ARKANSAS CITY - It was three minutes before noon on a frigid December day when the 108-year-old bell atop the old Desha County Courthouse rang once.
It was supposed to ring 12 times - and three minutes later.
"Y'all witnessed it," Desha County Judge Mark McElroy told a reporter and photographer. "Y'all done made him mad, and you're going to leave me with him."
McElroy was referring to the ghost - courthouse staff members call him "Willard" - that residents of this remote Desha County seat in southeast Arkansas say has haunted the courthouse and its E. Howard clock for more than 100 years.
The story, according to more than a half-dozen residents, goes something like this:
Sometime between 1899 and 1903, a man lost money gambling in an Arkansas City hotel and decided to set it and other hotels on fire, burning them to the ground.
The man accused in the arsons was captured, tried and convicted. A judge ordered him to be hanged at the courthouse.
The man pleaded his innocence before he died and told those watching that he would curse the new clock atop the courthouse as proof of his innocence.
"The man said he was not guilty, and to prove his innocence he said that clock would never keep time again," Arkansas City resident Dee Fowler said.
Fowler said her grandfather served on the jury that convicted the man and told her the story when she was young.
Some say the clock stopped immediately after the man died.
McElroy, the county judge since 1993, said the clock has never worked properly. Sometimes it jumps forward, sometimes back. Sometimes the long hand reads the hour and the short hand reads the minutes. The bell often malfunctions, as it did Dec. 15, he said.
One night a few years ago the bell rang constantly, keepingresidents awake for hours before McElroy arrived to shut it off.
"I've worked in this courthouse over 30 years, and that clock has never worked properly," said Rita Kolb, the Desha County treasurer.
In the 1970s, McElroy said, county officials decided to run the clock off electricity rather than weights, hoping that would solve the problem.
It didn't.
One of McElroy's campaign pledges before taking office in 1993 was to restore the courthouse and fix the clock.
Being mechanically minded, McElroy worked on the clock himself.
That didn't work, either.
So he hired Frank Jackson, a clock repairman out of Dunnellon, Fla.
Jackson, owner of the 73-yearold Clock Service Co., removed the old clockwork from the top of the courthouse, loaded it up and took it back to Florida, where he exchanged old parts with new ones before bringing it back to Arkansas.
Jackson said he doesn't believe a ghost is causing the clock to malfunction.
"Back in the old days, they probably did hang somebody out there on the front of the courthouse or on the steps of the courthouse or up in the tower of the courthouse or whatever," Jackson said. "I don't dispute thatone bit, and the guy may have cursed them and the clock, but that's not the problem with the clock. It's just an old clock, and it needs tender loving care. All of them are that way."
Jackson said the clock at the Desha County Courthouse is exposed to the elements and when it gets cold is prone to malfunction. He also said a sliding bar that allows the bell to ring 10 times at 10 o'clock, 11 times at 11o'clock and 12 times at noon and midnight, and so on, needs to be oiled more than once a year or it won't work properly.
Whether the clock is just old or really cursed can't be resolved, at least not scientifically.
McElroy, the courthouse staff and workers who worked to restore the historic building after he took office believe that a ghost roams the courthouse.
Reports of doors opening andslamming for no reason, footsteps in areas with no humans and other oddities are common talk at the courthouse.
"There's a ghost in here somewhere," Desha County clerk Beth McMahan said, adding that even the clocks on courthouse staff telephones malfunction.
On Dec. 15, for example, all the dates on the phones read Dec. 14. Several efforts to fix the dates on the telephones provedfutile, she said.
McElroy said he has considered his options to reverse the curse.
He said he has mulled over inviting "ghost busters," paranormal researchers, to the courthouse to find out if any ghosts and goblins are residing there.
He said he has also considered holding a mock trial to undo the conviction of the man accused of burning the hotels.
Then, maybe, the courthouse clock would finally work properly, and the ghost known as Willard could rest in peace, he said.
Arkansas, Pages 11, 20 on 12/27/2008