On March 22, 1920, Little Rock patrolmen, Charles Canada and H.R. Wilson were on patrol in the south end of Sixth Street.  They saw a Dodge touring car abandoned near the foot of a ditch and went to investigate.  Finding no one in sight, they continued down into the ditch to see if there were any people in need of assistance.  They saw off in the distance three lights bobbing in an erratic manner, eventually seeming to ascend into the treetops near an old, abandoned house.  As they made their way through the ditch, they heard a female voice say, “Believe I’ll put a bullet into this ditch, just to hear the noise.”  Alarmed, the policemen climbed out of the ditch and found a group of three women, equally frightened by the sudden appearance of the policemen. 

When asked what they were doing, the women told the officers that they had heard rumors that the old, abandoned house on Sixth Street was haunted and that the ghosts could be seen on the night of a new moon and wanted to see if it was true.  They planned to camp on the porch of the abandoned house and keep watch.  That night, around 10:30, they saw a group of bobbing lights, the same the police had seen in the distance.  Seeing the lights, the women decided they had enough of the camping trip and decided to make a hasty retreat home.  After imparting their tale to the police, the women vowed that they would never return to the house, especially on nights of the new moon.¹

Such trips are common even today.  People of all ages find the urge to camp out in strange places, hoping to see something frightening, often hanging out in abandoned buildings, or near cemeteries.  Human beings have been telling themselves ghost stories for as long as human memory.  To explain such tales, customs, and popular superstitions, a new field of study was invented, “popular antiquities.”  In 1846, William John Thoms replaced the clunky term by coining a more precise term, “folklore,” as the practice of repeating tales and customs that have been handed down from generation to generation.²

Sometimes, the stories have little basis in fact, but they persist, nevertheless.  A good example  can be found in a tale told by Bernie Babcock,  who spent many years writing the society column for the Arkansas Democrat and became a widely read syndicated columnist.  She related that a pioneer built a cabin in the woods in some undetermined area in eastern Arkansas.  After the settler died, rumor spread through the area that he had hidden gold somewhere in the cabin.  Soon, the settlement was swamped with treasure seekers hoping to find the lost horde.  One group of gold hunters saw a white object floating down a garden path near the cabin as they approached.  Then they heard the unmistakable sound of a creaking door and strange noises coming from the cabin.  As they approached, he thought he heard  coins dropping to the ground and the faint sound of someone counting.  Like the women in the story of the ghost on Sixth Street, the treasure hunters quickly decided to call it a night.  They returned the next night to hear the same strange sounds.  They repeated this over the next several nights, never daring to enter the cabin. 

Soon after, another settler named James Holman learned of the abandoned cabin and decided that if no one was living there, it might make a fine residence for him and his family.  When told that the place was haunted, he scoffed, “Who’s afraid of a ghost?”  As far as Ms. Babcock told the story, Mr. Holman settled in the cabin and lived happily ever after, the beneficiary of folklore that spread through the area.³

Some stories have more basis in verifiable fact.  The town of Natural Steps lies west of Little Rock close to the Perry County border.  Over the years there have been mysterious ghost legends associated with the area.  Many of the legends predate the Louisiana Purchase.  In 1821, the Benedict Family moved onto what is now Natural Steps.  The Benedicts’ son, R.W., was exploring the newly purchased homestead and discovered that there was an old fort on the property.  Over the years he found bullets, arrows, and the evidence of an ancient military presence on the estate.  Benedict later speculated that the fort was one of three forts built by the de Soto expedition in the sixteenth century.⁴

Other legends associated with Natural Steps are tales of a Civil War era boat that the Confederates sunk.  The story goes that the Confederates wanted to hide a large cache of gold and chose to hide it on the boat by sinking it in an area that would be recognizable to them and chose Natural Steps as the place.  While sinking the boat with dynamite, three of the soldiers were killed in the explosion.  Yet another tale tells of a couple who were married on the Natural Steps formation.  Days later, the groom died leaving his bride distraught.  Soon after, she disappeared, never to be seen again.  According to legend, the killed soldiers have been seen walking in single file formation marching to the spot where the boat was sunk, hoping to retrieve the gold.  The vanished bride is seen walking through town.⁵  Another person, who wishes to remain anonymous, reported to me that she heard singing in the middle of the woods outside of Natural Steps, close to Pinnacle Mountain, and never saw a single soul.

These folk stories may or may not be true.  This is the nature of folklore.  They are stories handed down over time.  But can folklore be more contemporary?  Does there have to be decades of retellings before a story can officially be labeled folklore?  Traditionally, yes.  Folklorists have often used the rule of thumb that stories can only be classified as folklore if there is about a hundred years of retellings or three generations.  Some recent folklorists have challenged that notion.  After all, folklore has at its heart the idea that it is passed down through unofficial channels.  According to this new school of thought, stories develop into a tradition, and this tradition can be classified as folklore regardless of the age of the story.⁶

For instance, the classic vanishing hitchhiker story has been around for a hundred years, but some of the elements have not.  The story goes that somewhere on the highway between Pine Bluff and Little Rock, a young man picked up a hitchhiker and when he delivered her to her destination, she vanished from his car.  Later, the young man goes to the house where the young woman vanished only to learn from her relatives that she had been killed years before on that very highway.  Today, people still swear that their friend’s cousin’s stepfather saw the vanishing hitchhiker years ago.  This is a story that has been told in various locations around the world for decades.  Around 1980, Conway had its own variant of the story, in this telling, there was the addition of the hitchhiker giving an apocalyptic warning about the end of the world before vanishing.  Which part is folklore?  Is the Conway variant no less folklore because it has only existed for a few decades?  Does it make it more authentic folklore if it existed for centuries than a story that has only been around for forty years?⁷

Consider the story of Dr. John Guenthner, a beloved citizen of Baxter County.  He was born in Niagara Falls, New York, in 1904, graduated medical school at the University of Chicago, and began his career in Chicago.  While there, he gained some renown.  The notorious gangster, John Dillinger, was public enemy number one in Chicago.  Ana Cumpañas, Dillinger’s lover, identified the gangster for police by wearing a red dress while accompanying him outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago.  A gunfight ensued and when the dust cleared, Dillinger was dead.  Ms. Cumpañas entered police protection.  One night, she feared that Dillinger’s gang was coming for her to take revenge.  She leaped from her apartment window, breaking her pelvis and both arms.  She was rushed to the hospital, where Dr. Guenthner treated her.⁸

Guenthner’s career, otherwise, was quite calm.  Scanning a job billboard at the Cook County Hospital, he saw an advertisement for a surgeon in Gasville, Arkansas, a small hamlet in Baxter County.  He knew nothing about the town or the hospital there, “They needed a surgeon here . . . It was a good opportunity.”  For the long trip to Arkansas, the doctor bought a brand new 1936 Buick.  Knowing little of Arkansas’s road system, it might not have been a good choice.  The streets of Harrison were the last pavement he would see as he made his way to Gasville.⁹

When Dr. Guenthner arrived in Gasville, he was shocked and a little uncertain as to how he would create a medical practice in such a rural place.  “I thought I’d be able to last a year,” he recalled later.  His services, though, were badly needed in the area – the closest trained surgeon was either in Batesville or in Harrison.  He charged $6 a day for a hospital stay and $15-25 to deliver a baby.¹⁰

In September 1944, Dr. Guenthner bought the hospital, renaming it the Baxter County Community Hospital.  He ran the hospital until 1950 when he sold it to go into practice with Dr. Ben Saltzman.¹¹  He continued working in medicine until his retirement in 1984.  He remained a vital member of the community in Mountain Home until his death in 1996.

The building that housed the hospital he owned later became the home of the Baxter County Heritage Museum, then the home of the White River Baptist Association.  When it was still the Baxter County Heritage Museum, some staff believed that Dr. Guenthner never left.  Museum Curator Jane Andrewson told a reporter for the Baxter Bulletin, that lights turned on by themselves.  One could also smell the smell of cigar smoke and see thin whisps of smoke in the hallway.¹² I spoke with Vincent Anderson of the Baxter County Library, and he said he had never seen anything like that in all his dealings with the museum.  But some believe nevertheless, and these stories are passed from person to person and generation to generation, proving that folklore does not have to be something centuries old to become an enduring and vital part of humanity.