Lost Places Society
Case 004 · Open investigation
The Clarksville corridor holds several different stories: a vanished nineteenth-century mill, an old bridge, burial grounds altered by development, a disputed local place-name and two unusual recordings from a private home. They belong in one file—but not in one category of proof.
What the record says
Blackiston Mill Road looks ordinary now, but its name preserves a working landscape that once gathered around Silver Creek.
Historical collections date Blackiston’s Mill and its dam to 1853. The site later became associated with the Fourth Dam Inn and a recreation landscape remembered for music, dancing, swimming and picnics. An iron bridge built in 1888 collapsed during repair work after flooding in May 1963. In 2025, reporting documented the reopening of the repaired modern bridge and removal of a failed low-head dam.
The corridor also contains burial grounds whose boundaries became harder to see as roads, stores and parking lots changed the landscape. Clarksville records describe the surviving portion of Hale-McBride Cemetery being restored and rededicated in 2022. At Stewart-Emery Cemetery, road work in 2017 disturbed or uncovered seventeen unidentified nineteenth-century burials. Contemporary reporting covered a dispute about their reburial, but this case has not yet located the final official record documenting where the remains were placed.
Dead Man’s Hollow is a locally used name for a nearby low area. The case has not yet found a reliable historical source establishing when or why the name began. Stories about a flu burial or Indigenous ancestry remain tradition or disputed claims unless appropriate records support them.
Two security-camera clips from a private home helped inspire the investigation. One shows a fast object crossing an outdoor frame immediately after an infrared change. Another shows a cat reacting while a faint shape crosses indoors. Insects, animals, reflections, headlights, sound outside the frame and compression artifacts remain possible explanations. The clips are unresolved evidence, not proof of a ghost.
A responsible future camera experiment would preserve original timestamped files, use two synchronized angles, record weather and infrared changes, and protect the home and neighbors from identification. No trespassing, unauthorized cemetery access, doxxing or unsupported claims about named people are accepted.
Questions still open
The most valuable answer may be an old photograph, a government document or a precise firsthand memory.
Inspect the sources
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