Bill Sketoe and the Hole That Would Not Stay Filled

William “Bill” Sketoe Sr. (1818–1864) was a Methodist preacher who lived near Newton in Dale County, in Alabama’s Wiregrass country. He and his wife Sarah Clemmons had a large family, though sources disagree on whether they had seven or eight children. On 3 December 1864 he was lynched by a Home Guard unit under Captain Joseph Breare as he crossed the wooden bridge over the Choctawhatchee River north of town.

Why he was killed is contested, and the two versions show how a local tragedy became a legend. The romantic version, told by Kathryn Tucker Windham in her 1969 book 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey, says Sketoe had served in the Confederate army and come home when his wife fell ill, and that the Home Guard refused to believe his papers and hanged him as a deserter. Historians are doubtful: no record of Confederate service has been found, and the Confederacy had repealed its substitute rules earlier in 1864. David Williams, in his 1999 history Rich Man’s War, argues that Sketoe was suspected of helping John Ward, a leader of deserters and pro-Union guerrillas who had ambushed an ammunition transport that autumn. No evidence against Sketoe was ever produced and he was never charged or tried.

The ghost story concerns the ground beneath the tree. The Home Guard is said to have dug a pit under Sketoe, and afterward, according to local tradition, the hole could not be filled: dirt and debris thrown in were said to be gone within hours, and campers claimed that a hole they had covered was clean by morning. Local histories also say that every man in the party met an unnatural death, and that Breare was killed by a falling tree in a storm in 1866. A post-war Dale County resident, Mary Fleming, claimed that Sketoe’s friends quietly kept the hole clear themselves, a claim one of them denied.

A new highway bridge was built over the site in 1979, and after flooding in 1990 tons of rock were placed over the cavity, so it can no longer be seen. In 2006 Sketoe family members and Newton officials dedicated a monument nearby. It tells the sick-wife version of the story, which some historians question. Sketoe is buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery.

A pit about 30 inches wide and 8 inches deep that was said to restore itself after being filled. The reports come from local tradition and Windham’s retelling, not from a named investigation.

The Choctawhatchee River crossing north of Newton, beneath the bridge approach, and the monument close by.

The tale is the tenth chapter of Kathryn Tucker Windham’s 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (1969) and appears in roadside-attraction guides. Paranormal visitors still come to the bridge.