Dear editor:

I feel the need to address the article, Haunted Happenings, dated Oct. 30, 2017. I was thoroughly disgusted with the comical tone in which Hickory Springs Primitive Baptist Church was highlighted. With so much hate, religious desecration and intolerance in today’s world, no church should be ridiculed or persecuted for any reason, especially for untruths that have been alluded to over the years by people, a small town mentality, unfounded folk lore and reckless news articles.

As a proud member of this church, I am greatly offended and appalled that Ms. Sarah Warrender basically invited all of South Georgia/North Florida to come to our church to see the “ghost lights and shadows” for themselves. My father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brother in law and countless other beloved family members are buried in the cemetery. How dare Ms. Warrender implore people to drive around the cemetery in order to see the red and white ghost lights! I wonder if she or anyone else that had family members buried there, would enjoy random people driving on and disturbing their loved ones graves? No one has the right to invite people to visit and vandalize our holy and sacred grounds. That is my father’s final resting place and it should be peaceful. And I will not stand for anyone to make a spectacle or mockery of his grave.

And for her to say “if you enter the church,” she was challenging people to do just that in order to try and get the Bible out. She even mentions in the article about the vandalism that occurred many years ago. Does Ms. Warrender with her irresponsible journalism want that to happen again? It was as if she was promoting and advocating for these activities to be repeated.

For a while, these old lies and gossip had been forgotten until this article brought them to life again on the front page of the newspaper. We shouldn’t have to ask or beg that our quiet and reverent place of worship stop being treated like a small town ghost adventure. If this was your church, would you enjoy these types of innuendo? I don’t think so.

Over the years, Hickory Springs and its graves have been damaged by cars, people and ridiculously untrue stories like this one. It is time for all that to stop. How can anyone justify stealing from, breaking into and/or damaging churches and their cemeteries? How can the Tifton Gazette perpetuate these falsehoods to simply sell papers? Our church does not want, deserve or need any further negative connotations. We, as Christians, just want to worship in peace. We don’t deserve to be discriminated or victimized for merely being a little country church.

She also snidely mentioned that “supposedly” the sheriff’s department has stepped up patrols of the area. There should be no doubt that deputies do in fact routinely patrol the church grounds and will arrest any trespassers.

Ms. Warrender did get one thing right. Hickory Springs Primitive Baptist Church is a plain, quaint white church, much like many others in Tifton. But it is so much more than what is spewed in this article. In order to dispel these stories and rumors that this article alludes to, I invite you to join us at Hickory Springs Primitive Baptist Church one Sunday morning and see for yourself what our church stands for. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Christie B. Venable

Tifton