The Whispering Alphabet of Runnymede Plantation

The moon hung low over the Ashley River, its pale reflection trembling across the black water like a secret trying not to be spoken. Beneath its glow, Runnymede Plantation stood like a monument to memory itself—its chimney a solitary sentinel rose into the sky, its oaks draped in Spanish moss that swayed like mourning veils in the humid breeze. An impressive avenue of live oaks led to the haunting estate, their limbs arching overhead like cathedral vaults. A second avenue, consisting of a skyline hedge of Southern Magnolias, bordered the garden in fragrant silence, their waxy blossoms glowing faintly in the moonlight.

Elias Carrington had come alone. In his hands he carried the parchment containing the verses written by Poe as he strolled the garden. The edges were brittle, the ink faded in places, but the rhythm of the lines still pulsed with eerie vitality. Local lore held that Poe had been a frequent visitor, slipping away from Fort Moultrie during his brief military posting in Charleston to wander the plantation’s shadowed paths, drawn to Runnymede’s spectral beauty and the strange Alphabet Walk that twisted through its gardens like a living cipher.

He was seen once, they said, beneath the Cypress tree at twilight, murmuring lines to himself and scribbling furiously in a leather-bound journal. The gardener’s daughter swore she saw him bury something beneath the tree—a scroll, perhaps, or a letter sealed with wax and marked with a raven.

Nothing prepared Elias for the visceral unease that crept into his bones as he stepped onto the Alphabet Walk. The trees loomed like sentinels of an ancient code; each one marked with a brass plaque bearing a single letter. A for Ash, B for Birch, C for Cypress… and so on, winding deep into the garden’s heart.

He paused beneath the twisted limbs of a Hackberry tree marked with an H. The plaque was tarnished, but beneath the grime he saw a faint engraving: “Heed the hush.” He turned. The wind had stopped. The garden was silent. Then came the whisper. It wasn’t a voice, not exactly. More like a memory brushing past his ear. A line of verse, half-formed and aching to be remembered:

"In twilight’s hush where shadows creep,

And ancient oaks their secrets keep,

I wandered lost through paths of lore,

Where time had locked a hidden door."

Elias scribbled it down in his notebook, heart pounding. He had found the first clue.

The Alphabet Walk twisted unexpectedly, leading him to a grove where the trees grew closer together, their branches interlaced like the strands of a wicker chair. Here, the letters grew stranger—Q for Quince, X for Xylosma, Z for Zelkova. Poe had walked this path. It was said Poe had whispered his poem into the bark of these trees, each line a cipher, each stanza a map.

"U urges fate to turn its face,

V veils the vow of love’s embrace,

W wakes the wind to cry,

X marks the spot where secrets lie."

At the base of the Zelkova, Elias found a stone half-buried in moss. It bore a carving: a raven in flight, its wings outstretched over a scroll. Beneath it, a single word etched in Latin: “Veritas.” The final lines of Poe’s poem read:

"But truth is not for hearts untried—

It waits where sea and soul collide.

Seek not the gold, nor glory’s flame,

But speak the word that none dare name."

Elias stood in the hush of the garden, the wind returning with a sigh through the magnolias. He felt the weight of time pressing against him—not just the plantation’s haunted past, but the burden of secrets kept too long. Somewhere, beneath the sand and salt of Sullivan’s Island, a scroll waited. And on it, the name of a treasure lost to time.

But tonight, the garden had given him its first whisper. And the Alphabet Walk, it seemed, was only beginning to speak.

The Haunting Ashley River Plantation Just a Buggy Ride from Magnolia Plantation