Our visit to the Ticking Tomb...

On the way we stopped at Mamaw and Papaw's house to get some more tomatoes. Zach got a surprise and got to take a ride on a tractor.

As we were getting ready to leave I asked him if he had fun driving. He said, "yeah, I drove all by myself."

So now it's time to visit the "ticking tomb." Megan went with one of her friends this past spring to see it and it's all she talks about and has been wanting us to see it since then. I don't know why I haven't gotten there before now, I guess it's because it's so close I knew I could do go there anytime.

According to legend, in the mid 1760's surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were passing through the area while mapping out their famous Mason-Dixon line. A local tot supposedly swallowed Mason's pocket watch, which continued to tick inside the boy throughout his life and beyond. It's said that if you put your ear close to his tombstone, you can sometimes still hear the watch ticking away.

Here we are approaching the cemetery.

Megan had been there before and knew where it was but Lauren wanted to find it. All she knew was that it was next to a heart shaped marker. She was the first one to listen.

Of course no one heard the ticking. One theory about the ticking is that it was caused by an underground spring that was beneath the gravestone. In recent years, the ticking has reportedly stopped, which suggests that the underground spring has shifted. Or maybe that the watch has finally run down. Who knows?

Another interesting tidbit about this legend is that Edgar Allen Poe visited the grave himself and the result was the story, "The Tell Tale Heart." Poe did actually stay at a local tavern a few years before his story was published so that part of the legend could actually be true.

The "ticking tomb" is the small flat tombstone to the left of Lauren.
It took us till the end of the summer to go see it but we finally did.