Speaker 1: My family on my mother's side have unique abilities. My grandfather,
Speaker 1: as told to me by my grandmother, was for lack
Speaker 1: of a better term, a witch doctor. People would come
Speaker 1: to him because he could cure different types of illnesses.
Speaker 1: He said my mother would be next in line, but
Speaker 1: he died before he was able to teach her. She
Speaker 1: was still able to predict births and feel the moods
Speaker 1: of people around her. My abilities are the opposite. For me,
Speaker 1: it's death and ghosts. I've had many strange things happened
Speaker 1: to me, and there was one incident that bothers me
Speaker 1: to this day. It changed my life. There's a church
Speaker 1: near the Southern Park Mall in Boardman, Ohio, where my
Speaker 1: brother's friend was a caretaker. It's a church and school combined,
Speaker 1: so it's a large building with two large chapels, a classroom, offices,
Speaker 1: and community rooms. A good sized group of us were
Speaker 1: meeting there to play some game or another. One night.
Speaker 1: We showed up early, so my brother's friend asked me
Speaker 1: to walk around with him to shut off the lights
Speaker 1: and lock the doors and generally just check the building.
Speaker 1: It was I that he asked me to do this,
Speaker 1: because I was always seen as George's little brother, not
Speaker 1: their friend Christopher. These were all my brother's friends, and
Speaker 1: I was happy to do it, though, because I saw
Speaker 1: it as me being accepted into their group. All was
Speaker 1: okay until we reached the room where the priest gets ready.
Speaker 1: The worst feeling hit me. The pressure seemed to increase
Speaker 1: and there was a disgusting feeling coming from the room.
Speaker 1: I stopped and I said I can't go in there.
Speaker 1: My brother's friends said, don't worry about it. You won't
Speaker 1: be breaking any religious rules by going in. Well, that
Speaker 1: wasn't quite what I meant, but I couldn't explain why
Speaker 1: I felt that way, so I went in. It was
Speaker 1: even worse inside. We walked through and went out the
Speaker 1: other side. Instantly everything felt normal again. We locked some
Speaker 1: doors and turned off a couple of lights before coming
Speaker 1: back to the room. The second we approached it, I
Speaker 1: got an awful feeling again and I begged not to
Speaker 1: go in there. I even asked to go outside and
Speaker 1: wait by another door, but he said no. It was
Speaker 1: late February, with the temperatures and the teens and half
Speaker 1: a foot of snow on the ground. At six feet
Speaker 1: I only weighed one hundred and twenty five pounds, so
Speaker 1: no thermal on me, and I was only wearing a
Speaker 1: T shirt. But I didn't want to go in that
Speaker 1: room so much that I would have willingly stood outside
Speaker 1: to avoid it. I had no choice though. My brother's
Speaker 1: friend was a former lineman for the football team. He
Speaker 1: wasn't small, and we went in and the room felt
Speaker 1: even worse this time, Just like the first time, As
Speaker 1: soon as we left the room, the feeling went away.
Speaker 1: Next we went to the basement, where there were some
Speaker 1: more classrooms, the cafeteria and kitchen, and some storage areas.
Speaker 1: Then we went back upstairs and entered the old chapel
Speaker 1: from the rear side. We had to go across the
Speaker 1: back to set a couple of doors just inside the chapel.
Speaker 1: I stopped, I can't go in there. I told him
Speaker 1: there's a ghost and it doesn't like me, and then
Speaker 1: I pointed it out to him. He could see the
Speaker 1: black shadow near the front by the organ. He uttered
Speaker 1: an expletive and we headed for the doors across from us,
Speaker 1: and it started following us. The faster we moved, the
Speaker 1: faster it moved. There was just the one shadow, not
Speaker 1: too so it wasn't our own shadows we were seeing.
Speaker 1: We made it through the doors, moving at a pretty
Speaker 1: fast pace. It was fifty feet to the corner where
Speaker 1: the stairs to this third floor apartment were, and I
Speaker 1: started feeling hot as we walked to it. It was
Speaker 1: like something hit me, but it wasn't physical. For a
Speaker 1: few seconds, I was completely disoriented and I lost all
Speaker 1: thoughts where I was or even who I was. And
Speaker 1: I was just coming back to myself when the second
Speaker 1: one hit. This was worse than the first one. Now
Speaker 1: I had to grab the wall to keep from collapsing. Well,
Speaker 1: it passed, and my head was beginning to clear when
Speaker 1: a third one hit, and this one put me on
Speaker 1: the ground. My brother's friend pulled me to my feet
Speaker 1: and away from that spot. Now I got my head
Speaker 1: on straight, and I told him to go stand in
Speaker 1: the spot where I was attacked. Well, he was a
Speaker 1: big boy, like I said, alignment on the football team.
Speaker 1: He bounced off the wall like he was nothing. That
Speaker 1: stirred him into motion, and he grabbed me and we
Speaker 1: ran up the stairs, and I don't remember touching a
Speaker 1: single step in two flights. When we got to where
Speaker 1: my brother was, he asked me how I knew of
Speaker 1: the ghost, so I told him about my ability. About
Speaker 1: a week ago. He said, I was getting in bed
Speaker 1: with my wife. I just lifted my leg to climb
Speaker 1: in when a face appeared in front of me. That
Speaker 1: scared the crap out of me. He paused him minute,
Speaker 1: and then he added it was just a face. There
Speaker 1: was no head, no body, just a face. The next day,
Speaker 1: he and his wife moved out of the church and
Speaker 1: end with her parents. This happened back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago. I went back there to
Speaker 1: talk to someone about it, and no one there was
Speaker 1: able to tell me anything. I wrote down my name
Speaker 1: and number, along with a note stating that I'd like
Speaker 1: to talk to someone about what happened to me there,
Speaker 1: but no one ever called me. It was still there.
Speaker 1: I felt it that day that I went back. I
Speaker 1: want to go there again. There are more details about
Speaker 1: the church I'd like to clarify, but there are more
Speaker 1: stories of things that had happened to people there. But
Speaker 1: whatever is there, it's very strong. Okay, that's a ghost
Speaker 1: living inside a church. I don't know something about. These
Speaker 1: paranormal events are just captivating. They're very believable. Some of
Speaker 1: these are very believable, and I really enjoyed reading this
Speaker 1: person's account. Chris, thanks for the story. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I used to stay with my papa in the mountains
Speaker 1: of Virginia every year when school let out for summer break.
Speaker 1: We like to sit out on the porch at night
Speaker 1: and enjoy the cool of the evening and talk. On
Speaker 1: one of those nights, our conversation turned to hunting and trapping.
Speaker 1: We'd been talking for a bit when Paupaul paused for
Speaker 1: a few minutes, during which he must have been pondering
Speaker 1: whether or not to tell me something that happened to
Speaker 1: him when he was my age. I was sixteen at
Speaker 1: the time. He said he wanted to go out on
Speaker 1: his own and hunt and trap and sell pelts, and
Speaker 1: times were different back then. It wasn't nothing for a
Speaker 1: young guy that age to go off and do his
Speaker 1: own thing. There was an old wooden room cabin way
Speaker 1: up in the mountains, far away from anyone, that his
Speaker 1: dad used as sort of a hunting lodge when he
Speaker 1: was younger, and that's where Paupaul decided to go and
Speaker 1: try his hand at being an independent man. He spent
Speaker 1: several months in that cabin, collecting a variety of pelts.
Speaker 1: But the winter was hard and living off the land
Speaker 1: wasn't as easy as he hoped. He spent all of
Speaker 1: one day hunting and got nothing, and that night, as
Speaker 1: he slept, a storm blue in, dropping two feet of
Speaker 1: snow on the mountain. That made things all the more difficult,
Speaker 1: and Papaul still had to eat, so he set out
Speaker 1: to hunt some game to sustain him until conditions were
Speaker 1: right and he could make his way off the mountain.
Speaker 1: He saw a deer and he took a shot. About
Speaker 1: the same time he pulled the trigger, something spooked it
Speaker 1: and it took off running. Popav said that he'd hit
Speaker 1: the deer in its hind leg, and he set out
Speaker 1: to track the blood trail through the snow, but it
Speaker 1: was getting late in the day darkness covered the mountain
Speaker 1: and he had to give up. He was disappointed, and
Speaker 1: he made his way back to the cabin, and he
Speaker 1: built the fire and made some coffee and tried to
Speaker 1: stem the hunger with some hard tack next to the
Speaker 1: warm fire. With the little food in his belly and exhausted,
Speaker 1: he fell asleep sometime in the night. He awoke to
Speaker 1: a strange, deep guttural sound, and he heard voices. Rocks
Speaker 1: and sticks were being thrown at the cabin. He was
Speaker 1: scared now, and he stoked the fire, and he lit
Speaker 1: a lantern, and he hunkered down in the corner with
Speaker 1: his gun, waiting for the worst. It didn't last long, though,
Speaker 1: and once things had quieted down, he drifted off to
Speaker 1: sleep again. A few hours later, he woke up with
Speaker 1: a start. He was confused and angry with himself for
Speaker 1: having fallen asleep in such a situation as this. His
Speaker 1: cabin had no windows, but he could see sunlight coming
Speaker 1: around the door. It was morning. Paupaul opened the door
Speaker 1: slowly and peeked outside. He was still a little concerned,
Speaker 1: and when he didn't see anything, he stepped outside to
Speaker 1: find footprints in the snow all around the cabin. They
Speaker 1: were giant human tracks, he called them. Judging by the
Speaker 1: size and the number of tracks, he guessed there must
Speaker 1: have been two or three individuals. He went around to
Speaker 1: the side of the cabin to grab some firewood before
Speaker 1: going back inside, and there laying on top of the
Speaker 1: wood was a hind leg of a deer. It had
Speaker 1: a single bullet hole right where Paupau had shot it.
Speaker 1: Whatever those things were that scared him half to death
Speaker 1: the night before had tracked the deer that he had
Speaker 1: shot and took their share for tracking it, and then
Speaker 1: they gifted Paupaul the hind leg. He was grateful for
Speaker 1: the meat, but as soon as he was able, Paupaul
Speaker 1: made his way down off the mountain, never having seen
Speaker 1: what kind of buggers could make those tracks or rip
Speaker 1: the hind leg of a deer off. I was born
Speaker 1: the youngest of six children in a small Connecticut town.
Speaker 1: We had a couple of dogs and a whole lot
Speaker 1: of cats that my siblings that I looked after, since
Speaker 1: they were all quite a bit older than me. It
Speaker 1: wasn't long until they'd all gone off to college or
Speaker 1: gotten married and moved out, and that left me to
Speaker 1: care for the animals alone. By the time I was twelve,
Speaker 1: we were down to just one dog. He was a
Speaker 1: Norwegian elkhoun with a strong pull. Every day I walked him,
Speaker 1: or maybe he walked me through the woods behind our
Speaker 1: house to the tobacco fields far from the road, where
Speaker 1: I could turn him loose and let him run. There
Speaker 1: was a huge track of land owned in part by
Speaker 1: members of my family and mostly surrounded by neighboring shrub
Speaker 1: and tobacco farms. At twelve, I was finally allowed to
Speaker 1: go alone on these daily walks. I wasn't afraid. We
Speaker 1: had no black bears to speak of back then, and
Speaker 1: the coyote seemed to stay away, and I'd never seen
Speaker 1: a bobcat. A few years later, while I was in
Speaker 1: high school, I encountered a mountain lion back there. They've
Speaker 1: only recently acknowledged their presence in my state, but all
Speaker 1: in all, I had no fear of anything, so I
Speaker 1: would often take off on my own with the dog
Speaker 1: Norwegian elkhouns, or a medium sized dog for sort of
Speaker 1: compact version of a husky. They're known for hunting in
Speaker 1: packs and bringing down moose and bear. My dog took
Speaker 1: advantage of my female build and lack of strength to
Speaker 1: pull extra hard and practically drag me through the woods. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: I started taking him to the fields every afternoon. We
Speaker 1: walked up the wooded hill alongside my house and wound
Speaker 1: our way on a well worn path and continue on
Speaker 1: the thicket and more woods until we got to the fields.
Speaker 1: Every day, when we got to the top of the hill,
Speaker 1: which was about halfway on our journey to the fields,
Speaker 1: I would hear a strange knocking sound and the quiet
Speaker 1: of the woods. I would hear a long tree cracking,
Speaker 1: and then it would be followed by three knocks. I
Speaker 1: thought it must be a woodpecker, and so I shrugged
Speaker 1: it off. After a while, I noticed that the tree
Speaker 1: knocking only started when I stepped foot on a particular
Speaker 1: part of the path. I never suspected that Bigfoot was
Speaker 1: anything more than what I had read about in books
Speaker 1: about the lock Ness Monster and other cryptids, and it
Speaker 1: never occurred to me that that was what it could be.
Speaker 1: But day after day, walk after walk, when we reached
Speaker 1: that one specific spot on the trail, I would hear
Speaker 1: exactly three knocks, and then I would go on my
Speaker 1: way without incident. Pretty soon, though, my happy, go lucky,
Speaker 1: hearty and hard pulling dogs stop trying to ease so
Speaker 1: far ahead of me. He became clingy, hugging my side
Speaker 1: until we got out of the area. Sometimes I could
Speaker 1: hear something moving around in the woods, but I always
Speaker 1: thought it was some deer watching me or some other critter.
Speaker 1: And it was definitely watching me. I could feel it
Speaker 1: the footsteps of whatever was making the noise were moving
Speaker 1: toward me as well, not away from me. And once
Speaker 1: I stopped, and the footsteps stopped, And when I moved,
Speaker 1: it moved, and when I stopped again, so did it. Still.
Speaker 1: I wasn't afraid. I was sure it was a deer.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize back then that deer don't track people,
Speaker 1: and my dog continued to look petrified. As I got
Speaker 1: older and joined our high school's cross country track team,
Speaker 1: I used that same route to get in some extra practice.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I brought my flute with me, and when I
Speaker 1: got to the top of the hill before the descent
Speaker 1: into the field, I'd lean up against what we call
Speaker 1: the big tree that grew there and play freestyle for
Speaker 1: an hour. Each time I passed by that one spot,
Speaker 1: I would hear three knocks. I didn't know to look
Speaker 1: or listen for sosquatch, so it was quite a while
Speaker 1: before I realized there were specifically three knocks. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: pattern became hard not to notice. I started to believe
Speaker 1: there were forest spirits, more along the lines of ghost
Speaker 1: rather than bigfoot. I somehow knew intuitively that those three
Speaker 1: knocks were not for me. They were about me. It
Speaker 1: was as if they were telegraphing the arrival of the
Speaker 1: human into the area. One winter day, I went up
Speaker 1: the hill to take pictures of icicles on bushes for
Speaker 1: my photography class. It was my dream back then to
Speaker 1: become a national geographic photographer. I was enjoying pretending that
Speaker 1: I already was one as I flopped down in two
Speaker 1: feet of snow on my belly to get the right
Speaker 1: angle from my shots. And as I did so, I
Speaker 1: noticed an odd and increasingly familiar smell that reminded me
Speaker 1: of really strong cat urine. Sometimes the smell was there
Speaker 1: and sometimes it wasn't, but when it was, it was
Speaker 1: always exactly where the tree knocks happened. I began to
Speaker 1: look around for cougar tracks. At that point, I had
Speaker 1: already seen the cougar that lived back there, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't noticed that there were big, deep tracks all around me,
Speaker 1: But now I was paying attention. I put each of
Speaker 1: my feet inside a pawprint to see how big this
Speaker 1: cougar was. The stride was my whole height of five feet.
Speaker 1: There was also a long straight mark alongside the prints,
Speaker 1: which I assume must have been its tail dragging I
Speaker 1: was so excited because now I could show my mother
Speaker 1: and preof to her that I really did see a
Speaker 1: mountain lion up there. So I ran back to the
Speaker 1: house and I got her, and she took one look
Speaker 1: at the tracks, and with a funny expression on her face,
Speaker 1: she said, I don't think those are cougar tracks. And
Speaker 1: then that awful smell came back, and she remarked about it.
Speaker 1: Her eyes got big, and she said, I don't think
Speaker 1: we need to stay here. Looking back, I think she
Speaker 1: knew something she didn't reveal. She tried to dissuade me
Speaker 1: from following the tracks, but I was determined. She went
Speaker 1: home and I went tracking, and I followed them, passed
Speaker 1: a bunch of tobacco sheds to a swamp. They led
Speaker 1: right up to the swamp, and then they ended. Things
Speaker 1: felt odd. It was unnaturally quiet. A ghostly steam rose
Speaker 1: off the frozen black water. The remains of a couple
Speaker 1: of old cars from the nineteen fifties poked out here
Speaker 1: and there, as if they were reaching out for salvation
Speaker 1: against the encroaching decay of the hungry swamp. The woods
Speaker 1: felt as if they were encircling me, closing in and
Speaker 1: reaching out their naural limbs to wrap around me and
Speaker 1: throw me in the cars. Call it intuition or maybe panic.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was, I felt like the cougar must be
Speaker 1: lingering near and watching me, So I turned around and
Speaker 1: I ran home. There definitely was a cougar living in
Speaker 1: that area. I'd seen it with my own eyes, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't until years later that I realized what I
Speaker 1: followed that day could not have been cougar tracks. I
Speaker 1: hadn't paid attention to the fact that it was not
Speaker 1: a set of four tracks, but it was two feet
Speaker 1: The imprint I had taken to be the cougar's tail
Speaker 1: was probably made by someone dragging a stick. My earliest
Speaker 1: bigfoot encounters went on for six years, and I was
Speaker 1: oblivious to them. Only after I saw a bigfoot did
Speaker 1: I start to research them and finally interpret my childhood's
Speaker 1: experiences correctly. I often think how lucky I was that
Speaker 1: I wasn't attacked. Now I've since encountered those who were aggressive.
Speaker 1: Also can't help but wonder what my silent, hidden audience
Speaker 1: must have thought of my flute playing. When I was
Speaker 1: a young girl, I lived in a familiar community in
Speaker 1: a rural farming area in the Midwest. My grandfather had
Speaker 1: one sister, Aunt Roseanne. She lived one mile south of
Speaker 1: my grandfather's home, and our family's property went almost two
Speaker 1: miles north to south and nearly one mile east to west.
Speaker 1: Aunt Roseanne's husband farmed this land with my grandfather, and
Speaker 1: we lived in another house on the same farm. So
Speaker 1: I got to spend loads of time with all these
Speaker 1: wonderful older folks who taught me more about life than
Speaker 1: anyone else could imagine. They loved telling me old stories,
Speaker 1: and I loved hearing them. I especially loved Aunt Roseanne's stories,
Speaker 1: and I asked her to repeat them over and over.
Speaker 1: I'd love to share my favorite story with you. I
Speaker 1: wish I could tell stories like her, but I can't,
Speaker 1: but I'll do my best to remember the words. When
Speaker 1: I was a child and through my teenage years, there
Speaker 1: was a scary old woman who lived down the road
Speaker 1: from my aunt's house. She disliked my aunt very much
Speaker 1: and dabbled in dark, scary stuff. At some point, Aunt
Speaker 1: Mary was sure the old woman had put a curse
Speaker 1: on her and her family to scare them or harass them.
Speaker 1: Every morning, Mary and the girls would do the housework
Speaker 1: before going upstairs for breakfast. While the men did the
Speaker 1: barn chores. They would fix breakfasts and sit down together
Speaker 1: before the day of real work started. Soon they began
Speaker 1: to notice the beds were unmade, no matter how many
Speaker 1: times they made them in the morning. Clothing was on
Speaker 1: the floor no matter how many times they hung them up.
Speaker 1: And then strange things began happening in the barn. The
Speaker 1: animals became skittish, and it seemed impossible to keep up
Speaker 1: no matter how much they worked. But worst of all,
Speaker 1: charm marks began to appear on the doors of the outbuildings.
Speaker 1: My uncle suspected someone was deliberately trying to frighten them away,
Speaker 1: but Mary believed it was something supernatural and it had
Speaker 1: something to do with the old woman down the road.
Speaker 1: One evening in Midsummer, my cousins had a party on
Speaker 1: Saturday night. Teenagers from all over the area came to
Speaker 1: have fun and play games with us. My cousins began
Speaker 1: to tell us about the strange happenings. They told the
Speaker 1: story of the fiery man who had been seen around
Speaker 1: the house, a man who was always on fire, but
Speaker 1: he never died. The younger kids who were just hearing
Speaker 1: about these events. They made great bored out of it
Speaker 1: by laughing and making fun of the stories. One girl
Speaker 1: who was wilder than most of us, she laughed a
Speaker 1: great deal, and she even went to the back door
Speaker 1: and opened it up, and she pretended as if she
Speaker 1: was looking for the culprits. Before she closed the door,
Speaker 1: she cried in her rather loud voice, fiery man, come
Speaker 1: kiss me. She slammed the door and continued to make
Speaker 1: fun of the situation until the evening ended. And as
Speaker 1: the first kids opened the door to leave later that night,
Speaker 1: they saw burned handprints on the outside of the back door.
Speaker 1: We all saw them, and everyone left to go home
Speaker 1: that minute. No one ever made fun of what was
Speaker 1: happening in Aunt Mary's house ever again, and none of
Speaker 1: us were allowed to visit Aunt Mary's house until that
Speaker 1: dark old lady down the street finally passed away. It
Speaker 1: was late that evening in August nineteen fifty three when
Speaker 1: the phone rang. The caller was one of my mother's sisters,
Speaker 1: calling to tell her that my maternal grandmother had died
Speaker 1: unexpectedly while visiting friends in Detroit, Michigan. My father was
Speaker 1: at work at the time, and I was sent to
Speaker 1: bed while my mother and aunt talked. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: my father come home from work and my parents quietly
Speaker 1: discussing things. The next thing I knew, it was four AM,
Speaker 1: and I was being awakened and told to get dressed
Speaker 1: because we were leaving for my mother's ancestral home in
Speaker 1: northeast Louisiana, near the little town of Oak Grove. I
Speaker 1: was told that my grandmother's coffin was being shipped by
Speaker 1: train to her home on their farm near the Beef River,
Speaker 1: and the funeral would be in about five days. As
Speaker 1: I sleepily walked outside to get in our nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one studabaker, all was packed and ready to go. We
Speaker 1: were living in California's Central Valley at the time, as
Speaker 1: my dad worked for an oil company there. All of
Speaker 1: us being Southerners, we yearned to go back home, but
Speaker 1: not under these circumstances. Blessed with good luck and no
Speaker 1: car trouble, we made it to our destination after three
Speaker 1: days and three nights of continuous driving, and as we
Speaker 1: drove down the gravel road outside of Oak Grove, a
Speaker 1: column of dust spread out behind us and we could
Speaker 1: see my mother's childhood home up in the distance. It
Speaker 1: was located well off the road, surrounded by their farm
Speaker 1: land and further back by the dark woods. The house
Speaker 1: was built long before the American Civil War and had
Speaker 1: sheltered many generations, some of whom were still there even
Speaker 1: though they had passed. I never felt comfortable in that
Speaker 1: old house, especially when it was just me with no
Speaker 1: other kids around, and at times I felt I was
Speaker 1: being watched to make sure I was behaving myself. When
Speaker 1: we pulled into the front drive, we were met and
Speaker 1: welcomed and hugged by all the family and friends who
Speaker 1: had been there off and on since the notice of
Speaker 1: my grandmother's death. We were fed, and we got a
Speaker 1: chance to clean up and rest after the marathon driving
Speaker 1: trip we had just completed. We were told that my
Speaker 1: grandmother's coffin had arrived and it would be going to
Speaker 1: the local funeral home first before coming to the family home.
Speaker 1: After a rest and a good meal, we were told
Speaker 1: that Grandma was on her way. The hearse could be
Speaker 1: seen coming down the dusty road a mile away. It
Speaker 1: pulled into the yard, and the funeral director and my
Speaker 1: grandmother's pastor accompanied the family men as they brought Grandma
Speaker 1: inside and placed her on the byre and arranged the flowers.
Speaker 1: The pastor blessed all those present the house, and he
Speaker 1: blessed Grandma. The funeral director opened the upper section of
Speaker 1: the coffin, over ground IMA's face and upper torso, and
Speaker 1: placed a finely woven Gaulls type cloth over that part
Speaker 1: of the coffin. Then he announced that those who wished
Speaker 1: could come and see my grandmother, and most people did.
Speaker 1: Then he took a couple of photos for the family
Speaker 1: who were not able to come, and suggested to the
Speaker 1: family that, due to the time elapsed during the train
Speaker 1: trip from Michigan and the hot August heat, that the
Speaker 1: coffin be sealed and not reopened. Everyone agreed. In the South,
Speaker 1: there has long been the tradition of sitting up with
Speaker 1: the dead. The deceased will be placed on a buyer
Speaker 1: in the sitting room or living room, surrounded by wreaths
Speaker 1: of flowers. Family and friends will take turns sitting with
Speaker 1: the deceased continually from the time the person dies until
Speaker 1: they are buried. Some of those present then took up
Speaker 1: the vigil once the funeral director had left. The friends,
Speaker 1: family and pastor and neighbors who had come to the
Speaker 1: home to pay their respects and help with the vigil
Speaker 1: got to visit and tell stories and eat the wonderful
Speaker 1: foods they each had brought. We kids, mostly cousins I
Speaker 1: haven't seen in months, got to go outside and play.
Speaker 1: The mood lightened considerably, just like Grandma would have wanted.
Speaker 1: After a couple of more days, the funeral director came
Speaker 1: and took Grandma to bul a cemetery not far from
Speaker 1: where she lived and where many of her relatives rested
Speaker 1: in those days. It was already ancient and quite grown
Speaker 1: up with vegetation, and had to be accessed by going
Speaker 1: through two cattle pastures and two electric fences. It was
Speaker 1: maintained by those who had family resting there, and I
Speaker 1: remember many a day spent their cutting grass and wating.
Speaker 1: After the funeral service, most returned to Grandma's home for
Speaker 1: one last meal and more reminiscing. Goodbyes were set all around,
Speaker 1: and some of those who had come from greater distances
Speaker 1: lingered a few days longer. Well. This gave me a
Speaker 1: chance to play with my cousins a bit more. Anytime
Speaker 1: we kids would play outside, we would be told to
Speaker 1: stay away from the woods far across the fields behind
Speaker 1: the house. They told us the buggerman lives in those
Speaker 1: woods and down on the river, and my mother remembers
Speaker 1: being told stories of sightings of a strange man like
Speaker 1: being often seen in the woods and around Oak Grove,
Speaker 1: and in particular a long beef river. Large footprints were
Speaker 1: sometimes seen in newly plowed fields and on the river banks,
Speaker 1: and we kids loved to follow my grandfather's tractor when
Speaker 1: he plowed, because he would frequently turn up arrowheads or
Speaker 1: pottery shards and other neat things. Even then, we were
Speaker 1: admonished to stay near the tractor and not go near
Speaker 1: those woods. During the summer, when the corner would grow
Speaker 1: tall and up near the house, we were told to
Speaker 1: stay out of the cornfield. There had been folks who
Speaker 1: said that the man would go into the corn fields
Speaker 1: for the fresh sweet corn, and occasionally vegetable gardens would
Speaker 1: be entered, and farm animals sometimes would come up missing.
Speaker 1: One story I was told by my grandfather was when
Speaker 1: he got home from World War One in about nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: he and my grandmother were living in the house after
Speaker 1: they got married. One night, my grandmother was sitting at
Speaker 1: her dresser, combing her hair, with her back to the
Speaker 1: bedroom window. People who lived well out in the country
Speaker 1: at that time didn't usually put curtains on their windows
Speaker 1: because their nearest neighbor might be a mile away or more.
Speaker 1: As my grandmother looked in the mirror, she saw a
Speaker 1: face in the window behind watching her. She said it
Speaker 1: was large and dark, but since they were still using
Speaker 1: kerosene lamps, it was not well lit. Grandpa had brought
Speaker 1: home an old German pistol as a war trophy, which
Speaker 1: Grandma kept in her dresser drawer. She is said to
Speaker 1: have calmly pulled the pistol out of the drawer and
Speaker 1: turned and fired several shots through the window. Grandpa came
Speaker 1: running in and she told them what happened. He and
Speaker 1: a couple of the family men grabbed their shotguns and
Speaker 1: started looking around outside. There was no blood, but there
Speaker 1: were large footprints in the soft damp dirt near the
Speaker 1: water pump that they used for their water, and faintly
Speaker 1: muddy handprints high on both sides of the window where
Speaker 1: it had leaned against the house. Another time, there was
Speaker 1: an incident during the night of something hitting the side
Speaker 1: of the house hard enough to jar a hanging number
Speaker 1: two washtub off a nail that held it. My father
Speaker 1: was there that night and told me about it. Also,
Speaker 1: several times they were awakened by the sound of someone
Speaker 1: or something pumping the water pump handle up and down,
Speaker 1: or a hand pump. To work, it has to be
Speaker 1: primed by pouring water down the top of the pump
Speaker 1: while you pump the handle, and the water being pumped
Speaker 1: acts as a lubricant that somewhat quietens the noise of
Speaker 1: the metal pump. Pumping a dry pump makes it quite
Speaker 1: a racket and is only done by someone that doesn't
Speaker 1: know how it works. My mother also told me some
Speaker 1: more unusual things regarding that old house. She said, on
Speaker 1: some days, when they would sit on the front porch
Speaker 1: at noon or in the late afternoon, there would be
Speaker 1: the sound of heavy footsteps that would come up the
Speaker 1: steps and continue across the porch and end at the
Speaker 1: bench that used to hold a water basin and soap
Speaker 1: for men to wash up for meals after coming in
Speaker 1: from the fields. These footsteps were always around noon or
Speaker 1: dinner time. People made a habit of never sitting on
Speaker 1: those steps during that time. Also, there were times when
Speaker 1: they could sit on that porch in the late afternoon
Speaker 1: and they would hear the sound of log wagons, wooden
Speaker 1: wheels and planks creaking, and trace chains rattling as they
Speaker 1: passed along the side of their house, the unseen loggers
Speaker 1: driving down a logging road long since grown up and
Speaker 1: nearly invisible for over fifty years. And then there was
Speaker 1: the time my grandmother asked my mom to go into
Speaker 1: the house and get some laundry soap, which she needed
Speaker 1: as she boiled the clothes outside in a large iron pot.
Speaker 1: When my mother opened the front door, there was her
Speaker 1: Aunt May's rocking chair rocking back and forth. The house
Speaker 1: was closed up and not a breeze was blowing. Aunt
Speaker 1: May was an invalid. For the last few years of
Speaker 1: her life, the family would place her rocking chair just
Speaker 1: inside the front door so she could look outside and
Speaker 1: watch the kids play, or just get a breath of
Speaker 1: fresh air. She spent her time rocking and reading, and
Speaker 1: she died in her chair a few years before this incident.
Speaker 1: My mother did not go inside to get the soap,
Speaker 1: but she ran to my grandmother and told her what
Speaker 1: she saw. She and my grandmother went to look and
Speaker 1: the chair was still rocking. My grandmother closed the door
Speaker 1: and waited until my grandfather came out of the field.
Speaker 1: She told him what happened, so he went and opened
Speaker 1: the door, but the chair was still. He went inside
Speaker 1: and brought the soap out to my grandmother, and she
Speaker 1: asked him what had happened. He told her before going
Speaker 1: into the house. He said, may, I don't mean to
Speaker 1: bother you, nine, but many needs a soap to wash
Speaker 1: the family's close, so if you don't mind, I'll just
Speaker 1: take it now. So he got it and he left.
Speaker 1: As far as I heard, there were no more chair
Speaker 1: rocking incidents, at least any scene by the family. Now,
Speaker 1: twice a year, I still make most of that same
Speaker 1: trip we took in nineteen fifty three, but now it's
Speaker 1: from my home in El Miraje, Arizona. I have a
Speaker 1: brother who farms near Oak Grove, and I visit him,
Speaker 1: and another brother in Monroe who gave up farming. I
Speaker 1: am seventy five, and they're both older than me. US
Speaker 1: eighties still exists in bits and pieces along its old route,
Speaker 1: but now it's replaced by I ten and I twenty.
Speaker 1: Today we can ride in comfort at eighty miles per
Speaker 1: hour through parts of New Mexico and Texas, listening to
Speaker 1: satellite radio. And we can stop in comfortable hotels and
Speaker 1: motels and quench our thirst, or get snacks in any
Speaker 1: of a thousand convenience stores or truck stops along the way.
Speaker 1: The house and these people are all gone now. I'm
Speaker 1: the last of my mother's side of the family from
Speaker 1: that time. My mother was the matriarch, and she died
Speaker 1: in two thousand and shortly after, so did her family reunions.
Speaker 1: None of the young people know about these stories in
Speaker 1: these people. The land is now commercially farmed. Much of
Speaker 1: the dark woods are gone, cut and cleared for timber
Speaker 1: and to make more farmland. Bill a cemetery is still
Speaker 1: there now, it's an island between paved roads and nearby houses.
Speaker 1: And Beef River is still there, as muddy and as
Speaker 1: slow moving as ever. And I don't know about the
Speaker 1: bugger man. I assume he moved on, trying to keep
Speaker 1: ahead of the lumber companies and the farmers. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: moved west to Falk, Arkansas. It's not that far away still.
Speaker 1: I like to think that on quiet evenings, just at
Speaker 1: sundown in the lonely fields west of Oak Grove. If
Speaker 1: I were to listen closely, I might hear the sound
Speaker 1: of lumber wagons long gone, still squeaking and rattling down
Speaker 1: a ghostly road found now only in my memories.