History & local legend
Shotts Cemetery near Ford City is associated with a teenage boy called Reuben and the white horse he supposedly rode on the night of his death. In the local legend, Reuben died by suicide near the cemetery. Afterward, visitors reported a white horse on the hillside, sometimes with fiery red eyes. Seeing it was said to foretell a terrible death.
Kris Grafton Shunk supplied that version to the Purple Pinkie blog in 2008. The cemetery also had a tradition surrounding Reuben’s damaged marker. A visitor writing as Kare in 2018 remembered seeing the broken stone during a trip with school friends in the 1970s. One friend warned that anyone taking a fragment home would die. Kare left it untouched.
