Episode 15: The Snake Charmer of Fiddler's Rock

Today’s episode is part legend and part ghost story. In the Appalachians just east of Mountain City, Tennessee stands the Stone Mountains. Legend has it that on calm nights, the sound of a ghostly fiddle as well as painful screams can be heard coming from a formation there known as Fiddler’s Rock. There are multiple local tales about this remote site and the melancholy ghost who haunts it. Join me as we explore the ghostly legend of the Snake Charmer of Fiddler’s Rock. 

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Welcome to the Tennessee Ghosts and Legends Podcast. My name is Lyle Russell. I am your host, and I love a good ghost story. Today’s episode is part legend and part ghost story. In the Appalachians just east of Mountain City, Tennessee stands the Stone Mountains. Legend has it that on calm nights, the sound of a ghostly fiddle as well as painful screams can be heard coming from a formation there known as Fiddler’s Rock. There are multiple local tales about this remote site and the melancholy ghost who haunts it. Join me as we explore the ghostly legend of the Snake Charmer of Fiddler’s Rock.

The Story:

There are multiple rock formations in the Appalachian hills of Tennessee and Kentucky known as Fiddler’s Rock. This Tennessee legend takes place on Fiddler’s Rock just east of Mountain City in Johnson County. The area is the uppermost northeast tip of Tennessee, bordering Virginia and North Carolina in a very remote part of the state. 

During the early westward expansion and settlement of the Appalachian Mountain regions, locals would gather regularly and hold large social events and dances. The fiddler’s rock was the name given to any flat rock outcropping where the musicians could get above the crowd and play from. One musician in particular, who is known by either Old Martin or simply as Martin, was well known in the Johnson County area as being the best fiddle player in the region. Martin was born in either the town of Trace, or at Elk Mills around 1850. His father and grandfather were both mountaineers and natives to the area, so Martin grew up learning how to hunt, trap, and fish as a boy. It is said that his family operated a sawmill and logging operation and could craft nearly anything from wood. It was here that Martin first learned to play music. Under the watchful eye of his father, Martin fashioned a fiddle of his own made from Spruce and Curly Maple cut from the hills they lived in. His grandfather taught him the old tunes that traveled over from Europe and the Highlands of Scotland with their forebearers, songs that many but the old-timers had forgotten. Martin learned them all by heart and added his own artistic flair to the tunes. Before long, young Martin was known as the best fiddler in Johnson County. 

It is said that Martin would travel regularly to Fiddler’s Rock to practice his craft. As anyone knows who has visited remote rocky areas of the Appalachians, there are more than a few snakes around, especially rattlesnakes. The legend says that Martin’s playing was so precise and hypnotic that the rattlers would come out from the rocks and sit around him as he played, swaying to the fiddler’s tunes. When Martin saw the effect his music had on snakes, he would gauge the quality of his play by how quickly he could charm the snakes before they got too close to bite him. It became a game that would one day take a deadly turn.

Until that fateful day, Martin used his ability for the good of his neighbors. Some believed his music was so good that it had restorative powers over the sick and afflicted. Though Martin himself didn’t claim that or really believe it, he would oblige anyone who was feeling ill by playing a tune and at the very least, raise their spirits for a time.

As Martin grew older and more seasoned as a fiddler, his music was so hypnotic that he could also charm people, especially the ladies that heard him play. Martin, however, was very shy and awkward with the fairer sex. The legends say that while his fiddle could swoon the ladies, he remained single his entire life, but one time, he did fall in love. This would be another omen that would lead to a terrible end. 

When you are considered the best at anything, that means there is always someone up and coming who is trying to take your crown. Such was the case with Martin and a rival fiddle player named Orville Keane. Keane was a fine player in his own right but did not receive nearly the invitations or fees to play that Martin did. For years, Keane would burn with jealousy over Martin’s abilities. Then one day, he decided it was time to act. Keane gathered all his earnings and struck out for New York City. His goal was to find the vilest woman he could to come back with him to Tennessee, woo the heart of Martin, and then break it so badly that he would no longer want to play the fiddle at all.

In New York, after weeks of searching through the city’s undesirables and malcontents, he finally met the woman who would rid him of Martin forever. Her name was Josie McCombe, and was said to have the blackest heart of any woman alive. Keane at first did not believe such a beautiful woman could have such a dark reputation. Keane saw her beauty charming men the same way Martin’s fiddle could charm women, but her purposes were more nefarious. She would use her beauty and wiles to ensnare rich men and then take them for every penny she could get. Sometimes they survived it, sometimes they did not. Keane cornered her at a party in a New York pub and laid out his proposal. Keane convinced her that Martin had a hidden fortune from his family’s logging business but lived as a pauper so not to alert any bandits in the area of his wealth. Keane paid McCombe his savings to make the trip to Johnson County with the promise that once there, she could take Martin for whatever he had and leave him ruined and heart broken. Keane did not know if Martin had any wealth or not, so he was taking a gamble on lying to Josie. He didn’t care. His only goal was to take Martin out of his life for good. After a few days of negotiation, Keane’s silver tongue and the lure of riches was too great to pass up. Josie boarded a train with Keane and the pair of brigands finalized their plans on the way back to Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Martin had been invited to play for a large wedding between two prominent families from neighboring towns. They threw a huge party, inviting every resident and passer-by to attend the event. This blanket invitation was the perfect opportunity for Keane to bring Josie in and introduce her to Martin, starting a series of tragedies that would befall them all.

Right before the wedding performance, Keane sought out Martin and introduced Josie as his niece visiting from the north. Uncle Orville, as she called him, said Josie was considering moving to Tennessee because of the lack of eligible bachelors in New York City. Martin was instantly smitten, stumbling over his words when introducing himself. When he got up on the fiddler’s rock to play and could not take his eyes off her. Keane, knowing what was about to happen, told Josie to put cotton tufts in her ears or she, too, would fall under the spell of Martin’s fiddle and not be able to execute their plan. She pretended to, but left them out simply for curiosity. Could his music be that hypnotic? She thought. There was only one way to find out.

Clearing his mind to focus, Martin played the best tunes in his repertoire. Though he was playing for the new bride and groom, in his mind, he was playing for Josie. As his bow struck chord after melodic chord, Josie found herself swimming in the notes. It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. In her mind, she felt every bad thought and feeling being pried back, revealing the sad, abused and abandoned little girl she once was instead of the hard-hearted vixen she had become. Keane looked over and saw the swoon in her eyes. He nudged her roughly and snapped her out. “It’s happening just as I said,” he whispered angrily at her. “He’s charming you.” She came to for a moment and assured him she was fine, and she would see her part through, but a seed had been planted in her mind by the music. It was a feeling she had not felt in years. For the first time in her adult life, Josie McCombe was conflicted about her role.

Over the next few weeks, Josie was sure to find where Martin was and bump into him every chance she could. Every time they met; Josie could see in his eyes that her hooks were in. Martin was falling for her, and she was playing the part, well, like a fiddle. Keane grew impatient, becoming more rough and more demanding of Josie to speed the process along. Martin was still being asked to play for nearly every event, and Keane had spent all his savings to get Josie here to ruin Martin. He was quickly finding, however, that it was he who was ruined and had no source of income. He demanded that Josie ramp up her efforts at Martin’s next performance, which was two nights from then. 

This part of the legend has multiple variations. I will continue with the version I liked for now but will relate the other version afterward. For this version, the night of the party arrived and Josie and Keane found a corner to lurk in, waiting for the opportunity to strike. Martin went to the stage and was about to open his case at the party and begin his warmups when Josie approached him in her finest purple gown unlike anything Johnson County had ever seen. Martin was struck dumb as she glided toward him, putting her hand gently up to his cheek where he blushed three different shades of red. 

“Martin,” she said. “Will you play me a special song tonight?”

“Of course, if you’d like one,” he replied. “I sure will.”

“Be sure to wink at me before you play it, so I’ll know it’s for me.” She said with a wry smile. Before he could reply, she leaned in a kissed him on the lips. Martin had never felt such a rush. She released him, stared into his eyes and said, “That’s so you don’t forget.”

Martin’s mind was everywhere but on his music at that moment. He staggered up to the stage where the mayor gave him a wave to get started. His thoughts were hazy until his chin nestled into the rest on his fiddle. Suddenly, all the music lessons learned from his father and grandfather flooded back to him, and Martin gave the best performance of his life. Even the crowd who had heard him play several times before could not break away from the haunting melodies his fiddle made. Josie stood at the back of the room, resisting the siren’s song of his fiddle until Martin locked eyes with her and winked. As he played, tears streamed down her face. She could not remember the last time she had cried. Her mind was a chaos of guilt and regret over a wicked life lived so poorly. A feeling washed over her that she did not recognize at first but figured it out just as quickly as it had arrived. Through the bars of the music, Josie was in love. She suddenly buckled at the knees only to be caught by an enraged Orville Keane.

“I knew it,” he snarled. “I knew you couldn’t do it.” He roughly pulled her outside the door where the two co-conspirators faced off. “Well? Are you going to hold up your end of the bargain or not?” 

“I… I can’t. I’m leaving this awful place. I’m going back to New York,” she said through her tears.

“The hell you are,” he snapped back. “You go back in that room right now and tell him you never want to see him again. Break his heart and finish the job. Then you can go wherever you want.”

“I won’t do it,” she said defiantly. “I won’t. I love him.”

Keane pulled a large hunting knife out of his jacket. Her eyes went wide with fear. “You wouldn’t dare…”

“Miss McCombe,” he said very calmly. “You have no idea what a man in hell is willing to do to get out of it. Martin is just going to have to lose you in another way.” He grabbed her hair and before she could scream, he buried the knife in her chest, cleaving her heart in two. He dropped her dead body on the threshold of the hall and ran out into the night.

Martin was devastated at the loss of the only woman he ever loved. The day after the stabbing, townsfolk said they saw Martin walking up the trail into the mountains toward Fiddler’s Rock where he practiced. For three days, they claimed to hear the saddest and most melancholy fiddle echoing through the trees from the direction of the rock. Then one day, it fell silent, and Martin never came back down the mountain. When the town sheriff and his deputies went in search of him, Martin was found laying on top of Fiddler’s Rock, his prized fiddle broken under his weight where he fell. Across his swollen arms and legs were multiple punctures from the bites of rattlesnakes. The legend says that the ghost of Martin is still heard playing atop Fiddler’s Rock, trying to call Josie to him so their spirits can be together forever, and that the snakes will not let anyone near the rock while Martin is playing, forever protecting the snake charmer.

As for Keane, he is said to have run north until he was caught in an abandoned cabin in West Virginia. The legend says that Josie’s financial ledger with details of all the fortunes she stole and crooked deals she had made was found in her personal effects, to include exacting details on Orville’s plan to ruin Martin. Keane was transported back to stand trial for the murder of Josie McCombe, but the crime the citizens of Mountain City were most interested in seeing justice done was causing the loss of their beloved fiddler, Old Martin. At the trial, and Keane was sentenced to death. During the trial, he heard onlookers whisper in shock over the fortune that had been discovered under the floorboard in Martin’s cabin. It would seem he was quite wealthy after all. Keane was hung for his crime in a tree next to Fiddler’s Rock.

The romantic in me feels that as sad as that version of the legend is, it is the most fitting for the story. Tales of star-crossed lovers are not new literary ground, and both protagonists passing away seems cliché but appropriate. Martin never knew how Josie had malice in her heart at the beginning. He only knew that for one time in his life, he felt love. Josie’s malice is redeemed in her willingness to abandon her plan and paid the ultimate price for her betrayal. In an alternate version I found while researching the story, it is said that Josie made trips to Fiddler’s Rock while spying on Martin to learn more about how to seduce him. The snakes, acting as Martin’s protector, felt her malicious intent and killed Josie with a bite to save Martin so he could continue playing for the snakes. The story of painful moaning sounds coming from the area are supposed to be her cries of agony as she died from the snakebite.

This legend was difficult to find any real-world evidence of aside from the folk tale. A search of graves and property records for Johnson County did find records for several Martins, but with no last name to search, results were inconclusive. There were mentions of Keane and McCombe family names around the area, but none named Orville or Josie, and no record could be found about a murder like what is described in the legend. As for folk tales, there were many, all with a slightly different twist but similar enough to convince me that this tale has likely been passed by word of mouth over the last 150 years, and each time it is told a detail or two gets changed and we end up with multiple variants.

Much like the legend of Sadie Baker in Coffee County, this could simply be a cautionary tale made up to warn against the sins of jealously and envy. Throughout recorded history themes of jealousy have brought about major pieces of literature, like Othello, Little Women, and countless Biblical stories like Cain killing Abel and the fall of Lucifer being jealous of humankind. It is a strong motivator in people willing to do bad things. In other versions of this legend, the theme of vanity also comes into play.

The version in Kathryn Tucker Wyndham’s book, “Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey”, Martin has a streak of vanity concerning his playing abilities and is talked into going up to Fiddler’s Rock and trying to charm snakes by some of the townsfolk to see just how good he really is. Martin accepts the challenge and does this several times, each time killing a snake and bringing it back as proof of his playing ability and as trophies of his prowess. On his last fateful trip, he decides to see if his music has the same effect on the snakes at night and finds out the hard way that it does not. The snakes take their revenge and Martin’s body is once again found riddled with bites.

With so many variations and so many places being calling Fiddler’s Rock in Tennessee and Kentucky, real-world proof of this legend may never be found. Proof, however, has not stopped locals from claiming to hear phantom fiddling in the rocky crags of Appalachia. I have also found that most legends do have a trace of truth in them. Before the Civil War began, traveling minstrels were common in the hillsides, going from town to town and setting up performances. Some came in troupes; some came by themselves. A short version I found of this legend says that a lone fiddler wandered the backroads and played anywhere he could for money. It was said that when he passed through Johnson County, there was a particular cave he would make camp in, and that he was killed by a rattlesnake in the cave. As you probably know, sounds inside a cavern carry for long distances. If this fiddler was practicing in the cave, the sound could have easily been heard by other travelers or echoed down to a town and gave the effect of a ghostly fiddle player off in the hills.

At one site called Fiddler’s Rock in the Daniel Boone National Forest in southern Kentucky, there are shapes etched in the rock of a fiddle, a rifle, a cowboy, and other initials and symbols. Locals there believe these were the marks of moonshiners leaving clues to the locations of their stills and cabins for those who bought their illegal spirits. Others think these were clues left by miners who hid the location of Jonathan Swift’s secret silver mine. Believers in those legends think the story of Martin and his fiddle were made up to keep people away. Though there is no connection I found in my research, it is also hard to ignore the moral parallels in the lyrics of  The Devil went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels. The Devil and Johnny are both full of pride and vanity over their fiddle abilities, and there is the cautionary part about jealousy of each other can cause you to lose your soul. In this legend, the devil could have been Orville Keane who preyed on the blackness in Josie McCombe’s soul to do his bidding. The connections and webs these similar tales weave do prove that a legend persists around Fiddler’s Rock, and possibly a haunting to go with it. If you find yourself in the rocky hills of Appalachia and hear a sad fiddle in the distance, you might be hearing all that remains of Old Martin, the Snake Charmer of Fiddler’s Rock.

END

Thank you for listening to today’s Tennessee Ghosts and Legends Podcast episode. I invite you visit my website at www.lylerussell.net if you’d like to learn more about this and other stories I’m working on. If you have had a paranormal experience, know of a Tennessee legend, or want to recommend a haunted location for me to research, I would love to hear about it. Feel free to send me a message through my website and tell me about your brushes with the spirit world. I am your host, Lyle Russell, and remember, the dead may seem scary, but it’s the living you should be wary of. Until next time.