Oakdale Mill and Ghosts of Workers Past

While visiting Jamestown yesterday to look at sites, I decided that no trip to explore paranormal activity in Jamestown would be complete without a visit to Oakdale Village, which is located just outside of Jamestown on Oakdale Rd.


Oakdale is a Cotton/Textile village located right next to the Oakdale Mill on the Deep River.

Open in 1865 just at the end of the Civil War the Village was built to house the workers for the mill.
Here's the gatehouse, the one way in and the one way out of the village.
A historical marker is at the entrance to the village.

Haunted Jamestown

While Lydia's Bridge might be the famous of Jamestown's Haunted Places there's plenty of other places to explore as well.  I'm going to put Oakdale on it's own blog entry since even though it's in Jamestown it's actually a little village all to itself.  So after visiting Lydia's Bridge yesterday I decided to return and visit a few place in Jamestown and Oakdale.

Visit to Lydia's Bridge

I've been to Lydia's Bridge more times than I can count.  I graduated from Ragsdale High School which is just up maybe about 300 yards up from the bridge.  My most interesting visit was in 1986, at midnight on Halloween after visiting a haunted house that would become Kersey Valley Spooky Woods.
I was feeling nostalgic so I stopped by there today:

This is the new bridge; it's on Main St. in Jamestown, also still called by many High Point Rd.  Jamestown is located straight ahead right up the road.  Jamestown itself, with the Mendenhall Plantation, many old homes, abandon textile mill towns, and High Point City Lake, which has seen several murders and suicides over the years, could hold many haunts.  But it's most famous haunt is Lydia's Bridge.

To get the jest of the story check out the links at the bottom of this post.  Lydia is what folklorist call a "hitchhiking ghost".