The Weeping Man of Georgetown

South Carolina · United States · Execution site

A hanging tree outside Georgetown, South Carolina in the late 1820s, and a man who arrived at the meeting place to find his love already dead in it.

This entry is recorded locally under a name that uses a word for people with dwarfism that we will not print, and it is worth saying so plainly, because the man at the centre of the story was outcast for his condition in the first place.

In the late 1820s he left the port city of Georgetown, South Carolina to meet the woman he loved at a place outside the town. When he arrived, she was hanging in a tree. She had been executed for what her accusers called witchcraft, on the grounds that she had attempted to increase his stature.

What visitors report at the site is almost entirely sound and sensation rather than sight. Weeping. A woman gasping for breath. Air that feels heavy. Sudden changes in temperature. Hair rising on the arms and neck. Prickling on the scalp. The phrase that recurs across accounts, and the one that best describes what people say they come away with, is a feeling of lost hope.

Two people were destroyed here by other people's disgust. That is the story, and the haunting follows from it.

FAQ

Where is The Weeping Man of Georgetown located?

The Weeping Man of Georgetown is in South Carolina, United States.