Fiddler’s Rock:
You Have To Have A Ghostly
Fiddle Player in the Band
For most country music fans, it isn’t country music unless the band has a fiddle player. The fiddle—which fans will tell you is just a violin played by someone who really means it—gives country songs that distinctive plaintive sound. Fiddle players, therefore, were given a place of honor in a country and western combo.
While you’ll never get an argument from a fan that a fiddle is important to that country sound, you might get some raised eyebrows if you claim that fiddle players are magic. You won’t get those strange looks, however, if you make that declaration in Johnson County, Tennessee, near a spot on Stone Mountain that most locals call “Screaming Rock.” The haunted spot has a country music twist to it, though. Besides Screaming Rock, some residents refer to it as Fiddler’s Rock. And there’s a connection between the two.
If you visit the site on windy winter days, the legend goes, you can hear a high-pitched sound echoing through the trees. Now most of the unimaginative people you talk to will tell you it’s just the wind whistling through the rock outcroppings. But there’s another theory, one that is more supernatural—and far more fun.
The sound, they say, is actually a phantom fiddle player who is playing a haunting mountain melody. The story—a wonderful example of Appalachian ghostlore—goes on to reveal the name of the fiddle player, dubbed Martin Stone, who used the rock as an outdoor rehearsal hall. The fiddle player became a hot commodity, playing at dances and shows in the area as a featured performer.
People said Stone was a super fiddle player. You might say supernatural fiddle player. Mothers, for instance, who spent many sleepless nights trying to rock their teething babies to sleep would call Stone. It turns out, the moms didn’t need to rock them to sleep—they needed to country and western them to sleep. When he would play, the babies would be soothed to sleep.
Stone’s musical powers went beyond curing insomnia; he supposedly could also heal the sick. His most bizarre talent was not how he healed the sick, but how he soothed the beasts, particularly snakes. People said Martin could play so sweetly that rattlesnakes would crawl out from under rocks and stones and sun themselves as he played. Then he would shoot them with his shotgun.
One day, Martin’s neighbors noticed that the sweet notes of the master’s fiddle had stopped filtering down from the majestic heights of Stone Mountain—and there were no sounds of his shotgun, either. The neighbors decided to investigate. When they made it to the rocky outcropping, they found the lifeless body of Martin Stone. His body was covered in snake bites—and his hands were stretched out, inches away from his shotgun. He didn’t make it to the gun in time.
Without Martin’s soulful strings, the mountain was silent for a while. But then people began to hear the odd whistling from the mountain. At times, they could almost make out a tune. Most skeptics said it was either a practical joke or the winds were echoing through the stones. But others weren’t so sure. They went to investigate when they heard Fiddler’s Rock erupt in all its musical glory and they never found any pranksters. The music could be heard on windless days occasionally, too.
These believers had an explanation. The spirit of the aptly named Martin Stone—the magic fiddle player—was not leaving his beloved mountain, and he was never going to leave his beloved fiddle.