I’ve been noticing a lot of references around the ‘Net this Halloween season to the Greenbrier Ghost, a case in which a woman was allowed to testify in court about her dead daughter’s dream visits, which ultimately led to the arrest and conviction for murder of the daughter’s husband.
This is a very different story, of how dream visits from a dead man brought about legal redress of an old wrong he had done to his family.
James L. Chaffin of Mocksville, North Carolina, was a farmer. Married and the father of four healthy sons, he nevertheless was guilty of a degree of favoritism when he made his will in 1905; he left his farm to his third son Marshall, and also made Marshall executor, which in effect disinherited his other sons–John, James, and Abner–and left his wife of many years with no provision whatsoever.
Jim Chaffin was severely injured in a fall in the late summer of 1921, dying of his injuries on September 7. Within weeks of Chaffin’s death, Marshall had obtained probate on that iniquitous will.
Marshall Chaffin only outlived his father by a year, leaving his father’s farm, in turn, to his wife and son.
His mother and remaining brothers did not contest the will at the time of probate, and so the matter stood for nearly four years, until the spring of 1925.
Old Jim Chaffin’s second son, James Pinkney Chaffin, was troubled that spring by dreams in which, at the witching hour of midnight, his dead father came and stood by his bed, looking as he had in life, but unnaturally silent.
This went on for some time until, in June, the older Chaffin turned up in his son’s dreams one night wearing something he had not previously worn: his old black overcoat. He held the front of the coat open and spoke to his son for the first time: You’ll find my will in my overcoat pocket.
Jim Chaffin vanished, and James woke up with the conviction that his father was trying to tell him that there was a second will somewhere that would overturn the one that left everything to Marshall and his family.
James was on the road by daybreak, on his way to his mother’s house to look for his father’s black overcoat. Unfortunately, Mrs. Chaffin had, in the interim, given the overcoat to her oldest son, John, who had moved sometime previously to a farm in the next county over.
Undaunted, James rode twenty miles to have a talk with John. After he told John about this latest dream, the brothers hunted out the coat and gave it a careful looking over. They found that, in one place, the inner lining had been cut and handstitched back together. They carefully cut the stitches, and found inside the lining a bit of paper, rolled up and tied with string.
The note, in old Jim Chaffin’s unmistakable handwriting, read simply Read the 27th chapter of Genesis in my daddie’s old Bible.
John was in the middle of some late spring planting and couldn’t accompany him, so Jim returned to their mother’s home without him. On the way, though, he picked up a longtime neighbor and friend named Thomas Blackwelder, feeling he might need a reputable outside witness to whatever might transpire.
Mrs. Chaffin had packed the Bible specified by her late husband, one that had been his father’s, away and couldn’t remember at first where she had put it. By the time her son and Thomas Blackwelder found it, upstairs in a chest, other witnesses had arrived.
The Bible was old and falling apart, but Thomas Blackwelder took the part where Genesis was located and carefully opened it to Chapter 27. There, he found that two pages had been folded to form a pocket, and in that pocket was a piece of paper.
It read, in its entirety and in Jim Chaffin’s unmistakable hand:
After reading the 27th chapter of Genesis, I, James L. Chaffin, do make my last will and testament and here it is. I want, after giving my body a decent burial, my little property to be equally divided between my four children, if they are living at my death, both personal and real estate divided equal; if not living, give share to their children. And if she is living, you must take care of your Mammy. Now this is my last will and testament. Witness my hand and seal,
James L. Chaffin
This January 16, 1919.
Under North Carolina law of the time, a will was considered valid if it was all written in the testator’s own hand, whether or not it was witnessed.
Genesis 27 tells the story of how Jacob, the younger son of the biblical patriarch Isaac, received his father’s blessing and thus disinherited his older brother Esau. In the years between the 1905 will that left everything to third son Marshall and this one from 1919, Chaffin had obviously read, and taken to heart, this story of a wrongful inheritance.
Of course, Marshall had been dead some three years by the time the later will was found. The three brothers and Mrs. Chaffin, therefore, filed suit against Marshall’s widow to recover the farm and make an equal redistribution of the assets; Mrs. Marshall Chaffin, of course, promptly countersued.
A trial date was set for early December of 1925. About a week before the trial was to open, James Chaffin received one final visit in a dream from his father. This time the old man seemed quite agitated and inquired somewhat angrily, where is my old will?
James reported this dream to his lawyers and said he took it as a sign that they would win the suit.
In the event, Chaffin v. Chaffin never went to trial. On opening day, Marshall Chaffin’s widow got her first look at the 1919 will, immediately recognized it as being in her deceased father-in-law’s hand, and ordered her lawyers to withdraw her countersuit. The two sides retired to chambers and by late afternoon announced that a friendly settlement had been reached, based on the terms of the second will.
And old Jim Chaffin never troubled his son’s sleep again, having, apparently, gotten what he was after: redress of a wrong after reading a story of one ancient such.
The late North Carolina folklorist and radio personality John Harden told the story of Jim Chaffin’s will in his 1954 book Tar Heel Ghosts.
As I was typing this story of a will I kept hearing Missouri songwriter Damon Black’s “The Condition of Samuel Wilder’s Will” (as recorded by the Osborne Brothers) on the soundtrack in my head. That song has a wonderfully ironic O. Henry type ending that the Chaffin case lacks, but the two remind me of each other, although one has been told for true for nearly nine decades and the other is affirmatively fictional.
I love the story but I have to ask: If old Jim Chaffin was actually still alive when he wrote the second will, why didn’t he just announce it to everyone as a replacement for the first will. Or was he not alive? 😉
I’ve twisted this one every which way but loose and I can’t make the math work, save to say he was alive when he wrote the will and dead when he finally let the family know about it. Ornery ol’ cuss!! 🙂
Well. I’ll just keep to my own interpretation, which is that he died and then decided to change his will. Either way, great story.
This is a good one, isn’t it? Almost has a redemptive aspect to it, like he couldn’t go on to the other side till he fixed the mess he left.
Occurs to me, though, that perhaps the SON knew there was another will, but for whatever reason–a finely honed sense of the dramatic?–opted not to bring up the fact for four years. Kind of outlandish–
Hmm… was that first will a forgery? And why all the messing about with the coat instead of just telling Jim to look in the Bible? It feels like several stories got conflated. Or maybe that’s just how they do things in NC ;->
Makes one wonder, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t be the first or last time there was monkey business about a will– 🙂