Pillar of the community struck down at the age of 138
December 20, 2016 10:29 AM   Subscribe

Augusta, Georgia's Haunted Pillar, has been a downtown landmark since Broad Street's Old Lower Market was razed by a freak winter cyclone on February 8th, 1878, leaving just the pillar standing. Local legend holds the column to be cursed, bringing death to any who touch it. On the morning of December 18th, 2016, an auto accident slammed a car into the Haunted Pillar, toppling it.

However, this is not the first time the Pillar has suffered vehicular damage, it was knocked over twice previously in 1935 and 1958, only to be rebuilt.

And the story of the curse, how an itinerant preacher who had been barred from sermonizing at the Old Lower Market (some versions of the legend attribute the ban to the preacher being black), cursed the Market to be leveled by a "Great Wind", leaving a single pillar, that if touched, would cause the toucher to be struck by lightning, is reported to have been manufactured by publicity firm Lockhart International in the 1930s.

So as the City of Augusta gathers up the masonry rubble for storage and evaluates making a restoration plan, one question they will face is whether to hold fast to the fanciful narrative of the curse, and maintain it as a tourist attraction for paranormal seekers, or instead embrace the real history of the Old Lower Market, and the fact that the original pillar would have been a witness to a portion of the city's slave trade, a thought that should be "haunting" all on its own.
posted by radwolf76 (20 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
2016, man.
posted by Mchelly at 10:35 AM on December 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


On the bright side: free frogurt!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:36 AM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Nice headline!
posted by boilermonster at 10:52 AM on December 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


So the town is wondering whether to keep up the lie about some ridiculous curse in order to fool yokels and drain some cash, or to rebuild and replace the useless object and provide a new Narrative for it in order to justify having it replaced at all? Or do they really believe it being left by the cyclone actually meant something other than luck, in which case, why did that "something" disappear at the times of all the later topplings? I know, I know, tradition, superstition, and faux authenticity and history are important to towns, but I still think this sort of stuff is more representative of all the stupid we have to deal with everywhere than it is otherwise meaningful.

That isn't a slam on the post or the links though, reading about the pillar and how it miraculously saved a pole and building from getting hit was interesting.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:30 AM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think they should rebuild it every year out of wood and straw, and just see how it goes.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:33 AM on December 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


To be clear, everyone who ever touched the pillar either has, or will, die.
posted by wormwood23 at 11:38 AM on December 20, 2016 [16 favorites]


or instead embrace the real history of the Old Lower Market

Every schoolchild in Augusta knows that pillar was used in the slave trade; it's part of our basic civics lessons. It's by no means unspoken history.

Although honest to god, I had a moment of terror when I heard it had been knocked down, like all the devils of hell were going to fly up and rain destruction on downtown. Not entirely sure how one would tell the difference, though.
posted by mittens at 11:48 AM on December 20, 2016 [10 favorites]


So the town is wondering whether to keep up the lie about some ridiculous curse in order to fool yokels and drain some cash, or to rebuild and replace the useless object and provide a new Narrative for it in order to justify having it replaced at all?

As a local, I think it's ultimately going to come down to how much the engineer's structural evaluation says it'll take to put back up, and how much of the original masonry was snatched up by souvenir takers over the past few days. Unlike some Southern cities, Augusta doesn't generate much history tourism, paranormal or otherwise, and any that it does gets absolutely eclipsed by the surge of visitors one week every year in spring who come to see golf at the Masters Tournament.

The city has been floating plans for revitalizing its downtown district, but much of the focus has been at the other end of downtown, where they keep pumping money into a convention center as a means to bring in visitors. So I really don't know what the government is going to do.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:52 AM on December 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


.
posted by Mayor West at 11:53 AM on December 20, 2016


Maybe the town should think about putting a little more oomph in the curse to make it relevant again. Like rig it with explosives and poisoned spikes or something.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:03 PM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


That car must have had a more powerful curse.

"DIE CAR!"

"NO, YOU DIE COLUMN!"

*COLUMN DIES!*

FIN.
posted by Atreides at 12:09 PM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm with the other locals in this thread (howdy, neighbors!). Why rebuild? It's not that much of a tourist draw, at least not that I'm aware of. Cool story, but nobody makes a special trip here. And it won't be authentic at all, cause the pics I saw looked like pure rubble.
posted by jhope71 at 12:18 PM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


...but much of the focus has been at the other end of downtown...

For those not from around here, that's partly because the strip clubs and dive bars are located at the end of town near the pillar

Interesting to see this here; Augusta doesn't typically get too many mentions on MeFi. It was a big story on the local news the other night, but my thought was "good; maybe that silly local superstition can fade away." We have a pretty dysfunctional local government, but they will probably put aside their differences to get behind rebuilding this thing. I wonder how much the driver's insurance will pay to cover a haunted pillar. Maybe it will even show up in one one of those Farmer's Insurance commercials: "Haunted pillar? We covered it in 2016."
posted by TedW at 1:00 PM on December 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


That car must have had a more powerful curse.

Maybe it was The Car.

We had some equipment problems at work today. I've started telling everyone it's because of the destruction of the haunted pillar.
posted by TedW at 1:05 PM on December 20, 2016 [2 favorites]




Heh. That reminds me of a long stretch of highway outside the Dayton Ohio area, where, for many miles the highway runs almost in a straight line until you reach a patch where some homeowner didn't want to sell the quarter acre of land the highway would have run through because they had an old tree sitting right where the highway was slated to go to keep that nice straight line. So, instead, the planners created a fairly sharp curve that went right around the tree before resuming the road's course on the far side. Over time, the locals, according to my cousin, started calling that area the home of the death tree since a good many drivers, who maybe overindulged a bit before heading out to the far suburbs, would get up to speed on that nice straight road and forget to notice that one little bend curving right around a tree that just happened to be planted right where the road would be expected to go. That tree saw a good number of accidents apparently. So sometimes, the tree does win too.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:39 PM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you hit a haunted/cursed pillar with your car and the pillar doesn't fall directly onto the driver's side killing you instantly (or slowly and painfully), said pillar was clearly not all that haunted/cursed.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:00 PM on December 20, 2016


_
posted by NMcCoy at 5:35 PM on December 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


Y'ALL - it gets better and better. There's a face in the Haunted Pillar, it seems!
posted by jhope71 at 5:40 AM on December 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


Whoa, it DOES GET BETTER and BETTER.
posted by Atreides at 10:07 AM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


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