
We are excited to announce the winner of the October 2022 Chattanooga Writers’ Guild Monthly Contest is Laura Miller with the submission “The Black Track Ghost of Soddy.”
Laura Miller is a local writer and poet who studied creative writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A long-time teacher and community volunteer, she presently works as a legal assistant.
The Black Track Ghost of Soddy
Gather ‘round, Children, Miss Walker would say and share some tales of our coal mining past with cave-in disasters and a few ghosts, the most notorious one along Black Track—today’s Durham Street— that was named for coal chunks fallen from railcars rumbling from the mines to Big Soddy Creek. The story began with a love triangle: an unfaithful bride, a town clerk, and a coal miner— then, a murder a fugitive couple and a mysterious drowning of the runaway bride whose wet specter wanders the black track as a silent companion with no breaths of condensation clouds on a frigid night Some claim she foreshadows a dear one’s death. So beware of solitary strangers we were warned, and look out for tumbled coal by the wayside.
You must be logged in to post a comment.