Tales from the Trail: Seven Sisters Road
L Road outside of Nebraska City is a great place to get in a rolling hill workout — but make sure you’re done before dark. A beast with ruby red eyes is said to lurk in the haunted hills.
Location: Nebraska City, NE
Trail: Seven Sisters Road
Seven Sisters Road (L Road on maps) just south of Nebraska City is a fantastic place to get in a rolling hill workout — but make sure you’re not alone and done before dark. You might just find yourself running for your life.
According to a feature story on the area published by the Omaha World Herald, a Lincoln-based psychic medium Cheryl Ann Fletcher came across seven bodies hanging by nooses from the trees, “their chests blown open by gunshots” when she paid a visit to a hilly site near Seven Sisters Road. The bodies were hanging above a graveyard in a wooded area.
“It was clear as day, as if it were you and me standing right here,” Fletcher told the Herald. “There were seven bodies, males and females mixed. The one that captured my attention was a little boy who was blonde, he was about 7 years old.”
She claims that she felt the phantom-boy’s chilly grip wrap around her wrists and pull her toward a weathered gravestone bearing no inscription. There, the boy introduced himself as Matthew and the two chatted a bit before parting ways. Fletcher later returned with a full paranormal crew to document any supernatural activity. The property owner of the location described to the team a terrifying experience he had in an open field in the area one morning when a ghastly creature with “glowing red eyes, shining like rubies” slowly walked toward him “as if a wolf were stalking prey.” Fortunately for the landowner, the beast eventually scrammed off over a nearby hill. Others have not been so lucky. Every single night for one week in November of 1968 there was a report made to the local police office about a monster in the hills that would come out around 11 p.m. One report claimed that a teenage boy was grabbed by the beast, scratched up, and tossed into a ditch.
Over the years there have been many bone chilling accounts coming from those who have visited this site near Seven Sisters Road.
If you’re brave (foolish) enough to jog the backcountry road at night and end up near the spot, you may hear blood curdling screams, as many others have claimed to. They’re allegedly piercing and seem “nearby, yet just out of reach.” The most commonly told backstory to these paranormal phenomena begins with a belligerent farmer who lived along a road with seven hills many years ago. One night, for some reason or another, the farmer snapped and hung his daughters one by one onto tree limbs. Each daughter was hung on a tree atop each one of the seven hills, giving the area its locally known name. Other tellings of the story claim that it was a brother who went mad and murdered his seven sisters.
Besides the screams, visitors speak of electronic glitches in the area such as headlights going dim, cell service dropping, and speedometers freezing. (Your GPS watch will likely go haywire.) The winds are also said to be capricious. Others have seen red eyes watching them from shadows, and some have heard the haunting ringing of mysterious bells and muffled whispers in the night.
On second thought, maybe find another, less cursed location to do a hill workout in Nebraska City and visit Seven Sisters Road by car if you must. Best to have a quick getaway.
Check out the complete Tales from the Trail collection here.