Stories about humans and their dogs are usually about loyalty, bravery, and protection on the dog’s part, love and affection on the human’s part. Dorothy Thompson Hagwood’s story about her big black Great Dane, Babe, was no different — except that the story didn’t end when Babe died.

    Babe, Hagwood says, still sits on the front porch of her business, the historic Causeyville General Store, greeting visitors and protecting his owner. Hagwood said she is not alone inside the store either; a sneezing ghost, a haunt that fiddles with light fixtures, and a spook who plays the piano, and numerous others are said to keep her company, making the small building more crowded than it appears.

    The store first opened back in 1895 and has been used since then for everything from grinding corn in a grist mill to showing films. Its primary function today is as a general store selling hoop cheese, hot roasted peanuts cooked in an antique roaster, glass bottle Coca-cola, and a variety of sundries. The grist mill also is still in operation, and there is a large collection of antiques on display, with pianos and player pianos, radios, movie posters, old timey electronics and furniture from the old Marks-Rothenberg department store taking up enough space to make the store seem crowded, but not so much that it feels claustrophobic.

    The building itself looks just like a general store out of an old Western film, except it’s covered with brightly colored old-fashioned signs and advertisements. From the entrance, over a large front porch and through a screen door, customers step onto an ancient hardwood floor to purchase goods displayed on heavy wooden shelves and antique glass cases.

    Hagwood’s late husband took over operation of the store in 1982, and Hagwood began to run the store herself after her husband’s death in 1995, 100 years after it first opened.

    Hagwood found Babe after she began running the store. He was a stray dog she had seen around and fed a few times. When she heard a neighbor was planning on shooting him, she took him in as her pet. As if he knew that she had saved his life, Babe returned the favor.

    Most days, Babe would sit on the front porch of the store greeting customers, but would act differently when he felt something was off. One day, a group of men came into the store and began browsing the food shelves. One man motioned to Hagwood to come look at a can of soup he was holding so she could tell him the price. Sensing that something was not right, she stayed behind the counter. Then Babe appeared, growling softly and giving them a menacing look.

    “What’s that?” one of the men asked.

    “That’s my guard dog,” said Hagwood.

    The men left without buying anything.

    Later, when Hagwood told some deputies who visited the store about the incident, describing the men and their car, the deputies said the men were known robbers who they had been trying to catch.

    “They said I was lucky to be alive,” Hagwood said. Had they gone through with the robbery, deputies told Hagwood, the men likely would not have been satisfied with the small amount of money kept in the store.

    More than once, Babe scared off potential robbers from the store, and he made Hagwood feel safer. She knew the dog would die to protect her.

    When Babe did eventually die, it was from bone cancer. He was put down peacefully and buried near his home.

    Hagwood thought Babe was gone until she started hearing strange stories from some of her customers.

    The first time, it was two brick masons from Tennessee. Being out-of-towners just passing through, it was unlikely they had ever heard of Babe. But when they came in the store, they asked for him.

    “Where’s your big ol’ dog?” Hagwood said they asked her. She thought they were talking about another one of her dogs, but then they said, “That big ol’ black one that has the white chest.”

    She said the men told her they had driven by the store earlier that day and were planning to go in, but the dog had blocked their way. When they came back, they were hoping to make friends with the dog.

    Another time, a lady stopped by the store because she said she and her kids had spotted the dog on the porch a couple of days earlier, and they wanted to pet it. When Hagwood told her the dog she described had died, the woman was in disbelief.

    Hagwood is confident a look-alike dog hadn’t happened to stop by and sit in Babe’s old spot, because her other dogs always barked when a strange dog came by.

    The thought that Babe’s spirit continues to protect her is a comfort, Hagwood said. “I couldn’t ask for a better guardian angel.”

Variety of spooks reported

    The first story of a haunting Hagwood ever heard of at the store was about a sneezing ghost. After leaving the store and then returning, Hagwood found that a young woman who had stayed in the store was acting agitated.

    The girl said she had distinctly heard someone sneezing right next to hear, but found no one when she searched the store.

    Later, when Hagwood was alone in the store, absorbed in a mystery novel, she heard the sneezing too — but was disappointed to find that the sneeze came from a customer she hadn’t realized was there.

    She has heard someone walking around when she is alone in the store, as have others. She said the sound of someone walking with heeled shoes on the wooden floor is common and often accompanied by a lavender scent that brings to mind an old fashioned sachet.

    The scent is usually fleeting, Hagwood said. “It’s like somebody’s running past you with it.”

    Another scent that Hagwood reports, one which usually manifests itself suddenly, is that of cherry pipe tobacco.

    In the back of the store is a collection of antique pianos and player pianos that have sometimes been the site of unusual activity. Hagwood said she thinks her husband, who was protective of his piano collection, may be guarding them.

    When a paranormal research group visited the store, they made audio recordings in hopes of capturing a message from the other side. What they found when they played back the recording, Hagwood said, was that a piano was softly playing through the entire thing. No one could hear the piano when the recording was being made.

    Occasionally, whatever haunts the Causeyville store will be more active. Electronics, including a toy train that Hagwood used to keep at the store, have sometimes come back on after being turned off. Cans will fly off the shelves if they aren’t stacked a certain way. But perhaps the most frightening and most often witnessed phenomenon is the swinging lamp.

    Hanging from the ceiling near the middle of the store is a large old fashioned lamp that is tied to a massive flat iron.    

    “It’s tied down for a reason,” Thompson said. “Out of the clear blue, you’ll look up and that thing is going as far as the chain will let it, round and round and round… I got afraid it was going to break loose, so I tied it down.”

    She’s actually lost employees because of the lamp. One time, she left an employee alone in the store while she ran an errand and didn’t leave behind a key. When she came back, the employee was sitting outside the store, terrified.    

    While Hagwood was out, the employee said, the lamp had started spinning, and a small sled that’s tied to the ceiling nearby had started bouncing around. The employee said she never wanted to be alone in the store again, and quit.

    Even when there’s no activity, Hagwood said the store sometimes just gives you odd feelings. “You just get the idea — You turn around and you think someone’s there,” she said.

    The store is actually not the oldest building on the premises, but it’s most haunted. The building next door, which Hagwood called the Old Indian Trading Post, is much older, but there have been no reports of suspected paranormal activity there.

    Since running the store, Hagwood said her attitude about ghosts and hauntings has changed.

    “I used to laugh at people about that,” she said. “I don’t laugh anymore.”