Jack Cole Road

 

We’ve all been out driving late at night. Driving a secluded highway or back road in the nighttime blackness for too long can leave the mind wandering. This particular time of year it’s especially troubling, when the stormy weather leads to cloud-blanketed black skies. We all know far too well that when we go miles in between streetlamps or headlights, it’s a whole ‘nother sort of dark. Drive these roads too long, our tired eyes can see things that aren’t there… Or are they?

Jack Cole Road in Hayden has a bloody history. The road has a death toll of 68 unfortunate souls. The majority of these are people who died of cholera, which can be an agonizing, distressing expiration. Other deaths along this road may be accidental, but not all of them.

Sadly, this half-mile long road is host to recovered missing bodies, a grisly axe murder, the discovery of a civil rights era photographer’s body, and even as recent as last year a completely atypical sinkhole has rendered the road impassable.

Early in the 1900s, hunters discovered something utterly distressing just off of old Jack Cole – a mummified, unidentifiable body. Locals claim it’s the body of a witch who used to live in a since burned down cabin along the road. It’s also said that she’s still seen wandering the road, looking for her home.

Very few people still live on the road. Those who do report a myriad of unusual sightings. Late at night in the cold black woods, one can spot distant, floating lights between the trees. Many think they are the lost souls of those desiccated cholera victims trying to find their way out from the woods.

Those who dare to wander off of the road have come to regret it. We all know that Alabama backwoods aren’t exactly the easiest to traverse. Undergrowth, stickers and snake holes are bound to stagger the unwary traveler. But just imagine. Stumbling through the growth, you’re barely able to see the trees in front of you on a moonless night. Sure, you may have a flashlight, but that light doesn’t let you see everywhere at once.

You wouldn’t be the only person to have done this on Jack Cole Road. Those who have followed these footsteps report more than strange twinkling lights between the trees. They have seen unusually shaped humanoid figures off in the distance of the forest. Imagine, you can barely see ahead of you in the first place, then right on the edge of your light, you see that you’re not alone. But then you wave your flashlight around, maybe even shout out to scare something off. No luck, though. Whatever you saw, it got away unheard and unseen.

In 2015, Lisa Weaver disappeared from her home on Jack Cole. Now, this might be so distressing on the face of it, but the devil is in the details. Ms. Weaver was disabled, unable to live independently. Further, her home burnt down around her. When firefighters were sifting through the destroyed remains of the property, they found everything – her pets, her belongings, what was left of the house itself… but Lisa Weaver was nowhere to be found. No one in the community knows where she went, and everyone interviewed expected she was at home at the time of the fire. Ms. Weaver was in very poor health. She could barely get anywhere independently, and she was to begin hospice care soon. Hours of searching by investigators, helicopter search teams, and cadaver dogs have yielded a distressing result – there are no human remains at the home.

We often associate haunted areas with a dark, twisted history. Jack Cole Road definitely has that. However, there’s more to it. This is an area, already known to be haunted, around which distressing horrors continue to happen. This has continued for decades… a simple half mile by day…

…and a quick trip to eternal rest by night.