Anna Applegate.. (Folk Lore)

The Legend of Anna Applegate - 1831

This story takes place in the late summer of 1831 in a small town in the Rogue Valley. The town’s population was booming due to the new sugar-beet factory that had located there. Most folks were fruit pickers, following the harvests from state to state. There was an encampment of small cabins near the factory, where most of the workers and their family’s lived. The factory was working overtime one night and a few of the workers family members came to inquire why their men weren’t home yet.

Jane Applegate was waiting for her husband Clay, along side a store house on the shaded side. Her daughter and son were both with her. It was hot and the air was so thick it was hard to breathe. The daughter, Anna asked her mother if she could get her some water to drink. Jane scurried off to the office to ask for drinks as quickly as she could. On her return her son Troy told her that a bat came and took Anna away. The mother was terrified and went back to the office to get help in finding her.

All the staff and factory workers organized, and a search began. Days had past with no signs of Anna at all. Not even a hair was found. Two weeks later the janitor of the Redwoods Tower (a hotel) went up to the roof getting ready to tar it. He noticed a small child huddled up by the smokestack. He ran over to her – but she was already dead. It was Anna; they say the cause of death was from loss of blood. She didn’t have not one drop left in her small body.

The parents and town’s people were distraught and in shock, “how could something like this happen in our safe small town” they said. Nearly 200 people showed up at Anna’s funeral. The preacher said a few comforting words and then her father Clay asked for the coffin to be opened so he could say his last goodbyes to his daughter. The preacher opens the lid, but the coffin was empty.  Murmurs and cries swelled over the crowd as they were in disbelief. An investigation took place, no body was ever found.

Every year, on the anniversary of Anna’s funeral day, various people will report that they saw her walking the alleyways and streets in town. Grey skin – red eyes – torn tattered dress. Some say they have even seen her up close, and that she has fangs like a vampire. Others say she is trying to find her mother, wandering aimlessly to no avail. People do come up missing quite often, never to be found again. Is Anna adding to her vampire family? Or are all the disappearances just coincidental, happening on the same day every year?  Only the victims know for sure, but I would speculate her covey in the hundreds by now. Some say it was voodoo others say witch craft.

But if you talk to the mortician Alan Applegate, he will tell you to stay indoors at night in the Rogue Valley in the late summer, because Anna is still thirsty.