By KARIN SHAW ANDERSON / The Dallas Morning News
Lying down on the dry grass and brittle leaves in Garland's Mills Cemetery on Saturday, Brenda Jennings waited, her head nearly touching the Smiley family tombstone.
MONA REEDER/DMN
Rumor has it that if you lie on the Smileys' grave, you'll have a hard time standing up. But Brenda Jennings is skeptical. Cloaked in black, the Garland woman was in the mood for a ghostly encounter.
But Ms. Jennings, who professes to have seen, felt or heard from dozens of specters, said she felt only the grip of grief atop the Smiley tomb, not the grasp of a spirit as claimed in a variety of legends about the gravesite.
MONA REEDER/DMN
Posters, including one for the Panther Creek 'Haunted HOG Ride,' are tacked to a tree near the grave of the Smileys, who died in a 1927 storm. The site was part of a tour of 13 spooky stops taken by a group of Harley owners in Allen. Many doubt the tomb is haunted, but at least one man on the tour reported something supernatural. "I feel the sadness of the day they were all here being buried," said Ms. Jennings, eyes closed. "I feel a lot of sadness and see pictures of what things would have been like at the time they were buried, pictures of wooden caskets side by side.
"But I think if anybody's having trouble getting up from here, it's the slant of the ground," she said.
With that, she jumped up, dusted off her clothes and vowed to return at midnight on Halloween, the time Internet sites claim the legend should really be tested.
Most online accounts say that someone lying on the grave will have trouble standing up. But those same sites also set forth varied versions of how the five members of the Smiley family died on May 9, 1927.
"It's really a pretty good rumor to start, if you're going to start one," chuckled Michael Hayslip, a local historian. "Typically [portrayed in the legends], it's some sort of murder ... where all these people were killed."
In truth, the Smiley family was killed by a tornado that ripped through Garland and other nearby towns. Many others, including a former Garland mayor, died as well in the deadliest tornado in Dallas County history, but the Smiley family appears to have lost more kin than others: father, mother and three young children.
But two other Smiley children survived.
Dorit Smiley was 6 at the time of the tornado, and his sister, Margaret, was 4.
"He never remembered anything about it," said Muriel Smiley, Dorit's widow.
An aunt raised him, and Mrs. Smiley said he rarely spoke of what happened to his family that night. He visited the gravesite only once, after a cousin found it.
Mr. Smiley died about three years ago, but he was reminded of his family's tragedy shortly before his death, his wife said. He had fallen and broken a hip, she explained.
"The surgeon that worked on his hip said he had never seen bones like that in anyone," Mrs. Smiley said. "They were like eggshells. The surgeon thought it was the electricity in the storm that night that caused that."
Despite the unusual effect that storm caused in her husband, Mrs. Smiley doubts that his family's grave is haunted.
"I think it's all a lot of people imagining things," she said. "I can't believe all this stuff that's going around."
Edward Parker thought the idea was just spooky enough that he decided to include the Smiley grave as one of 13 stops on a "Haunted HOG Ride" he organized for the Panther Creek Harley Owners Group based in Allen.
"We thought the story behind it fit well with the ride we're doing," Mr. Parker said. "From our perspective, it didn't really matter if it was real."
But one man who took the ride past the grave has attested to something supernatural at the site, Mr. Parker said.
"He has a picture he took that has orbs of light in the photograph," Mr. Parker said.
Those orbs, Ms. Jennings said, are spirits.
She says they appear in dozens of photos she has snapped at area graveyards, especially Mills Cemetery.
Once she gets photos of orbs or other swatches of light she calls vortexes, Ms. Jennings said, she returns frequently, hoping to capture more evidence.
"But they love to drain my batteries and ruin my camera," she said. "My last digital camera was just totally ruined. Whatever energy they use pulls all the energy out of your batteries."
Mr. Hayslip remains skeptical.
"I think there's a propensity on the part of some people to dwell on rumors," he said. "I don't know how you counter something like that."
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