by Virginia Holmes

He lived in solitude for 45 years and no one ever knew why. There have been strange and difficult vows, but none more fantastic was ever sworn and kept to the bitter end than that of James Monroe Eoff, the hermit of Crooked Creek Valley, Arkansas. Monny Eoff, while in his early 20s, swore never to see daylight again, never to behold another human face and never to speak to another human being except his wife. Eoff, who had enlisted in the Confederate Army in his teens, emerged from the Civil War bitterly disappointed at the South's defeat. Four years afterwards, when he was 22, he married the belle of Crooked Creek Valley, daughter of a well-to-do planter. Although he was not in good health, the young couple appeared completely happy in their log cabin. Twin sons were born to the Eoffs in 1870 when Monny was 23, and a few months later he contracted a severe case of measles. The doctor told him, 'Eoff, you want to protect yourself from going blind. You have to spend the next two months in a dark room.' Eoff and his friends set to work and built a lean-to shed, 10 by 15 feet, against his cabin. It's windowless walls were planked up to the inside that no light could enter. The room was ventilated through an opening in the floor. When the doctor called at the end of the two months, Eoff refused to leave the shed. All reasoning failed and the doctor finally became convinced that Monny meant it. His last words to anyone except his wife were, "I have taken an oath never to leave this room alive. Never again will I see the light of day." After he had been in his self-chosen prison for several months, neighbors decided that his trouble was laziness. A band of them went ot the cabin determined to force him to work. But Mrs Eoff calmly told them that her husband's manner of living was approved by her, and was no concern to anyone else. Since she was highly respected and seemed capable of taking care of the farm by herself, the neighbors expressed sympathy and left. During the first few years Eoff's seclusion was a never-ending wonder to the people of Crooked Creek Valley. Mrs Eoff refused all offers of assistance and said repeatedly that her husband was content and she was also. But, with the passage of time, the situation came to be accepted as inexplicable. Between Monny and the rest of the world stood a door, through only his wife was allowed to pass. On the other side of the door, his sons grew to manhood, and on the other side of the door he could hear the voice of the daughter he never saw. On the other side of the door visitors, relatives and friends talked and laughed, but he remained silent. As the years went by legends began growing up about him. It came to be believed that he possessed second sight, and could predict floods, cyclones, deaths and tragedies. Through an era of invention and history more momentous than any before it, the Hermit of Crooked Creek kept the door tightly shut. Doubtless, he was the only person in a civilized land who was totally unaware of anything that happened during that time- and by his own choice. He was sometimes heard pacing back and forth on the plank flooring and, after his death in 1915, it was found that his footsteps had worn the boards thin. The only furnishings in his fark cell were a cot, a chair and a table. Only death released him from his self-imposed sentence. And since it sealed his lips, and he had left no written record of his years as a recluse, the motive for such a deliberate waste of life remains unknown. The generally accepted theory is that it was a morbid defiance of Fate. He had wanted the South to win, but it had lost. He had wanted health, but had been sickly. As a last straw, fearing he might lose his sight, he said to himself, "I shall withdraw from the world which has given me nothing but frustration. This is something I can will and bring to pass". Unreasonable as it may sound, this theory of perverted heroism is the best which has been offered. But it remains only a theory- and the amazing hermit of Crooked Creek Valley is as much a mystery today as he was when he died 40 years ago.