History & local legend
Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church stands on Buckingham Mountain, where a Black congregation replaced its log chapel with a stone church in 1852. A later teenage tradition turned its churchyard into the starting place for a race against the devil.
In the tale, a runner begins at a particular stone. A gust passing the runner before the finish means the devil has won; feeling it behind after finishing promises a year of good luck.
Nearby Holicong Road has a different story: ghosts of soldiers supposedly push cars up a rise known as Gravity Hill. Bucks Happening writer Angela Giovine searched for it in October 2010. She found Mount Gilead’s churchyard, but after roughly two hours driving around the mountain, she still had not located the stretch of road where cars were said to roll uphill.
