THE STORY
Reported Haunting
A rural stretch of Falling Branch Road near Christiansburg has long been remembered in local folklore as "The Chains." According to stories passed down among area teenagers and residents, an enslaved man was hanged in the surrounding woods and his spirit can still be heard at night dragging shackles and chains. Other accounts describe unexplained crying, shadowy activity, and an unusually oppressive or heavy feeling in the area. The claimed hanging has not been historically verified and should be regarded as local legend. The road does, however, have a documented connection to tragedy. On June 1, 1992, 32-year-old shoe-store manager Lorna Raines Crockett was robbed after making a night bank deposit, forced down Falling Branch Road, and shot twice in the head. Her body was discovered there the following morning. Local retellings have sometimes incorporated her death into the supernatural reputation of the road, although no documented evidence establishes that any reported apparition is Crockett.
Falling Branch Road runs from the developed southeastern side of Christiansburg into a more rural and wooded section of Montgomery County. Local oral tradition associates an area toward the end of the road with a ghost story known as "The Chains." The exact historic location referred to by that nickname has not been independently identified. Falling Branch Road was also the scene of the 1992 murder of Lorna Raines Crockett, a Christiansburg shoe-store manager.