Week 10 Story: Gates to Hell

Gates to Hell

Stull, Kansas—1912

Back in the days when Stull was still a growing town, business was booming. The town had multiple restaurants, stores, a saloon, a medical building, and a hotel in addition to the town hall, church, and cemetery which had been there since the founding.

At that time a woman lived in a small house at the end of North 1600 Street. She was very old, and all her family had already died. She kept to herself most of the time, but the interactions she did have with the townspeople were very odd. She made regular trips to the apothecary where she bought strange herbs and spices, storing them in an old quilted bag she carried at all times. The children often saw her walking out of the forest, carrying sticks, leaves, and stones.

Some people thought she was going senile. A few theorized she was driven mad by the loss of her son to pneumonia. After his death, none of her relatives were among the living. Others claimed she had to be a witch—her quick intellect, knowledge of every small detail about the town, and ability to travel long distances in no time proved she was more than just a grieving old woman.

One day at twilight, a townsperson noticed the woman walking on the other side of town from her home, so he stopped to ask if everything was alright. The woman didn’t respond, but kept walking in a trance-like state with her eyes shut. He heard her whispering something under her breath.

The man didn’t know what to do, so he ran across town to get help from the doctor. He hurried into the building and told the doctor all he had seen. At the time, the doctor happened to be helping the old woman’s neighbors, a mother and three children who all had developed a cough. At the news of the woman’s activities, the children began urgently whispering to themselves.

“Was she walking toward the cemetery?” The son asked.

“She is trying to raise the dead!” the youngest daughter blurted.

“We don’t know that,” said the oldest daughter.

“Yes we do! We see her outside every evening, making potions, saying spells, and talking about how she will soon be reunited with her family.”

“Perhaps we need the priest, not a doctor,” the townsperson thought before running back to the church, right next to the cemetery, followed by everyone at the medical building.

They walked into the church nave, just in time to see the woman disappear behind the altar. The priest was deep in prayer and hadn’t noticed anything.

“Help!” The townsperson shouted, jerking the priest from his meditation. “An old witch is doing magic in the church building!”

Everyone ran behind the altar to see where the woman went. A staircase descended behind the altar, but didn’t lead anywhere. The woman was nowhere to be seen.

The priest was shaking, visibly frightened. “That staircase shouldn’t be there—it doesn’t exist. I’ve never seen it until today.”

Since that time, no one attends that church, and the building is falling apart. They say that the old woman was trying to reach her family, but never made it all the way. Stull cemetery is known today as one of the few gateways into hell, and the woman stays beyond the staircase, guiding people who wish to enter the land of the dead.

Author's Note

This story was inspired by the Camp of Ghosts story in the Blackfeet Stories unit. In this story, a man’s wife dies, and he is so grief-stricken that he journeys to the camp of ghosts to be reunited with her. I was intrigued by the old women who instructed the man on his journey to find his wife in the camp of ghosts. I wanted to do a backstory for one of the women, and as I was writing it, I thought it might be interesting to change the setting. I’m back home in Kansas City for the weekend, and there’s a small town a while away rumored to be one of the seven “gates to hell” in the United States. I’m not familiar with all the legends surrounding it, but I did read that supposedly there’s a gate to hell in an abandoned church near a cemetery. That inspired the setting for my story.

Image information: Photo of abandoned church from Sergio Souza on Unsplash.

Story Source: Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell (1915).