The column first appeared in October 2012.
It’s October in Irvington. Time for hot apple cider, Halloween decorations and ghost stories. Allow me to suggest a one tank trip an hour west on the National Road to visit one of Indiana’s best known, and most beloved, ghost stories. The Vigo County Historical Museum is located at 926 Wabash Ave. in Terre Haute. While you’re there, visit the subterranean vault that is home to Stiffy Green, the subject of Terre Haute’s best known ghost story.
As with most ghost stories, the tale of Stiffy Green is partly fact and partly fiction. Stiffy was the cherished pet of the Heinl family. John G. Heinl, a prominent Terre Haute businessman, acquired a bulldog in the early 1900s. The two became inseparable, often seen walking the streets of “Terry Hot” side-by-side. Mr. Heinl named his faithful friend Stiffy Green because of the dog’s quirky, stiff-legged trot and blazing emerald green eyes. In 1920, Mr. Heinl passed away. The dog refused to leave his dead master’s side, faithfully attending the funeral and then afterwards standing vigil outside of the mausoleum.
Stiffy stood sentinel, snapping and snarling at all who came within range of the mausoleum doors. Every night, the family took Stiffy back home, but the dog managed to find his way back to his master’s side. The Heinl family even placed the dog miles away at the homes of friends, hoping to sever the bond once and for all. But the intrepid Stiffy Green would always return to Mr. Heinl’s crypt. Soon, the family gave up the quest and simply tried to make the dog as comfortable as possible with food, water and an impromptu sleeping place. It has been said that the dog refused to eat. The brave little bulldog guarded the mausoleum day and night, rain or shine and for awhile became a familiar fixture at Highland Cemetery.
One day, the widow Heinl came to the mausoleum to check on the dog only to find the lifeless Stiffy body on the cold marble steps of his master’s tomb. Seems that not even death could dampen Stiffy’s devotion as he was found just a few feet from his master’s body. Conscious of the bond between the dog and his master, Marie Heinl decided to have the dog stuffed and entombed inside the crypt near her husband. Word of the dog’s loyalty quickly spread and locals created a fund to have the dog’s body preserved by a local taxidermist. He was mounted into a sitting position with his bright green eyes open to watch over the tomb for all eternity.
That’s where the legend begins. The family returned to the tomb, not as often as they did before Stiffy passed, but on a fairly regular basis to care for the final resting place of their beloved husband and father. The family noticed that Stiffy was never in the same place they had left him before. He seemed to be moving around the tomb on his own. Word of the nocturnal ramblings of Stiffy Green began to leak out. Soon, visitors would report peeking into the mausoleum to gaze upon the glowing green eyes of the dog on the right side of the crypt one day only to return the next day to find that Stiffy had moved to the left side of the locked gravesite.
Another part of the legend claims that as a caretaker was leaving the cemetery one warm evening, he heard a dog barking from the general direction of the Heinl tomb. He hurried over to within a few hundred feet of the tomb and immediately recognized the short peg-legged trot of Stiffy Green disappearing around the tomb. Soon, many others claimed to hear barking, always at dusk, coming from the Heinl mausoleum. What’s more, at times witnesses claimed to have seen the dog’s head tilt or the tail wag. Still another part of the legend claims that the ghostly figure of a man walking his dog near the tomb could be seen in the wee hours of the morning, long after the cemetery gates had closed.
Over the years, the Heinl mausoleum became a favorite rendezvous for Terre Haute teenagers, who would shine flashlights through its glass doors to see the dog’s glowing eyes. Vandalism to the crypt seemed inevitable and in the 1980s a group of teenagers fired bullets into the Heinl crypt and shot out one of Stiffy’s eyes. The dog was removed in 1985 due to the constant vandalism to the mausoleum. The Terre Haute Lion’s Club built a life-size replica of the Heinl mausoleum in the basement of the Museum “to create the proper atmosphere to perpetuate the legend,” and Stiffy was moved into it in 1989. He has been there ever since. Highland Lawn cemetery is no longer open at night to the public. Still, rumors persist that, on certain nights, you can still hear him barking within the closed gates of Highland Lawn.
It’s a great Indiana ghost story, ranking right up there with the House of Blue Lights. But sadly, just like the blue lights tale, it’s not true. Stiffy Green was never a real dog. Marylee Hagan, Executive Director of the Vigo County Historical Society, friend of the Indiana National Road and an acquaintance of mine reports that Stiffy was never a real dog. He is a cement statue that once adorned the front porch of the Heinl household and a favorite of Mr. Heinl’s. After the vandalism of the mausoleum, the great-grandchildren of John Heinl gave him to the Vigo County Historical Society for safekeeping. Of course, the legend is a fun story of pet loyalty and the museum lets visitors make up their own minds about whether it is true or not.
Regardless, Highland Lawn cemetery at 4420 Wabash Avenue is well worth a visit. After visiting the Heinl gravesite in Section 1, lot 20, be sure and mosey on over to the nearby Sheets family crypt. Interred in the mausoleum are Martin Alonzo Sheets, his wife, Susan, and their only child, Ethel, who died at 13 months. When Alonzo Sheets died in 1926, his will insisted that a telephone be installed in the mausoleum, along with a rocking chair and a bottle of whiskey. He was buried in a special coffin containing latches that could be opened from the inside, so that if he ever woke up, he could call for a taxi and have a drink while waiting for his ride to arrive.
As you might imagine, operators at the old Indiana Bell Telephone Company were in constant fear that someday the line from Sheets’ resting place would begin flashing. There were many complaints about the telephone poles and lines strung throughout the peaceful cemetery leading up to the Sheets crypt. Therefore, with a court order, the Board of Cemetery Regents was ordered to remove the offending poles and wires. Because the phone installation was included in Sheets’ will, the Bank Trustee had to go to court in order to remove the phone from the mausoleum.
But as you may have already guessed, just like the concrete dog statue Stiffy Green, the phone inside the Sheets crypt became the source of a ghost story all its own. A number of years later, Sheets’ widow also passed away. Her body was discovered lying on her bed with her eyes frozen wide open in a deathly stare, a telephone receiver clutched firmly in her hand. She held the phone so tightly that it had to be pried from her fingers. Susan Sheets had experienced a severe stroke and family members surmised that she died while trying to call an ambulance. A service was held and afterwards her casket was taken to the family mausoleum for internment beside her husband. When cemetery workers entered the locked mausoleum, they received the shock of their lives. Nothing inside the Sheets crypt was disturbed and it was exactly as it had been left the last time it was opened for Martin Sheet’s funeral — except for one thing: The phone was off the hook.
When you’re finished there, walk over to the unusual grave of John Robert Craig (April 2, 1877. to December 31, 1931.) You can’t miss it because it’s shaped like a bed. Legend has it that Craig, a traveling salesman, had traveled to a prominent Indianapolis hotel to be with his lover and celebrate the new year far from prying hometown eyes. While in bed with his girlfriend, Mr. Craig suffered a fatal heart attack. The woman fled the scene and hotel staff found the body later the next day. Authorities contacted the widow and informed her of her husband’s passing. She arrived in the city shortly and soon discovered the circumstances of his death and illicit affair. The wife, now very upset, told the folks at Highland Lawn; “He made his bed. Now he’ll lie in it.” When she brought the body back to Terre Haute for burial in Highland Lawn Cemetery, she designed a special tombstone custom built just for her cheating husband. It resembles a bed to remind everyone just how he died. She even had him buried on “his” side of the bed.
The cemetery’s other famous residents include the triple-victims of 1914’s Brazilian Gypsy Murders, Socialist Party hero and five-time Presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, and Chief Bearfoot, a performer in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.
However, it’s the Stiffy Green exhibit at the Vigo County Museum that keeps people buzzing. The exhibit has become a favorite of Terre Haute visitors. The story has been told many times in many ways, especially around Halloween, but the legend of the green eyed faithful four-legged friend, like Stiffy himself, never grows old. Stiffy Green; an Indiana folktale guaranteed to fascinate and confuse generations of Hoosiers for years to come and, in the meantime, grace the front of the museum’s most popular shirt.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
