According to legend, she appears at night near the corner of a country back road, roaming fields she likely worked in more than 100 years ago.

At Rose Dale Cemetery, a mile east of this quiet Cambridge back road, Mrs. Clarence B. Markham, the former Julia A. Johnson, is buried in an unmarked grave.

Her seven children -- Clara, Harry, Charles, Mary, Lucy, Laura and Asa, ranging in age from 5 months to 8 years - are buried beside her, their bodies in one grave.

Maybe Mrs. Markham never knew why she committed one of the most heinous crimes in Quad-Cities' history on a late Saturday morning in 1905. Only she, and perhaps her children, went to the grave knowing that secret.

A Sept. 30, 1905, headline in The Rock Island Argus read, "Henry Woman's Awful Deed: Mrs. Clarence Markham While Insane Murders Seven Children With An Ax And Sets House Afire -- Succeeds in Killing Herself."

The country road east of the cemetery is known as Death Curve. It's where Mrs. Markham and her family lived.

Ghost hunters occasionally inquire about the area, now a wide expanse of corn fields and grass-filled ditches.

Not much passes by out there but an occasional car, truck or tractor. On sunny afternoons, the sound of birds singing under blue skies and spring winds blowing give visitors a sense of comfort, of calm.

But at night, legend comes into play at Death Curve. Sometimes, when all is silent except for the night sounds of crickets or an occasional screech owl, something has been said to appear in the distance.

Some say a female figure roams the fields, almost translucent and wearing white. With hair flowing, she glides across the field.

At least two witnesses claim to have seen her.

When they were teens in 1989, a female courthouse employee and her friend were at a red barn near Death Curve. The barn was a popular teen hangout after Friday night football games or on weekend nights.

The courthouse employee, who didn't want her name used, was slightly nervous as she told her story. A friend in Henry County Sheriff Gib Cady's office asked her to talk about the experience.

"On the fence, you could see something white floating off into the cornfield," she said. "I found I was crying in the car. I didn't know what the heck it was.

"I still don't know. It was white with long flowing hair. I was stone sober. Something really weird happened," she said, adding that a Wisconsin ghost hunter has contacted her for research on a book.

At the Cambridge Public Library, Ellie Sponsel rewound microfilm of Cambridge Chronicle newspapers from a century ago. She stopped at a headline about Mrs. Markham.

"Awful, awful, isn't it?" the librarian said. "The moon must have been full."

On Sept. 30, 1905, after Mrs. Markham killed her children and tried to kill herself with a butcher knife, she doused her house in kerosene and set it on fire. Neighbors saw the smoke and rushed over to find her crawling out of the house, burned, her neck cut and bleeding.

The charred bodies of the children were inside when a Dr. Clanahan of Woodhull arrived with Sheriff B.H. Stiers and his deputy. When told by the doctor she wasn't long for this world, Mrs. Markham confessed.

Her husband toiled at a nearby farm and "was nearly prostrate upon arriving home and finding out that she had killed all of their children and likewise herself," according to the Oct. 5, 1905 edition of the Cambridge Chronicle.

Restless spirits never have bothered Stackhouse-Moore Funeral Services owner Vern Stackhouse, who was curious about what happened to the Markham family. A few years ago, he researched the area to see if he could find the bodies.

He points to where the unmarked graves lie in Rose Dale Cemetery.

"I personally don't believe in ghosts," Mr. Stackhouse said. "I've embalmed probably 1,500 to 2,000 bodies in my career, and I've never had any ghost presence. I believe there may be some people that may communicate with the afterlife."

Like Mr. Stackhouse, Sheriff Cady has heard the stories of a ghost haunting these parts for years. "I have no explanation whatsoever," Sheriff Cady said. "I don't know."

At the time of Mrs. Markham's murder spree, her mother, Mrs. Mary Johnson, "has been mentally deranged for some time, and at present is in the insane annex of the county institution at Knoxville," according to the 1905 Cambridge Chronicle article.

The article went on to say a postman found a letter in the mailbox down the road from the crime in 1905. In it, Mrs. Markham, already passed away, had written to her husband, "Dear Clarence: This is to say goodbye to you.

"Some give their souls for others, and I will do this for my children. ... They will all die happy in the arms of Jesus. I will meet them there and someday you will join us, too."

Mr. Markham never joined his family in Rose Dale.

"Apparently, it was too much for him and he moved away," Mr. Stackhouse said. "He's buried somewhere in the Bishop Hill area."