The Three Legged Lady of Nash Road

 Happy Monday, Missians!

Welcome to your next installment of this year's Monsters of March series.  I must admit that this one sounds the creepiest to me so far, of all the "monsters" or legends I've researched.  Just the name of this "monster" sounded freaky before I'd ever read one article about her.  She sort of puts in mind of a cross between the girl off The Ring and the Bloody Mary legend.  

And of what monster is this I speak?  Well, this legend tells more of a ghost story than that of a monster.  This urban legend details, (though not many details could be found), the Three Legged Lady of Nash Road.

Nash Road is a road in Columbus, Mississippi that is allegedly haunted by a mysterious, spectral woman, appearing to have an extra limb--an infamous third leg.  Most of the articles I ran across concerning this frightening figure were regurgitating the same thing and were very brief in what they had to say about the three legged lady.  But I did find one blog post that went into a bit more detail about her (more on that in a bit).

Okay, so I'm sure y'all are dying to know what this lady's back story is.  I was too. And here's the thing, there are several origin stories circulating out there as to how she came to have three legs and why she ended up hanging around this particular road.  Some stories say she's an unfortunate mother whose daughter was kidnapped and dismembered.  The desperate mother supposedly scoured the woods in search of her daughter, only to find one of her legs.  Upon this gruesome discovery, the poor woman was so distraught she carried around her daughter's leg with her, wandering the road and the surrounding woods in despair, and can still be seen doing so to this day.  

Other versions of the story say the woman has the rotting leg of a dead lover sewn to her body, (in some versions this is the leg of her husband, in others it's the leg of someone she was having an affair with).  Then some parts of the legend say her appearance on the road is connected to satanic rituals that were performed at an old church, (that's no longer standing) near the road. But even creepier than the legend itself, is the "fact" that she's been known to chase drivers' cars down and slam her body into their automobiles as they speed away in terror, (although in her defense, it seems that most of these drivers "summoned" her by honking their horns three times and turning off their headlights.  When the church was still erected, some stories have people luring her into interacting with them by knocking on the church door three times (which causes her to chase them). 

Sidenote:  Both of these sound like incredibly bad ideas to me.   

The most lengthy site covering of this mysterious lady's back story comes from paranormalstories.blogspot.com:

Three-Legged Lady Road (paranormalstories.blogspot.com)

One story begins with a girl living with her mother. One day she was run over by a car, losing a leg and supposedly her mother sewed her daughters leg back on. Now if you knock on the church (that doesn't exist anymore) door 3 times she'll chase you. Don't look backwards until you go around the next curve (where the gate is) or she'll open the gate, you'll drive out into the field and she'll kill you. (The knocking on the church door three times and the lady chasing you seems to be a consistency even though the back story isn't.)

Another story talks about a poor farmer and his housewife who lived on Nash Road a.k.a. Three-Legged Lady Road. The housewife had an affair with a civil war veteran, and of course, the farmer found out. The farmer killed the veteran, and drug his body down Nash Road and over the bridge. In the process, the veteran's leg was torn off on the bridge. The housewife found his leg after the funeral, and stitched it onto her own body. She then went crazy, killed the farmer, and committed suicide. She now walks up and down Nash Road, and haunts the church (which isn't there anymore) that the funeral took place in.

A third story talks of a here was a woman and her husband who lived on Nash Rd. She loved her husband dearly and devoted her entire life to him until she discovered one day that he was cheating on her. She killed him and chopped him up into bits. Then sewed his leg onto her hip so he would always stay with her, and buried the rest of his body in the cemetery down that road. The church found out and accused her of murder and threatened to turn her in (because having a third leg attached to her and a husband who mysteriously disappeared wouldn't have been enough to cause suspicion). So one day during Sunday mass, she locked everyone inside the church then lit it on fire! The remains of the dead are scattered up and down the road. She has never been seen since. Rumor is that she will kill anyone who walks on the church grounds and threatens to tell her secret.

Be sure to click the link above to hear more about the three legged lady and her sightings.  This was the only site I found that offered some variation of the legend and was a bit more extensive.  Most of the other sites were saying about the same thing and didn't have much extra to say; but this one lacked some of the details the others said.  So, for extra reading, you can also check this one out:

Mississippi's Scariest Legend: The Three-Legged Lady Of Nash Road (onlyinyourstate.com)

So, where do you all stand with this one?

As I mentioned in the opening of this post, this one reminds me of Bloody Mary.  And just like that one, whether it's actually real or not, I'm not going to test it out to see.  I don't know why, but I feel like this one could be real; but I don't believe all the back stories are real.  Granted, there are some bat-shit crazy people out there, but I don't think some real-life woman actually sewed someone's leg to her body, and I doubt she was carrying around her daughter's leg either.  If this really is the spirit of some woman who actually once existed, the truth is probably far less fantastical.  But that of course that still doesn't tell us who she is, and why it appears that she has a third leg.  Then there's the possibility that this entity was never human to begin with, and instead, may be some malevolent being like a demon or some kind of trickster.  All I can say for sure, is that I won't be out there on Nash Road to find out!

Well, that's it for now, Missians!

Be sure to join me back here next week for our last Monster of March post.

Until then, 

This is your host J,

signing off...