(1890, Arkansas Backwoods)The Macabre Trial of Silas Dunning —A LOST Mystery Too Shameful to Uncover | HO!!

For nearly a century, the records of The Macabre Trial of Silas Dunning lay buried—sealed beneath courthouse floors, mislabeled in archives, and whispered about in the darker corners of Arkansas folklore. What happened in the isolated mountain settlement of Bitter Creek in 1890 remains one of the most disturbing and inexplicable episodes in American criminal history.

The case wasn’t simply a trial—it was an exposure of something so incomprehensible that even the men who presided over it questioned their own sanity.

When the lost transcripts resurfaced in the 1970s, scholars who examined them described their contents as “a wound in history—one that bleeds through the paper itself.”

The Settlement That Time Forgot

In 1890, Bitter Creek was a speck on the map—two hundred settlers clinging to life in the dense folds of the Ouachita Mountains, sixty miles southeast of Fort Smith. It was a place of whispered legends and endless twilight, where mail arrived twice a month and the forest was said to swallow travelers whole.

The isolation bred both faith and fear. People believed in hard work, in God, and—quietly—in the things that moved beneath the earth.

Among them lived Silas Dunning, a man whose very presence seemed carved from the same ancient stone as the mountains. Tall, gaunt, and soft-spoken, he arrived in 1889 claiming to be a preacher. But his gospel was strange, filled with talk of “old covenants” and “the congregation beneath the soil.”

Residents tolerated him—until they began to disappear.

The Vanishings

The first to go missing was Mary Elizabeth Hartwell, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the local merchant. She was last seen walking toward Dunning’s cabin one October evening. The next morning, her bonnet was found hanging from a tree branch halfway there.

Ten days later, brothers Samuel and Joshua Brennan vanished while hunting. Their rifles were discovered arranged in a perfect circle around a tree carved with symbols no one could recognize—symbols that seemed, impossibly, to pulse in the firelight.

By winter, the disappearances had become epidemic. Families vanished overnight. Travelers never reached their destinations. Those who remained spoke of hearing their loved ones’ voices calling from underground—pleading, singing, or laughing in ways no human throat could sustain.

“The Earth Remembers Everything”

In December 1890, Dunning was arrested after an eight-year-old boy, Timothy Morrison, claimed to have seen him leading a procession of the missing into the forest—“down into the ground, singing.”

Sheriff William Hutchkins described Dunning as “unnaturally calm, his eyes like wet stone, his words not meant for human ears.”

During interrogation, Dunning spoke of “vessels for the awakening” and “ancient promises fulfilled beneath the mountain.”

When asked where the missing were, he replied simply:

“They are below, where time folds upon itself. The old ones wait there, and I have merely opened the door.”

Physician Dr. Jeremiah Blackwood, who examined the prisoner, noted that Dunning’s pulse was faint, his body temperature abnormally low, and his pupils “reflective like those of a nocturnal creature.” The doctor added, “He knew things about anatomy no itinerant preacher should—where pain resides, how memory can be harvested.”

The Trial

The Trial of Silas Dunning began in January 1891 under Judge Cornelius Ashford. From the first day, the courtroom itself seemed afflicted. Witnesses swore the floorboards vibrated faintly whenever Dunning spoke. The air grew cold, and a sound like distant weeping echoed beneath the building.

Court stenographer Helen Fairchild recorded that “the temperature dropped each time the defendant addressed the jury.”

Timothy Morrison’s testimony transfixed the court. In trembling detail, he described seeing the missing townsfolk descend willingly into a fissure in the earth as Dunning led them in song. “The ground opened,” he said, “like it was glad to see them.”

The boy’s words drew laughter from skeptics—until several jurors began clutching their heads, claiming to hear the same melody echoing faintly beneath the floor.

Madness in the Courtroom

As the trial wore on, rationality itself seemed to decay. Witnesses collapsed mid-testimony. The defense attorney, Robert Caldwell, began muttering to himself and drawing geometric patterns on his notes.

Sheriff Hutchkins testified about finding Dunning’s cabin filled with strange diagrams burned into the wood—spirals, intersecting circles, and what appeared to be maps of subterranean tunnels.

Psychiatrist Dr. Ezekiel Morrison, brought from Memphis to evaluate Dunning, declared him sane yet “operating within a framework of knowledge that does not belong to our species.” Dunning, he wrote, “predicts the fears of men as if reading from their own bones.”

Even Judge Ashford began to unravel. In a letter to his brother, later recovered from his estate, he confessed:

“I no longer believe we are judging a man. We are witnessing the trial of something older, wearing human skin as its disguise.”

The Disappearances Continue

The horror did not stay confined to the courtroom. Witnesses began to vanish during the trial.

On February 12th, Martha Cunningham, who had testified about lights near Dunning’s cabin, was found missing from her locked room—her bed sheets folded into the same geometric formation found at earlier disappearance sites.

Three days later, Deputy Frank Morrison disappeared during a routine patrol. His horse returned riderless, saddle etched with those same unreadable symbols.

By then, fear had infected the entire county. Locals begged the court to end the trial, believing each testimony angered something buried beneath Bitter Creek.

The Verdict and the Vanishing

Despite the lack of physical evidence—no bodies, no weapons, no remains—the jury took only four hours to convict. Judge Ashford sentenced Dunning to hang on March 15, 1891.

He never reached the gallows.

Five days before his execution, guards discovered his cell empty. The door was locked from the outside. The stone walls untouched. On the wall above his cot, scratched deep into the limestone, were the same geometric symbols seen throughout the case—and a single phrase written in his own blood:

“The thirteenth door opens.”

Buried Truths

The case was quickly closed. Officials blamed accomplices and sealed the records “to protect public order.” But in private letters, Judge Ashford admitted, “We convicted the wrong entity. Dunning was merely the vessel.”

Within months, Ashford suffered a breakdown and spent his final years in an asylum muttering warnings about “the hunger below.”

The official archives remained sealed until 1977, when historian Dr. Margaret Thornfield of Arkansas State University uncovered a cache of suppressed evidence in the basement of the defunct Blackwater County Courthouse.

What she found was staggering.

The Hidden Evidence

Among the files were medical reports from Dr. Morrison describing the survivors of Dunning’s congregation—people found wandering near his compound after his arrest. Each bore identical scar-like carvings across their backs—geometric wounds that reopened and bled decades later.

At night, orderlies reported the survivors rising in unison at exactly 3:17 a.m., arranging themselves in a perfect circle, eyes open, unmoving until dawn. None remembered it in the morning.

Also sealed away were daguerreotype photographs of the underground chambers beneath Dunning’s church—rooms carved from solid rock, their walls lined with the same symbols found on the victims. Drainage channels cut into the floor tested positive for human blood.

And then came the discovery that changed everything: a journal written by Dunning himself.

The Journal of the Thirteenth Door

Written in cipher and decoded by Thornfield after two years of work, the journal detailed Dunning’s so-called Harvest Ceremonies—rituals involving thirteen participants aligned with specific astronomical events.

He wrote of “crossing the threshold,” of “devoted souls serving eternally beneath the soil.”

The final entry, dated October 27, 1890, repeated one phrase over and over:

“The Thirteenth Door opens tonight. We go to serve.”

The evidence suggested Dunning’s “church” was one of many. Records linked him to disappearances in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Missouri—each involving a preacher known as Brother Silas.

The Second Discovery

In 1978, following an anonymous letter, Dr. Thornfield located a secondary site hidden deep within the Ouachita National Forest. Inside a cave system, she found relics of dozens of vanished settlers—wedding rings, children’s shoes, pocket watches—arranged in ritual circles.

She also uncovered a journal belonging to Marcus Whitmore, son of Judge Ashford, revealing that the judge had conducted his own secret investigation before his death.

Whitmore’s notes suggested Dunning was part of a nationwide network—thirteen preachers across the American frontier performing identical rituals aligned with the stars.

Judge Ashford died on March 13, 1891, five months after the trial. His son died a year later—both found in rooms covered wall to wall with the same symbols.

The Final Excavation

Later that same year, Thornfield led an official archaeological expedition to the original Dunning compound. Using ground-penetrating radar, the team mapped a vast tunnel network stretching half a mile in every direction.

Inside, they uncovered thirteen chambers, each containing skeletal remains arranged in identical patterns—arms folded, faces turned upward as if awaiting something. Forensic tests identified at least 150 individuals.

Before the findings could be published, three members of the team—including Dr. Thornfield herself—vanished overnight. Their belongings were discovered arranged in the same geometric shapes found in the caves.

The investigation ended there.

The Legacy of Bitter Creek

Today, the site of Dunning’s compound lies within restricted federal land. Officially, it’s closed due to “unstable geological conditions.” But locals tell another story—of voices beneath the soil, lights that flicker in the woods, and strangers in old-fashioned clothes inviting travelers to join evening prayers.

Those who accept, they say, are never seen again.

Digital restoration of the 1890 daguerreotypes in the 1990s revealed something chilling: shadowed figures standing at the edges of the original photographs—observers who appear unchanged in age when compared to images taken years apart.

Historians now believe the Dunning case may have been part of a larger pattern spanning the entire American frontier: thirteen communities, thirteen vanishings, and an unbroken chain of worship reaching far below the earth.

Whether Silas Dunning was a madman, a murderer, or a messenger of something far older, one truth remains.

The trial that sought to expose him instead uncovered a mystery too shameful, too terrifying, for history to face.

And somewhere beneath the mountains of Arkansas, the earth still whispers—

“The thirteenth door opens.”