BY AUSTIN SPEIGNER
ELMORE/AUTAUGA NEWS
The Elmore County Museum welcomed author Wil Elrick Sunday afternoon to share some stories from his book “Alabama Lore: The Choccolocco Monster, Huggin’ Molly, the Lost Town of Cottonport and Other Mysterious Tales.”
Jan Wood opened the meeting by reading a statement to introduce Elrick.
“Wil Elrick hails from Guntersville in the northeastern part of Alabama. He is a writer and ‘weirdologist’ who loves telling stories, whether as a tour guide to historic Huntsville or with friends around a campfire. He can often be found ‘off the beaten path’ researching historical, weird or unusual tales.” Although an author of folklore and tall tales, he also officiates weddings, sometimes dressed as Sasquatch. He puts in time taking part in screenplays, and ghost hunting. During the pandemic he got into B Horror movies and was in The Third Saturday in October (part 1) where he officially saw himself as a dead body on a giant screen.
As a former law enforcement officer at Marshall County Sheriff’s Office he said “The first thing I noticed when walking in this room today (The meeting room at the Elmore County Museum) was the replica of the Yellow Mama. During the filming of the movie (The Third Saturday in October part 1) there was a scene using a replica of a Yellow Mama.
He said to the cast and crew “I’ll bet I’m the only person in this room who has actually seen an actual electrocution” which he was.
He shared excerpts from his book such as Ghostly Governor Thomas Bibb and His Haunted Family, When UFOs Visited the Tiny Town of Fyffe, The Choccolocco Monster, The Tale of the Coosa River Monster, The Strange Disappearance of Orion Williamson, Huntsville’s Dead Children’s Playground, and Bigfoot in Alabama.
He has a couple other books you can check out, such as Covered Bridges of Alabama and Alabama Scoundrels: Outlaws, Pirates, Bandits & Bushwhackers.
Aside from hearing Alabama ghost stories, this reporter coincidentally wore my Eureka Springs 1886 Crescent Hotel shirt to hear about ghost stories. which Elrick said he hadn’t planned on speaking about that day. But the shirt triggered a memory.
He and his wife have stayed in the Eureka Springs hotel and had an experience where in the middle of the night something grabbed his arm. Thinking it was his wife trying to wake him up, he realized she was sound asleep. He said “(The hotel staff) really plays it up, they have a ghost walk that goes through the hotel. As a matter of fact, every time I would leave the room and come back the ghost group was standing outside of our door. It’s a little unnerving.”
Question of Wetumpka’s ghost tour from a few years back were brought up, and one of the audience members said they actually attended the tour.
“The Chamber of Commerce has a scarecrow that they normally put near the window. It’s not a spooky scarecrow, more like a doll… like a cabbage patch kid, on the second the level I guess. It has been known to move around. I noticed how it was when we went up and when we came back it was in a different position.”
There has also been a experience inside the Elmore County Museum where someone saw a man dressed in black with a stove top hat, and a lady in period dress with big white curly hair that appeared then disappeared.
“Although there’s still a lot of religious beliefs that go into ghost,s whenever encountering a cemetery or a haunted place make sure you have your own little personal blessing so you too don’t fall victim to a haunting,” he said.
The Elmore County Museum is looking for volunteers for Wreaths Across America on December 17, 2022 at 12 p.m.. If you are interested in sponsoring a wreath or helping volunteer to place wreaths in Wetumpka City Cemetery you can find more information out at https://wreathsacrossamerica.org/pages/171320/Overview/?relatedId=171323
You can find Wil Elrick’s books on Amazon.
