Big Liz of Greenbriar Swamp

This is a story about a ghost story — the legend of Big Liz of Greenbrier swamp.

The tale dates to the American Civil War, when, according to a retelling by S.E. Schlosser, a young but powerfully strong woman — her huge arms could carry two sows at once — was suspected of being a Yankee sympathizer by the man who enslaved her.

The slave owner, who lived on a plantation in Maryland, supported the Confederates, and came up with a plan to get rid of Big Liz, instructing her to carry a big chest of gold out to the local Greenbriar Swamp, and bury it in the marshes. After exhausting Big Liz by having her dig an enormous hole, the slave master confronted her from above and chopped off her neck with his sword, imagining his problem solved.

But as he returned home in the dark, he saw looming nearby “a massive, dirt-encrusted figure that glowed with blue fire.” The creature had tucked under her arm a severed head. The terrified man was unable to prevent the phantom from snapping his neck and tossing his body. The folklore around this legend has it that sightings of Big Liz have reoccurred in the Maryland region of Greenbriar Swamp, about ten miles from the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge.

As folklorist Elliot J. Gorn writes, 19th-century African Americans from the South accomplished more than the creation of titillating stories when they spun tales about ghosts. Such folklore reflects the cultural mindset of the times. Big Liz demonstrates a belief in the moral depravity of white enslavement. But slave ghost stories show other things too — like fears of white masters, a re-appropriation of justice, or reflections about having a lack of agency.