Jellico Tennessee - The Bag Man

Until recently I thought that the Bag Man was a story that the adults in my family had made up to scare me and my siblings. It was a good story to keep us from wondering too far from the house and to keep us in our yard.

As I grew older I learned that I wasn't the only one who had been told this story nor was I the only one who spent many sleepless nights as a child worried about The Bag Man coming for me. It seems that this was a local legend that has slowly dissolved over the years.

As the story went, there was a large man that lived in the mountains surrounding Jellico. He carried a huge bag over his shoulder and would lure children into the woods by promising that the bag was filled with candy. If they refused to follow him, he'd grab them and put them in the bag and haul them off into the mountains. No matter if they went willingly or not, the children was never seen again because he turned them into stone. With this on my mind I was terrified of stone lawn ornaments, I assumed that it was a stone child that the Bag Man had captured.

This was a scary story to be telling children back in the day, although I am sure that the adults never thought about how terrifying it actually was. To make matters worse there really was a tall man that walked the streets who also happened to carry a large sack over his shoulder. Every time that we seen this man coming down the street we would run for our very lives. To say very least the story served it's purpose well because we absolutely would not venture too far from home. However as we grew older we decided to go find the Bag Mans old shack in the woods and see the stone children for ourselves.

We entered the woods along the top of Cumberland Avenue and followed a well beaten path up into the mountain. Every sound that we heard sent us backward a few steps as we tiptoed deeper into the woods, careful to not make too much noise. Finally we came upon a old wooden shack that seemed unoccupied so we built up the courage to peek through a window. What we saw shook us to the bone. No we didn't find any children turned into stone but we did find a huge sack and it was filled with something. Children? We just knew that we had found his sack full of children. What should we do? Run for help? No he'd surely catch us and throw us into that sack too. It only made since to go free the children in the sack. If he found us at least we'd have numbers and could fend him off more easily. Then we'd all leave the mountain as heroes.

My brother and cousin stood watch as I went inside to free the children. I poked the bag a few times but they didn't move, they must have been asleep or something worse. I fumbled with the string on top of the bag. My hands was shaking so bad that it felt like it was an impossible task. I don't think I took a single breath as I untied the knot. When the bag finally opened I screamed to the top of my lungs and threw myself against the wall behind me. From the corner of my eye I could see that my brother and cousin was running away with every ounce of energy that they had. I had never seen two boys run so fast before.

CANS! The sack was filled to the rim with old tin cans which was now scattered all over the room.

After picking up all of the scattered cans and shoving them back in the sack, I shut the door and started walking back out of the mountain. I was somewhat disappointed that there was no children in that bag. It began to sink in that we had been made fools of by our very own parents. I sort of chuckled to myself in knowing how well the story had kept us kids close to home and afraid to go near strangers.

A few days later I seen The Bag Man come walking down the street, only this time I didn't run for my life. I actually spoke to him as he passed by and he kindly spoke back with a gentle smile. Come to find out for all of these years he had been collecting cans along the streets. I even started saving every tin can that I could find and leaving them for him to grab on his way past our house.

I was watching my grandson play out in the front yard one day. I thought to myself, the world is a dangerous place so maybe I should tell him a story to insure that he doesn't roam out of the yard. I thought about The Bag Man and smiled to myself. Instead I decided to just sit there and enjoy watching him be care free and young. There is more than enough to worry about as he grows older and the harsh reality on the 6 o'clock news will give him enough sleepless nights.