Stories of Superstition: Dead Man's Quarry

              From: Rhea, Sketches and Legends of Upper East Tennessee ( 1932)
STORIES OF SUPERSTITION:
DEADMAN'S QUARRY
In the eastern part of Johnson County, ten miles from
the North Carolina line, there is a branch road that leads from the
State Highway, and winds around the base of a cliff called Dead
Man’s Quarry.
This cliff is haunted so the natives say, and they tell a
ghostly legend from which it receives its name. During the latter part
of the Civil War when bushwhackers reigned in Johnson County, an
unknown traveler carrying on his person a quantity of gold and silver
coins was passing through. A bushwhacker lying in ambush saw this
interesting looking stranger approaching. He shot and killed him, and
when he saw the money, and the important looking papers on the
person of the man he had killed, the bushwacker grew alarmed, ran
quickly to get a mattock from the nearest house, and dug a shallow
grave in which he buried the murdered victim, with his money,
intending to return for the treasure.
But the bushwhacker was killed in a skirmish of
guerrilla warfare, and the mystery was never solved, for no matter
how hard the neighbors would dig in after years, they were never
able to find the money which seemed to disappear in the rocks of the
cliff. But even now, so the people say, this murdered traveler is not
content with his cliff as a resting place, for at quiet times, such as
twilight and after dark, when following this lonely road, you can hear
the money rattling inside the cliff, as the dead man jingles the coins