With Halloween right around the corner, all things spooky are on my mind. Have you been to a haunted house feature yet? How about a night walk through a corn maze? Enjoying scary movie time in the comfort of your home...who's got popcorn? What else do you think of during the Halloween season? How about cemeteries? There's always lots of spooky things about cemeteries in general. Now combine the eerie feeling of cemeteries with a possible haunted statue placed on someone's grave.
Let's travel out East for the story of the Black Addie. The original statue was commissioned for Marian "Clover" Adams, wife of Henry Adams. Henry was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams. Some sources say Clover fell into a dark depression after the death of her father, other sources state there is no known information, but overall Clover died of suicide by drinking potassium cyanide in December 1885. She was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington D.C.
A simple headstone was originally placed at her gravesite, but Henry later had Augustus St. Gaudens create a statue for her site. What was created during a four year period was a mournful-looking seated woman carved out of pink granite. People who came to the cemetery and saw the statue called it Grief.
In 1907, sculptor Edward Pausch created a replica for General Felix Agnus, a Civil War veteran and newspaper publisher in Baltimore. The replica statue was placed on Agnus' family plot in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Maryland. Can I take a quick moment to enjoy the name of that cemetery? It's one of the best ones I've heard so far.
In the meantime, St. Gaudens' widow (not sure when he died) had an obvious issue with the fact that Pausch created the replica of the statue without permission and threatened legal action. She did sue and won, but Felix Agnus kept the statue anyway.
Agnus' wife died in 1992 and Agnus passed away in 1925. They were both buried under his replica statue. This status became known as the Black Aggie. It is said that because he kept the replica statue, a curse began and mysterious things started to happen.
Reportedly, grass would not grow around the statue. Visitors going to the cemetery at night claimed that the eyes of the statue glowed in the dark and, if someone looked straight in the eyes, they will become blind. It is said that other spirits in the cemetery would rise up out of their graves and sit around the Black Addie in adoration. One of the saddest things I've heard is that if pregnant women would walk by the statue, they would soon miscarry. I really hope and pray there was absolutely no truth to that!!!
At some point in time, there was supposedly a fraternity initiate who was to spend the night sleeping by the statue and was supposedly crushed to death when the statue came to life. Another report stated that the initiate went to the statue with two fraternity brothers and he was dared to sit upon the statue's lap. Once the initiate was sitting on the lap, the two fraternity boys claimed that her eyes began to glow and her arms reached out to encircle the initiate. The other two boys freaked out and ran off screaming. Hearing a commotion, the cemetery caretaker went to check things out. The caretaker arrived at the Black Addie and saw that statue was looking normal, but the dead boy rested in the lap, his face frozen in fear.
In 1962, a metal worker was found to have the statue's arm in the trunk of his car. He was taken to court and told the judge that the statue cut off its own arm and gave it to him. I have no idea what to think of this one. I can see if there are haunting things the statue can do, why would it give away its arm? This will never make sense to me. Was the statue like, "Hey, my arm is so cramped up from being in this position all these years, take it"? Out of every possible story about this statue, that is one I just can't believe.
Unfortunately, due to people showing up and defacing the statue, it was removed in 1966 by descendants of Felix Agnus. They donated the statue to the Maryland Museum of Art but the deal fell through and the statue instead went to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in 1967. The Smithsonian at some point gave the statue to the National Museum of Art. It spent a lot of time in the basement in storage, but eventually was placed in the courtyard of the Dolley Madison house in Washington. It is still there today.
People can still go visit the Agnus plot in the Druid Ridge Cemetery, but will only see the empty stone marked Agnus where the Black Addie used to reside.
Cursed or haunted or whatever...overall I find the Black Addie to be a beautiful statue. May it continue to reside peacefully in the National Museum of the Arts. If you go to visit, please don't take the arm!
-- Audre
Photo by: tobaccoland.us
Photo by: flickr.com
Sources:
Cursed Objects - Strange but True Stories of the World's Most Infamous Items - J.W. Ocker
mythcrafts.com
Comments