Lucinda The Phantom of Stony Hollow Road

Lucinda waiting on the bluff. Ready to jump
into legend? Maybe.

Out past Burlington, where the cornfields turn to limestone and the road hums under your tires, lies Stony Hollow Road. Quiet, crooked, and empty. A place where headlights vanish faster than they should and the night feels heavier than it ought to. Locals say a woman named Lucinda still waits there—though for what, no one’s sure anymore.

The story is simple and mean. She was supposed to meet her lover at the bluff. He never came. Maybe he got stuck in the mud. Maybe he never planned to show. She waited, heart cracking open, then stepped off the edge. No records. No obituary. Just a story that settled in the dirt and refused to leave.

If you stop there after midnight and say her name three times—“Lucinda, Lucinda, Lucinda”—she’s supposed to appear on the cliff, pale and silent. Yeah! It sounds like Beetlejuice, but Lucinda was there first, so who’s copying whom?

A Haunted House in Leach Hollow

Neighbor's say Burch in Leach Hollow was haunted.

Everyone agrees the Burch House in Leach Hollow is haunted. It’s an old farmhouse surrounded by scrub oak and hazel brush out in the middle of nowhere.

When they had enough of the hauntings, the family sold all their stuff and moved to Nebraska. They rented the place to Clyde Nepper and his new bride in 1908—conveniently forgetting to tell them about the supernatural happenings. After a short while, the Neppers heard strange noises—a weird rapping on the walls and voices. One night when it got to be too much, Nepper hitched up his team, and they fled the house.

Several friends returned with him the next night to help ferret out the cause of the sounds.

“We got down to the house after dark,” said Earl Heisler. “I laid down with my clothes on and had a gun in my pocket and one on the floor near the bed where I could reach it without moving.”

The noises started at about 10 p.m. It sounded like someone was moving in the other room—with wooden shoes or a peg leg.

“I wanted to reach for that gun on the floor,” said Heisler, but “I couldn’t... it seemed that my whole body was asleep, and I couldn’t move a finger.”

Is the Alice French Mansion Haunted

If you want to do a drive by, it’s located at 321 East 10th
Street in Davenport. (Alice French house in 1910)

I’m not sure it’s haunted, but—if you follow the online rumor mill, strange things are happening at the Alice French house in Davenport.

If you’re unfamiliar with her, don’t sweat it. No one else knows her either, and the handful who do, know her as that lesbian writer from Iowa’s past which is a real shame. Alice was one of the highest paid woman authors at the turn of the century, but as reader preferences changed she didn’t, and her books fell out of favor.

Alice died in 1934, but the mansion she bought in 1906 lives on. Visitors report feeling cold spots, and seeing a dapper Victorian gentleman seated in the parlor. Others say lights mysteriously switch on and off, and doors slam open and shut when no one is nearby. Some people have heard strange voices in the basement—whispered conversations.

Could it be Alice and her special friend, Jane Crawford? Or is something else haunting the Alice French mansion? We may never know.