The Cold That Stole Lewisburg: The Harper Givens Murders, Part 1.
- Cindy Armstrong
- 14 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Storytelling to heal, haunt, and hold on to
Some stories don't just rattle your bones — they hang on like the smell of wood smoke in your clothes or the hush of an old hymn sung too softly to forget. No story had this effect on Kentuckians like the Harper Givens Murders.
December 1965
Back in December of 1965, somethin’ dark and mean found its way into the heart of Lewisburg, Kentucky. The Harper Givens Murders. The kinda thing that don't just happen and get buried—it stays. It lingers in the cracks of your mama’s porch steps, echoes in the rustle of cemetery leaves, and stirs up goosebumps on the back of your neck even fifty-some years later.
It was in Lewisburg, on a bitter winter mornin’, when Edgar Carroll Harper, the town’s bank man, and his sweet pie-makin’ daughter, Ella Givens, were found lyin’ cold in the frost-kissed grass of Peach Orchard Hill Cemetery. Not far from the family graves they'd tended with love for decades... they became the mourned instead of the mourners.
The murder—cruel, sudden, and silent—tore through that town like a whip through water. The Kentucky State Police came knockin’, but even they couldn’t uncover the truth. Four years of huntin’, questioning, diggin’… and still, nothin’ but shadows.
Today, that cemetery still stands, arms full of secrets and soft winds, like it’s waitin’ for someone to come back and tell the rest of the haunting story.
But the dead don’t talk… or do they?
In the next blog entry, I’ll walk y’all deeper into the mystery of Peach Orchard Hill Cemetery and why locals still leave fresh-picked flowers and hushed prayers on Edgar and Ella’s graves—even now.
Stay tuned, sugar. This story ain’t finished whisperin’ yet.
The Curse Of Peach Orchard Hill
...Sunrise cut across the frozen hill like a blade, and two shapes lay still in its path—one with hands calloused from years behind a banker’s desk, the other still wearin’ the apron she’d used to bake for Sunday church folk. No footprints. No blood trail. Just silence... and the shiver of something wicked that had come to town.
Because sometimes the ghosts we carry ain’t in chains—they're in memories.”
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