobody arguing that
it's not spooky season. Everybody agrees at this point this
is spooky season, which is wonderful because now we're talking
about ghost stories, we're talking about horror movies, and we're
talking about hauntings, and I just love that stuff. You know,
my friend Stevie with the Truther or Demons podcast is
(02:38):
going to places and holding seances and using spirit boxes
and doing paranormal investigations. My buddy Tally's out telling ghost
stories all around the Carolinas. I'm going to be going
and doing some spots on the Carolinas. So spooky season
is in its full effect.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Remember, guys, if you want to support this show, you
can go to Patreon dot com for Slash the Carolina Storyteller.
That is patreon dot com forward Slash the de Carolina Storyteller.
You can support the podcast. You can check out all
of our exclusive stuff, all the behind the scenes stuff
for Valmont. You can get access to our discord community,
(03:17):
all kinds of great stuff for as little as three
dollars a month. You can really help to put this
show on and keep this show going, So please go
over to Patreon dot com forward Slash the Carolina Storyteller.
And of course you can get our merchandise at the
Carolinastoryteller dot com. Belinka there is in the store. It
will take you straight to the Pretophile store where you
(03:38):
can get all kinds of great stuff like the Valmont mug,
which is the newest thing that we've added, which I
think is going to be a big hit when Valmont
it breaks December first. So now that I've been a
show for a few minutes, let's talk about today's story.
(03:58):
So you know, I grew up in George Town, South Carolina,
and I spent a lot of time traveling to Monk's
Corner where my father lived in Berkeley County, South Carolina.
So I kind of grew up in two counties, and
our story has something in common with that, and the
fact that it's actually technically in the history of two counties.
(04:20):
You see, today we're going to be talking about a
specific location that is located technically halfway between Berkeley County
and Georgetown County. And for a good period of time
it was in Berkeley County, but now the Berkeley County
line has moved back about five miles and the tree
sits in Lamberttown. That's right, I sit a tree today
(04:44):
where you're going to be talking about the Hangman Tree
of Lamberttown. Now, a little bit of backstory on this tree.
I was a firefighter for Georgetown County back in early
two thousands, and I'm talking early, like we still had
the Twin Towers early, okay, And as I worked as
a firefighter. I actually worked at the Lambert Town fire station.
(05:08):
One of the things they told me is that the
tree there, and it is right there along the side
of the road. There is actually a barricade built around it.
The limb that used to hang out over the road
is no longer there, but the road actually runs where
the old road ran two hundred and fifty years ago
during the Revolutionary War. It's amazing to think about mind
(05:29):
blowing stuff here. This road has been in this location,
this tree has stood for that long, and they actually
if there is a wreck there, it was said that
the people would respond to the tree first before they
checked on the patients. That's how important the tree is
(05:49):
to that community. It's a piece of their history. To
the people that live in that community, and some of
them have lived there for their families have been there
for hundreds of years, and he represents the history of
that community. So let's talk about the tree now. I
always thought it was an oak, but a lot of
(06:11):
the documentation says that it's a cypress tree. But I
think it's more of an oak. Honestly, I just think
that the botanists don't know what trees are when they
look at them sometimes, And I also think that people
who write ghost stories aren't necessarily botanists. But I've actually
physically seen this tree, and I know for a fact,
I believe this tree is an oak, and it has
(06:32):
stood there along the side of the road for more
than two hundred years. This tree in its heyday was
used for hanging, particularly because it had a limb, a
very long limb that stretched out almost all the way
to the other side of the road. So what they
(06:52):
would do is they would, you know, hang someone for
whatever reason, you know, maybe they were criminal, maybe they
were a slave trying to escape, maybe they were a tory,
maybe they just wanted to hang somebody that day, whatever
reason they saw, they would hang them from this tree
and leave their body hanging there over the road as
(07:13):
kind of a warning for whatever it was that they
did to anybody else, Hey, don't do this, or you're
gonna get hung. It was not the nicest thing in
the world to do. My understanding is is that that
tree was continually used up until around World War Two,
(07:35):
when the community cut the limb off because it was
no longer as much of a segregated community and they
didn't want because of course, by that time it was
more of a racial thing for hanging in that place,
and it was not gonna happen there anymore, they decided,
Which is interesting because at that time it was in
(07:57):
Georgetown County, but originally it was in Berkeley County. Now
Berkeley County is very famous for having a whole bunch
of swamp on its northern tip next to Georgetown County.
These swamps kind of intermingle and go out to the coast,
really in between Georgetown and Charleston. And understand, Berkeley, you know,
(08:23):
borders Georgetown on the north and Charleston on the east.
You know, Charleston has this slip of kind of like
beachfront property that also used to be Berkeley County. So
it is this area here where the swamp Fox did
all of his shenanigans. Really, and the story behind the
(08:46):
tree is that one day the British had learned that
Francis Marion, this is after we had retaken Charleston, learned
that Francis Marion and his men were in an area
called Pineville, which is not very far from the tree,
maybe about fifteen miles. But in fact Francis Marion was
(09:10):
in Jamestown, but they decided they were going to march
a small contingent up to Pineville and take Francis Marion out. Now,
this is something that the British didn't ever learn from,
because every time they tried to take Francis Marion out
they ended up losing badly. It was like the dumbest
thing they could do. Let's go take out Francis Marion. Well,
let's go get our butt whooped again, because honestly, Francis
(09:35):
Marion gave zero cares. I could say another word, but
I'm gonna use cares this one to try and keep
it a little less explicit this time, because the story's
bad enough. Anyway, Francis Marion and his men were well prepared.
They got ready. And this is the other thing that's
interesting in Berkeley County. And just a little side note
(09:58):
that I'm gonna throw in here. There are a lot
of names that trace all the way back to the
Revolution here in Berkeley County. Marion, Piegler, Bono. These are
the names of places, but they're also the name of
people who were still here, some of them. Even William
Piegler was the mayor of Monk's Corner and before that,
(10:22):
I believe he was. I believe he was county supervisor
for some time, or maybe it was reverse. Maybe he's
county supervisor now and he was the mayor. And his
name actually dates all the way back. His family dates
all the way back to the Revolutionary War. So for
two hundred and fifty years, his family has lived here
(10:43):
in this area. And you know they fought on our
side for you know, for the revolution. So Captain Piegler
back then, Francis Marion, Captain Bono, they get their men
together and they wait for these toys to show up,
and then they rout them. I mean they just routed them.
(11:07):
And as they're getting away, they capture a few of them.
And one that they capture as he's riding away on
one of Captain Bono's horses with a whole bunch of
Captain bono stolen stuff. As he's riding away, Captain Bono
captures him and brings him up and he asks him
(11:29):
in his name, and he says, my name is Jack Spratt.
Obviously his name was not Jack Spratt, but he refused
to give his name, probably to protect his friends and
family from being identified by him. But he refused to
give his name. He said, my name is Jack Spratt.
And Captain Bono kind of saw this as very honorable,
(11:52):
and he figured that if he was an honorable man,
he deserved an honorable man's death. So they took him
to the tree. They he gave Jack Sprat a piece
of rope, told him to tie it into a noose,
climb the tree, tied around the tree, and hang himself.
Do the honorable thing. Take you don't want to turn
him in fun. You can kill yourself right now so
(12:13):
that we don't have to torch you. And you did it.
Jack climbed the tree, got on the branch, tied the
rope off, put the noose around his neck, knelt down,
smiled after the colonial soldiers that were grouped there, waved
to them, and then leapt off the branch, of course,
his neck then being snapped by the rope as it
(12:34):
stopped him from falling the rest of the fifteen feet,
and then they left his body hanging there for quite
some time. He just hung there. Supposedly he hung there
and took the bones, and his bones fell to the ground,
(12:56):
and then his bones were just left there. He was
never actually buried, And that could tie to why people
say that the tree has a paranormal mystery. A couple
of years later, there was a man that was captured
(13:16):
by the Tories. He was one of Francis Marion's men,
and he was actually one of the men directly from
Francis Marion's own brigade. So they took this as a win.
So they went straight to the tree, and they thought
they were gonna get some payback. They strapped a rope
to his neck, swung it around the tree, and pushed
(13:39):
him off and hung him, and then they rode away,
leaving him there hanging. Well, as he was there hanging,
a group of loyalists, no not loyalists, a group of
colonials came up and saw him and took him down.
They cut the rope, and so shortly thereafter the story
(14:04):
started to be told of the man with a noose
around his neck sitting outside of the church, just down
from the hanging tree, and it's really frightened these Tory captains. Well,
fast forward a couple of years, America wins everything that's forgiven.
We're going about forming a nation. Now, this is the
seventeen eighties, and his captain is sitting there and he's
(14:28):
borning a drink and a man walks in. He orders
a drink, and the captain looks at him like he's
seen a ghost, and he's like, didn't I hang you?
Guy's like, yeah, you did, only right after you left,
some colonials showed up and cut my noose. So I lived.
So that's a funny side story that goes along with
(14:49):
the Hanging Tree. But you know, there was at one
point in time a very supernatural suspicion about the hanging
tree because this man had surpun. And then the first
thing he did when he survived was he got a
bottle of hoots and sat in front of the church
there and drink himself happy, which I assume I would
(15:11):
do too if I had just survived being hung. He
was not well hung. I guess there's my joke for
the day. Fast forward a few decades and people began
to claim that as they rode through the road at night,
they could see Jack spratted kneeling getting ready to jump
(15:37):
from the limb of the hanging tree. In fact, it
became so common that many times they called thinking that
it was maybe an escaped slave at one point in time,
or a criminal or somebody's child up in the tree,
only to when they go investigate it further for there
to be nothing there. Now, this became so common that
it was reported as far as in the Nintheen fifties,
(16:01):
just before the limb came down. So everybody kept saying
they saw this same spectru They also rumored to see
spirits walking around the tree as if they were the
condemned men being led to where they would be hung.
Even as far as when I was a firefighter, people
(16:23):
would say that they had been out there on some
night when it was cool and it was foggy, and
they swore that they saw something by the tree. And again,
this tree became such an important cultural artifact to these people,
and it still stands to this day minus aforced the
very long limb that hangs out. And I'm sorry, I'm
(16:46):
just thinking back. It was not in the fifties. It
was in the late seventies that the limb was taken off.
The limb was not taken off until the late seventies.
I was wrong when I stated that earlier. That's my retraction.
I just remember because Bruce Or, who was an author
(17:06):
who wrote about this in one of his books, had
stated in his book that he had at one point
in time driven under the tree and seen this spirit
there on the tree. And of course I heard about
it all my life, but I never saw the branch
because by the time I was around in the late
(17:28):
nineteen eighties driving through there to visit my dad, there
was no branch on the hanging tree hanging over the road.
But folks, that's our story for today. I really hope
that you enjoyed it. I hope that you found it informative.
If you ever get to drive down what is known
(17:49):
as Saint de Lights Road between Georgetown and Jamestown, or
technically between what is it Highway five WU one and
Highway forty one, when you come to the area of Lambertown,
right before you get in there, if you look to
the right as you're heading towards Highway forty one, you
will see a barrier right beside a large oak tree
(18:12):
that is directly I'm talking about. The pavement goes up
to the start of the roots beside the road. This
tree is the legendary hanging tree of Lambertown, and it
has stood there for more than two hundred and fifty
years and probably seen more death than the os will
see in our lifetime, for regardless of good or bad circumstances.
(18:37):
And it is unknown how many spirits may be wandering
around this particular tree, in this quiet little neighborhood in
the middle of Georgetown County, right there in the swamp,
where Francis Marion used to plan his raids and do
(18:58):
all of his stuff to deal with the British. Thanks
for tuning into the show, Thanks for giving it a listen.
I'm glad that I had you guys here. I again
really hope that you enjoyed the story. Remember, go to
patreon dot com forward slash the Tea Carolina Storyteller to
support the show. I can't stress enough how much how
important that is. Also, if you want to see us
(19:19):
on YouTube, we're on YouTube The Carolina Storyteller'd love to
have you subscribe. We're going to be doing live shows
starting in October and then all next year we'll be
having live shows every Friday evening. We don't have a
time set yet, actually working on the time, but it'll
be Friday evenings live shows, and then of course at
(19:41):
midnight the new podcast episode whatever story for that week,
will drop and the live shows will be related directly
to the story. Anyway, that's our show for today, folks.
Thank you for being here. We'll see you next time,
and stay spooking my friends.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Six
Hi, folks, this is Jonathan Poenix, the Carolina Storytellers, coming
to you with an important important message. Okay, this is
an adult podcast, so it shouldn't be listened to by children.
And if you're listening to this, I assume that you're
an adult. And if you're not an adult, that's bad
because some of the things that we cover on this
podcast are topics that really younger ages shouldn't be listening to.
(00:25):
There's murder, there's death, there's blood, guts, and core things
that really they don't want to be exposed to. So
as an adult, I'm gonna ask you to keep the
kids away, but I don't think every one of you
is doing it, So I'm gonna have to do something
to curb this behavior. If you don't stop, maybe I'll
tell your kids where sin is real address this, or
maybe I'll tell them where babies come from, or how
(00:47):
to get a hold of the Easter Buddy and the toothberry,
or maybe I'll just tell them why the mailman always
brings them birthday presents and why Daddy is really mad
about it. So remember, keep the kids away from the
adult material and enjoy the show. This is the Carolina Storytime.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
In the dark looks with shadows, creep stories rise as
the Kim far reads Jot, the voice of haunts it
through with every sale he bends off. Will Echoes whispered
to night Crossy by the fire light of Fierce t Lie,
(01:32):
the General letter storyteller Joan through the Spekchan of fas
in Fight, Fangels of darknessing Night and nights.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Of the Night, the lad sales of Frightened dread, every
heartbeat a path we shread, Bean.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Expanses, happy Storry. Hey, folks, welcome to the show. I
am Jonathan Phoenix. You're Carolina storyteller. It's great to have
you guys with me here on what maybe the last
Saturday of September by the time this one runs first
Saturday after of October. Either way, it's getting right into
(02:16):
the hardest spooky season. Now we have nobody arguing that
it's not spooky season. Everybody agrees at this point this
is spooky season, which is wonderful because now we're talking
about ghost stories, we're talking about horror movies, and we're
talking about hauntings, and I just love that stuff. You know,
my friend Stevie with the Truther or Demons podcast is
(02:38):
going to places and holding seances and using spirit boxes
and doing paranormal investigations. My buddy Tally's out telling ghost
stories all around the Carolinas. I'm going to be going
and doing some spots on the Carolinas. So spooky season
is in its full effect.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Remember, guys, if you want to support this show, you
can go to Patreon dot com for Slash the Carolina Storyteller.
That is patreon dot com forward Slash the de Carolina Storyteller.
You can support the podcast. You can check out all
of our exclusive stuff, all the behind the scenes stuff
for Valmont. You can get access to our discord community,
(03:17):
all kinds of great stuff for as little as three
dollars a month. You can really help to put this
show on and keep this show going, So please go
over to Patreon dot com forward Slash the Carolina Storyteller.
And of course you can get our merchandise at the
Carolinastoryteller dot com. Belinka there is in the store. It
will take you straight to the Pretophile store where you
(03:38):
can get all kinds of great stuff like the Valmont mug,
which is the newest thing that we've added, which I
think is going to be a big hit when Valmont
it breaks December first. So now that I've been a
show for a few minutes, let's talk about today's story.
(03:58):
So you know, I grew up in George Town, South Carolina,
and I spent a lot of time traveling to Monk's
Corner where my father lived in Berkeley County, South Carolina.
So I kind of grew up in two counties, and
our story has something in common with that, and the
fact that it's actually technically in the history of two counties.
(04:20):
You see, today we're going to be talking about a
specific location that is located technically halfway between Berkeley County
and Georgetown County. And for a good period of time
it was in Berkeley County, but now the Berkeley County
line has moved back about five miles and the tree
sits in Lamberttown. That's right, I sit a tree today
(04:44):
where you're going to be talking about the Hangman Tree
of Lamberttown. Now, a little bit of backstory on this tree.
I was a firefighter for Georgetown County back in early
two thousands, and I'm talking early, like we still had
the Twin Towers early, okay, And as I worked as
a firefighter. I actually worked at the Lambert Town fire station.
(05:08):
One of the things they told me is that the
tree there, and it is right there along the side
of the road. There is actually a barricade built around it.
The limb that used to hang out over the road
is no longer there, but the road actually runs where
the old road ran two hundred and fifty years ago
during the Revolutionary War. It's amazing to think about mind
(05:29):
blowing stuff here. This road has been in this location,
this tree has stood for that long, and they actually
if there is a wreck there, it was said that
the people would respond to the tree first before they
checked on the patients. That's how important the tree is
(05:49):
to that community. It's a piece of their history. To
the people that live in that community, and some of
them have lived there for their families have been there
for hundreds of years, and he represents the history of
that community. So let's talk about the tree now. I
always thought it was an oak, but a lot of
(06:11):
the documentation says that it's a cypress tree. But I
think it's more of an oak. Honestly, I just think
that the botanists don't know what trees are when they
look at them sometimes, And I also think that people
who write ghost stories aren't necessarily botanists. But I've actually
physically seen this tree, and I know for a fact,
I believe this tree is an oak, and it has
(06:32):
stood there along the side of the road for more
than two hundred years. This tree in its heyday was
used for hanging, particularly because it had a limb, a
very long limb that stretched out almost all the way
to the other side of the road. So what they
(06:52):
would do is they would, you know, hang someone for
whatever reason, you know, maybe they were criminal, maybe they
were a slave trying to escape, maybe they were a tory,
maybe they just wanted to hang somebody that day, whatever
reason they saw, they would hang them from this tree
and leave their body hanging there over the road as
(07:13):
kind of a warning for whatever it was that they
did to anybody else, Hey, don't do this, or you're
gonna get hung. It was not the nicest thing in
the world to do. My understanding is is that that
tree was continually used up until around World War Two,
(07:35):
when the community cut the limb off because it was
no longer as much of a segregated community and they
didn't want because of course, by that time it was
more of a racial thing for hanging in that place,
and it was not gonna happen there anymore, they decided,
Which is interesting because at that time it was in
(07:57):
Georgetown County, but originally it was in Berkeley County. Now
Berkeley County is very famous for having a whole bunch
of swamp on its northern tip next to Georgetown County.
These swamps kind of intermingle and go out to the coast,
really in between Georgetown and Charleston. And understand, Berkeley, you know,
(08:23):
borders Georgetown on the north and Charleston on the east.
You know, Charleston has this slip of kind of like
beachfront property that also used to be Berkeley County. So
it is this area here where the swamp Fox did
all of his shenanigans. Really, and the story behind the
(08:46):
tree is that one day the British had learned that
Francis Marion, this is after we had retaken Charleston, learned
that Francis Marion and his men were in an area
called Pineville, which is not very far from the tree,
maybe about fifteen miles. But in fact Francis Marion was
(09:10):
in Jamestown, but they decided they were going to march
a small contingent up to Pineville and take Francis Marion out. Now,
this is something that the British didn't ever learn from,
because every time they tried to take Francis Marion out
they ended up losing badly. It was like the dumbest
thing they could do. Let's go take out Francis Marion. Well,
let's go get our butt whooped again, because honestly, Francis
(09:35):
Marion gave zero cares. I could say another word, but
I'm gonna use cares this one to try and keep
it a little less explicit this time, because the story's
bad enough. Anyway, Francis Marion and his men were well prepared.
They got ready. And this is the other thing that's
interesting in Berkeley County. And just a little side note
(09:58):
that I'm gonna throw in here. There are a lot
of names that trace all the way back to the
Revolution here in Berkeley County. Marion, Piegler, Bono. These are
the names of places, but they're also the name of
people who were still here, some of them. Even William
Piegler was the mayor of Monk's Corner and before that,
(10:22):
I believe he was. I believe he was county supervisor
for some time, or maybe it was reverse. Maybe he's
county supervisor now and he was the mayor. And his
name actually dates all the way back. His family dates
all the way back to the Revolutionary War. So for
two hundred and fifty years, his family has lived here
(10:43):
in this area. And you know they fought on our
side for you know, for the revolution. So Captain Piegler
back then, Francis Marion, Captain Bono, they get their men
together and they wait for these toys to show up,
and then they rout them. I mean they just routed them.
(11:07):
And as they're getting away, they capture a few of them.
And one that they capture as he's riding away on
one of Captain Bono's horses with a whole bunch of
Captain bono stolen stuff. As he's riding away, Captain Bono
captures him and brings him up and he asks him
(11:29):
in his name, and he says, my name is Jack Spratt.
Obviously his name was not Jack Spratt, but he refused
to give his name, probably to protect his friends and
family from being identified by him. But he refused to
give his name. He said, my name is Jack Spratt.
And Captain Bono kind of saw this as very honorable,
(11:52):
and he figured that if he was an honorable man,
he deserved an honorable man's death. So they took him
to the tree. They he gave Jack Sprat a piece
of rope, told him to tie it into a noose,
climb the tree, tied around the tree, and hang himself.
Do the honorable thing. Take you don't want to turn
him in fun. You can kill yourself right now so
(12:13):
that we don't have to torch you. And you did it.
Jack climbed the tree, got on the branch, tied the
rope off, put the noose around his neck, knelt down,
smiled after the colonial soldiers that were grouped there, waved
to them, and then leapt off the branch, of course,
his neck then being snapped by the rope as it
(12:34):
stopped him from falling the rest of the fifteen feet,
and then they left his body hanging there for quite
some time. He just hung there. Supposedly he hung there
and took the bones, and his bones fell to the ground,
(12:56):
and then his bones were just left there. He was
never actually buried, And that could tie to why people
say that the tree has a paranormal mystery. A couple
of years later, there was a man that was captured
(13:16):
by the Tories. He was one of Francis Marion's men,
and he was actually one of the men directly from
Francis Marion's own brigade. So they took this as a win.
So they went straight to the tree, and they thought
they were gonna get some payback. They strapped a rope
to his neck, swung it around the tree, and pushed
(13:39):
him off and hung him, and then they rode away,
leaving him there hanging. Well, as he was there hanging,
a group of loyalists, no not loyalists, a group of
colonials came up and saw him and took him down.
They cut the rope, and so shortly thereafter the story
(14:04):
started to be told of the man with a noose
around his neck sitting outside of the church, just down
from the hanging tree, and it's really frightened these Tory captains. Well,
fast forward a couple of years, America wins everything that's forgiven.
We're going about forming a nation. Now, this is the
seventeen eighties, and his captain is sitting there and he's
(14:28):
borning a drink and a man walks in. He orders
a drink, and the captain looks at him like he's
seen a ghost, and he's like, didn't I hang you?
Guy's like, yeah, you did, only right after you left,
some colonials showed up and cut my noose. So I lived.
So that's a funny side story that goes along with
(14:49):
the Hanging Tree. But you know, there was at one
point in time a very supernatural suspicion about the hanging
tree because this man had surpun. And then the first
thing he did when he survived was he got a
bottle of hoots and sat in front of the church
there and drink himself happy, which I assume I would
(15:11):
do too if I had just survived being hung. He
was not well hung. I guess there's my joke for
the day. Fast forward a few decades and people began
to claim that as they rode through the road at night,
they could see Jack spratted kneeling getting ready to jump
(15:37):
from the limb of the hanging tree. In fact, it
became so common that many times they called thinking that
it was maybe an escaped slave at one point in time,
or a criminal or somebody's child up in the tree,
only to when they go investigate it further for there
to be nothing there. Now, this became so common that
it was reported as far as in the Nintheen fifties,
(16:01):
just before the limb came down. So everybody kept saying
they saw this same spectru They also rumored to see
spirits walking around the tree as if they were the
condemned men being led to where they would be hung.
Even as far as when I was a firefighter, people
(16:23):
would say that they had been out there on some
night when it was cool and it was foggy, and
they swore that they saw something by the tree. And again,
this tree became such an important cultural artifact to these people,
and it still stands to this day minus aforced the
very long limb that hangs out. And I'm sorry, I'm
(16:46):
just thinking back. It was not in the fifties. It
was in the late seventies that the limb was taken off.
The limb was not taken off until the late seventies.
I was wrong when I stated that earlier. That's my retraction.
I just remember because Bruce Or, who was an author
(17:06):
who wrote about this in one of his books, had
stated in his book that he had at one point
in time driven under the tree and seen this spirit
there on the tree. And of course I heard about
it all my life, but I never saw the branch
because by the time I was around in the late
(17:28):
nineteen eighties driving through there to visit my dad, there
was no branch on the hanging tree hanging over the road.
But folks, that's our story for today. I really hope
that you enjoyed it. I hope that you found it informative.
If you ever get to drive down what is known
(17:49):
as Saint de Lights Road between Georgetown and Jamestown, or
technically between what is it Highway five WU one and
Highway forty one, when you come to the area of Lambertown,
right before you get in there, if you look to
the right as you're heading towards Highway forty one, you
will see a barrier right beside a large oak tree
(18:12):
that is directly I'm talking about. The pavement goes up
to the start of the roots beside the road. This
tree is the legendary hanging tree of Lambertown, and it
has stood there for more than two hundred and fifty
years and probably seen more death than the os will
see in our lifetime, for regardless of good or bad circumstances.
(18:37):
And it is unknown how many spirits may be wandering
around this particular tree, in this quiet little neighborhood in
the middle of Georgetown County, right there in the swamp,
where Francis Marion used to plan his raids and do
(18:58):
all of his stuff to deal with the British. Thanks
for tuning into the show, Thanks for giving it a listen.
I'm glad that I had you guys here. I again
really hope that you enjoyed the story. Remember, go to
patreon dot com forward slash the Tea Carolina Storyteller to
support the show. I can't stress enough how much how
important that is. Also, if you want to see us
(19:19):
on YouTube, we're on YouTube The Carolina Storyteller'd love to
have you subscribe. We're going to be doing live shows
starting in October and then all next year we'll be
having live shows every Friday evening. We don't have a
time set yet, actually working on the time, but it'll
be Friday evenings live shows, and then of course at
(19:41):
midnight the new podcast episode whatever story for that week,
will drop and the live shows will be related directly
to the story. Anyway, that's our show for today, folks.
Thank you for being here. We'll see you next time,
and stay spooking my friends.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Six
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