Ray City History Blog

The memoirs of Judge Augustin H. Hansell describe a ghost encounter from his childhood days at Milledgeville, GA in 1822.

“It may have been an ancient belief that evil spirits cannot pass running water. It has certainly been so in later times.” -Christian Demonology, F.C. Conybeare, 1897

Judge Hansell was known to everyone in Wiregrass Georgia and had defended, prosecuted or presided over the most prominent court cases of Rays Mill, Troupville, Nashville, and other south Georgia towns.  As a young attorney Augustin H. Hansell put up a sensational murder defense for Jim Hightower (aka James Stewart); as Solicitor General he won an equally sensational murder conviction against Jonathan Studstill,

Augustin H. Hansell

which was later pardoned by the state legislature. From 1858 to 1902, Judge Hansell sat on the bench for the Southern Circuit of the Superior Court.  In the 1877 Superior Court of Berrien County, he presided over The State vs Burrell Hamilton Bailey for the murder of Bradford Ray. Judge Hansell presided over the trials of  some of Ray City’s early settlers as well.  One sensational case was the 1899 trial of James T. Biggles, who shot down Madison Pearson on the front porch Henry H. Knight’s mercantile store at Ray’s Mill, GA. In 1855, he ran for the state senate on as a candidate of the Know-Nothing Party.  He was a representative of Thomas County, GA at the Georgia Secession Convention of 1861, and signed the Georgia Ordinance of Secession along with John Carroll Lamb, of Berrien County.  He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of the of 1877, along with Ray’s Mill (now Ray City) resident Jonathan David Knight.

Judge Hansell’s written memoir, handed down through his descendants  and eventually published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly, include the following account:

1822
About this time and when only in my sixth year, I was started to school…. The school house was about two and a half miles from our home, and the walk seemed rather long for a five year old tot. Our nearest way took us off the public road and directly through the extensive orchard and yards of my grandfather….The walk was long and tedious for me and besides that I was often badly frightened going home. Our school held on till very late in the evening usually, and there was a long steep hill which we came down, and some time before a man had been thrown from his horse against a tree and his brains dashed out. When it was getting dark, as we came to this hill, we all looked for his ghost, which was often seen and in which we had implicit faith. Often some boy should see it and call out, then began a race down the long hill to get across the double branches at its foot, knowing a ghost could not cross running water.

The Wiregrass folklore that a ghost cannot cross a running stream reflects a widespread belief in the power of water to protect against evil spirits. The text Christian Demonology, written by F.C. Conybeare in 1897, expounds:

It may have been an ancient belief that evil spirits cannot pass running water. It has certainly been so in later times. “A running stream they dare na’ cross,” as Burns wrote in his Tam o’ Shanter. In this case there was a bridge, and yet the demons in pursuit of Tam could not cross it; any more than the evil spirits in the Avesta could cross the Chinvat bridge over the water into heaven…The shades of old equally required Charon with his boat to ferry them over the Styx;

Ghost City Tours shares the following on the Theory that Ghosts Can’t Cross Water

Ancient Times in Greek Mythology
Going back to the Ancient Greeks, there has been the belief that the dead cannot cross a body of water. For the Greeks, the River Styx existed just for this purpose. Down in Hades’ domain of the Underworld, the River Styx segregated the land of the living from the land of the dead. Within Ancient Greek mythology, the deceased spirit could not pass over the River Styx unless they paid a fee to Charon, the ferryman. If it was the right fee, then off you went across the river into the Underworld. On the other hand, if the fee given was not correct, Charon banned you to wander the banks of the River Styx for all eternity.

The Bible Says…

Matthew 12:43 reads: “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.”

This suggest that it’s not that ghosts can’t cross water but rather that water often holds entities that would do them harm. Because negative energies were unable to find a place to stay on dry land, they made themselves at home within the water—ghosts would thus be unwilling to cross it in the worry that they’d end up as food for a demonic entity.

Spirits Crossing Water in the American South
Theories that ghosts can’t cross water have continued into modernity. In the American South, those who were enslaved pre-Civil War brought their own beliefs with them from Africa. They believed water was used to ward off evil spirits (Holy Water) and they sometimes even used blue pigment on their houses to mimic flowing streams.

In most religions, water represents purity—ghosts, for the most part, are believed to be wandering souls caught in limbo.

Related Posts:

• Ben Furlong’s Ghost Haunted Conscience of Berrien Residents
• The Ghost of Ben Furlong, Berrien County Desperado
• More Haints of Berrien County
• The Haints of Berrien County