MEMORY HILL CEMETERY

The cemetery in Milledgeville, Georgia, might just qualify as the weirdest graveyard in the whole nation. This twenty-acre resting place, known as Memory Hill, has three odd legends associated with it.

Dixie Haygood

Photo shows three men trying, unsuccessfully,
to force a billard cue down to the ground,
while Dixie Haygood is able to prevent them
from doing it by the mere touch of her hand.

Memory Hill is the final resting place of woman who was known as dangerous and odd in life, and who continues to spread this reputation in death.

Dixie Haygood was a Milledgeville resident born just before the Civil War. Her legend quickly spread, as she was reported to be a witch with supernatural powers. She was known to go into violent, uncontrollable rages. She could lift up heavy wooden tables with full grown men sitting on them. Local residents both respected and feared the strange, powerful young woman. The Macon Telegraph described her strange powers this way:

"It is said that Dixie Jarratt Haygood, whose stage name was Annie Abbott, had a strange 'power.' She could lift 4 men on a chair by simply touching the chair. She could stand upon one foot and resist the united efforts of four strong men to move her. She could lift men into mid-air by placing her open hands upon their heads. She is believed to have performed for the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria, the Czar of Russia, and other royalty of Europe."

According to her obituary in the Union Recorder, "Mrs. Haygood, also known as the Little Georgia Magnet, achieved a reputation as a spiritualist which not only made her well known in this country, but in many of the European nations. She appeared before the crowned heads of Europe whe she demonstrated her supernatural powers."

Just before her death Dixie Haygood reportedly placed a curse upon her own gravesite. She proclaimed that anyone who stood between the grave and the sun would be cursed forever. This legend seems to have unfairly affected the peace of the family buried next to her, the Yates family.

Each year, just before Christmas, a large hole opens up just next to the Yates plots and swallows up a chunk of land. In some years the depression has actually consumed some of the Yates family's tombstones. Each year the hole is filled in-sometimes even with cement-and eacj year the same thing happens again. Stories say that this is the effect of the vindictiveness of Dixie Haygood and is her effort to prove her powers still work. Others claim that Dixie is so frightful that the Yates family is striving to escape being buried next to such an evil being.

Echoes of the Fish Family Mausoleum

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century a typhoid epidemic swept through Georgia. Many Milledgeville residents buried their loved ones at Memory Hill. One resident, William Fish, found himself depressed and lonely after burying his wife and child. Unable to cope with his grief, he entered the gates of Memory Hill one night, went into the small crypt that held the remains of his family, and blew his head off in a desperate bid to reunite his shattered family. It's said that this act not only reunited the family but set their spirits into a state of extreme restlessness. Legend has it that if one knocks on the door of the Fish mausoleum, a faint but distinct knock answers from the inside.

The Screaming Devil Faces of Memory Hill

One tombstone in Memory Hill features a tall spire surrounded by an iron fence. This fence is decorated with hundreds of small devilish faces. No one is sure who sculpted these faces or why they are there. On Halloween, they say, these faces let out bloodcurdling, high-pitched screams. People often visit the fence-demon grave in the dead of night around Halloween to hear the strange sounds for themselves.