This is the story of Jesse Elliot, a horse racer with a bold and drunken reputation, who frequented these races with his horse called Fury.
On a Sunday in October, Jesse challenged a mysterious man in black to a race for a wager of one hundred dollars. But some say Jesse made a deal with the devil to help his horse along, a deal that ultimately the devil wouldn't pass up.
During the race, Jesse yelled out to his horse, "Take me in a winner or take me to hell!" The horse reared up, throwing Jesse head-forward into a pine tree. The mysterious rider soon vanished, never to be seen again.
The neighbors said that Jesse's hair hung from the bark of the tree for months afterwards, and that that side of the tree eventually turned brown and died, leaving the tree's other half still green and living. Even today, the prints from Jesse's horse are still plainly visible, and still free from any type of vegetation.
Nothing covers the hoofprints for long, though many have tried by piling leaves, sticks or other objects into the crevices, only to return later to find them bare.
Around the mid-twentieth-century, a journalist named Earl Harrell arrived to get some pictures of the Bath Hoofprints. Harrell was told by local residents that chickens would eat corn from all around the holes, but that they would not touch any kernels that were actually in the depressions. Harrell decided to film his own experiment with chickens and corn, and the result was the same. The birds ate all of the corn from around the holes, but ignored the feed lying within the holes themselves, even after the surrounding ground had been picked clean.
Artwork by AmericanTerror.com
