The Black Zodiac

10. The Hammer

The Hammer is the ghost of an African-American blacksmith, George Markley, who lived in a small town in the 1890s. He was wrongfully accused of stealing by a white man from his town, and when threatened with exile, refused to leave town. A gang led by his accuser hung his wife and children and burned their bodies; in revenge, George used his sledgehammer to beat the culprits to death. He was then subjected to a cruel form of frontier justice by the townsfolk, being chained to a tree and executed by having railroad spikes driven into his body with his own sledgehammer. As a final touch,they cut off his hand and attached the sledgehammer—handle and all—to the hand that was cut off. His ghost is seen with the railroad spikes protruding from his body and a sledgehammer for a left hand.