Joe's Cave

Missouri · USA · Haunted site

A Black man named Joe was lynched in this Missouri cave in the early 1900s after being accused of raping a white girl. He said God would prove his.

In the early 1900s a Black man named Joe was accused of raping a young white girl near Richland, Missouri. He maintained his innocence throughout, and the words remembered from him are that God would prove he did not do it.

What happened to him is a lynching, and it should be called that. According to the account handed down locally, he survived the electric chair. A group of vigilantes then took him to this cave, tarred and feathered him, and hanged him with barbed wire in one of the larger chambers at the back.

This is one of thousands of racial killings carried out across the United States in that period, and the details here come from oral tradition rather than from a court record, because that is how such killings were meant to work.

Joe had been a fiddle player. After supper he would sit on his front porch and play. Visitors who come to the cave around dusk describe hearing fiddle music carrying through it.

That is what has been left of him: an accusation nobody proved, and the sound of his fiddle.

FAQ

Hvor ligger Joe's Cave?

Joe's Cave ligger i Missouri, USA.