Bizarre murder story of a cadaver found hidden in an amusement park haunted house attraction. Written by Nick Zegarac.

In the spring of 1979, workers dismantling a haunted house attraction inside Atlanta’s now defunct ‘Wonderland’ amusement park made a most usual discovery. One of the full sized figures that had been terrorizing eager patrons inside the funhouse for nearly forty years was, in fact, a human cadaver. The workers only discovered this when they attempted to take apart the ‘figure’ in preparation for its shipment to San Antonio. But instead of the usual inner workings of an audio animatronic mannequin, they found real human bone and sinew tucked inside, perfectly preserved beneath a tough layer of dense yellowed wax.

Even more curious was the fact that DNA testing conducted on this mummified body revealed it to be at least ninety years old, thereby placing its origins somewhere around the turn of the last century. For Mr. Edmund Pew, the new owner of this haunted attraction, the discovery of a real live – or dead, as the case may be – ghoul was something of a cause for celebration. He decided with all speed to hire a private investigator to look into the history behind this mystery man.

Over the years, the spooky ‘dark ride’ had undergone several landmark renovations, to say nothing of the yearly maintenance updates that had greatly altered its primary condition. Thankfully, one artifact from the structure had remained intact; a small metal plaque with its raised lettering all but filled in by many layers of paint liberally applied throughout the intervening years. The plaque had been bolted to a narrow stretch of rail track inside the funhouse. It bore the name, Tarot & Masters Inc.; a Pittsburgh based company that had specialized in creating early ‘thrill rides’ from late 1900 to 1950 but had, in 1962, been purchased outright by Chicago’s Dooley & Co. – an even bigger manufacturer of carnival amusements that is still in operation to this day.

So Edmund Pew sent his private investigator, Terry Mullens, to Chicago to learn all that he could about the manufacturing of this ghost ride. One week later, Mr. Mullen’s returned to San Antonio with a story to change even Mr. Pew’s Grecian Formula raven locks immediately to the color of chalk.

“Well?” said Edmund, “What did you find out?”

“Think maybe I could have a drink first?” replied Mr. Mullens. After all, he had come straight from the airport to Mr. Pew’s home office.

“Oh, very well,” muttered Edmund, hastily pouring Terry Mullen’s a short brandy and nervously tapping his fingers on the surface of his desk while the man savored it.

“Well?”

“I think your stiff’s none other than Mr. Eugene Ogelvy,” said Terry.

The name meant absolutely nothing to Mr. Pew.

“Who?”

“Mr. Johannes Tarot’s silent partner.”

“Silent indeed,” agreed Mr. Pew, “the man’s been dead for the past hundred years.”

“Well, he was very much alive until the evening of August 31, 1902,” explained Terry, “See, that was the evening of the big Founder’s Day picnic in Savannah.”

Apparently, Mrs. Frederica Ogelvy ran the local flora and fauna preservationist’s society; dedicated to the cataloging and display of reincarnated plant and wildlife preserved in wax. It was a noble pursuit that greatly advanced Savannah’s historical standing within the new south. Money was raised and a museum was built on the sight of an old Civil War stockade to house Mrs. Ogelvy’s ever expanding collection.

In the meantime, Eugene Ogelvy concerned himself with establishing a visiting menagerie of oddities that travelled all over the country, from New England to Kansas City and parts in between. For Frederica, her husband’s ambitions proved something of a mild, though highly lucrative embarrassment. While she was out to beautify the world, he had been exposing its most wickedly perverse dregs; misshapen and tattoo covered midgets, overgrown women with braided facial hair, one eyed deviants who ate live chickens on stage, and three-legged conjoined twins that could dance the can-can on a bed of nails.

Anyway, one afternoon in late May, Mr. Ogelvy apparently came to his wife’s boudoir pale-faced and blood stained from the waist down. He regaled his wife with a most repugnant ordeal. Apparently, Gwendolyena – his armless and legless blob, billed as ‘the human top,’ had given birth to Chodar, one of the deformed mute’s love children. The male child was stillborn and horribly disfigured. Mr. Ogelvy, who had been called in to witness the birth, and presumably, to take the child away to a nearby orphanage upon its arrival, was now instead inclined to incinerate the tiny corpse that resembled a winged gargoyle in the furnace at the factory he and Messers Yoder Tarot and Jacob Masters shared.

Unfortunately for Mr. Ogelvy, he was discovered quite by accident by Yoder who had returned after business hours to collect his latest blueprints for the haunted house attraction all set to debut that summer at Wonderland Park. What plausible explanation could he have offered Yoder for his actions? In the heat of the moment, none came to Eugene Ogelvy, who instead seized a draftsman’s metal T-square from a nearby wall hook, bludgeoning his business partner to death until the workroom looked like an abattoir.

For hours afterward, Eugene remained locked inside with the body, surrounded by his own bloody carnage and a fearful curse, that at any pensive moment he might be discovered by Jacob Masters. But Mr. Masters had remembered his blueprints the first time around and would not return back to the offices until early the next morning.

After the sun had set behind the trees, Eugene Ogelvy, dressed in the long protective trench coat he usually wore to inspect the paint and acid wash silos out back, dragged Yoder Tarot’s limp and still oozing remains to the sulfuric acid vat and dumped him into its sizzling liquid bath. The toxic fluid easily ate through Yoder’s clothes, skin, eyes and hair. In a few days, it would also devour all of his internal organs and almost everything of his dense bones and teeth.

Afterward, Eugene returned to the workroom to light a fire in its iron stove furnace. But tonight he would deliberately leave the cast iron doors wide open and overstock its hearth so that the popping embers would fall to the floor below where he had left several large jars of flammable cleaning fluid to catch fire. By morning’s light nothing would remain of Tarot and Masters but smoldering wreckage.

“Murderer!” declared Frederica Oglevy.

“I had to!” insisted Eugene, dropping to his feet to beg for his wife’s forgiveness.

“But that still doesn’t explain how Eugene Ogelvy wound up petrified inside my house of horrors,” suggested Mr. Pew.

Terry Mullen paused to refresh his own drink.

“No,” he admitted, “for that we have to turn to another page in history.”

At a quarter to midnight the fire inside the furnace caught the first vapors from the open bottles of cleaning fluid. In no time at all a three alarm blaze had consumed Tarot and Masters workroom facilities and had spread even further to engulf the stockyards directly behind the company, as well as a modest distillery set up by neighbor, Toby Jenkins, whose backyard faced the property.

This inferno brought virtually everyone within a mile radius to Tarot and Masters front door. Some came panicked, with overflowing buckets of cold water from a nearby cistern, determined to isolate the blaze before it spread any further. But most simply came to gawk and speculate how the fire had begun. One man, however, was nowhere to be found: Eugene Ogelvy.

Driving his carriage with all speed to fetch his business partner, Mr. Jacob Masters was politely told by Frederica that her husband had not come home that evening.

“Well?” said Jacob, mildly perturbed by the woman’s vagueness, “Where the hell is he?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Frederica coldly replied before closing the door.

The next morning, as the ruins continued to smolder the body of Yoder Tarot was discovered still fermenting in the sulfuric acid vat out back. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately for Frederica Ogelvy – the body inside was in such an advanced state of decomposition that it was easily misidentified as Eugene Ogelvy. With heavy heart and great regrets Mr. Masters returned to the Ogelvy home to relay this news to Frederica, who shed a few crocodile tears on his behalf.

In truth, however, she had exacted her own revenge on Eugene Ogelvy the night before. After accepting her husband’s murderous confession, she quelled his fears and calmed his nerves with a most elegantly prepared pork roast, new potatoes and cleverly arranged salad made with hand selected leaves from the garden out back; all of them spiked with a sufficient amount of arsenic to stifle even the most stouthearted of men.

As Eugene Ogelvy’s heart was already not what it ought to be, he easily – and rather quietly – succumbed to this poisoning. After Frederica Ogelvy had dispatched Mr. Masters to his home, she set about embalming her husband’s remains, employing the same taxidermy process she had developed to preserve her collected plant and wildlife specimens for the museum.

For some months after her husband’s funeral, Frederica Ogelvy consistently hinted to her patrons – who came to offer their condolences – that a special tribute to her husband was already ‘in the works’ and would make its debut at the Preservationist’s Museum shortly. And so, on August 11, 1902, Frederica Ogelvy debuted the remains of her husband, whom she had cleverly stuffed and dipped in wax to forever preserve him for posterity.

Dressed in his Sunday best, Eugene Ogelvy stood tall and erect as the day he had fallen, his mummified corpse proudly introducing his wife’s waxworks collection of natural wonders inside the museum’s front foyer. In death, he had become the arbitrator of good taste Frederica had always wanted him to be in life.

And there he would remain until Frederica Ogelvy stepped down as curator of the museum in 1926. At the farewell dinner given in her honor the incoming curator made Frederica a gift of ‘the statue’ that had meant so much to her over these many years. Mr. Ogelvy returned to the house he had shared with his wife, with a ceremonial place of honor near the front stairs where he continued to greet visitors until Frederica’s death by natural causes in 1939.

The Ogelvy’s house and contents were sold at public auction that same year. Mr. Ogelvy went into public storage for almost ten years until the proprietor of that warehouse decided the statue’s visage was strangely unsettling and ‘too real’ to keep around his place. Hence, when a traveling carnival came to town, the proprietor suggested they take Mr. Ogelvy and install him as part of their ‘house of haunted horrors’ attraction. He could not have known that the manufacturers of their ‘dark ride’ were the descendants of Tarot and Masters. So, in essence, Mr. Ogelvy went home again.

Stripped of his blue pinstripe suit and redressed in a long flowing black cape, Mr. Ogelvy became ‘the hooded menace’ for a number of years, a ghoulish executioner who terrorized visitors to this anti-chamber filled with buckets of severed heads. Then, several more years, he stood in as the mad scientist, dressed in the white robes of a surgeon and given a syringe and scalpel to clutch in his hands as he was forcibly bent at the waist to appear as though staring down at a terrified patient strapped to an operating table and still very much awake.

By now, however, the waxen death mask had begun to visibly crack, chip and crumble. And there was also a peculiar smell emanating from the figure; a putrid odor that equally turned the stomachs of guests and the maintenance crew overseeing the haunted house attraction after hours.

Mr. Ogelvy was removed from the display and sealed in a vacuum bag for two long years, stored in a un-air conditioned facility until even there, he managed to stink up the place. He almost met with the incinerator himself in 1961 before an ambitious sculptor working in the thrill ride industry suggested that a new coating process might restore ‘the figure’ to its original stature and appeal.

As it was perceived by the powers that be that no more harm or damage could possibly come to this sad and deteriorating likeness, Dooley & Co., who had acquired Harlen and Masters Inc. that same year, allowed their third class assistant his experimentations. And to everyone’s surprise, his restorative efforts yielded a rather glamorous result. Not only did Mr. Ogelvy no longer stink up a room, but now he was also outfitted with a spectacular suit of clothing, satiny green and gold and lavishly appointed with bells on his finger and toes, wearing a headdress that vaguely resembled a court jester.

This is how he would remain for the rest of his days – a figure of fun – leaning into an endless cavalcade of careening cars that wound their way with terrified guests through Wonderland’s House of Horrors.

Mr. Pew leaned back in his leather chair.

“Well,” he concluded, “what’s to be done about Mr. Ogelvy now?”

“That’s your problem,” said Terry Mullen, “mine was uncovering the truth. And now that I have I should like to be paid for my time.”

Mr. Pew wholeheartedly agreed, reaching into the top drawer of his desk to produce his check book. At the end of their transaction the two men shook hands. Only one thing troubled Mr. Pew now. With his acquisition of the funhouse and a few other rides from Wonderland he had incurred a considerable debt. But perhaps he had suddenly discovered a way to resolve at least part of his financial concerns.

“Mr. Mullen,” said Mr. Pew, placing a warm and inviting hand around Terry’s shoulder, “Come with me. I’d like to show you where we make our figures.”

-THE END-

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

Murder tale of a rich man whose breakup with a demanding girlfriend doesn’t go as planned. Then the mermaid appears. Written by Nick Zegarac.

Jackson-David Pitney dusted off the lapels of his cream-coloured dinner jacket and took in a deep fresh breath of salty air into his lungs. He had just skidded his Cadillac convertible off a lonely stretch of highway facing the Florida Gulf Coast. A loathsome speck of coarse sand prickled beneath the lid of his left eye. This only added to his already irritable mood. You see, Jackson had just come from a funeral. Oh, not in any conventional sense. But it strangely felt like death creeping in. He had listened to his lover, Millie Burgh-Allen explain most passionlessly how her feelings toward him had been cooling for some time.

The ungrateful swine had even given him back his engagement ring tonight, and at the beach house they had bought with dreams of starting a new life together. And after all he had done; plucking her out of an unknown chorus at the music hall after the sight of those shapely legs, sheathed in snug silk, had caught his middle-aged eye from the third row. He had paid for her dance and acting lessons. Had bought her pretty clothes and moved her into a more fashionable address near the theatre district. For months, he had lavished her as few women had been lavished, with gifts of gold and money, grooming her talents even as he stoked that ravenous ego with plaudits and lush bouquets of flowers that now seemed quite undeserving.

It was that Bromfeld fellow, thought Jackson as he surveyed the damage to his car. That sleek silver bullet, designed for a man half his age, had careened over the gnarled, grassy embankment. Now it lay on its side some forty feet away from the crumpled guardrail around that hairpin turn, its driver’s side wheels still crookedly spinning in mid-air.

“Damn Tom Bromfeld,” muttered Jackson, “And damn Millie Burgh-Allen too. They belong together; a pair of overzealous wannabes who have about as much talent between them as could fit on the head of a pin.”

His Cadillac convertible was a total write off. Even if it weren’t for the extensive bodywork necessary to resurrect the automobile from the scrap yard, its axle had been hopelessly mangled in the fall.

It wasn’t the money. A weighty rock and gravel inheritance had made his life soft and forgettable. He was nothing more than a garrulous playboy who had dabbled in life the way others found mindless hobbies to occupy their free time. Only ‘free time’ was all that Jackson-David Pitney ever had. He needn’t – and didn’t – bother with a profession. What for? Work bored him silly. And in his own circumstance it was wholly unnecessary. Money was all that mattered – and there was enough of that lying around to sustain him through at least two lifetimes, even as he recklessly ran through his fortune without a care in the world. But now the money he had squandered on Millie seemed to draw a strange sickening emptiness from the pit of his stomach. What a fool he had been – what a damn middle-aged fool, to think she cared for any part of him except his wallet. Every time he opened it, her eyes had lit up like a child’s first glimpse of the Christmas tree.

But now she would have to do without. He had taken the key to the safety deposit box moments before storming out of her house like a petulant child. Tomorrow, he would go to the bank and clean it out, sell off the expensive jewels, liquidate the bonds and deposit the several hundred thousand in fresh bills back into his own account. That would teach her. She could have her handsome suitor, have Tom Bromfeld – but nothing else. How long did she think their affair would last on his modest stipend?

The thin pallor of the moon overhead suddenly disappeared behind a dense bank of low lying clouds. A storm was brewing at sea. Hopefully, it would not arrive before some kind bystander came along to stop and offer him a lift back into town. Perhaps he should return to the guard rail and lean against its distorted metal to catch a driver’s eye. After all, they might not stop for a wreck. But surely, they would pause a moment for the man.

As he turned to go, Jackson felt a sharp twinge of pain in his lower left leg. He removed the lighter from his breast pocket and flicked on its flame to see what was the matter. His black soft woolen dress pant leg was torn from just above knee all the way down to his ankle. Blood was oozing from a horizontal gash across his calf. The strong breeze coming off the ocean smite like an axe hacking into the fresh meaty innards of a maple tree.

No, Jackson reasoned, the leg needed tending to first. He took off his dinner jacket for a clean place to sit. What did it matter now anyway, he reasoned. He would burn these clothes when he came home, incinerate them in the cavernous hearth in his great room along with all the others Millie had given him as presents during their yearlong affair. Fire alone would cleanse him of her memory once and for all. He would melt down the gold in those cufflinks she had paid for with his money, perhaps turning their soft precious metal into a ring, or maybe even a key chain for the new roadster he would go shopping for tomorrow.

Yes, Jackson reasoned. It would be a fresh start, a new beginning. No more dalliances with women half his age. At least, none that would last. He would use them all as he himself had been used by Millie. And every last one of them who came to his bedroom from this day forward would know that he was in charge, that their happiness was dependent on his own.

At present, a curious glow across the open waters caught Jackson’s eye. It was yellowish and strange, flickering upon the crest of the new waves like a million tiny golden sparks of amberish fire. And then, something else. The head of a woman bobbing up and down in the frothy surf, slowly but surely rising up and out of the sea, her slender frame becoming more detailed to him as she approached like a mirage. The water must not be as deep as all that, thought Jackson as he observed her small painted toe nails emerge from the briny foam. A stiff breeze suddenly arose from the ocean, tugging at her from all around and blowing her dry.

She soothingly approached – a pretty young thing draped in diaphanous entrails the colour of seaweed and long strands of auburn hair dancing about her face that shamed the swaying hibiscus plants nearest him. She smiled as though they were old friends, knelt down to his level and took the thick and hairy ankle bone of his left leg into her fragile hands. They were oddly cold and even more miraculously dry.

“You’ve hurt yourself,” she cooed, her voice an amorous chime to his ears.

“Yeah,” admitted Jackson, “Not nearly as bad as my pride.”

The woman laughed.

“What’s so funny?” said Jackson, leaning back on his elbows to get a better look at the willowy stranger who had come to his rescue.

“Oh, nothing,” said the women.

“Do you live around here?”

The woman nodded.

“Close?” said Jackson, “I mean, I don’t think I can walk too far with this leg.”

“It’s not so very far at all,” the woman replied.

Jackson observed as the elongated shadow of the woman’s fingers crawled up his pant leg. He felt a twinge of excitement mingle with his pain, like the prick of an acupuncturist’s needles being inserted into his wounded flesh. Then, quite suddenly, his leg felt better. Jackson looked down. His abrasion had been cauterized. All that remained of the gash was a thin pinkish line that ran crookedly down from just behind his knee to the inner swell of his bulbous calf muscle.

“Are you ready to come home?” the women inquired.

“What?” said Jackson.

“Home?” repeated the woman with a curious faraway look in her eye.

“You bet,” said Jackson, getting up and dusting his jacket off. “Is your car very far? I mean, did you park it up the road? Oh well, it doesn’t matter now. I mean, I can walk to whereever it is. By the way, how in the world did you do that?”

The woman smiled – a queer, all knowing smirk that he completely failed to comprehend.

The sound of a car fast approaching from the highway distracted Jackson.

“Hey,” he said, “There’s someone else. Maybe we can both get a lift.”

Leaving the woman on the beach, Jackson scurried up the weathered embankment toward the highway, digging his smooth heels into the spongy earth that continued to crumble under his feet. When he had reached the road, Jackson began to wave his hands wildly over his head to attract the attentions of the oncoming vehicle.

Its headlamps momentarily blinded him. But the car did slow down just enough, before coming to a complete stop at the hairpin turn where Jackson’s Cadillac had gone over the edge. The door to the driver’s side opened, and Millie Burgh-Allen stepped out from behind the wheel.

“Thank God,” said Jackson.

He was about to express his gratitude in more tangible terms when the passenger’s door swung open too. Out stepped Tom Bromfeld.

As Jackson quietly looked on, the two cautiously approached the crumpled guardrail. Tom appeared slightly worried. But there was only a look of absolute satisfaction about Millie’s face.

“There,” she declared, exceedingly pleased with herself, “I told you. Just another accident along the highway.”

“I don’t see a body,” said Tom, leaning over the edge.

“He’s probably still inside or maybe even under the car,” said Millie, “Anyway, it’s done now. Just like we planned.”

“What if the police discover the severed brake line?” said Tom.

“They’ll think it was part of the crash,” explained Millie, “Oh, darling, we’re free. Don’t you see? Free of the old fool for good.”

Jackson could barely believe his ears. How could they have overlooked him, standing there in the dark only twenty feet away?

“And best of all,” added Millie, “He left thinking he’d taken the safety deposit key with him. Only I had a duplicate made. Come on, Tom. Let’s get out of here. I feel like celebrating. Let’s go and spend some money.”

“That’s what you think!” shouted Jackson in a voice loud enough for them to hear, “Just wait until the police find out about this!”

Yet, to his amazement Tom and Millie ignored his defiant declaration, got back into Millie’s car and drove away.

“Come back here!” Jackson shouted, “Cowards!”

“It’s no use,” a voice reminded him from behind, “They can’t hear you.”

A supple female hand draped itself across his right shoulder, clutching tightly around his chest. In all his awe and disbelief, Jackson had quite forgotten about the woman on the beach. But when he turned to face her, he discovered a most hideous creature staring back at him.

Her skin was scaly green and fish-like, her eyes deathly dull with a thin film of the sea splashed over them. Her diaphanous gown was soaked through, a distinct hint of sulphur wafting about her fiery hair, draped in long tenacious strands of seaweed that seemed to anchor her to the ground. A fine net webbing between her fingers stuck to his shirt like the poisonous tentacles of a sea spine.

“Now are you ready to go home with me?” the woman inquired.

“What?” said Jackson, pulling himself free, “No! Go away! Go away!”

He turned and sprinted up the highway. But again, there she stood before him like a monstrous beached thing, her auburn tresses melting away to reveal a reddish fin parting her brow.

“You will come home to me,” she commanded.

“I won’t!” shouted Jackson.

He ran down the embankment, back to his car, and reached into the glove compartment where he always kept a revolver. But to Jackson’s shock and amazement, the metal had corroded through.

“No!” he exclaimed, “I don’t understand.”

“Come home with me and I’ll explain,” said the creature.

Jackson felt her tentacles wrap around his waist, pulling him back and closer to her. The coarse granules beneath his feet became a fleshy quicksand. He sank beneath its spongy ground, his head barely sustained above the surface, just enough to be able to stare up into the murky midnight sky. And finally, the tide came in. It washed over him in warm enveloping blankets, filling his lungs with bitter waters.

“Come home to me.”

Early the next morning, the police came across Jackson’s wreck. But all that remained of the man who had driven it so carelessly was a pair of discarded black dress shoes and two curious pairs of footprints, one male, the other female, leading off into the distance.

Dogs were called in. The police trailed the imprints in the wet sand to a fashionable beach house ten miles up the road. There, they discovered two badly decomposed bodies, fully clothed and floating face down in the backyard swimming pool. One was Millie Burgh-Allen; the other, Tom Bromfeld. They had drowned together. Or had they?

For as the officers fished out these bloated remains they were also to find curious deposits of fish scales in each cadaver’s mouth and fresh seaweed cleverly braided into their hair. And something else – the decorative hood ornament of the scuttled Cadillac, still tightly grasped in Millie’s left hand.

-THE END-

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

FROM THE AUTHOR: Nick Zegarac has been a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist for a little over a decade. No…wait. That’s not quite right. That is, it is – factual – although it does not say a whole lot about the sort of individual Nick Zegarac is.

“I always find it odd when I meet someone for the first time at a social gathering,” Nick explains, “…and they introduce themselves, first by name and next by their profession…like, “I’m Frank So-and-So. I’m an attorney”…as though I’m supposed to suddenly ascribe more weight to their stature right off the bat.

I never used to give it much thought before. But lately I find this sort of intro rather snobbish. I used to play along and say ‘Hi, I’m Nick Zegarac the writer.’ Now I just say, ‘Hi. I’m Nick Zegarac’ and leave it at that. It isn’t that I’m trying to be mysterious or evasive. I just don’t think ‘what I do’ should have any bearing on the sort of person that I am.”

Nevertheless, Nick realizes that as far as biographies in print go they should always include a bit about the work. So, during the past eleven years Nick has adopted the chameleon’s skin of a frustrated editor, a carefree magazine editorial/advertorial writer, a creative director, a struggling screenwriter, and, a not terribly prepossessing market researcher. Alas, professional disappointments have been the norm, rather than the exception.

“I don’t think I’m unique in that…,” adds Nick, “A lot of hard work goes unnoticed. You need luck as well as guts, brains and talent…and good timing – a lot of it! I used to think talent was enough. But actually it’s only about twenty percent. The rest is faith and having someone higher up the food chain believe in your work. I believe in myself so I’m already a success to myself. But someday I’d like to be a successful illustration for others. After all, there’s really no point to success if you can’t share it.

If your only measure of success is fame it makes for a lot of professional unhappiness. But being one of the pack actually means you’re in the majority – you’re among friends.”

If past experience has taught Nick anything, it is that an ‘in your face’ approach to life coupled with a light touch of professionalism and healthy mix of good humour are proven hallmarks for a better tomorrow. Inevitably, when meeting a new client, prospective employer or just a new social acquaintance Nick gets asked the same old questions about himself. However, rather than giving the same tired reply, Nick has chosen to constantly reinvent himself, not necessarily to make a solid first impression, but rather to illustrate, as well as test the rigidity and obviousness of the exercise.

“I was once asked by an interviewer where I saw myself in five years?” Nick explains, “My answer was, ‘Sitting on that end of the desk asking better questions.”

“Personally, I think a lot of HR types get it all wrong. They come to the interview looking for flaws in potential applicants instead of trying to uncover their strengths. Or they adopt the quiz show mentality and grill you with fifty questions. I’ve always tended to shy away from the obvious, especially when I was the one fortunate enough to be conducting the interviews. I know why the person sitting in front of me is here. He/she wants the job I advertised for. And I’ve read their résumés. Listening to them tell me their qualifications again in a different way is a waste of both our time. But I can’t pinpoint a ‘good’ person from a résumé or by listening to their scripted answers to questions they think I want to hear.

So, what I used to do is call in six or seven potential new hires at once just before the lunch or dinner hour. Then, when they all came in and realized they weren’t going to be alone I’d tell them all to get their coats and we’d go out for a meal and some relaxing chit-chat.

Everyone had a good time and the real go getters distinguished themselves from the rest of the pack. No one left feeling deflated, or embarrassed or wondering if they had ‘scored’ or passed ‘the test’. But they knew I meant business and would treat them fairly, with dignity and respect if their option was picked up.”

On the home front, optimism reigns supreme.

“I don’t expect I’ll ever truly understand cynicism,” Nick confesses, “I’ve been down and out and as low as the next guy. But in the end, I’ve chosen to reawaken my senses, with a good solid slap upside the head if necessary, rather than bury it from the neck up in a soft pool of wet sand.
In today’s world it’s too easy to forget that life isn’t just about tasks, but also personal tastes…not realizing that if nothing else comes your way, what’s already there is quite enough, I think makes a lot of us a little crazy for the things we’ve yet to acquire or achieve. Whenever I start on a new venture I try to remember that the journey is infinitely more rewarding than the destination. How I arrived at where I am says much more about ‘who’ I am as a person than the status I’ve achieved after the struggle to get there has ended.”

Nick’s not terribly serious about life because, as he readily admits “it’s too serious all by itself,” but he gets the job done nevertheless.

To learn more about the unremarkable life of this sincerely remarkable person, contact Nick Zegarac at:

Nick Zegarac
994 Greenpark Blvd.
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
N8P 1J5
(519)735-3321
movieman@sympatico.ca

“All truly great days begin with a challenge
…and a good cup of tea.”
- Nick Zegarac

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

Larger-than-life Charleston hotel owner pays the ultimate price for messing around with the mayor’s wife in Nick Zegarac’s twisted ghost story of murder and revenge from the spooky streets of old Charleston.

About a mile outside of Charleston, past a forgotten bend in the main road that overlooks a now equally abandoned stretch of property facing the ocean, sits Branson Park. At the turn of the last century, this acreage had been a much sought after destination for the local gentry – an elegant playground, lit nightly by tea lamps and rose coloured lanterns. It was a place for long walks and good conversations with cherished friends, and it positively wreaked of the gallantry and gentile charm that had once been so emblematic of the entire south. Its moonlit courtyards and secluded, meandering pathways through the lumbering pines and luscious willows, were the absolute perfect spot for sparking after sunset, tasting the cool salty breezes after a nice hot meal.

Now, truth be told, the locals liked Branson Park just the way it was. Especially with the likes of Humphrey McDonaugh there. He had come from back east to erect a formidable hotel at the embankment facing the ocean. This was a rather stately retreat that catered to very swell affairs indeed. And Humphrey was, himself, the most congenial sort, good natured and even tempered. He was a big, tough scoundrel of a man, with a barrel chest and meaty hands that could break any man in two. Not that Humphrey ever tried, but he certainly gave every indication that he could if the spirit moved him. But for a time he was liked by everyone, and not just for the cold whiskey and elegant clean rooms he could provide.

Now Humphrey was good friends with the mayor, Alec Renault, better still acquainted with his wife, Isabella, who liked her men tall and strong, and a little rough around the edges. She was willowy and smart, with a thick ebony mane and piercing green eyes that sparkled in the moonlight. But she was severely bored with being married to Alec, who had all the money to pamper her, but none of the proclivity to creatively mistreat her as she wished to be in the bedroom. For this latter excitement that would have raised more than a few handsome eyebrows in her husband’s front parlour, she came to Humphrey two or three times a week. Afterward, the two would acquit themselves quite nicely of the ball and claw bathtub in Humphrey’s suite, where Isabella could pleasantly cool the remnants of her lusty palpitations and wash off their sweaty flesh as it continued to twitch toward relaxation beneath the tepid waters together.

Only on this particular eve, Isabella was to encounter a most gruesome end to their affair. As the moon hid behind an approaching bank of storm clouds, she had encouraged her lover to light a candle next to the tub, then to run down to the pantry for another bottle of gin they would share together. It was all so tawdry and sinful and quite exciting to her. But she had already consumed far too much that night, and had oddly stepped into the smooth porcelain without Humphrey at her side for balance. She lost her footing and toppled backward with a sudden thud and miscalculated splash beneath the water. As she slid downward, her head struck the hard sharp and curiously greasy edge of the tub, knocking her unconscious and cracking the back of her skull wide open.

When Humphrey returned several long moments later he did not see this spectacular demise – at least, not at once. It was too dark to see anything at all. The candle next to the tub had been snuffed out.

“Where are you, my lovely?” he whispered into the dark.

But there was no reply.

Again, he called to her in the night, feeling about the shadowy room and bumping into furniture while approaching the bathtub and whispering softly that he adored her, still with visions of her ripe, sweaty cleavage bobbing about his filthy mind.

But now the floor underfoot was sopping wet, and not from an overflow of bathwater either. Humphrey had stepped into a vast pool of Isabella’s blood. As he struggled to compose himself, Isabella’s swollen head, face down, crested ever so slightly above the water’s edge. Outside the moon grew full, casting long tenacious fingers of pale light through the thickening moss covered branches of the willows.

There she lay, swollen and quiet, like the great bow of a tall ship turned over in a gale. As Humphrey quietly approached in utter disbelief there came from below a terrific scream; the scream to end all that had come before and any he was likely to experience again. Isabella’s blood had soaked between the floorboard and through to the ceiling of old Mrs. Macintyre’s bedroom just below. Within moments, the old crow – who had come to the hotel for medicinal reasons, and under a doctor’s care no less – had awakened the entire house. Panicked guests beat a path to Humphrey’s room.

Their host lay prostrate before them on the floor, blood stained and cradling Isabella’s nude lifeless body in his arms. And although their horror was somewhat quelled by their more immediate sympathies for Humphrey as he quietly relayed the story of the accident, there arose almost immediately a disquieting disdain for both this man and the newly departed.

A coach was sent at once to fetch the Mayor at his home. Now, the town gossips began to form a more odious opinion of Humphrey McDonaugh. He was hardly an innocent. He had corrupted the most generous woman in town. He had betrayed a trusted friend. And he had done all of this before their very eyes. Humphrey McDonaugh was a louse!

“You’ll hang for this, Humphrey McDonaugh,” began the jeers and cheers, “You’ll burn, then hang, then burn some more if we have anything to say about it.”

And talk they did. Every last guest put in his dirge into the court of popular opinion. All except the Mayor who, having returned from an all night constitutional in the woods, listened to his wife’s fate with an almost passionless acceptance.

“Well, it’s done then” he muttered to all their collected shock and amazement.

For he had been the one to grease the rim and the bottom of Humphrey’s porcelain tub with thick lard earlier that afternoon while the guests were at play in Branson Park.

“But I’m innocent!” declared Humphrey.

The mayor took his old friend by the hand. Humphrey squeezed it tightly. He would believe him. He must. He knew him too well.

But Alec just shook his head.

“Not of wounding a man in the deepest way any man can,” suggested Alec with a queer half smile.

Humphrey rubbed his fingers together. They were smooth with fresh lard that made Humphrey realize the truth they now shared between them.

Humphrey lunged at Alec with all his might but it was no use. No one believed him. How quickly he had gone from being everyone’s fair weather friend to a social pariah. He was restrained by the mob and held down until someone returned with a fresh cord of rope from the cellar.

“And now you’ll pay,” said Alec calmly.

There was no trial. As far as anyone was concerned no need for one either. Humphrey McDonaugh was bound and carried out of his beloved hotel, writhing on the shoulders of men whose last round of drinks he had poured himself earlier in the day, and fitted with a noose to satisfy the mob’s bloodlust. They strung him up without knowing the reason why, and watched with vengeful pride as he convulsed and twirled in the air, the thick leather soles of his bloody boots leaving deep imprints in the craggy stalk of the tree.

It was a most awfully pleasurable sight for the mayor. Alec stood by long after the morbid appeal of the hanging had elapsed for everyone else and relished every moment as his old friend was left to ferment in the blistering noonday sun. By late afternoon a gaggle of sea cranes and a few brooding pelicans had picked apart the juicy innards of Humphrey’s eyeballs, had torn into the crisp crinkly flesh of his fingers and ears and nibbled off the tip of his left nostril. The next day the mayor and a few of the more stouthearted men returned to cut loose these tattered remains and bury them in a plot not far from the hotel.

Afterward, things were never the same at Branson Park. The place developed a perverse reputation that frightened away most anyone who dared even think of the area now as the idyllic lover’s lane it had once been. The hotel was left to fall into disrepair, and gradually became shuttered from view by the encroachment of burdensome vines that kept even the most ardent curiosity seeker at bay.

Months passed. Years too. And finally Branson Park became nothing more than a distant memory in everyone’s mind. Everyone, that is, except Mayor Renault. Elected twice more to his current post, then to the state legislature – some would later claim on sympathy alone for his forthright handling of this most sordid affair, Alec Renault became something of a legend in his own time.

He married in 1920 for a second time to Caroline Maine; a woman of high born pedigree and sterling reputation, and moved away to a big mansion far removed from the reality of Branson Park – though perhaps not its memory – where he grew old and fat on the promises kept to his constituents. Indeed, the rest of his life had become exemplary. Still, one part of that life was forever tainted and this stain – kept secretive from the second Mrs. Renault – on an otherwise unblemished life together, gradually gnawed away at Alec’s self respect. It was a rot on his mind, a decay that grew like a malignant fungus and caused him great emotional stress. Isabella lay damp and rigid, her eyes staring up at him from the sopping wet floor in the hotel.

She came to him nightly in this fashion, an almost sweet apparition, slowly rising to her feet from the watery grave he had doomed her. These many years had been ageless for her; those cat green eyes glistening through the fog of his slumber, seemingly peaceful for him without her.

“I didn’t mean it,” Alec began to whisper in his sleep, “I didn’t mean it.”

“What?” said Caroline, nudging her husband to awaken him from his nightmare.

She had become all too familiar with these episodes. But most recently they had begun to annoy, rather than concern her.

“What?” said Alec, rubbing his eyes.

“You were having another dream, dear,” Caroline insisted.

“Oh,” said Alec.

He was sweaty and exhausted.

“Go to sleep,” said Caroline.

“I can’t,” Alec replied.

“Fine. Then let me go to sleep.”

“I’m sorry.”

Perhaps a nice cool bath would settle him down. Yes, it might. He would go and take a nice long bath and forget about his worries. They were all in the past and unknown to everyone but himself. Yet, as he crawled into the claw legged tub to ease his conscience, a whisper filled his brain, softly at first, then more assured and pronounced until it rattled every fibre of his being. He shut his eyes and clasped his hands over his ears but still the voice echoed through his mind.

“Leave me alone,” Alec whimpered, “Leave me be.”

The room fell silent. He could hear the sound of his own heart violently beating in his chest.

“And now you’ll pay,” a voice soothingly suggested.

Alec opened his eyes. But there was no time to notice the large meaty hand firmly gripping the top of his head and forcing him beneath the waterline. As he kicked and struggled and gasped for air he could barely make out the rippled reflection of a woman standing over him. But he knew those green eyes so well, knew better still the last time he had firmly shaken his best friend’s hand, and knew too well that they had both come to claim their revenge for his crimes against them.

-THE END-

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

Virginia ghost story about two kids who investigate a mysterious campfire across an eerie swamp one night. You know this ain’t gonna end well. Written by James Colton

My cousin, Ben, had a lake­side cabin where he and his par­ents would spend their va­ca­tions. I was al­ways jeal­ous of my cousin when he came back with sto­ries about his ad­ven­tures in the woods and on the lake, so I was ec­sta­tic when his fam­ily in­vited us to join them that sum­mer in Virginia.

We stayed up late our first night there, sit­ting around a camp­fire and roast­ing marsh­mal­lows. Our par­ents caught up on each other’s lives while Ben and I swapped ghost sto­ries.

A sound caught my at­ten­tion as it drifted over the lake, like laugh­ter from far off. I looked over my shoul­der, across the dark ex­panse, and saw the tiny flick­er­ing light of a fire on the far shore. I had imag­ined my cousin’s cot­tage as a se­cluded re­treat, but then I re­al­ized such a pic­turesque lo­ca­tion was sure to at­tract other rich fam­i­lies who would build their own lake­side cab­ins and enjoy their own camp­fires each night.

“Your turn.”

“Huh?” I replied stu­pidly. Ben had fin­ished his story, and I had missed the ter­ri­fy­ing punch­line. I thought about it for a sec­ond, then began my own ghostly tale.

The next morn­ing, I stepped out onto the deck and gazed out across the peace­ful water. I re­mem­bered the laugh­ter from the pre­vi­ous night, and turned to­wards where I re­called see­ing the light of the camp­fire, hop­ing to catch a glimpse of an­other cabin. I scanned the far shore for sev­eral min­utes be­fore my cousin joined me.

“Where’s the other cabin?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said, “there are a few down that way—” He pointed to­wards the north end of the lake. “You can’t see them from here, though. I think there might be one at the south end too.”

“What about di­rectly across from here?”

Ben stared out in the di­rec­tion I was point­ing. “No, there’s noth­ing over there. It’s all swamp­land that way.”

“Huh,” I grunted, try­ing not to sound too sur­prised. What had I seen last night? I had heard of swamp lights be­fore—a nat­ural re­ac­tion when gases were re­leased into the air—but what about the laugh­ter? What had I heard? I de­cided to tell my cousin about it.

“Are you sure it was laugh­ter?” he asked. “It could’ve been an­i­mals. Rac­coons, you know…

Had that been all? I could not be sure if it was just my brain try­ing to make sense of things, but think­ing back the sounds had seemed a bit off, less than human.

“We could go check it out today, if you want,” my cousin said. “Our dads said they wanted to go fish­ing, but we can use the old row­boat.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

The water sloshed lethar­gi­cally against the side of our lit­tle boat as I dipped the oars in and out of the murk. I imag­ined, even when the wind ripped across the open water of the lake, that this cor­ner re­mained still, and that the wet slap­ping against our bow was the swamp’s out­rage at our pres­ence.

“Look at that,” Ben pointed. Two sickly trees grew out of the water, and wedged be­tween the pair of rot­ting stumps was a ru­ined old row­boat. The hull was de­cayed be­yond hope, up­ended so it formed a canopy over the dark water, and I imag­ined all man­ner of frogs, snakes, and other slimy things mak­ing their soggy nests un­der­neath its pro­tec­tive dome.

“Do you think they drowned?” I asked, won­der­ing at the fate of the row­boat’s own­ers.

“Who knows,” my cousin an­swered. “Prob­a­bly.”

Some­thing splashed un­der­neath our boat, and I tried not to imag­ine what it might have been.

Ben took over the row­ing once we were under the trees, and he guided our lit­tle ves­sel through the maze of moss-cov­ered trunks until our stom­achs began to growl from hunger.

“I’ve never ac­tu­ally been here be­fore.”

I looked at my cousin, sur­prised, as we dug out the sand­wiches his mom had made for us.

“When we were younger, Uncle would tell us sto­ries about it, try­ing to scare us. I al­ways pre­tended to be brave, but I guess the sto­ries worked, be­cause when­ever we came out in the boat, I would tell my dad not to get too close to this place.”

“What kind of sto­ries?” I asked.

“I guess you couldn’t re­ally call them ghost sto­ries, not re­ally, but…scary sto­ries. The gist was that chil­dren who got lost in the swamp were cursed to live there for­ever, trans­formed into some­thing not quite human. Uncle said that at night you could hear them, and if you weren’t care­ful they’d lure you into the swamp, and you’d be­come one of them, lost for­ever. When­ever we’d hear a strange noise from across the lake, Uncle would say ‘The swamp chil­dren are play­ing.’ Of course, it would re­ally just be rac­coons fight­ing.”

I fin­ished my sand­wich, all ex­cept the crust, which I crum­pled up and dropped into the water. I peered over the edge of the boat, try­ing to fol­low the re­mains of my lunch as it sank into my re­flec­tion. My grimy twin stared back up at me, al­most tak­ing de­light in block­ing my view, nearly smirk­ing as I tried to make out the bot­tom. “Do you think there’s any truth to those sto­ries? You think some kids did get lost here?”

“It’s pos­si­ble,” Ben replied. “Maybe that ru­ined row­boat be­longed to them. More than likely they drowned, like you said ear­lier.”

I con­tin­ued watch­ing my re­flec­tion as it danced in the rip­ples below. It smiled a big, mis­chie­vous grin, and its arms slowly reached up, threat­en­ing to break the placid sur­face.

“Watch it!” Ben warned, yank­ing me back. “You nearly fell in!”

“What?” I replied stu­pidly. “I thought…nev­er­mind.”

Our lunches fin­ished, my cousin turned the boat around, and we began row­ing for home.

A cool breeze rus­tled the leaves over­head, and Ben looked wor­ried. “It’s the evening draft,” he said. “Comes every night just be­fore dusk. We should’ve been out into open water by now.”

A cold fist squeezed my chest at the re­al­iza­tion that we were lost. I tossed my head back and forth, try­ing to catch a glimpse of open sky, but there was noth­ing but wa­ter-logged trees, draped in vines and moss, as far as I could see.

With a dull clunk, our boat shud­dered to a halt. “What was that?” I asked.

“We hit some­thing.” Ben prod­ded under the water with an oar. “Feels like a rot­ten log. This isn’t good. Here.” He handed me the other oar. “Help me push, see if we can get free.”

I thrust my oar under the boat, and al­most in­stantly felt it dig into some­thing soft. “Are you sure that’s a log?” I asked. “It’s aw­fully squishy.”

“It’s got to be,” my cousin replied, rock­ing back and forth in an at­tempt to shake the boat loose.

Sud­denly, with a soft splash, we were free. The un­ex­pected move­ment threw me off bal­ance, and I grabbed onto the edge of the boat, sav­ing my­self from being tossed over­board. In my panic, how­ever, the oar slipped from my fin­gers and landed in the water. With­out think­ing, I reached out to grab it, mo­men­tar­ily dip­ping my hand be­neath the sur­face. My fin­gers wrapped around the wood, grimy from the swamp water, and an­other hand, slimy and bloated, wrapped around mine.

I yelled out in shock, re­coil­ing from the water and bump­ing into my cousin who, with a shout, tum­bled over­board. I was alarmed at first, but be­fore I could even catch my breath, Ben’s head popped back up with a gri­mace.

“This water tastes awful. You need to be more care­ful.”

“Sorry,” I apol­o­gized breath­lessly. “You al­right?”

“Yeah. It’s not too deep, ac­tu­ally. I can stand.”

I helped him climb back into the boat, where he sat shiv­er­ing. “I’m re­ally sorry,” I apol­o­gized again. “When I reached in to get the oar, some­thing grabbed me.”

“It was prob­a­bly just a fish. We have big­ger things to worry about, any­way. It’s get­ting dark.”

In­deed it was. Under the trees, night­fall was ac­cel­er­ated. Al­ready, the bright greens and browns of the swamp were be­gin­ning to bleed to­gether into a muddy gray. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Prob­a­bly just wait here. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if our par­ents have started search­ing for us al­ready.”

And so we waited. Be­fore long it was com­pletely dark. The tiny traces of moon­light that man­aged some­how to find their way down into the swamp were hardly enough to see by, and we were sur­rounded by vague dark shapes.

“Do you smell that?” My cousin’s voice, trem­bling as he shiv­ered in his wet clothes, star­tled me. I sniffed the air. A rot­ten odor as­saulted my nos­trils, faint at first, but steadily grow­ing stronger.

“Yeah. What do you think it is?”

“Swamps smell some­times, I guess.”

Some­where in the dark­ness, leaves rus­tled, fol­lowed by a tremen­dous splash.

“What kind of an­i­mals live here?” I asked, fail­ing in mask­ing the fear in my voice.

“Bears, deer. But they wouldn’t hang out here. They def­i­nitely wouldn’t go in the water.”

A steady, rhyth­mic slosh­ing started up, grow­ing louder, like some­thing walk­ing through the water to­wards us.

“It’s prob­a­bly just a boat wake from out on the lake,” Ben said.

“Who would be out on the lake at this hour?”

The slosh­ing stopped a few feet from us, al­though we still could not see any­thing, and then some­thing thumped hard against the side of our boat. I inched away from the noise, and I could hear Ben doing the same. The row­boat tilted dan­ger­ously as our weight shifted.

The thump­ing con­tin­ued, again and again, like a fist on the wooden hull, pound­ing re­lent­lessly. Sud­denly, it was joined by an­other, on the other side of the boat where my cousin and I cow­ered. We scram­bled to the cen­ter, as far from ei­ther side as pos­si­ble, feel­ing the boat shud­der under the as­sault of the un­seen hands. A few more joined in, and a few more again, until we were com­pletely sur­rounded.

And then we heard laugh­ter. It came from all around, like count­less lit­tle chil­dren mock­ing us.

A bright light sud­denly ex­ploded to one side, and the noises abruptly stopped. In the or­ange flick­er­ing glow, we could see our sur­round­ings. The water was per­fectly still, like a layer of black-coated glass, and not ten feet away from us was the shore. There, hov­er­ing above the ground, was a blaz­ing fire.

“That looks warm.”

I glanced over at my cousin, who was shiv­er­ing vi­o­lently in his wet clothes. “Is it real?” I won­dered out loud.

“Who cares,” Ben replied, grab­bing the oars and start­ing to row. “I’m freez­ing!”

Our boat slid gen­tly onto the shore, and be­fore I could stop him, my cousin jumped out and ran to the fire. Be­fore my very eyes, his sil­hou­ette blurred, and be­fore long he was lost in the glare.

“Ben!” I tried call­ing out to him, un­cer­tain whether or not I should fol­low. “Ben!”

An­other voice an­swered me, not Ben’s, from the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

The scene was plunged into dark­ness. The fire, as if star­tled by the voice, had gone out. A smaller light ap­peared, bob­bing up and down as it grew closer and brighter. A flash­light.

“Son, is that you?”

“Dad?”

“Son, are you al­right? Every­one’s been wor­ried sick. We’ve got to get you back.”

“Wait,” I protested as he started to help me into his boat, “what about Ben?”

“It’s al­right,” my dad said. “We al­ready found him.”

“What?” I replied, look­ing back at where the strange fire had been with a con­fused look on my face. “But—”

“I know,” my dad in­ter­rupted. “His body floated back to the sur­face. That’s how we found him.”

“What?” Some­where in the back of my mind I un­der­stood the words that he was say­ing, but I could not make sense of them. “What are you talk­ing about?”

“Ben fell over­board, don’t you re­mem­ber?”

“Yeah, but…” I looked again at the dark shore­line where the mys­te­ri­ous blaze had been only min­utes ago. “He’s not…”

“Come on, son, let’s get you back to the cabin.”

I will never be able to for­get that sight. There was Ben, laid out on the kitchen table with his eyes closed. He was sop­ping wet, and his skin was a nau­se­at­ing shade of pale green. I still wanted to deny it, but how could I with his drowned corpse lying there in front of me?

I had no ex­pla­na­tion for what hap­pened. When Ben’s par­ents asked me about it, I sim­ply said he had fallen over­board, and that the row­boat had drifted away when it got dark. That was what they ex­pected to hear. It was what I told my­self over and over again, and what part of me wanted to be­lieve. I wanted to for­get our foray into the swamp, along with all its strange sights and sounds and feel­ings, but to this day I can­not seem to put it from my mind. When­ever I go near a pond or lake or soggy wood­land, I swear I can hear laugh­ter.

-THE END-

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

Who is the crazy local gal wandering around a Louisana gas station asking customers about her missing mother? Find out in this Louisiana ghost story from Sabrina Alipate.

Tilly couldn’t stand the heat. She cranked up the air-conditioning in the car and prayed for the remainder of the day to go by faster. The sooner she was out of Houma, Louisiana the better. She’d only agreed to bring her mother to her kin’s party out of guilt; her mother hadn’t been back to Louisiana in over a decade. Tilly was in her thirties and she’d never stepped foot in Houma. Her roots were in New York and no matter what her mother tried to tell her, she would never consider the south part of her pedigree. Tilly had been guilted into coming down south, but it was her mother’s fault if she now regretted asking her daughter to bring her.

“Did you have to be so awful?” her mother asked.

“They just weren’t used to hearing the truth. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t speaking the truth, mama,” Tilly said.

The argument in question was about the family get-together. Some of the family members, though overjoyed to see Eloise back home, didn’t take a liking to Tilly. They found her standoffish and just a wee bit full of herself. Tilly did nothing to change their minds. Before the birthday cake had even been cut she was dragging her mother out of the hall towards the car. No one stopped her. They just ran to kiss Eloise and tell her how nice it was to see her, no one said goodbye to Tilly.

“What else were we going to do there, mama?”

“It just would have been nice if I had gotten more time with them,” her mother replied.

“I’ll tell you what, our flight leaves tomorrow afternoon. Think about who from that God-awful party you actually liked spending time with and we can invite them to breakfast at the hotel tomorrow morning before we leave.”

“Do you mean it?” Her mother smiled at her from the passenger seat.

“Absolutely. So long as they keep the ignorant-speak to a minimum, I don’t mind treating a half dozen country kin to the buffet at the hotel.” Tilly laughed.

“You’re not a mean girl, but you talk like it a sure lot. You’re the perfect woman, you just have to work on your mouth and that temper of yours,” her mother said.

“Mama, where exactly is the turn off to your place?” Tilly asked completely ignoring her mother’s advice.

Eloise took notice of the road they were on. It seemed like they had been driving on route 113 for far too long. “It was always just five minutes from town. You drive so fast I can’t tell where we are and there’s so much more here than there was when I was here last.”

“Basically, we’re lost. I’m pulling off on the next road for directions.”

“Be careful, Tilly. Some of these windy roads seem short, but they can go on forever and I don’t want us to get out too far.”

Tilly took a turn off of route 113 and headed down a broken road that probably hadn’t been repaved, ever. The rickety road led to a small gas station and small shop that had no right existing. Both the shop and the two small gas pumps looked like they would fall down if it got too windy.

“Don’t worry, mama. There’s a gas station up ahead. I’m sure they’ll know how to speak English.”

Tilly pulled up to the pump and honked her horn. No one came out, so she rightly assumed it was a self-serve type of establishment.

“Mama, I’m going inside. Would you like anything?”

“A coke, please.”

“You got it. I’m going to leave the car running so the air-conditioning will stay on.”

“Thank you, dear.” Her mother smiled at her and Tilly remembered in that moment why she had taken the time to come down south. She made a mental note to apologize for her behavior at the party when she returned to the car.

Walking into the store felt like walking onto a movie set. Everything around Tilly looked like a real store, but it was so stereotypically a small gas station store in the Deep South that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d learned it had been built only the day before for a film production. As she approached the counter she was given honest proof that it was indeed authentic. There was a table in the corner with a plate of uncooked chicken parts. Tilly couldn’t decipher what part of the chicken it was, but the plate was attracting flies and her interest in directions to her mother’s childhood home was lessening with every minute she had to stand in that store.

“You need something?” A large black woman asked Tilly. She now stood behind the cash register and was looking at Tilly like she was taking up space she shouldn’t. Tilly was a tall woman herself and in Manhattan she always felt like she was the bigger one of her group of girlfriends. Here in her mother’s town, she sometimes felt downright waifish.

“Yes, directions and two cold sodas and I’ll be out of your hair. I’m looking for this address.” Tilly handed her a piece of paper with the address of her mother’s childhood home.

“That’s just down the road here. You’re not far at all.”

“What came into town today? Cocoa butter perfection!” A loud voice boomed from the back of the store. A man in his late sixties wearing a comical, multicolored business suit stood against the wall. He had a striking face; his smooth skin was as dark as midnight, in contrast to his green eyes and white beard. He looked at Tilly the way that old men that should know better looked at beautiful women. Tilly rolled her eyes and paid for her sodas.

“Wow, more of the local culture. Today’s just been filled with quaint little reasons for one to never want to come back to this place.” Tilly did her best to give him one of her coldest smiles. The kind of smile that told the person it was directed at that they better tread lightly.

“Miss, you just might find something you love around here and stay forever.”

“Leave her alone, she didn’t mean nothing, she’s just getting directions.” The woman behind the cash register stuck up for her.

Tilly didn’t need anyone to fight her battles and she sure didn’t need help cutting down some slick-talking senior citizen in a dinky little gas station quick mart. “Sir, I’m going to let you in on a little secret.”

“Secret? I love secrets. Tell it.” Even though he hadn’t moved, it seemed to Tilly that he was somehow closer to her than he was when they first started talking. She wavered for a moment, and then thought it must be a trick of the lighting.

“The secret is that I would usually be riled being verbally accosted in public by someone such as yourself, but after the slew of people I’ve come in contact with today, some allegedly even sharing blood with me, I understand that your mannerisms and habits are no fault of your own.” Tilly gestured around the store. “You’re just a product of what you have around you and well, how can you help it?” Tilly finished her talking down with another cold smile and walked towards the exit. She turned back to the cashier. “Thank you for the directions.”

The man walked over to the small table by the cash register and sat down. He reached for a knife and fork then proceeded to slice off a piece of the uncooked meat, popping it into his mouth. Tilly’s stomach churned and she held both sodas in one hand as she reached for the door.

“You’re going to say sorry before you walk out that door, little girl.” He had his back to her so she couldn’t see if he was joking. The tone in his voice told her that he was serious, but how could he be? “Pride is an awful thing, it leads to awful things. Especially in those as young as yourself.” He continued to eat his plate of food with his back to her.

Tilly had not been spoken to in that manner since she was a little girl and she was pretty sure she hadn’t stood for it back then either. “Mister, if you’re looking for an apology, you’ll be waiting here a long time.” Tilly wanted to think of a better comeback, but she was actually starting to get angry and she didn’t want to spend another minute in that store. She turned to the car to see her mother waiting patiently. Eloise caught her daughter looking and she smiled and waved. Tilly smiled at her mother, threw one last cold stare at the back of the man at the table and walked out of the shop.

Tilly got back into the car and slammed the door shut. She placed both drinks in the cup holders and put her seatbelt on. “You would not believe what kind of moron I ran into in there, mama.” Tilly turned to see that the passenger seat was empty. “Mama?” She looked around and her mother was nowhere to be seen. Tilly hurried out of the car and headed back into the shop.

The old man was gone and the shop was empty. The cashier walked out from the back of the shop. “Can I help you?”

“Did my mother come in here? Is your bathroom in the back?”

“Sorry, ma’am, no one’s come in here.”

“That’s so weird. She was sitting in the car just a moment ago.” Tilly looked over to the small table. It had been cleaned. “Where’s the old man?”

“He’s already gone.” The cashier made to leave.

“I’m sorry, we’re not done here. My mother is missing and if you can’t help me, would you be so kind as to call the authorities? Something very weird is going on here.” A sinking feeling began to form in Tilly’s heart. Her mother was missing and she was in unfamiliar territory. On top of being angry and tired, she had to admit that she was a little bit scared. It was the kind of scared where she was starting to think that her mother’s disappearance had something to do with her.

The authorities arrived and they were of no help to Tilly. No one had seen her arrive with anyone and the cashier hadn’t known that her mother was in the car. As for the old man that had been bothering Tilly in the store? The cashier quickly stated that he was a regular customer and that he had left before Tilly had walked in asking about her mother.

The authorities were able to contact members of Tilly’s family. What they learned changed the missing persons investigation.

“Ma’am, can we have a word with you?” One of the officers asked Tilly.

“Just a sec.” Tilly hung up her cellphone and walked over to the police officer. They were still standing in the gas station shop. “Is there any progress?”

“Ma’am, we just spoke with your aunt.” The officer was nervous, as if he didn’t know what to say. “Well, she informed us that they were all with you earlier today.”

“Obviously. I attended a birthday party with my mother earlier today. We were just making a quick stop to see her childhood home before we returned to the hotel. We’ve gone over this already.” Tilly was growing impatient.

“Ma’am, your kin are saying that you all buried your mother today. At her childhood home in fact.” The officer couldn’t look her in the eye. The cashier crossed and uncrossed her arms clearly taken aback by what she’d overheard.

“What did you just say?” Tilly was too overwhelmed to be angry.

There was no more exchange of words. The officers helped Tilly into the police car and they took a drive to Eloise’s childhood home. Tilly stumbled out of the car onto the front yard of a home she had never been before. She fell to her knees in front of a new tombstone. The tombstone had her mother’s name on it. The date of death was just a week earlier than the present day. Tilly couldn’t process what she was seeing. She just began to cry.

The officers couldn’t rightly leave her at the house. It was a shell of a home that looked as if no one had lived in it in over a decade. It wasn’t peculiar for townspeople to choose to be buried on their own property, but it was a little curious that an out-of-towner would choose to do so on a property that had clearly been neglected for some time. It was no one’s business but their own, so the officers kept their opinions to themselves. The only problem they faced was the crying woman before them. When they were finally able to get her off the ground they drove her back to her car.

Arriving at the gas station acted as a splash of cold water in Tilly’s face. She grabbed for her purse. “Officer, there’s something going on here and I know someone that can shed some light on the situation.” Tilly dialed her assistant’s number back in New York. “My assistant will be able to prove to you that there’s a conspiracy going on here. Pam, it’s me, look on my calendar and tell me what you have blocked off for me this week.”

Tilly waited for her assistant’s answer. “Oh my, Tilly, I’m so sorry, we didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what? Just tell me what you blocked off on my calendar!”

Tilly’s assistant was sniffling on the other end. “Tilly, it just reads, mama’s burial.”

Tilly didn’t answer her; she simply hung up the phone.

“We understand how trying these times are, ma’am.” The officer tried to console her. They dropped Tilly off at her car and left. The gas station and shop were closed at this point.

Tilly went back to her hotel and just sat there staring at the ceiling. There was no one to help her. Her relatives were no help. Her coworkers in New York had the wrong idea. The only person she had to count on was her mother and she was gone. There was a tombstone with her mother’s name on it in front of her childhood home. “What’s going on here? This can’t be.”

It was nearly midnight when Tilly got into her rental car and drove to her mother’s childhood home. The only light in the front yard was from her headlights. There was a shovel leaning against the side of the house that she grabbed. “I know the truth and this is not the truth.”

Tilly spent the next two hours digging up the fresh grave. Her clothes were covered in dirt and she had at least half a dozen welts and splinters in the palms of her hands. Six feet down and Tilly was vindicated, but also more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. The grave was empty, no coffin, and no body. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make her believe that her mother was dead.

“I told you you were going to have to apologize to me before you left.” The man in the suit was standing by the car. He smiled a devilish smile and waited for her reply.

“Where is my mama?”

“Are you going to apologize?” He moved forward and the headlights of the car cast his shadow across Eloise’s empty grave.

Tilly was tired. It had been a long day filled with bad memories she wanted to put behind her. She wanted her mother back and she wanted to get the hell out of this town. She also realized she wasn’t dealing with your average crazy person.

She remembered his deep green eyes, but tonight they were different. She couldn’t tell if it was the trick of the headlights, but his eyes were a bright cat-like yellow. She didn’t feel safe standing there, but she was filled with anger.

“I’m going to get that apology now and this will all be over.” Tilly shivered. It was as if he had been standing right behind her, whispering the words into her ear. He stood at the same spot by the car she first saw him, even though moments earlier it had seemed like he had been standing right next to her. “Your apology.”

Tilly was trying to put that temper of hers in check. He moved closer to her, his smile growing with every step he took.

Tilly understood that he was an evil, manipulative trickster and she was angry. The humiliation, uncertainty, and pain she had dealt with that day were more than she had experienced in her entire life.

When the man in the suit was within arm’s reach, before she could make sense of the situation, the shovel still in her hand swung out and hit him on the side of the head. Blood began to pour from the wound and the man fell to his knees. His yellow eyes flashed bright amber, and then they dimmed to a light green before turning onyx black. The man stared up at her with a look of complete shock.

Tilly finally realized what she had done. She dropped the shovel and rushed over to the man. “Tell me where to find my mother. Please!”

The man, now crumpled on the floor, looked up at her and tried to form words, but then he rested his head down and said nothing more.

Tilly sat there on the floor by her car for almost an hour unmoving. She was in a town she didn’t know with her mother’s empty grave and a dead body. There was no way the situation could be worse.

Not wanting to spend the rest of her life behind bars, Tilly made use of the empty grave. When she was finished, she sat on the ground, exhausted. She knew she had to get out of there soon before the battery of her car died. Her head was throbbing as well. Since it was close to dawn, she might as well stay a while; maybe her mother would show up. Tilly turned off the car and headed into the house.

The next morning she walked to the gas station to ask questions. Wearing the same clothes she had the day before, minus shoes, Tilly didn’t look her usual self. The cashier still didn’t have any answers, but she also looked at Tilly differently. Tilly didn’t notice, her main priority was finding her mother and getting her home, what people thought about her didn’t matter. Tilly followed this same regime for a few days, which turned into weeks, which stretched even longer.

Every morning she would get up and walk to the gas station to ask questions about her mother. Sometimes, she even ordered a plate of food, usually some undercooked dish, and had lunch at the shop.

On one ordinary afternoon, a couple showed up at the gas station lost and needing directions.

“Ma’am, would you happen to know how to get to this section of Houma from 113?” The man asked Tilly, pointing at a map of Louisiana he had in his hand.

Tilly was sipping on a soda, sitting on the front porch of the shop. “Have you seen my mama, mister?” She didn’t even look at the man when she asked.

The man walked past her into the shop where he got directions from the cashier. “There’s a strange woman sitting in the front of your shop,” he informed the cashier.

The man exited the shop with the cashier behind him. “Sorry, sir, don’t mind her. She’s just a local girl that’s just a bit off.”

“Don’t go disrespecting me now!” Tilly yelled at both them.

“Tilly, go home now. There’s nothing for you here,” the cashier said.

The man quickly got into his car after thanking the cashier for the directions. Tilly watched him drive away and she cried when she saw her mama sitting in the backseat smiling and waving at her. It was the same for her every time. Every car that drove into the gas station would have her mother sitting inside, smiling and waving. Most of the time Tilly was harmless, but sometimes the authorities would be called to drag her back to her house.

Tilly never got into trouble for her antics. The locals took care of each other in this town. Tilly’s story spread across the entire parish and some say the entire state. She was the Houma girl not quite right in the head who thought she saw her long dead mother sitting in every car that stopped at the gas station not far from her house. Some folks would even swear that they sometimes saw Eloise sitting in a few cars travelling through town too. No one would mention it to Tilly; there was no need to upset her needlessly. Everyone in town knew she had a temper that seemed to light up her cat-like yellow eyes. No, it was best just to leave her be.

-THE END-

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

Ghost story of a Dallas boy who meets the girl of his dreams in a Texas small town. A girl who might be too good to be true. Maybe the old rotary phone is a giveaway. Written by Bob Hopkins.

The weather was perfect that third day in May as the boy, energetic and youthful, walked out the door of his childhood home with an ample bit of courage coupled with excitement, but shadowed with a slight hint of fear. It was on that day the boy became a man. That beautiful morn in May was his twenty-first birthday and life seemed so full of possibilities, and like a pit bull full of spit and courage to face the unknown, regardless of what may come, he trotted into a day of boyish vigor morphing into manhood.

It was a typical spring morning and not a cloud in the sky. Just the kind of day for an adventure, and not just any adventure – today, Hayden Hawkins would celebrate his birthday with a gift that most boys his age would certainly envy if offered half the chance. Today would be the day when Uncle Red would finally allow Hayden to drive his treasured 1964 Chevy Corvette, a priceless gem of Americana, one that still dominates the dreams of car lovers both young and old alike.

He arrived at Uncle Red’s house about 9 AM that morning with unbridled anticipation. Red, his mother’s brother, three years her senior, met him at the door with a list of what not to do while behind the wheel of his classic automobile, rules of the road spelled out by a man who treated his car better than he treated his wife. Hayden, hearing only about half of the lecture, couldn’t wait for Red to hand over the keys. After absorbing an eternity of instructions he finally found himself sliding into the driver’s seat of a classic piece of machinery.

Where would he go? What would he do? He was forbidden to allow any of his “hoodlum” friends, as Red called them, to even sit in the car, let alone ride in it – Red’s strict orders. So, he just drove in the direction the car was facing: eastbound. Soon he found himself cruising through the campus of Southern Methodist University and figured that was as good a route as any while the warm wind caressed his youthful face, bobbing to the music on the radio which was blaring loudly from the convertible classic.

Soon he connected to the dreaded 75 Central Expressway, six lanes of southbound traffic speeding toward the very center of “Big D.” Like a bead of water into an ocean he too blended into the endless stream of steel and rubber floating toward the heart of the city. One either needed to be a part of it or be run over by it and if he wasn’t careful, it could easily be the latter if he dared slow down or take his eye off the eighty mile an-hour traffic.

Hayden was as giddy as a child as his swelling pride rose up once he discovered he was the envy of most drivers along the highway, gawking at the Vette with smiles, envy, and even an occasional “thumbs up.” He found it almost impossible to keep his foot light on the throttle but even in his youthful venture, discipline would keep him safe from such dangerous thoughts. And still, where to go? It didn’t matter; he had all day and the world, that day, belonged to him.

Before long, Hayden found a deep desire to get out of the city and since he was southbound on Interstate 35, he figured he’d just keep going. It was near noon by now and he was getting hungry while taking the Highway 287 exchange – next town, Waxahachie.

He’d heard of the small town but had never been there and his stomach convinced him that stopping for a burger anywhere was a must. Route 287 Business was his next exit west into the middle of the historic north Texas village. Fertile fields and forests of pecan and oaks soon gave way to historic stately homes on either side of the road. He was amazed as he passed one historic home after another giving his imagination a hint of life in the old days. The pride of the village was a beautiful red stone courthouse right in the middle of the town square surrounded by unique 19th century commercial architecture. He soon found a quaint little restaurant right across the street from the courthouse and had a bite to eat among cut limestone walls lined with black and white pictures and décor from a time when cotton was king and Waxahachie, Texas thrived by the profits of it.

Once Hayden devoured the best home cooking he’d ever had away from his mother’s table he decided to cruise the Victorian neighborhoods and admire the historic homes. He was mesmerized as he drove past one beautiful house after another, each outlined with bright colors, gingerbread trim, large wrap-around porches and stately yards manicured to perfection.

Early-afternoon was looming as thoughts beckoned his return to Dallas, when suddenly the car sputtered. His heart sputtered along with it. Not only would a breakdown maroon him in unfamiliar territory but Uncle Red specifically instructed him not to take the car very far from the neighborhood. He just knew he would be in some serious trouble if Uncle Red found out. Another sputter, a cough and that was it…nothing. The car died and rolled to a stop, and Hayden found himself stranded without any idea of what the engine looked like, let alone what could be wrong with it.

Once again, he tried to start the car but to no avail. Over and over he turned the key but the engine just churned and sputtered. So, naturally, he got out of the car and lifted the hood glancing at the motor, not that he had any idea what he was looking at but that is what men were supposed to do. He was no mechanic.

Not knowing what to do next Hayden instinctively started jiggling wires and checking for loose parts when his hand unintentionally came in contact with a hot radiator cap. “Ouch!” he shouted as he jerked his arm back, striking the support rod dropping the hood directly on his head. Frustrated, he let out an expletive that would embarrass anyone in mixed company. But he was not in mixed company, or so he thought until he heard the sweetest voice on God’s earth.

“You broke down?” she yelled from the safety of the porch. It was only then that he realized his car had stalled in front of a beautiful Victorian house with a large wrap-around front porch. Sitting in a rocking chair on the porch was one of the most beautiful girls Hayden Hawkins had ever set his eyes upon.

“What’s the matter with your fancy car?” she yelled again. Hayden found himself awestruck and suddenly unable to speak. “Are you deaf or something?” she hollered.

“No,” he replied, somewhat insulted and embarrassed all at the same time. “It just died.” At that she stood up and walked down the sidewalk toward the car. Hayden was instantly smitten with the girl as if bewitched, even though she seemed a bit feisty in her initial tone. It mattered not, she was a Goddess as far as he could tell.

“Is it yours?” she asked.

“Uh, no…it’s my, my Uncle Red’s,” he stuttered. “We live up in Dallas and, well, he lets me drive it.”

“Do you always tear up your Uncle Red’s stuff…Just kidding,” she said with a smile. “You want to use our phone to call your Uncle?”

“I guess so,” he reluctantly replied, knowing that the phone call could spell out the end of driving the car forever.

“Well, come on up to the porch and I’ll ask my mother if you can come in and use the phone.” Hayden had his cell phone in the car but ignored it – if doing so would lend him any prospect of being in the company of such beauty.

“Mama,” she yelled into the back of the house, “there’s a boy who needs to use the phone, his car broke down in front of the house!”

“What boy?” came a woman’s voice from the same direction.

“Just a boy,” the girl yelled back. “He just needs to use the phone!”

“Alright, yelled her mother, “but don’t go any further into the house, I just waxed the dining room floor and I don’t want anyone walking on it for a while!”

“Okay, Mama,” the girl replied, motioning Hayden into the large foyer lined with dark oak wainscoting upon a crimson carpet that covered the heart-o-pine flooring.

He found the home elegantly fashioned in comfort but oddly retrospect in decor. The young lady pointed toward an old rotary telephone sitting in a little nook just inside the main hall next to the beautiful staircase that led to the second floor. “Strange,” he thought as his eyes spanned the room which smelled of fresh cooked pastries mixed with floor wax, odd yet inviting all at the same time. Hesitant to use the phone, mostly because he wasn’t sure how to operate the antique rotary dial, he figured he’d wait a bit before calling Uncle Red. Maybe the engine just got hot, he thought, and he could let it cool off and then see if it would start. Besides, he could think of no better place on earth to be stranded.

“Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Barbara, Barbara Hill.”

“Nice to meet you,” he replied as he found himself hypnotized by her beauty and her smile.

“So, do boys from Dallas not have names?” she asked with a curious smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he replied embarrassingly. “I’m Hayden, Hayden Hawkins.”

“Nice to meet you Hayden Hawkins,” she replied with a slight giggle.

“I think I’ll wait on that phone call and just let the engine cool down a bit, if you don’t mind,” said Hayden.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “You can sit out on the porch and relax a bit if you’d like,” of which he was more than happy to oblige.

He quickly made himself comfortable in one of the large white rocking chairs with thick padded cushions surrounded by big tropical plants as he took note of two hummingbirds sipping from the blooms on the crepe myrtles. Barbara sat in the chair next to him quickly joined by a gray tabby cat who she affectionately called “Mr. Doodles”.

“Do you go to school? she asked.

“Yes’em,” he replied, in his usual southern drawl, “I do. I just finished my third year at Texas. I’m working on my business degree. What about you? Do you go to school here?” he asked her.

“I’ll graduate high school in a couple of weeks,” she replied. “I’ll be a freshman at Baylor this fall. I can’t wait.”

The conversation went on and on and Hayden was beginning to understand the silly notion of love at first sight. They shared interests and hobbies and each other’s goals for life as if time no longer held any meaning. He learned that her father was a physician who had a practice up in Dallas, her mother stayed home and her brother Roy was in the Army, a first lieutenant stationed right out of Fort Hood, Texas, and Mr. Doodles, well, he just walked up to the house one day and they took him in.

They spoke of things like childhood memories, grandparents and friends – all the while careless of the stress that comes with adulthood and responsibilities. The only thing that suddenly existed for them seemed to be the bliss of the moment.

The day evaporated and Hayden suddenly realized that evening was upon them and he still had a car problem on his hands. “Wow,” he remarked as he noticed it getting dark, “I guess I need to see if that car is going to start, I had no idea that it was so late.”

“Why don’t you see if it will start now?” she said, as Hayden got up to walk toward the car. She followed down the sidewalk which ran through the manicured lawn to the curb where the car sat. Hayden rechecked the hood to make sure it was closed when he slid into the seat and tried the ignition once again. With one crank, Vroom! Just like that the engine roared to life. Hayden checked the gauges and everything seemed just fine. Curiously, he got out of the car to thank Barbara for her hospitality.

“I guess maybe it just got hot or something,” he said.

“Yea,” she replied, “cars sometimes do that I guess,” as she shrugged her shoulders while giggling.

“Well, I guess I’d better be getting home, he said, nervously. Suddenly, as if again bewitched he instinctively added, “I sure would like to see you again.”

Barbara said, “Yeah, me too. I really had a nice time today.”

“Would you like to go out next Saturday night?” Hayden nervously asked.

“I’d love too,” she said with a huge smile.

“Great” he said, “it’s a date. Why don’t I pick you up early in the afternoon and you show me around Waxahachie?”

“Sounds wonderful to me,” she said.

“Can I have your phone number?” he asked and she said “Yes,” and made a quick trip back into the house returning with the number written on a small piece of personalized letterhead that read, “Dr. Lewis Roy Hill, MD.” With that Hayden walked around the car and got in, leaving the beautiful girl waving goodbye from the sidewalk in front of her beautiful home.

Hayden’s drive back to Dallas was interrupted by his cell phone. It was Uncle Red inquiring the whereabouts of his classic Corvette and to make sure Hayden was alright. Any punishment handed to him at this moment was irrelevant compared to how he was feeling. He was on cloud nine, floating northbound along a stream of lights toward home, his mind still reeling with the thoughts of the most beautiful girl in the world and eager anticipation of the time he would spend with her next Saturday night.

The week seemed to drag for Hayden. He’d had lots of dates with girls and even had a serious girlfriend in high school but something about Barbara Hill was different. Just the thought of her made him feel all funny inside. Never before had a girl had this kind of impact upon him. Like a five year old waiting for Santa, his thrill and anticipation of seeing her again seemed to grow daily. He could hardly wait. She was all he could think about.

”The number you are calling is no longer a working number…” was the recorded voice each time he dialed the numbers Barbara Hill had written on the oddly faded piece of paper she’d handed him just days before. Hayden tried the number several times, each with the same results. It was the middle of the week and he just needed to hear her voice again and besides, it was proper to confirm the date. But he couldn’t reach her by phone. Not to worry, he thought. He’d planned to show up anyway. Nothing was going to keep him from going to Waxahachie – after all, he had a date with the girl of his dreams and he was going to keep it no matter what.

Soon, Saturday arrived and Hayden, borrowing his mother’s SUV, headed south to the small town half an hour south of Dallas in nervous excitement. It was about four in the afternoon when he pulled up in front of the large Victorian house. But something strange was about. The rocking chairs were missing, as were the plants, and the crepe myrtles were missing their blooms. As a matter-of-fact, the porch was bare and lifeless with the front door shut. No longer warm and inviting as it was the week before, as dust and dead leaves covered the porch and steps as if no one had been there in weeks or even months.

As Hayden walked up the sidewalk he noticed an elderly woman in the lawn next door stooped over a flowerbed. The woman looked his way as if curious of his intentions. He continued up the steps to the front door where he knocked but got no answer. He knocked again when he was interrupted by the elderly neighbor, “Can I help you?”

Oddly startled he replied, “No Ma’am, I’m just here to pick up my date but it seems that nobody is home.”

“Well, young man,” she replied, “that could be because nobody lives in this house.” Hayden looked at the woman as if she had lost her marbles. She went on to say, “No one has lived in the house since 1968. It’s owned by Mr. Roy Hill, who lives near Seattle, Washington. I don’t think he’s actually been here in years. He just keeps the place exactly like it was when he was growing up here. I keep an eye on things for him.”

Hayden was dumb-struck and refused to believe what the old woman said. Most likely crazy, he thought. “Is this some kind of joke?” he replied. “I just met these people a week ago. My car broke down right there,” pointing to the spot at the curb where he had parked the car. “I met the girl who lives here. I walked into the house where I heard her mother in the kitchen. People live here. I saw them. I was here and they were here.”

“Young man,” she replied, “I never said you didn’t see and talk to someone at this house. I simply said no one has lived here for over forty years.”

Hayden looked at her completely puzzled when she asked, “Did you meet a pretty young lady named Barbara with long black hair, beautiful blue eyes and sweet as the morning dew?”

“Yes,” he said with confusion. “Yes, that’s her, that’s Barbara Hill!”

“Did she sit on the porch and talk to you and give you a phone number that you couldn’t call?” asked the old woman.

Hayden was dumbfounded as the woman continued with another question.

“Was she wearing a pair of white slacks with a blue sleeveless sweater and a red ribbon holding her hair back?”

“How do you know all that?” he asked.

“Because you’re not the first,” she said. “I mean, you’re not the first boy who has showed up here for a date with Barbara Hill. Several young men just like you have walked up to these steps expecting to find a warm and friendly young lady waiting for them at this door, but no one has been at this door in many years. Or at least, no one living.”

Hayden was beginning to question his own sanity and not sure he could believe a word of what this crazy old woman was saying.

“The first time it happened was about 1978, ten years after the plane crash. A young man just like you, about your age, showed up one afternoon to take her out on a date, but naturally no one was here and hadn’t been for some time. He knocked on my door looking for any information about my neighbors and young Barbara Hill. I was angry with him at first and told him to leave my property because I thought he was playing a cruel joke. Since that time there have been several, including you who came looking for a beautiful young lady forty years dead. Like a magnet from beyond she continues to come home to this house, somehow, and mingle with young men who instantly fall for her devilish charm and unending beauty…even in death. I’ve lived in this neighborhood since 1948, only a couple of years before Barbara was born. I watched her and her brother grow up here. My husband and I were good friends with her parents. You can only imagine the grief when the family died in that plane crash.”

“Plane crash? What plane crash?” he frightfully asked as his mind wondered if any of this conversation was really happening. He was sure, without a doubt that he stood upon this very porch not a week ago falling hopelessly in love with an 18 year old beauty named Barbara Hill who was as real as he was and very much alive.

The woman continued as she searched her mind for memories, “It was on the 3rd of May, 1968 when they were headed home on a flight from Houston. The Doctor had been to a conference there. He’d decided to take Barbara and her mother along on the trip so the family could spend some time together. The morning was stormy here in Waxahachie and a line of heavy storms had just past through. The plane was en route back when the pilot tried to fly through those storms. The plane just came apart in mid-air and crashed to the ground in a fireball near a small town down near Corsicana. There were no survivors.”

The conversation went silent as Hayden searched every fiber of his being for something to assure him that things like this didn’t really happen. That the ghosts of pretty girls don’t come back to break the hearts of boys like him. But he was left with no choice as the facts began to unfold on that strange afternoon, one that would forever plague his mind in wonder and doubt.

“Barbara was a beautiful girl and very witty,” the woman continued. “She was so full of life and was looking forward to her first year in college. She was a very popular girl whose young life was tragically taken away. I guess she wasn’t ready for that to happen and somehow keeps trying to go on with life the way she lived it, unfortunately, she hasn’t figured out yet that she can’t.”

Once again, another moment of eerie silence caressed the space between Hayden and the old woman.

“Barbara’s older brother Roy was serving in the Army and was in Vietnam at the time. He came home and buried his family. Roy inherited the home but never lived in it again. He hires folks to keep it maintained just like it was when he was growing up and it’s been kept just as it was the day the family left,” she told him as she sadly gazed into the empty yard.

She then stared right at him and said, “You see son, some things in this world are…well, just strange like Barbara Hill and we’ll never have the answers to them. I suggest you go on home now and give this some time to sink in. It’s best if you don’t try to find all the answers in life. You go on now.”

With that she turned and sadly walked away, leaving Hayden Hawkins standing on the front porch of the beautiful home where a beautiful girl once lived on a beautiful day in May many years ago.

-THE END-

Links of Interest:

Waxahachie, Texas Official Site
True story of Corsicana plane crash.
Bob Hopkins’ Texas ghost stories

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

Creature story of a mysterious Tennessee lake that tends to attract visitors – for life!
Written by Harris Tobias

One wonders how these places get their names. There was nothing especially owlish about its 60 acres of surface or the little islands that poked their domed heads above it. It was a pretty lake in the Tennessee woods, peaceful and pristine. Exactly the kind of place Monty needed for a few days of splendid isolation. Fishing, reading, getting back in touch with his inner man. A few precious days to decompress before the firm reeled him back in and sucked him dry.

There were a couple of reasons Owl Head Lake appealed to him. One was its inaccessibility. Three miles of dirt road to a primitive campground ruled out all but the most determined campers. The second was its unpopularity. The lake had acquired a bad reputation ever since people began disappearing from its shores—a group of teenagers vanished a few years ago, their tents and gear untouched. Before that a family went missing without a trace. And those were just the two that he knew of; he supposed there were more. On both occasions the lake was dragged, divers sent into its murky depths, to no avail. The divers reported the lake was uncommonly deep and cold but harbored nothing out of the ordinary. So the stories grew that the lake was cursed and as the stories multiplied, the locals kept away and its campsites gradually fell into disrepair.

If tall tales and ghost stories kept campers away, that suited Monty just fine. The last thing he wanted was company, some garrulous stranger making chitchat about the weather or some tedious retired couple from Des Moines. No Owl Head Lake was just the tonic he needed. Who knew what happened to those teen-age campers. Kids are famous for making stupid decisions. He could imagine them yelling, “Watch this” just before plunging over a cliff.

As for the lake’s reputation for being haunted or stalked by a serial killer, well he was a city boy and violent death was all around him. He knew the odds of being killed by a stranger were greater than getting struck by lightening. And besides as a lawyer he made his living defending the most depraved sociopaths on the planet. No, he wasn’t afraid of a violent end, he was afraid of some friendly camper destroying his solitude.

His heart sank when he first drove in and saw the bright blue of a tent pitched near his favorite site. He needn’t have worried the neighbors were packing up and leaving. The man came over to Monty his face showing obvious signs of distress.

“I wouldn’t be staying here, fella, if I was you.”

“Oh, why’s that?” an obviously relieved Monty asked.

“There’s something wrong with that lake. Something evil. You hear them stories about people disappearing and all?”

“I heard ‘em,” Monty said. “A lot of old wives tales if you ask me.”

“Maybe, but I ain’t staying to find out, we all heard weird noises last night and now my dog’s gone missing. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye open for him. If he shows up would you give me a call?”

The old man handed Monty a slip of paper with a phone number on it. Monty promised he’d do that. He watched the man pack his gear calling “Rufus” every few minutes until he finally drove away leaving nothing but blissful silence behind. When the neighbor was gone, Monty tossed the phone number in the fire, mixed himself a cocktail and sat facing the lake.

The sun was low in the sky, the birds were active, ducks, geese and herons making their living from nature’s intricate web. The graceful herons, like statues working the margins while flotillas of ducks and Canada Geese patrolled the deep water like opposing fleets. On the small islands, a glint of white, an owl or bald eagle. Fabulous, this is the stuff his spirit thrived on.

In spite of the scenery, his mind drifted back to his high-pressure job. He had to admit it was a hell of a way to make a living. Sure everyone is entitled to the best defense they can afford blah, blah, but his rich clients knew they could buy their way out of almost anything. Did it make him feel dirty? No, not really. He was a hired gun. Someone had to safeguard the civil rights of wealthy child molesters, drug dealers, thieves and murderers. How should it make him feel? He didn’t make the rules. Still, thank goodness for places like this, islands of peace and quiet to soothe a troubled mind. Nature restored his soul. He raised his glass to the setting sun by way of thanks.

Weren’t there three islands in the middle of the lake? Oh yes. From this angle it looked like two but there were the three little mounds. He knew them well; he called them the 3 knobs. They looked like the tops of three heads, dome shaped and symmetrical. They reminded him of three bathers wearing forested bathing caps. Something spooked the Canada Geese just then. They broke the placid surface of the lake in a spontaneous dash into the air sounding their alarms. He admired the natural world. Now there was a system of justice that made sense. Eat or be eaten, the strongest survive, that was how it should be. There was no plea-bargaining out there, no sir-ee-bob.

When his attention returned to the islands, they were spread out in a line before him. The sun was a golden ball spreading jewels on the rippled surface. The fleeing geese reminded him of the case he just finished litigating. Chichi Maldonado. What a piece of work. If ever anyone deserved to be locked away, it was Chichi. Bargaining down multiple felonies to a few months in a country club prison due to a technicality. That’s why he made the big bucks. He even got a bonus for that bit of work. What a system.

Was he mistaken or was the configuration of the islands slightly different? One of the knobs seemed to have drifted closer. It must be a trick of the light. The sun was almost down. What a scene. A sky striped like cotton candy and grape soda. The reflection on the lake was flawless. What a picture. He pulled out his camera and snapped a few for posterity. The heron called and took wing. Calling it a day he guessed.

The ducks too took wing. Where do ducks sleep he wondered. He loved the sunsets on this lake. He was here six months before. He looked back in the little camera’s memory and pulled up some shots he’d taken in May. Yes, that was another soul satisfying sunset. What was different about that earlier shot? The knobs. In the earlier picture they were somewhere else entirely. That’s strange he thought. It was his last rational thought before the island dragged him kicking and screaming into its toothy maw.

-THE END-

Harris Tobias lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of The Greer Agency , A Felony of Birds and dozens of short stories. His fiction has appeared in Ray Gun Revival, Dunesteef Audio Magazine, Literal Translations, FriedFiction, Down In The Dirt, Eclectic Flash, E Fiction and many other publications. His poetry has appeared in Vox Poetica, The poem Factory and The Poetry Super Highway. You can find links to his novels at: http://harristobias-fiction.blogspot.com/

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

Kentucky ghost story of a haunted house that holds the key to the mysterious past of a young girl.
Written by Samantha Frazier Gordon

You can feel a presence before you see it. The presence that had taken up residence in the house on Black River could reach clear across the county. But it didn’t have to; it made you come to it. Some places hold us captive by their beauty, some hold us captive by their history and other places just hold us captive. Grace knew exactly what the clapboard house looked like from the inside out, even though she had never been inside. She knew that the kitchen had yellow and white checkered gingham curtains that were hung askew and the lace sewn on the bottom was tattered and hanging by a thread. The kitchen countertops were mint green Formica and they had started to bow some time ago but no effort had been put into fixing the problem, before too long it would all peel off, exposing the rotting wood. The living room was small as was the dining room, both filled with pieces of mismatched furniture in various stages of ruin. People used to live here, but there was never any life.

The upstairs did not have a bathroom but it did have two bedrooms and there was a small attic with two small windows. Grace was certain the oldest child was a girl and that she slept in the attic, against her will. Grace didn’t have any siblings and she didn’t have any friends and she decided you couldn’t miss what you didn’t have. Grace didn’t have a mother, at least that’s what her father told her, she left before Grace could walk. Sometimes she could make out the voice of a woman; she was always whispering something indiscernible and smelled of honeysuckle. She wished she could remember more so she could think about that, rather than think about the things she didn’t have.

When they came to Black River her father seemed to disappear. She could still see him, but he could no longer see her, an absence took over as he looked straight ahead, he never even looked at his fishing pole, just pulled the pole out of the water, grabbed the line, all in one motion, without even blinking. Every now and then he would call to her to fetch him a peanut butter sandwich from the bag, even his voice lacked presence.

She knew it was the house, it hypnotized him and he couldn’t get loose of the spell, she just didn’t know why. There was no doubt the house had some mysterious power; she wondered how something could be both dead and alive at the same time. The windows were all covered with that thick plastic people used to keep out the weather. The plastic was secured with pieces of lath and nails so she was never able to see in it to ascertain the cause of its death. It looked as though some of the corners had been torn or cut, something trying to get in or something trying to get out.

Sometimes in the afternoon her father would put down his pole and lean up against the old willow tree for a nap. It afforded her time to wander, she desperately wanted to go inside the house, but her father had forbidden her to do so, but one day she knew she would, she had to. She walked up the winding path to the main road and started walking. When she looked back all that was visible was a thick canopy of willow trees and it blocked out the sun and held in the secrets. There was a little store about a half a mile down the road, she always saw it when they went by and always wanted to stop, but he never would. It had an old soda cooler out front; she was desperately thirsty and wanted something cold to drink. She had three quarters, hopefully that would be enough to buy a grape soda.

There was a hand painted sign on a gnarled piece of wood that was attached to a pole that had been stuck in an old milk can and it read “Rusty’s Bait.” It didn’t look as though the place had been painted in years and the screen door didn’t close all the way. Grace loved how the wind played with her, the way it picked up the scattered leaves and carried them to some unknown destination and she wanted to go too. Grace was mesmerized by the way the screen door creaked when the wind would catch it and then release it. Grace noticed the bulls eye window above the front door and it seemed so out of place, as though it was beckoning you to look through its swirling glass. The swirling pattern seemed to change shape and color and it reminded her of a kaleidoscope she used to have. She walked over to the soda machine to see if there was a price, but she didn’t see one. She would need to go inside and ask. She reached for the screen door handle but now it seemed to be stuck, she had been watching the wind open it, but now it wouldn’t budge.

You can feel a presence before you can see it. She kept pulling on the handle and she knew someone was behind her, she was afraid to turn around, but she had no place to go, the wind wasn’t about to carry her away to some unknown destination. When she turned around she was staring at two glowing red eyes, the belt buckle said snake eyes. She looked up and saw a heavily bearded man staring down at her with a grimace that covered his entire body.

“How many times have I told you not to come here, Gracie?” His voice was jarring and how did he know her name, why did he call her Gracie? No one ever called her that.

“I’ve never been here, this is my first time.” She knew he wasn’t going to hurt her so she asked him. “How did you know my name?”

“You ask me that same question every time.” He shook his head, reached down and moved her aside so he could open the door. He turned to look back at her.

“Are you comin’ in this time or what?” She followed him into the store and the door slammed behind her. There was a musty smell in the air and the floor creaked as she walked. When she looked up she wasn’t sure what to think, but she was sure this wasn’t a bait shop. All of the shelves had Instamatic cameras on them, some with new flashes and some with spent flashes but nothing else. She looked around and noticed a bulletin board next to the door with pictures stuck to it.

“What kind of a bait shop is this, I don’t see any bait?”

“Don’t need no bait, just people that are curious.”

“About what?”

“About that house.”

“Have you been inside?” He hesitated to answer.

“No, it won’t let me in.”

“I know what it looks like inside.”

“I know you do, that’s the problem.”

Grace wasn’t sure what he meant by that and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do, but before she could say anything he handed her a camera. She took it from him but wasn’t sure why. The camera had a shiny new flashbulb on it and it was ready to take pictures, she just didn’t know of what.

“You have four shots to …” As he said that she hit the button and the flash went off.

“You have three shots to get answers to your questions.”

“About the house?”

“I know your questions Gracie, I just don’t know which ones you want answers to and which ones you don’t, only you do. But you can’t hang around here anymore, it’s time to move on. So use the three flashes you have wisely and don’t look back.”

She left the bait shop and let the screen door slam behind her. She knew she wouldn’t be able to open that door again. She stared at the road and started walking towards Black River. She knew the wind was still blowing because she could see the leaves on the trees moving, but there was no sound. As she walked along she noticed little swirls of dust dancing around keeping pace with her reluctant stride. As she got closer to the path going down to the river they stopped and let her go ahead. She looked back and saw them as though they were suspended in midair, waiting.

The only way to get across the river was a fallen tree, the bridge washed out years ago for reasons no one cared to explain. The tree wasn’t quite long enough to cover the width of the river, so she knew she would get her feet wet, but the river wasn’t very deep where the tree ended. She carefully climbed off of the tree and walked through the shadowy water and up to the grass. She saw the plastic flapping but there was still no sound, as she walked around the back of the house she saw an old rope hanging from one of the willow trees. It had a knot tied at the bottom so she knew it used to be a swing. She kept walking up the incline towards the back door of the house still uncertain how she would use the camera. She felt something with her foot, she looked down and it was the board that went to the swing. She saw the notches carved out on each side so it would slip onto the rope. She picked it up and saw the name Gracie carved in it. She dropped it and kept walking until she reached the back door.

You can feel a presence before you can see it, and sometimes it’s too late.

But some things can change in a flash.

She knew he was behind her, but she didn’t take the time to look. She reached for the door handle and opened the door. Her mother and her sister were both lying on the floor, dead, in a pool of blood. Her mother still had the camera in her hand. Grace wouldn’t panic this time, she ran to her mother and grabbed the camera out of her hand. The last frame was blank; Grace needed to get to the picture when the killer first walked in the house and flash forward to change the course of the day. But he had other plans for her.

“You got lucky last time, I ain’t about to let that happen again.” He walked towards her and grabbed for her, knocking the camera out of her hand. The flash went off on the other camera when she stumbled. Two flash forwards left. She struggled to get the old flash off so she could reposition it, praying she got the first one so she could flash ahead with the two she had left. Charlotte in her party dress, the first picture her mother took. Flash forward.

Her mother told her to go out to the shed and bring in Charlotte’s new bicycle. She had seen the man leaning up against the old willow tree by Black River on and off for the last couple of days. Her mother told her not to worry, he was probably just fishing and there was no crime in leaning on trees. But now he was walking across the yard towards the house, for no good reason. Grace was no match for him, but Luke was. Luke wasn’t a smart dog but he was a fearless one. She ran back to untie him so he could go with her into the house. She ran as fast as she could, as she ran through the open door she heard her mother tell her to run away.

“Who are you, what do you want?” Her mother screamed when she saw the knife. Gracie let go of Luke, there was no need to tell him what to do. He heard the dog and turned towards Luke but Luke was already there and with the first hit Luke knocked the knife right out of his hand and sent him to the floor and struggling to get away from Luke. Luke wasn’t a smart dog, but he was fearless. Flash forward.

It was a perfect July day in Weavers Junction, Kentucky. Charlotte wanted to ride her bike so Gracie and her mother walked behind her. Charlotte slowed down until they caught up.

“I’m thirsty, let’s stop at the bait shop and get a soda.”

Gracie wanted to tell her sister and her mom, but she kept silent. Charlotte parked the bike and they walked towards the soda machine, still no price. They would need to go inside. When Charlotte reached for the screen door handle it opened with no effort. Gracie was the last one to walk through the door and she knew they shouldnít be going in. She stopped as soon as she got inside.

“Wait, this has bait in it.”

Charlotte responded, “It’s a bait shop, what did you expect them to have?”

She looked around; the bulletin board with the pictures was still there so she walked over to look at them. There he was, clear as day, Rusty. She called to her mom as she pointed at the picture.

“Mom, I know him, this is…”

“Yes honey, that’s your father in his uniform. He was a wonderful man. One day I’ll put back the pictures. I don’t like thinking about what I don’t have…but he loved you very much Gracie, he will always be with you. Fathers always look out for their little girls.”

Gracie wasn’t sure what it all meant, or how it all happened but here she was. She wandered around the store looking at all of the fishing paraphernalia and as she walked around a display of fishing knives there he was, the man with the knife, staring down at her. He spoke to her, almost in a whisper.

“Third time’s a charm Gracie..”

You can feel a presence before you see it and not a camera in sight.

Luke had chased him, but not far enough.

She heard her mother call her and she started backing away and moved towards the door. Gracie heard Charlotte and her mother go out the door, when she backed into the door she turned to face it. She didn’t want to see his face again, but she had to make sure it was real.

When she turned back to make sure it was the would be killer, Rusty emerged from behind the counter and smiled at Gracie as he made he way towards the man. She went through the door and let the screen door slam. She had to be sure, she turned to open the screen door to take one last look but the door was stuck, and no matter how hard she pulled it refused to open.

You can feel a presence before you see it, and by the time he saw snake eyes, it was too late.

- THE END-

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1. The Black Dog

The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends

True West Texas ghost story of a strange Mexican woman haunting the Green River Bridge. Think we’ll take the long way next time. Written by Bob Hopkins

The day was warm for October, but he loved the fall regardless. The crisp, cool mornings and warm afternoons were a respite from the relentless summer heat of north central Texas.

The year was 1948 and four cattlemen were on their way back home to Chico, just north of Bridgeport. They had been out to west Texas to purchase cattle. The weather being dry and the land parched as drought had claimed it earlier that year, recalled G.E. Francis, age 92 when he shared this ghostly tale in 2002. A strange account indeed, but one that certainly gains the respect of the reader once the details of the day are told.

“We’d been on the road for hours, stuffed into Buford’s brown 1939 Buick. There was no air-conditioning in cars back then and the trip had been a long one.” The car rattled along the old Green Elm road through, what was known in those days as “the bottoms”, a stretch of dirt highway that ran between Wizard Wells, now a ghost town, and Chico. The old road is now mostly covered by water, encompassed by the far north end of Lake Bridgeport, located on the Jack-Wise County lines south of Texas FM 1810.

“We had to stop for a nature break. We were close to home, but when you got to go, you got to go! We decided to go ahead and pull over when Buford simply came to a complete stop right on the bridge. You could do that in those days as you may not see another car for a half hour or so.” This particular bridge spanned the west fork of the Trinity River and was constructed with an iron frame support beams and wooden slats for car tires.

The four companions were relieved to get a break from the cramped car as the sun was just about to set in the western sky. As they finished their business they stood on the bridge taking in the scenery and making small talk as the blue sky above faded into orange and yellow hues upon the vast Texas horizon. The bridge was called “Green Elm Cemetery Bridge,” because of its proximity to an old cemetery located about 500 yards south of its location and just beyond a bend in the river.

One can only imagine the serine beauty of the area and the solitude of the fall evening. But soon, the still of that beautiful evening was shattered when suddenly, without warning, a blood-curdling scream vibrated across the silence amongst the men with a wailing that chilled their very souls. The feminine cry was so ear-piercing and so startling that they found themselves dumbfounded of its origin. All four were perplexed about what it was or where it was coming from. Once able to gather their senses they realized the cry was coming from up river, about 100 feet or so.

“We saw this thing,” said Francis. “It floated in the air about eighteen to twenty feet above the river and it was moving, rapidly toward the bridge, and us! The thing appeared as if it were floating and thrashing about in unseen waters. I was scared half to death. Actually, I was terrified to the point that I couldn’t move or even think to move. Either could anyone else. We just stood there in complete confusion and horror bewildered by the reality of what we were witnessing. Not one of us had any idea what it was or its purpose.

As it got closer, I began to realize that it appeared to be a woman, a Mexican woman wearing a white dress or gown of some kind, screaming and moaning as if she were in a state of turmoil floating along in mid-air. Then I realized she was in great distress as if she were drowning while being carried away by the unseen flood waters.

I was so scared, we all were, not knowing if to run, hide or just get back in the car. She floated right toward the bridge. She was wiggling, screaming and thrashing about as if she were trying to save herself. She came right over the bridge just barely clearing the top of the frame then rapidly on south into the bend of the river where, like a misty vapor, she simply faded into thin air. Her screams went silent as her form vanished, just like that. We all stood stunned not knowing what to say to each other. We all had blank looks about us, horrified and confused. Then we each quickly got into the car and left that place, each man searching his own belief’s in total shock, wonder and terror, still confused of what to make of the ghostly encounter.”

The four couldn’t get away from the bridge quick enough to find any emotional comfort as they realized that any rationale had, at the moment, been dismissed. As the Buick hugged the road in the escape each began to calm and collect themselves but were all of great confusion about the entire event. Obviously shaken by the incident the four in discussion decided they would not tell a soul of the eerie encounter as not to be the bunt of any joke or to be accused of taking to strong drink. They simply didn’t think anyone would believe them and wondered from time to time, if they believed it themselves.

But, as human nature would have it, secrets are known to be shared and within a couple of years, tales of the encounter with the ghost at Green Elm Bridge began to surface. Teenagers looking for a thrill as well as the curious began to partake in adventures out to the bridge for the chance of a like encounter. By the 1950’s folks from Jacksboro, Chico and Bridgeport frequently visited the bridge in hopes of seeing the specter and some did see it, or at least hear it, according to Francis who claimed that the ghost was the real deal. “I remember every terrifying minute of that day. A fella don’t forget things like that, you know! It stays with you.”

“Back in 92’, reported Francis, “two oilfield workers got quite a scare down at the compressor station near the bridge. They went to leave when their truck wouldn’t start. While working on the truck, at just about sundown, they too heard that horrifying scream coming from the river. I’m not sure if they actually saw her because it scared them so bad they didn’t want to talk much about it. They high-tailed it on out of there by foot, mostly in a run when they came upon my son’s place not far from the bridge. One of them fella’s quit his job that very day saying he was never going back down to the river where that ghost was. He was really scared from whatever he saw or heard.”

Not much is known about the old Green Elm Cemetery (also known as the Verner Cemetery) or those who make it their final resting place. It is located just south of the bridge where the road turns into more of a trail which dead ends into the cemetery. The earliest grave there dates to 1870 and the last entered in 1909. The cemetery, located amongst a thicket of post oak and mesquite trees is occasionally mowed but well hidden from view. According to Jack County records, fifty five or so graves have been entered there with twenty to thirty, sadly, unmarked.

The life and times of settlers to that area would have been difficult at best. Most people who ventured west were in search of hope and opportunity. Many Mexicans and whites alike dotted the landscape in crude makeshift huts or dugouts until better living accommodations could be obtained. Harshness, disease, rattlesnakes and scorpions would have been an everyday occurrence for these folks. Droughts and floods were a constant expectancy in the land and many undocumented calamities and tragedies were a common thread for many poor Texas pioneers.

By the 1970’s, all the hype had run its course and most locals forgot about the spook at the bridge but as far as G.E. Francis and three fellow ranchers were concerned, the phantom of Green Elm Bridge was very real. But, what could it be? Why was it there? What is its purpose? Has it been seen since? Most of these questions we’ll never know. Perhaps it is the echo of a tragic event of long ago or something more sinister. Like most ghostly encounters, it was very real to those most unfortunate to have experienced it and as much a mystery to those who did not. Many will simply choose not to believe the story but some will, especially those who claim it to be true through their own encounter.

Green Elm/Verner Cemetery is located about five miles down an isolated dirt road located along the Jack and Wise County lines. The old skeletal remains of the bridge still remain though the slatted boards were burned away in a fire many years ago. The area is densely covered with tress and scrub brush and is as lonely as the soul that haunts it.

If you ever feel brave enough to venture down the old dirt road at sundown be aware of the cries of the coyotes or mountain lions that roam the river banks and know that any scream you hear at that bridge may be your own.

-THE END-

Photos provided by Bob Hopkins.

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The Moonlit Road - Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends