The Sisters in Black

Local legends. Every town has one. Even cities have their own urban legends. My town has one that I paid no mind to, and I regret that desicion now.

Let me start by saying I live in a small town: Christiansburg, Virginia. Our football team is the Blue Demons (contridicting the name "Christiansburg"). We have five schools: Christiansburg Elementary, Falling Branch Elementary, Christiansburg Middle, Blacksburg Middle, and Christiansburg High. In the mid-19th Century, Blacksburg Middle had a different name: The Mongomery Female College, a boarding school for young women.

The headmaster was an unwed woman named Virginia Wardlaw. In her old age, she had trouble managing the school on her own. It got so out of hand that one of her students got impregnated by a country boy. The headmistress tried to hush up the matter, but, being the small town it was, the scandal spread like wildfire. When the baby was born, no one saw it; it disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The young girl who had the baby never spoke of the matter again.

After the incident with the baby, Virginia called on her two widowed sisters (Caroline Martin and Mary Snead) to help her run the school. In addition to the sisters they also asked Mary's son, Fletcher Snead, to groundskeep for the school. Fletcher had done a terrible job groundskeeping and was one night found dead in his bed, charred and scorched all over. Apparently he knocked a candle over in his sleep, but that didn't expain why he was burned all over. Further investigation from the police gave away that the sisters bought Fletcher life insurance a week before his death. In court, the sisters claimed it was compensation for his work as groundskeeper. The jury found them not guilty.

Years later, the school closed down due to paranormal disturbances such as fires, tainted water, a man's screams in the hallways and a baby's cries coming from the well outside. Mary and Caroline moved to New York, while Virginia stayed in Christiansburg. The city gave a permit to demolish and then rebuild the boarding school into a Jr high school. A reporter wanting the sister's thoughts on the matter traveled to New York to interview Mary and Caroline. He arrived in the midst of a funeral of Caroline's daughter, Ocey.

Aparently, Ocey drowned while taking a bath. Sedatives were found in her system, although Ocey was a known drug addict. The reporter pulled out the police report on the matter, and did find out that the sisters once again bought life insurance for Ocey around a week before her death.

The reporter made a tip for the police in New York, who did a backround check on Mary and Caroline. When they found out about Fletcher and the baby, they sent a team to Christiansburg to inform the police about Ocey's death and the outcome of Mary and Caroline's arrest. Mary thried to resist arrest and was shot on sight. Years later, Caroline hung herself in prison.

Virginia was tried and sentenced to death for the murder of Fletcher Martin. She only smiled when they led her to the gas chamber. She was buried at Christiansburg's own Sunset Cemetary.

After all of this, the abandoned Montgomery Female College was demolished and replaced with Christiansburg Middle School. The sisters were remembered the most for the fact that they always wore black and were frequently accused of being witches.

The gym of the school was built over the school well, which according to the blueprints is collecting cobwebs in the cellar of the school. When Blacksburg Middle collasped, they moved into Christiansburg Middle and renamed after their town.

I was doing research on the sisters for a school project on town history, when I came across a news article and a video clip posted on some forum at the far corner of the internet. It was posted some guy who was visiting his grandmother's grave at Sunset Cemetary. He had heard of the famed Virginia Wardlaw, and decided to visit her faded grave.

When he got there, he noticed a camera sized mound of dirt behind the grave. When he got it out of the ground, it turned out to be a tin box. Inside he found an sd card along with a newspaper clipping. The sd card contained a video called "hiden".

He copied the article down on the forum. As I scanned the article, I grew more and more concerned. It pretty much talked about three teenagers who journied into the cemetary during the night and never came back. After going missing, the search went on for weeks, only to end after a couple of months. I remember seeing it on the news.

I clicked on the video. The first few minutes were very distorted, but I caught a few glimpses of the cemetary. The visual cut out, but then I got to listen to the audio. At first, there was only the sound of leaves crunching and a person's breathing. Eventually, someone spoke up. "Are we there yet?" a girl's voice asked.

"Almost." said a guy's voice. The girl must have been around fifteen, and the guy about the same age.

A second guy's voice asked "How will we know when we get there?". "It doesn't have any words on it. A huge chunk of it was taken out of it in some gun duel. Plus, it's at the far end of the yard" said the first boy.

The audio cut out and I was left staring at a blank screen. After a few seconds, the video cut in again, with full visual and audio. The cameraman was filming a gym with a basketball court in the middle. At first, I thought it was a still frame, but the camera moved abrubtly towards a wooden door labeled "Exit". Then, it cut to a shot of walking down linoleum hallways. I heard the clacking of high heels, and assumed the cameramna was indeed a woman.

After several minutes of the walking the camera found itself at a metal door labeled "Furnace Room". After the shot moved down a metal staircase, I saw the furnace. The camera moved away from it, and I noticed a hallway leading to a darker area of the basement. The camera moved down the hallway and got to the actual basement. The camerawoman moved past numerous boxes of junk, finally reaching an old well.

Two dark figures stood beside it, with three unconscious bodies at their feet. One of them moved off the wooden cover of the well. They dropped the only female of the bodies in first. As the camera peered down the well, I could only make out for a second the other bodies in there. Rotting, molding, and piled on top of each other.

One by one, they dropped all three bodies into the well. When they dropped the last one, a baby started crying.

And crying. it was soft at first, but got louder and louder to the point of me wanting to cut my ears off.

They replaced the wooden cover, and the crying ceased.