Tombstone Tuesday: Miles Vernon Dixson at Charleston's Spring Hill

Miles Vernon Dixson's Tombstone at Spring Hill
Photo by Find-a-Grave User, Rosa Nutt

My husband and I recently rented an apartment in Charleston's East End...which means I'm literally about a five minute drive from the city's beautiful, historic Victorian-era burial ground known as Spring Hill Cemetery. This massive, sprawling cemetery overlooking the state capitol is the final resting place for many of Charleston's most famous and accomplished citizens. It's a wonderful look at the history of the city and a snapshot of the lives of those who made it all possible. 

But there's one tombstone included in the cemetery's self-guided history walk that is rather unassuming. To walk up on the small, rather plain marker amid elaborate obelisks and extravagant displays of funerary art, you might not take a second glance. However, the young man buried there has a fascinating tale to tell. 

Twenty-one year old Miles Vernon Dixson of South Hills was a teller at the Kanawha Valley Bank, but his dream was to become a pilot. So, the young man enrolled in Glen Clark's flying school, which he ran from his seaplane base, located on the Kanawha River. On Saturday March 2, 1935, Dixson took one of the training sea planes out for a practice run in preparation for his upcoming licensing exam. As he was flying over the vicinity of Spring Hill Cemetery, something went wrong.

Spring Hill Mausoleum 
Photo by Theresa Racer

Newspaper articles of the time period aren't 100% clear, but it seems as if a stunt may have went wrong, and one or both of the plane's wings were torn away from the body of the plane at about 1,800 feet up. He tried to deploy his parachute, but was unable to until he was only 200 feet high and it didn't have time to open. The plane crashed, and his body plummeted to the ground, right beside the mausoleum of Spring Hill Cemetery. His death certificate lists his cause of death as a fractured skull and crushed chest. Ironically, he was buried in Spring Hill, just a short walk from where his life actually ended. 

Over the years, Spring Hill Cemetery in Charleston (like it's counterpart, Spring Hill Cemetery in Huntington) has gained a reputation for being haunted. In recent years, the debate as to why cemeteries would even BE haunted locations of note has been a hot topic among the paranormal community. That's a blog post for another day, but it's stories like this one that definitely add an interesting layer to that debate! Unfortunately, this was a really sad case where a young life was extinguished way too soon. 

Bluefield Daily Telegraph
03 March 1935

Tombstone Tuesday: Egyptomania in Huntington's Spring Hill Cemetery

Huntington's Spring Hill Cemetery

I'm an all-around spooky kinda person. In addition to cruising cemeteries for potential ghosts, I also just love visiting these locations for a glimpse into the art, history, and culture of a particular location! There's so much beauty to observe and so many secrets to uncover, simply by taking the time to look closely at the clues hidden within the tombstones themselves.

A few weeks ago, Spectral Research and Investigations had an investigation that was rescheduled at the last minute, due to an emergency on the part of the client. As several members had already taken off work or otherwise cleared their schedules in anticipation, we were left with a free evening and nothing to do.  As tempting as it was just to sit at home and relax for once, I decided that I wanted to take the opportunity to once again participate in a fun little Halloween season activity, Remnant Stew's annual Cemetery Crawl!

Remnant Stew is a paranormal podcast that I love listening to, and each year, they hold a lil' contest. Participants are urged to visit local cemeteries and take selfies from a guided list of things to look for while in the cemetery, such as tombstone symbolism and types of epitaphs. This year, prompts included an anchor, an obelisk, a death date after 2021, a soldier's grave, and quite a few other things.  Beth, another member of SRI, met me at Huntington's historic and sprawling Spring Hill Cemetery, and armed with our cameras and list of prompts, we set out to explore.

I'll be posting more about our adventures in a separate blog, but it was a lot of fun, and we found quite a few, but not all, of the prompts on our list. We also discovered a few extra little gems that were not included on our list...

Two-Headed Snake with Orb
Close-up of Glick Monument
Spring Hill Cemetery, Huntington, WV

Perusing the Jewish section of the cemetery we found a really neat carving on the Glick Family monument, featuring an orb and two snake heads (or a double-headed snake?) peering out from behind it. It definitely stood out among the normal (and somewhat mundane) funerary art that we kept coming across. You can only photograph so many praying hands and heavenly gates before something like this would cause you to stop in your tracks...which it did! And, I immediately pulled out my phone to start searching for what such fascinating tombstone symbolism could possibly mean.

The first article I came across was a really fascinating piece on the Web Urbanist called The Language of Death: 15 Gravestone Symbols Explained. It was written by SA Rogers and had some great information on a variety of things commonly (and not so commonly) found on tombstones, complete with pictures. There was even an example photograph of an orb flanked by a two-headed snake that was very similar to the Glick monument. But, just like with dream symbolism, tombstone symbolism is rarely black and white, and the snake, while overall meaning everlasting life, can mean different things in different contexts, none of which really seemed to make any sense in this case. The snake wasn't wrapped around a cross, so it probably didn't mean our deceased was a high-ranking Mason. It wasn't wrapped around a staff, so our deceased probably wasn't a member of the medical field (later confirmed by research). So what did it mean? 

Admittedly, I got really excited when I read that the serpent could be seen as an occult symbol, and that a serpent around an egg, called the Orphic Egg (this symbol ISN'T an Orphic Egg, however) is the occult symbol of the personification of light, the Greek deity Phanes! My mind started racing, and probably influenced by recently watched shows such as Archive 81 and The Midnight Club, I was envisioning some cult or secret society of occultists operating right here in the city during the early part of the 20th century. 

Glick Monument
Spring Hill Cemetery
Huntington, WV

The second article I came across, however brought me back to reality. I was overreacting; there probably wasn't a secret occult symbol hidden in plain view in a popular Huntington, WV cemetery. Rather, we had found a beautiful example of 1920's Egypto-mania!  So what does that mean? Well, back in the 1920's, the United States was especially obsessed with anything having to do with Egypt. King Tut's tomb had been discovered and opened, leading the western world into a period of fashion, jewelry, architecture, and yes...even tombstone design...being heavily influenced by the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. Cathy Wallace wrote a great blog post for the Billion Graves site, called Egyptian Gravestone Symbols.   In it, she explains that Egyptian symbols on tombstones are actually pretty common here in the United States, including the image of a winged sun-disk with two serpent heads, as seen on the Glick monument. According to history, Pharaohs would wear the image of a cobra on their crowns as protection against their enemies, and what is the greatest enemy of all, but death? 

Now that I had a better understanding of the symbolism, I wanted to find out as much as I could about the people who would choose that symbolism to adorn their final resting place.  As it turns out, the monument stands over the graves of Samuel J. Glick and his wife, Sara Lewis Glick, a prominent Jewish couple living in Huntington, WV.

Samuel was a furniture merchant, born in Russia on January 15, 1872 to parents Abraham and Sarah Lewis (yeah, same name as wife, lol). The couple married on December 31, 1907 and had a daughter ten years later named Babette Samara. They were active in the B'Nai Israel Synagogue and lived in a very nice home on Washington Boulevard. From what I can gather, the Samuel was closely related to the Glicks who operated Star Furniture in Huntington, but I'm not 100% of the connection. 

Samuel passed away on October 27, 1925 (death certificate), and I assume that the larger monument was erected around this time, as this was the height of Egypto-mania here in the United States!  He was a charitable sort, leaving donations to a handful of charities in his will, including the Colored Orphan's Home in Huntington. The rest of the estate was left to his wife.  Interestingly, when doing research on a married couple, I usually find much more about the husband than I do the wife, but in this case, it was reversed. It seems as if Sara was a little more...well-known...than her husband. 

Sara was born in Washington, DC on September 9, 1885. However, her father was born in Russia, and I suspect was either related to, or was very close friends with the Samuel's family before THEY immigrated. In the 1910 census, Sara is listed as being a teacher. This is a profession she'd maintain well after her husband's death, and up until her own death from coronary thrombosis on January 7, 1940 (death certificate). But, she wasn't JUST a teacher. She was a leader in special education in West Virginia, serving in 1929 as the state supervisor of education for crippled children in the State Department of Public Welfare. She was responsible for founding a speech clinic, establishing vocational rehabilitation projects, and helping handicapped graduates enter the workforce. She truly was a pioneer, and it's a shame that she and her husband passed away too soon. 

My own mother spent over 40 years herself in the special education field, first as a teacher and then at the board office as an educational diagnostician. For years, she championed for the rights to a solid education for students of all abilities. She passed away on September 24 after a brief battle with cancer.  It seems almost serendipitous that a trip to the cemetery for a fun distraction would lead me to learning more about Sara Glick, a real hero to the special education program here in West Virginia.  A really cool, somewhat mysterious Egyptian motif on a tombstone sparked my curiosity to the point where I was led to discover someone I know my mom would have looked up to and would have loved to have known. 

Stay spooky, stay curious, and happy haunting, everyone! 

The Cumberland (Maryland) News
08 January 1940

Some Paranormal Humor from Spring Hill Cemetery

It's been awhile since I've posted a Friday Night Funny.  Luckily, on Wednesday I came across this little gem of grave humor and couldn't wait to share it!  This amusing anecdote comes from the Huntington Advertiser in an article dated June 6, 1911 and features one the city's most prominent burial grounds.  This particular cemetery has long had a reputation of being haunted by real ghosts and spirits...but maybe not all the stories are what they seem!  (For the ghost stories, check out Spring Hill Cemetery on Theresa's Haunted History!)

LOVERS FRIGHTENED AS CORPSE AWOKE

UNIQUE PRACTICAL JOKE WAS PLAYED

Sexton at Spring Hill Cemetery Tells Novel Tale at Confederate Reunion

Col. A. F. Southworth, recently returned from Little Rock, Ark. and is authority for the following story, which he alleges was told by Rev. W.J. Cocke, a veteran of the war, now sexton at Spring Hill Cemetery.

It concerns a youth and a maiden fair who were wont to roam about the cemetery grounds in the cool shades of twilight.

Now and then the sexton would discover the pair of lovers, in a secluded nook engaged in that phase of love-making called "spooning."  For many days the sexton watched the couple and smiled upon their happiness.

It occurred to him one day, however, that they might be fit subjects for a joke which he accordingly prepared.  He climbed into an empty coffin and closed the lid as they were approaching one evening.  As they drew near he made noises indicative that some supposed corpse was howling about being put in a coffin before he was dead.

The poke worked.  The lovers separated in their fright and fled in desperate haste when they saw the corpse, or ghost, or what-not, climb out of the coffin.  The boy went in one direction and the girl went in the other, climbing a wire fence in her hurry, and leaving thereon a goodly portion of her gown.

"They never came back," said Sexton Cocke, concluding his story.

Theresa's Note:  I did a little extra research to make sure that Sexton Cocke was in fact in charge of the Spring Hill Cemetery, and indeed it appears he was.  He's actually the Reverend William Joseph Cocke, who also later served as the chaplain for Huntington State Hospital, located just across the street from Spring Hill Cemetery.  Rev. Cocke passed away at the ripe ol' age of 94 on December 8, 1938.  He outlived two daughters, Rebecca (died 1901 at the age of 21) and Irma (died 1923 at the age of 44).

Huntington's Spring Hill Cemetery

The year Huntington was established, the city set aside almost 30 acres for use as a public cemetery.  The land was purchased from Collis P. Huntington's Central Land Company and named after the Old Spring House nearby.

The first official burial was for Josephine Webb, which took place in 1873.  However, the 1838 grave of Elizabeth Prosser was already erected in a field included in the acreage, so its listed as the "unofficial" first burial for the cemetery. As a spooky side note---there is an old southern belief that the first person buried in a new cemetery is destined to become that cemetery's protector, or guardian. Their spirit is said to remain on earth, protecting the sacred site until called home. So, who would be the Graveyard Guardian in this case...Josephine or Elizabeth? Anyway....

Bias stone. Photo by Ernie Wright

The original cemetery included a potter's field, although today, all such burials are reserved for the Highland Cemetery.  Over the years, as the city grew, small family cemeteries were relocated to the grounds of Spring Hill. Gen. Albert Jenkins was moved here in the 1920s, and is buried among 300 civil war soldiers.  A brick chapel on the grounds now serves as a sales office, but originally held funeral services.  A yellow sexton's house was located near the side entrance, but has since been torn down.  The last sexton was Arden Ross, who retired in 1998.  The superintendent now looks over the cemetery, but does not live on the grounds.

During the 1903 smallpox and the 1918 flu epidemics, many victims were buried here, some in the potter's field section.  Rumor has it that some of these were buried in mass graves.  What is known is that many of these flu victims did not have any funeral service due to the widespread contagious nature of the illness.  One such family had a grandfather (William Alfred Bias) who passed away during the 1903 smallpox epidemic, and was buried one day along with dozens of others.  Several of his sons sneaked out and waited outside the fence near the family plot for his burial to take place.  When he was placed in the ground, the boys said a few prayers, but then noticed a ball of light hovering above the grandfather's grave, which slowly lifted up and floated away.  The boys followed it all the way home, where it went through the front door of the house with a thud. This story, as told by Betty Burns Lusher, can be found in The Greenbrier Ghost and Other Strange Stories, by Dennis Deitz.

Today, there are still rumors of the cemetery being haunted.  There is some belief that the hauntings are connected to the many flu/smallpox epidemic victims, or even with the old Huntington State Hospital across the street. Whomever the ghosts may be or wherever they may come from, its important to note that not ALL the perceived paranormal activity found in Spring Hill is what it seems! A local newspaper article from 1911 tells the story of the sexton for Spring Hill Cemetery deciding to play a little prank on some young lovers that were using the cemetery grounds as a rendezvous spot. He climbed into an empty coffin, made some spooky noises, and then jumped out at them. Needless to say, they never came back.

More information about the history of this cemetery can be found in Joseph Platania's Huntington Quarterly article, issue 49.

*Updated January 2018*