We stayed on the property in our pop up tent trailer and spent many a summer for several weeks at a time.
It was great swimming fishing and playing in the woods we would make friends with the Grahams who lived along the road next to Mr. Jackson.
They even had a pontoon boat he took us out on as every summer they would dam the creek with sheets of steel near the bridge along Pa 65 and my dad bought us a row boat which the grahams borrowed one year when the bridge was out so they could get back and forth and they lost all the accessories to it and did not give my dad one dime to replace them. I also got the horrifying call one night that my summer friend Tim Graham had died from a brain bleed at 15 the result of a car accident .
Although summers where always fun it was after Mr.Jackson died and we would stay along the creek and visit with Mrs Jackson when things got very strange a family moved in up the road a small distance and the woman who was head of the family Betty Ross was said to be a practitioner of the dark arts she was a Black Witch.
One time they showed up at Mrs. Jackson to perform a say-once and brought the necessary props in a baby's coffin. Dee claims during the session she could smell her grandmothers perfume and heard her voice
OK so we all got a laugh out of it saying she was set up and they where playing mind games with her and for most part no one bothered the Ross's and they seemed friendly when you went by there place if they where sitting out. I kept my distance and always said hello as I walked or biked by .
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| Charlies house now has a garage cut into the front of it |
But then rumors spread of a fight Mrs. Ross had with a nearby family and she cast a spell on them throwing feathers in their yard and the whole family got deathly ill that summer.
Then the following year the creek flooded the whole valley but just high enough so water did not go in their doorway they had little damage while others had a lot of damage. Supposedly again she was behind it because of a fight with neighbors and she spilled water in the middle of the street and read out a curse.
But after the flood we did not see them again and we stopped staying at the property after the Manz's which where Dee Jackson's relatives started getting very strange with their behavior and getting nasty towards us for no reason. When Dee died and my mom went to her funeral they gave her the cold shoulder. and totally disrespected my mom and Dee after years of friendship.
Unfortunately all the little cottages and most of what I remember from when I was a kid in the 1960's has been destroyed and some caught fire and are in total disrepair when you ride down Mckim Way now it looks like a Ghetto and the Flood. of 2004 when Hurricane Ivan came thru took care of what was left standing many cottages where destroyed including Betty's cottage when water went over their roofs. when you look at mckim way on Google earth you can see all the patches of bare ground where a cottage stood.
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| Yellow Pins show some of the missing cottages. |
Did Betty Ross have the power to make people ill and cause the flood sure seems a coincidence then again maybe it was all in the family's minds they where cursed and the flood that was gods doing but when rumors start flowing there is no stopping them. Look at the Salem Witch trails which where based on nothing.
