The year is 1885, you are at the location that is now 395 Penns Cave Rd, Spring Mills, PA, when you see a woman dressed entirely in black mourning clothes walking down the road. She holds an infant in her arms as she walks towards the Swamp Church, repeating one thing, a name. “Will, Will, Will” The woman calls as she walks towards the church. As she enters, the church fills with the glow of candlelight as if someone had been waiting for her inside, as she walks down the aisle she stops at each pew, holding out her baby to offer an introduction to unseen guests. 

This is the story of the Swamp church ghost, supposedly the apparition of a woman who, 20 years prior, was in love with Will Stalwart when he was suddenly enlisted in company ‘D’ of the 148th Pennsylvania volunteers. He left to fight the good fight, and the woman stayed loyal; but as a result of their last night spent together, the woman had grown pregnant. They had planned to marry but without her lover there to confirm this everybody shunned her. Alas, he met an untimely death at a crossroads in Virginia called Chancellorsville and would never return. Turned away by the church, only god could know her truth, that she was loyal. And so he rewarded her with an afterlife where she goes to the church where her lover awaits her, and shows everyone their child.

One of the more interesting parts of this story is not the story itself, but the potential of its location to generate spiritually spooky energy. The location of swamp church just so happens to be in the middle of swampland on the bank of Penn’s Creek by Farmers Mills. This points to Penn’s creek being a possible spiritual energy source that these paranormal events could be related to. There is also the legend of the Headless Ghost of Sinking Creek, which is a decapitated man with a lantern that had walked along the old railroad bed in the area. He’s said to be shuffling up and down the area in search of his lost head. This railbed is also located along Penn’s Creek. With a few other stories on blogs and posts of locals having similar hauntings nearby. One being the tale of a phantom handcar, which can still be heard on certain nights. Upon digging slightly deeper into the reasonings for the hauntings in the region, there is one fascinating similarity that these stories share, location. All of the local hauntings are happening near Penn’s Creek. This small stream flows by all of these haunting sites and comes from the Penn’s Cave spring. Several stories depict bodies of water as either haunted or possessed. Bodies of flowing/moving water could be conduits of spiritual energy stemming from kinetic energy of the water.  Adding to this is the fact that Penn’s Creek is the longest limestone bed creek In the state of Pennsylvania. The fact that Penn’s Creek is a limestone bed creek is relevant because of limestone supposedly being a conductor of spiritual energy since it is a soft stone and easy to make impressions on. These two things mixed together could possibly give an effect similar to one described in “The Stone Tape” where instead of time being imprinted onto the landscape and rock using tools, It is being imprinted into the riverbed itself using the weathering of the running water. This would leave spiritual records literally embedded into the limestone itself, similar to the stone tape theory. While there is no factual claim to any of this ,it makes the region of the story all the more fascinating.  Read More