Ghost stories, Creepy tales, whos got 'em?

I always relate fall weather to sittin' around a camp fire in the woods tellin' ghost stories and scary stories and creepy tales. I thought it might be fun to start a thread on the subject. I have no doubt that some of you old geezers have some tales that will make the hair on my arms stand up straight.

I am running short on time just now but y'all go on and get started with out me and I'll be back tomorrow with one or two of my own.

In the mean time I'll leave this'n with you as an example of what I'm talkin' about. This isn't mine it was posted by a fellow poster on another site we share. It made me want to stay out of the woods for the rest of my life when I first read it.

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This may be very disturbing to some of you. I could never tell this story in person, but it's easier to type it for some reason.

When I and my wife were quite a bit younger, we decided that we would spend the bicentennial outdoors. Yes, July of '76......we're old. We lived in Pueblo at the time, and decided to go hiking, fishing and camp along Lime Creek between Durango and Silverton. There wasn't anything other than brookies in the creek, but they were plentiful and fun to catch.

We left our car by the side of the road along Old Lime Creek Road about 5 miles in from the highway and packed in upstream along the creek with our shepherd, Rebel. It only took us about an hour to get to where we wanted to camp, a nice meadow beside the creek just before a slot canyon that required you to swim to get any further upstream. Either that or take a several mile detour.

We camped uneventfully that night, the third of July, enjoying the sounds of the rippling creek and nature all around us. It was such a nice night that we just slept out under the stars, didn't bother to pitch our little backpacking tent. A little cool, but we had the fire going and our lightweight 30 degree bags, so we were very comfortable.

The next day we had breakfast, packed up and we all swam our way up the creek to the next wide spot with a bit of bank in the canyon, only about 150 yards or so. Now Rebel was never one to turn down a chance to get wet, but we had to do quite a bit of coaxing to get him to follow us up the creek. We fished and splashed upstream a bit, and before we knew it it was lunchtime. We thought we'd fry up some of those brookies but we were in this slot canyon that terminated in a fairly deep pool with about a ten foot rocky waterfall at the end of it.

We decided that I would scale the waterfall and pull the dog and the packs up and then I'd help Maggie get up. It was fairly difficult, even with the help of an old cable left over from a mining operation that was hanging down the side wall of the canyon. It took a LOT of effort and though we finally made it, we looked back down that waterfall and wondered what the heck we were thinking. Rebel was none too happy about it either, and seemed to get more irritable by the minute. We found enough driftwood at the rocky top of the falls to get a fire started and get the fish fried up, but that was about it.

You know the uneasy feeling that several others have mentioned? It was like a switch turned on and we all of a sudden became aware of our surroundings. It grew like a cancer and I actually watched the hair on the back of Rebel's neck stand up. Maggie felt it too and we both noticed that it was getting dark FAST down in this canyon. First thought in my head was a cat, and I actually felt a bit better about that because I figured the cat would leave us be, between the fire and the dog. I told Maggie what I thought and she seemed to feel a bit better, too.

I did not want to get caught in the dark in the canyon, for a bunch of reasons, flash floods etc. I spied what looked like a mine shaft about 2 hundred feet above us, a heck of a steep climb, but it looked like our best bet. We pulled out our flashlights and by the time we reached it it was PITCH black. The dog was a mess by this point, whipping around in circles, whining, yelping and generally being a real pain in the ***. Maggie and I were drenched with sweat and immediately began to freeze. July in the mountains is a weird thing, I have seen blizzard conditions before, but this was like someone turned on the deep freeze.

We were at what looked like the start of a mine, it only went back about ten feet, but there was evidence of fires at the mouth, and they curiously looked fresh. I was too tired to think more about it, I knew we had to get out of our wet clothes, pitch the tent, and climb in our bags before we got serious hypothermia. That was NO fun, let me tell you, having to do all of that by the light of our rapidly dying flashlight. And there was NO firewood anywhere close.

I cursed myself several times for letting things get this far out of control. We finally got the tent pitched right there in the back of this little cave , buck naked as we had no dry clothes left. The sleeping bags were slightly damp too, even though we had stuffed them in plastic garbage bags before our swimming expedition up the canyon. WE FROZE!! It was miserable.

About 1 in the morning I called Rebel into the tent for a little heat. The dog seemed to have calmed down greatly, and with the added heat we drifted off. Sometime during the night I heard something that just about woke me, I was still in a haze, so I fell asleep again immediately. I woke up one other time, because I thought I heard Rebel yip a little bit, but again I was in and out. I put my hand out to pet his head and he licked my hand. I fell asleep again. Maggie later said she fell asleep the same time as I did but never woke up at all during the night.

I woke to the most horrible noise I have ever heard come out of a hundred pound woman. Just the most God-awful shrieks that I have ever heard. I never want to hear that again.

I opened my eyes just in time to see a man at the mouth of the shaft, silhouetted against the morning daylight, looking back at us with the most twisted evil grin I have ever seen on the face of another human. I scrambled to get free of my tightly zipped bag and the little tent while he just crouched there and grinned. When I was just about free, he disappeared. Now, we were granola crunchin' tree huggin' anti-gun nature freaks at the time, so the only thing I had of any consequence as a weapon was my camp knife. I found it after what seemed like hours of searching, but really was probably under a minute. I very cautiously made my way to the entrance, millimeters at a time. The guy was gone.

About that time Maggie started screaming and whimpering again so I rushed back to the back of the shaft. She had struggled out of the tent and was pointing at what used to be Rebel. His head was nearly severed, and the tent and the bags were ruined with the blood all over everything. She had blood all over her, so the first thing I did was make sure she was not injured. Then I checked myself. We were ok,it was all Rebel's blood.

We put on our still damp cold clothes from the night before and then we noticed that our boots were gone. We were in trouble. I had some paracord, so we tied some shirts and towels around our feet and climbed back down towards the creek. We left everything in the mine, except for the knife and some stuff that we shoved in our pockets. It took us 8 hours to get back down to the car, and we were like hamburger. Hands, feet, arms and legs scraped raw, bruised and bleeding. We jumped in, the car started right up thankfully and we left a dust cloud that blanketed the valley as we sped down the rough trail toward Durango.

We limped into the Sheriff's office and we looked like hell. We got our story out, my wife through tears and me talking waaay too fast. but finally got it all out. The deputy said that they would go out first thing in the morning and asked us to stay in town. We had no money for a hotel, so he let us stay in a cell after we showered and changed into prison jumpsuits.

We were there at the jail waiting when the "expedition" returned with the convoy of three trucks. I noticed that all the officers, who were quite wet and filthy, gave us dirty looks as they passed us, and the Deputy that we had talked to the day before herded us back to his office. Then came the interrogation. Turns out that some animal had spread the dog's remains all down the slide to the creek, and he said that there was nothing else there. No tent, no backpacks, nothing. He asked us if we had any drugs. I did not want to admit to him that we had some herb, so I denied it.

It was clear that we were fighting a losing battle. They had come to the conclusion that we were wandering out in the woods high on LSD while a mountain lion had gotten our dog. The ******* even made us change back into our filthy clothes and give back the jumpsuits right then. He told us that he had better never see us again. We left. Maggie was sobbing. I never have been back to Durango.

The thing that I still have nightmares about years later, and I have never mentioned this to Maggie, is....... the second time I woke up when I heard Rebel yelp, was that when his throat was cut?.......and if it was, was it the dog who licked my hand before I fell back asleep?

I still go out in the wilderness, never overnight, out well before dark, only with other people, and always with a big gun. I respect animals, but I fear people.

I don't have any ghost stories as they do not exist. How I wish to see just one ghost. To see a ghost affirms life after death and means that maybe someday I will see my daughter again.

Uh yeah that had to have been one bad scary experience.
A friend of mine lived in a house that was haunted. The house was a tavern about one hundred years ago and in the back yard there were several head stones so there must have been a cemetery there some time ago. The name of the people that supposedly owned the tavern had the same last name as my friend but spelled different.
Okay so this friend of mine was no whimp and really wasn't some mental pushover either. He said often the sense of a presence was so strong in the house that he and the dog would sit right in front of the TV with the sound turned way loud trying to drown out the sense of a presence. Sometimes it got so bad he and the dog would get in the car and drive a mile away from the house.
He said once he had gone to the freezer and got a bowl of ice cream. Then he went into the living room and set the bowl on the coffee table. He then went back into the kitchen to get something else and when he got back into the living room the bowl was gone. He looked all over for the bowl and couldn't find it. Two days later the bowl of ice cream was found in the freezer just as it was when it disappeared.
His sister to this day is afraid to be alone at night because while in that house she would get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. She would feel a draft against her back and when she turned around there was a headless tall figure in a trench coat coming towards her.
Another friend had gone to the house to visit the friend and when he knocked on the door a voice said come on in. He went inside and found he was the only person there.
This friend and the friend that lived in the house would turn out all the lights at night then go outside and watch as lights would come on upstairs and move from room to room.
The people that live in the house now say strange things still happen in that house.
Some friends of mine and myself took a night drive to a bridge that was said to have strange things happen. It was said if the car was stopped on the bridge and the engine shut off then you could hear a baby crying up the creek. It was said that the car would not be able to restart then and have to be pushed across the bridge.

We never experienced that but we did pull a prank on the next car. We hid the car and we hid in the bushes beside the bridge. We took a sheet and tied a rock in the sheet. When the car got onto the bridge we threw the sheet across in front of them. OH MAN! That car took off like a scared rabbit. We all busted up laughing. The bridge is referenced to on ghost searches on the Web. The bridge is in Canal Fulton, OH. I think it is called the crying bridge.

One night I was driving down the road just staring out the windshield as usual when I saw an image plain as day of my mother in a casket. I thought what the heck is this. The image quickly disappeared. A couple weeks later relatives called telling me mom had a bad heart attack and wasn't expected to live. She died less than a week later. I again saw my mom in a casket just like I had seen her in the vision.

I have had other things happen that most definitely make me a believer in the spirit world. My wife's death was one of them. The house smelled heavily of flowers so much so that the smell was in my clothes hours later. Sitting alone there on the couch after her body was removed a heavy thick encyclopedia fell over on the shelf. There was no breeze blowing either. I said I know and goodbye.

Evidently only I could smell the flowers because nobody else said anything when I commented death smells like flowers. Nothing else has ever happened in the house since then.
Yep I am a believer.

Walkin' Jack said:

I always relate fall weather to sittin' around a camp fire in the woods tellin' ghost stories and scary stories and creepy tales. I thought it might be fun to start a thread on the subject. I have no doubt that some of you old geezers have some tales that will make the hair on my arms stand up straight.

I am running short on time just now but y'all go on and get started with out me and I'll be back tomorrow with one or two of my own.

In the mean time I'll leave this'n with you as an example of what I'm talkin' about. This isn't mine it was posted by a fellow poster on another site we share. It made me want to stay out of the woods for the rest of my life when I first read it.

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This may be very disturbing to some of you. I could never tell this story in person, but it's easier to type it for some reason.

When I and my wife were quite a bit younger, we decided that we would spend the bicentennial outdoors. Yes, July of '76......we're old. We lived in Pueblo at the time, and decided to go hiking, fishing and camp along Lime Creek between Durango and Silverton. There wasn't anything other than brookies in the creek, but they were plentiful and fun to catch.

We left our car by the side of the road along Old Lime Creek Road about 5 miles in from the highway and packed in upstream along the creek with our shepherd, Rebel. It only took us about an hour to get to where we wanted to camp, a nice meadow beside the creek just before a slot canyon that required you to swim to get any further upstream. Either that or take a several mile detour.

We camped uneventfully that night, the third of July, enjoying the sounds of the rippling creek and nature all around us. It was such a nice night that we just slept out under the stars, didn't bother to pitch our little backpacking tent. A little cool, but we had the fire going and our lightweight 30 degree bags, so we were very comfortable.

The next day we had breakfast, packed up and we all swam our way up the creek to the next wide spot with a bit of bank in the canyon, only about 150 yards or so. Now Rebel was never one to turn down a chance to get wet, but we had to do quite a bit of coaxing to get him to follow us up the creek. We fished and splashed upstream a bit, and before we knew it it was lunchtime. We thought we'd fry up some of those brookies but we were in this slot canyon that terminated in a fairly deep pool with about a ten foot rocky waterfall at the end of it.

We decided that I would scale the waterfall and pull the dog and the packs up and then I'd help Maggie get up. It was fairly difficult, even with the help of an old cable left over from a mining operation that was hanging down the side wall of the canyon. It took a LOT of effort and though we finally made it, we looked back down that waterfall and wondered what the heck we were thinking. Rebel was none too happy about it either, and seemed to get more irritable by the minute. We found enough driftwood at the rocky top of the falls to get a fire started and get the fish fried up, but that was about it.

You know the uneasy feeling that several others have mentioned? It was like a switch turned on and we all of a sudden became aware of our surroundings. It grew like a cancer and I actually watched the hair on the back of Rebel's neck stand up. Maggie felt it too and we both noticed that it was getting dark FAST down in this canyon. First thought in my head was a cat, and I actually felt a bit better about that because I figured the cat would leave us be, between the fire and the dog. I told Maggie what I thought and she seemed to feel a bit better, too.

I did not want to get caught in the dark in the canyon, for a bunch of reasons, flash floods etc. I spied what looked like a mine shaft about 2 hundred feet above us, a heck of a steep climb, but it looked like our best bet. We pulled out our flashlights and by the time we reached it it was PITCH black. The dog was a mess by this point, whipping around in circles, whining, yelping and generally being a real pain in the ***. Maggie and I were drenched with sweat and immediately began to freeze. July in the mountains is a weird thing, I have seen blizzard conditions before, but this was like someone turned on the deep freeze.

We were at what looked like the start of a mine, it only went back about ten feet, but there was evidence of fires at the mouth, and they curiously looked fresh. I was too tired to think more about it, I knew we had to get out of our wet clothes, pitch the tent, and climb in our bags before we got serious hypothermia. That was NO fun, let me tell you, having to do all of that by the light of our rapidly dying flashlight. And there was NO firewood anywhere close.

I cursed myself several times for letting things get this far out of control. We finally got the tent pitched right there in the back of this little cave , buck naked as we had no dry clothes left. The sleeping bags were slightly damp too, even though we had stuffed them in plastic garbage bags before our swimming expedition up the canyon. WE FROZE!! It was miserable.

About 1 in the morning I called Rebel into the tent for a little heat. The dog seemed to have calmed down greatly, and with the added heat we drifted off. Sometime during the night I heard something that just about woke me, I was still in a haze, so I fell asleep again immediately. I woke up one other time, because I thought I heard Rebel yip a little bit, but again I was in and out. I put my hand out to pet his head and he licked my hand. I fell asleep again. Maggie later said she fell asleep the same time as I did but never woke up at all during the night.

I woke to the most horrible noise I have ever heard come out of a hundred pound woman. Just the most God-awful shrieks that I have ever heard. I never want to hear that again.

I opened my eyes just in time to see a man at the mouth of the shaft, silhouetted against the morning daylight, looking back at us with the most twisted evil grin I have ever seen on the face of another human. I scrambled to get free of my tightly zipped bag and the little tent while he just crouched there and grinned. When I was just about free, he disappeared. Now, we were granola crunchin' tree huggin' anti-gun nature freaks at the time, so the only thing I had of any consequence as a weapon was my camp knife. I found it after what seemed like hours of searching, but really was probably under a minute. I very cautiously made my way to the entrance, millimeters at a time. The guy was gone.

About that time Maggie started screaming and whimpering again so I rushed back to the back of the shaft. She had struggled out of the tent and was pointing at what used to be Rebel. His head was nearly severed, and the tent and the bags were ruined with the blood all over everything. She had blood all over her, so the first thing I did was make sure she was not injured. Then I checked myself. We were ok,it was all Rebel's blood.

We put on our still damp cold clothes from the night before and then we noticed that our boots were gone. We were in trouble. I had some paracord, so we tied some shirts and towels around our feet and climbed back down towards the creek. We left everything in the mine, except for the knife and some stuff that we shoved in our pockets. It took us 8 hours to get back down to the car, and we were like hamburger. Hands, feet, arms and legs scraped raw, bruised and bleeding. We jumped in, the car started right up thankfully and we left a dust cloud that blanketed the valley as we sped down the rough trail toward Durango.

We limped into the Sheriff's office and we looked like hell. We got our story out, my wife through tears and me talking waaay too fast. but finally got it all out. The deputy said that they would go out first thing in the morning and asked us to stay in town. We had no money for a hotel, so he let us stay in a cell after we showered and changed into prison jumpsuits.

We were there at the jail waiting when the "expedition" returned with the convoy of three trucks. I noticed that all the officers, who were quite wet and filthy, gave us dirty looks as they passed us, and the Deputy that we had talked to the day before herded us back to his office. Then came the interrogation. Turns out that some animal had spread the dog's remains all down the slide to the creek, and he said that there was nothing else there. No tent, no backpacks, nothing. He asked us if we had any drugs. I did not want to admit to him that we had some herb, so I denied it.

It was clear that we were fighting a losing battle. They had come to the conclusion that we were wandering out in the woods high on LSD while a mountain lion had gotten our dog. The ******* even made us change back into our filthy clothes and give back the jumpsuits right then. He told us that he had better never see us again. We left. Maggie was sobbing. I never have been back to Durango.

The thing that I still have nightmares about years later, and I have never mentioned this to Maggie, is....... the second time I woke up when I heard Rebel yelp, was that when his throat was cut?.......and if it was, was it the dog who licked my hand before I fell back asleep?

I still go out in the wilderness, never overnight, out well before dark, only with other people, and always with a big gun. I respect animals, but I fear people.

Click to expand...

When I get to a reliable internet source? ill tell of a few. However-I also had many when I was in the Boy Scouts and in College too.

There were some mighty spooky people in these mountains in those days and there still are.

In the 80s a buddy back in England had a weird one we could never explain. His girlfriend realised they were nearly out of bread and asked him to run down to the bakery before it closed. He ran for the door, grabbed keys off the stand in the hallway, jumped in his his Ford car and drove off.

He arrived at the bakery in the nick of time, bought bread and some other goodies and walked back out to the car. He got back in (he had not locked the door) and went to start the car. The keys in his hand belonged to his circa 1968 van he used for his band. The keys for his 1980s Ford car were nowhere on his person nor could he get the van keys to do anything with the column lock on the Ford. He had to go back into the bakery to use the phone and get his girlfriend to bring him the Ford keys THAT WERE STILL ON THE HALL STAND.

Various people, including a couple of guys I'm sure had stolen cars in the past, could not make his Ford operate with those van keys, and yet somehow that car had started and got him to the bakery before closing.

He also had a "stuff returned to the kitchen" incident. The gang were watching a movie and he brought out cookies and coffee. At the end of the movie he picked up the tray to collect the cups to take them to the kitchen. He was wasting his time as they were all soaking in hot water in the sink. Nobody admitted to, or could recall, getting up to hit the bathroom and gathering up the cups, of which there were six or seven. A helpful haunter, perhaps?

My stepson bought his grandmothers house after she passed.
He gutted the house and had a fire going to burn some of the old plaster lath and other scrap wood. His girlfriend took some pictures of the fire and when they got developed there were images of his grandmothers face also images of her cat in the flames.
I know we had copies of the pictures I'll try to get my wife to find them and add them to this post.

I have a feeling that no one is going to sleep tonight.

Bacvk around 1999 I took my girlfriend into the Sierras for some informal shooting. Where we were was not too far from where convicted killer Cary Stayner had dumped and burn the bodies of two of his victims. This was the first time my girlfriend had done any shooting, and she loved it. Suddenly, she became very frightened and demanded that we get in the car and leave. She said that she could feel that someone was watching us. I'm not the guy who will argue with a frightened young lady with a gun, so we packed up the car and left. Since this was before Stayner was arrested, was it Stayner who was watching us and figuring us as two more of his victims? Or was it the spirit of one of the two murdered women?

I've never believed in ghosts,but there's this.There's an old mansion I restored some years ago.During the 70s it had been converted to apartments by Mr X and he lived there for several decades.In '03 we were hired to put it back to its former glory.Over the course of the job my plumber had several run ins with something that spooked him,but he wouldn't talk about it.The final straw came one evening when working late ,alone in the basement, he heard someone walk across the first floor and then the second floor.He checked and no one was there.He went back to the basement, stepped back into the shower he was working on and was hit with a blast of cold water.He refused to work there alone after that and at some point described to the owner someone or something he had seen early on.A few months after we finished ,when shopping for rugs the owner told the story to the storekeeper.He told her the description fit Mr X who had died several years earlier.I came to the conclusion that the ghost was watching over the place and the new owner.I had never experienced anything weird there,in fact, the place gave me a warm feeling.A number of years later the owner and I were sitting in the dining room at dusk when we started to argue about something.A brief shadow appeared in the kitchen doorway with a sense of menace (I don't know how else to describe it) and I dropped the subject.I swear he was still protecting her.

Boo! That's about all I got!

There have been other postings here on ghosts and the paranormal. While I will keep my experiences private (as I did then), I will say to all of the members who do not believe in ghosts only this: I ONCE believed as you do. Notice I said "ONCE."
They are out there, folks. I leave to a higher power as to why they are, but they are there nonetheless.

One evening I was out hunting and it started to get dark. I was hunting on private land and my quarry was either an axis deer or a feral hog (both of which are legal to hunt after dark). I settled down in a good spot at the base of an oak where I could look out over a field and proceeded to screw my hunting light mount onto my rifle. I waited for an hour or so and by now it was dark. My eyes had adjusted and I was starting to make out shapes and shadows that I assumed to be a small heard of axis deer coming into the field about 100yards away. I started looking at the shapes thru my scope trying to select a potential target before flipping on the spot light. All of a sudden the place went deathly quiet. No sound at all. Just like the woods will go quiet when the birds and squirrels realize you are there. Only problem is my presence was not the reason for the silence. The hair on my neck stood up and I couldn't help but feel or sense that something or someone was behind me. I tried squirming around to look or hear, but that chilling silence continued. Finally after what seemed like an eternity but might have only been a minute I decided to leave. I am familiar with that land and have hunted it before many times in the dark but this time it was different. I hightailed it back to my truck about a 1/4 mile away. The hair on my neck stayed up until I was in the truck with the doors locked and the engine running. A few days latter in a passing conversation a neighbor rancher told me about his nephew spotting a mountain lion (very rare in our parts but not unheard of) the same evening about a mile from and a few hours before I was running back to my truck. Not sure if a mountain lion was what got my nerves up, but I know I was not the only predator in the woods that night.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's not the dead people that'll hurt you, its the live ones.

Uninvited Ghost

My wife's friend, a reliable and credible woman, then in her late 60s, was the appointments secretary for a local VFW hall on Long Island, NY. It was a weekday morning when the hall is usually quiet. It was just her and the hall handyman.

They keep the doors locked during off hours for security reasons. She looked up and saw a man looking back at her from an interior doorway. He was wearing genes and a white T shirt and just glared at her, then just faded from view. She got on the intercom and summoned the handyman, asking him who else was in the building besides the two of them. He assured her that no one else was present. After some time, she came to believe that she had seen a ghost.

I've met the woman and after 30 years of conducting interrogations as a fed. agent, I got the distinct sense that the experience upset her and that she was being truthful. I saw no reason at all for her to fabricate this story. It doesn't necessarily mean that she did indeed see a ghost, only that she was being sincere and could offer no other explanation for the experience.

In the 50's my Dad worked for a local chain of restaurants. Being many of the waitresses didn't drive he would pick them up and take them to work and back home at night at the end of their shift. Late one night while driving down a road that ran beside a field he saw a girl in white walking along the side of the road. Thinking she may need help he stopped to offer his assistance but she was gone. He said there was no place she could have gone o hid. To this day it gives him the willies talking about it.

Dad became friends with one of the older women and took her home after she worked. They got to be close friends but not intimate. She invited him to talk and have a cup of coffee. She made him swear not to tell anyone but she has long passed so....... She told Dad that she was very close to her nephew who was in the Air Corp. One night there was a knock on the door. She turned the porch light on and saw her nephew on the porch in his flight jacket. She let him in the door they talked awhile. He told her that he was leaving and came to say goodbye. Where are you going she asked? All he'd say was he was leaving. They hugged and said goodbye and the nephew left. She found out days later his plane went down that same night and her nephew died.
It's weird to hear him tell these stories since he isn't the type to believe it.

Don't have any stories, but there have been many times neck hairs were tingling. Usually it happened late at night, tent camping deep in a wilderness area. We'd hear a shuffling, or a twig snap. Always concluded it was an animal, but there was always a little lingering doubt.

I had a game camera set up way back in our woods in Ohio. It was a breezy, almost halloween night several years ago. When I checked these pictures were revealed. Looking at the entire sequence of several pictures it appeared that the apparition was MOVING. I still get a little spooked when I go back there because even though it probably was a branch triggering the camera, pics like that have never been taken since, even from the same spot.

Dave

One of Jim Corbett's books on hunting man-eating cats in former British India involved an account of lights moving on the side of a steep canyon wall where people couldn't have found a footing.


Local natives told him that they knew about the lights and that they were carried by ghosts.

When I was a teenager and had gotten my drivers license some of us fool heart ed guys would go out to Marsh Rd. a 5 mile stretch of flat blacktop straight as an arrow. We would drag race there. One fact about Marsh Rd. is that the road runs through a wet marsh. Each side of the road has a deep ditch filled with water. The story is told that in 1963 a group of young people had gathered to watch the races. The last race of the night was a gruge race. The guys were from different towns both were said to have the fastest hot rod around. Each driver took a buddy with them in the car. The cars lined up at the starting mark. the flag was dropped the hot rods screamed off the line, both cars neck in neck. at the half way mark something went wrong, one car veered into the other, the cars both hit the shoulder and went airborne, launched into the marsh, the bodies and cars were never found.

When my buddy and went there on Halloween night for fun and a couple runs down the quarter mile. There was a light fog on the road but we decided to race anyway; cause it was a light fog and you could see any head lights coming miles away. We lined up and smoked the the road and shot down the road into the fog. Coming at us in the fog were the headlights of two deuce coups. Those deuce coups drove right through us. It said never drive Marsh road when there is fog.

Matty's Shack

This all happened some 30 years ago, when there weren't as
many people around as there are now. It was the 21st of
December, the Solstice, when they say magic things happen. I
was going to visit my dad, who still lived on the farm, way out
in the hills.

Snowmobiles where rare things in those days. My dad had a 20 year old Chevrolet pickup, but in winter he would hitch up the horse and sleigh for the 5 mile ride to the paved road.

I had moved into town after college, and lived in an apartment from which I could walk to work every day. I owned a pickup truck, which I seldom drove, but I would use it to visit Dad. In winter I might leave it at the paved road and ski in to the farm, or Dad might meet me with the horse and sleigh.

After Mom died, Dad seemed to tire easily, so I tried to find other ways to get in there. That was how I had come to ask Franky Summers, owner of the hardware store we had patronized all my life, if he would let me use his snowmobile. Somewhat to my surprise, he said "yes."

At the turnoff, I pulled my pickup over to the edge of the woods and parked. No one would bother it in those days. I dropped the trailer ramps and slid the snowmobile down. Then I locked the hitch, grabbed my bag and got ready to go.

I didn't have a snowmobile suit, but I had heavy boots, long underwear, wool socks, a thick sweater, my down jacket,
overalls, wool-lined mittens and a balaclava helmet.

Top speed on the snowmobile was 30 mph, but I planned on
staying at about 10 or so.

Franky had taught me how to use the thing. There really wasn't much to it. It started like a lawnmower and the throttle was like a motorcycle. To slow or stop you just let off the throttle. Easy enough. When I had told him I planned to cross Pothandle Lake, he explained what to do if the ice started to crack. He told me to open the throttle wide for all the speed I could get and keep going. If you stop, you sink.

I was ready to go in no time, and the engine started on the first pull. I let it warm for a minute, and then started along the road. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, with 2 hours of daylight left. More than enough time for the 5 mile ride.


The air was cold and the snow was deep, and no other vehicle had been on the narrow road since the last snowfall. I glanced back at the tracks I was leaving. There were two, deep, crisp ruts and one broad, flat one in the new snow. There wasn't much else to see. The sky was pure, cloudless blue, and the tall pines grew up close to the road, making it seem like I was in a long hall with no ceiling.

After a bit I came to Pothandle Lake. I didn't even pause, but pointed the machine straight across it toward the narrow beach on the other side. I had been hunting, swimming and fishing here many times when I was growing up, and I knew the area well.

About one third of the way across the lake I felt the machine sinking into the snow. When I looked back, my heart jumped because I could see water filling my tracks. What had happened was there had been a partial thaw and another freeze. That left water on top of ice, now with thin ice and new snow on top of that. The layers were too thin to hold a man, never mind a man and a snowmobile. I gunned the engine full throttle and tried to pick up my feet as though that would make the machine lighter. It did no good.

The machine began to lean to the right as it sank into the rotten ice. When there was no more hope of hanging on, I jumped for it as the ice broke and the machine sank into the water.

The ice all around me broke as I landed and I was instantly in the freezing water. In seconds it had penetrated my clothes, and the shock of it kept me from being able to take a breath for what seemed like a minute or more.

I struggled to stay afloat as my clothes became soaked and heavy. When I could take a breath again, I pulled off my mittens and reached under water to unlace my boots and kick them off. I was sinking as I shed my coat, my overalls, my balaclava helmet, my sweater, and finally my pants and flannel shirt.

I knew I had only a few minutes to get out of the water or I would be too cold to move, and then I would drown. I struggled through the broken ice, grasping at the edges, only to have them break in my hands. Finally I reached a firmer area and got my arms up on it. I kicked hard underwater and swung one leg up into the snow and, before the ice broke again, I pulled my other leg out and rolled away from the hole.


I didn't dare stand for fear of breaking the ice some more, so I rolled and crawled back the way I had come, the shortest way to shore. I got colder and colder.

Once I reached solid ice I stood and began to run. I'd never make it. It was over 2 miles back to the paved road, and then I would still have to wait for someone. The keys to my truck were in my overalls, on the bottom of the lake. At that time of day, at that time of year, I might have still been waiting, frozen solid, when tomorrow came.

Then I remembered there used to be a woman with a shack back in the hills. Matty was her name. We called her a witch when we were little kids, a bi**h when we were older kids, and crazy when we were young adults. As I remembered it, the cabin was about a half mile from the lake. I hadn't been there since I was a teenager, so I wasn't even sure Matty was still alive, much less still living in the shack. But it was my best bet. Even if Matty was gone, I thought I might be able to start a fire in the shack.

I went back along the road, walking in the snowmobile tracks so that I didn't have to step in the deep snow. Every few minutes I sat down to rub my feet, which were freezing. The rest of me was awfully cold, too, and I was shivering hard. I figured I was going to freeze to death before I got to the shack if I didn't go faster, so I started running. The water in my longjohns froze, making them stiff, and they cracked and scratched me as I moved. But my feet felt a little better, and I had to stop less frequently to thaw them.

I tried hard to remember where the trail left the road for Matty's shack. It was an old deer trail, of that I was sure, and would be visible now as only a slight spreading of the dead brush. I passed several, rejecting them as being too near the lake. Then I saw one that looked right. There wasn't anything really special about it, but the distance seemed correct. I turned off the road, shaking harder and still trying to run.

The trail was fairly clear but some brush overhung it and, since I was still trying to run, it cut at my face. The pine trees closed in over the top and things seemed very quiet except for my wheezing and the crunching of the snow under my feet.

The trail rose for a hundred yards before it turned to follow level ground. I was close to giving up, fearing I had followed the wrong trail, when it opened into a small meadow and stopped at the foot of another hill. I remembered that spot. Matty had chased a bunch of us kids through this meadow from her shack, stopping when we raced down the deer trail. Her place was just over that hill.

I pushed my way through some briers and hurried around the thin pines that covered the other side of the hill. I began to catch glimpses of the roof of the shack. I didn't hear anything, and I was shivering too hard to yell out.

When I finally came into the small clearing around the shack, it was obvious Matty wasn't there anymore. The walls of the shack were still up, but a part of the roof had fallen in and the glass was smashed out of the window. There was no sign that anyone had done anything to the yard and garden for a long time. I ran round to the front.

The door had been knocked off its hinges and I could see that deep snow covered the floor of much of the single room. It had fallen in through the gap in the roof and blown in through the door and window. Most of the furniture, including Matty's bed, was gone, but snow covered other things, hiding what they were.

I looked around some more. There was still some wood stacked up by the hearth, and when I scratched around in the snow on the mantle I found a wooden box with matches. Matty's tinder box was gone, but there were plenty of small twigs around the hearth, and some old wood that was not completely burned.

With my hands shaking almost uncontrollably I broke up the twigs and smashed the half burned wood, making a small pile on the hearth. Then I took the matches and struck one on the stone. It lit on the first strike. I picked up my pile of tinder in one hand while I carefully played the match under it. Despite my shaking I had a fire in a few seconds. I rolled the burning tinder from hand to hand while the flame grew, then put it in the hearth, carefully placing the smaller pieces of wood around it. They caught and started to burn. I began to believe I might just make it out of there alive, after all.

As fast as the fire grew, I fed it more wood to make it bigger. I huddled myself right over it to take up as much of the heat as I could. Soon it was big enough that I had to back off from it a bit. I looked around for something to wear.

Everything was covered by snow but the shapes suggested there might be things buried under it, so I started rummaging around. I also closed the wooden shutters on the window and stood the door up in the frame and wedged it with some sticks.

There wasn't much under the snow, but over in the corner I found the edge of a blanket that was wrapped around something. It was covered with snow and frozen solid to the floor, so I couldn't make it out. I was too cold to mess with it yet, so I went back to the fire.

In a bit the fire was burning merrily, and by turning around as I sat I thawed pretty well. As the ice in my longjohns melted and turned to water, the fire turned it to steam which rose and curled into the freezing air. When the feeling came back to my feet, I knew I had frostbite. I hoped I wouldn't lose any toes.

I dug around in the snow piles some more and found some table utensils and the metal blade of a spade shovel. I carried the blade over to the blanket and scraped under it until it broke free from the floor.

The sun was getting low as I dragged the blanket, and whatever was in it, over to the fire. It seemed like there might be a sack of potatoes in it, or maybe just some bags of trash. The size and weight suggested something small, but dense.

I pulled it close to the fire and worked it free from the mass as the ice in it melted. I still couldn't tell what was in it, but that soon became clear enough.

Slowly, as the ice and snow melted, first the eye sockets, then the brows, then the cheek bones and finally the whole skull were apparent through the wet fabric. It had to be Matty.

Despite the cold, and my still wet clothing, I felt hot. I needed that blanket but I didn't want to see Matty's corpse, even if it was frozen. But the rapidly gathering darkness motivated me, and I overcame my horror of the dead body. I pulled harder at the blanket, uncovering first an arm, then her legs, which were curled up against her chest. I turned her over, putting her back to the fire to thaw the rest of the blanket.

When the blanket finally came free I quickly put Matty's body back in the far corner and covered it with the snow. I thought about putting her outside, but I was afraid she might be attacked by hungry animals. It didn't occur to me then that they just as easily might have come into the shack, since it was such a wreck.

I wrapped myself in Matty's blanket and moved close to the fire, turning until the entire blanket was dry. I wondered about what happened to Matty.

I remembered her as an older woman, but Dad had told me stories of when she was young. He said she was a beauty. He said his dad had tried to court her, but she was just too crazy.

He told of Grandpa coming to the shack at dawn to find Matty dancing alone in the rising sun. Sometimes, he told me, there might be a few Indians, usually Lac du Flambeau, camped around the shack and she would dance in a circle of them, as they danced, too.

Then there were others who came to visit her. Some to court, some to chat, some just curious. There was even one who tried to kill her with her ax, for the treasure she was rumored to have there. No one knew what happened to him. Matty had survived the attack, but bore a long scar across her skull.

I put another log on the fire and stirred the coals to keep the heat coming into the room. There was nothing I could do about the roof, so a lot of heat just went up and out.

I wondered how long it might take someone to find me. Dad had been expecting me before dark, but he wouldn't begin to worry until dinner time.

He would call my apartment, and then Franky Summers to see
when I had left. Finally, he would figure something was wrong. I hoped he would call the Sheriff, first, but I knew he would hitch up the horse and sleigh to look for me himself.

Whoever came would follow the snowmobile tracks to where they went out on the lake. I hoped no one would try to go out there. I also hoped they wouldn't obscure my foot tracks and think I had drowned, because it might take a while before anyone realized what I had done. They might not even see my tracks until daylight if they had been driving and walking all over them. Eventually, I figured, someone would see where I left the road on the deer trail.

I wished I had thought to leave some kind of mark there, and I thought briefly of walking back to make one, now. But I knew I was too cold. My feet were already hurt and I might do real damage if I went out again. I vowed to make a smoky fire come daylight, so someone might see the trace in the sky.

Night came rapidly. The sun was so far south that when it went down it didn't linger, but just vanished, taking all the light with it. Shadows from my fire rose on the walls, some up to the ceiling.

It got colder so I put more wood on the fire. The pile was getting low so I looked outside for more. Even with the sky now dark, the snow reflected the starlight and I could see pretty well. Matty's wood pile was about 50 yards away and I made a dozen quick trips with as much wood as I could carry, stacking it around the hearth to help keep the heat in.

I looked at my watch to see what time it was, but it had stopped. It was full of water and had frozen. Waterproof watches were rare, in those days. I figured the time to be around ten p.m. I wanted to sleep, but I was afraid the fire would get low and go out. Even so, it was hard to keep my head up. I turned my back to the fire and watched the shadows and the light flickering on the walls.

After a while, when my fatigue had caught up with me and made my head a little fuzzy, it seemed like I could see things in the shadows and the weaving light. Like shapes of people, and animals. It got me to thinking of the stories I had heard of Matty's life.

Then, I swear this is how it seemed, those shapes took on real form. I saw Matty, dancing with her arms in a circle, like she was holding someone, but there was no one else there.

As the fire burned down the shadows changed, and there was Matty again, working at the hearth, cooking. And then sewing, maybe. And then, dancing again, this time with some Indians.

A chill went up my spine when one of the shadows took the clear form of an Indian holding a colorful staff, dancing and singing before Matty. He was young, proud, and strong, and he stood boldly, stamping as he turned. Matty and the rest of the Indians moved in a circle around him.

The scene faded as I tossed some more wood on the fire. This was wood from the pile outside and it was packed with snow. As the wood warmed and burned, the snow melted, hissing as it fell into the flames. Ice that was deep in the wood melted and then turned to steam, whistling and popping as it escaped. The shadows and the flickering light reached up to the ceiling.

Then, I swear, as Matty danced again across the wall, I heard her singing and humming as she turned. I heard the birds of an early spring morning calling from the trees as Matty danced.

The shadows mingled and the Indians were there again. I could hear their chants and Matty's voice, high and thin among them. I tossed another log on the fire.

The fire grew and I saw in the brightening light an image of the door opening, and a tall man with a broad brimmed hat entering and talking to Matty. Then, as she sat in her chair, he went behind her. My hair stood on end and a deep shiver ran through me as I saw him raise an ax and swing down on Matty's head. It may have been the fire melting some more snow, but I swear I heard Matty scream as she fell. She threw something at the shadow and crawled to where there used to be a chest against the wall. Her shadow jumped to its feet, holding the clear silhouette of a rifle in its hands. It may have been the wood splitting in the fire, but I swear I heard a shot, and the shadow with the hat bent over, and fell to the floor.

My mouth dropped open in horror. I strained to see more, but everything became just flickering light and shadows again. Then something else rose in them. It was huge, and dark, and I didn't believe it could be just shadow. It was soon so big and dense I couldn't see the wall behind it. The fire hissed behind me and I thought I heard a voice from the dark. I don't know what it said, but it spoke slow and low, in a slurred speech.

As it spoke I saw images of animals in the dark. I saw images of people. I saw things that must have been from Matty's life. I think I even saw my grandfather, come to court and sent away by a beautiful, crazy young woman.

I couldn't move. I didn't want to stay in this haunted place, but I knew I couldn't leave or I would die in the cold. I felt near enough to dying as it was. When I didn't respond to the voice of the huge, dark mass, it seemed to become solid and to move away from the wall, toward me. Another chill of fear swept through me and I reached behind me to push another log onto the fire, never taking my eyes off the dark.

The fire wasted no time nibbling at this new fuel, but enfolded it eagerly, roaring to life. The dark receded and I could again see the shutters on the window, and the boards of the wall. I inched backward, closer to the fire and between my wood piles. It was really too hot like that, but I wanted to be further from the dark. My front side was getting cold again, especially my feet, so I turned more toward the fire. But I didn't put my back to the dark. No way.

Something caught my eye on the wall beyond the hearth, nearer the door. New shadows and reflected light flickered there. I watched, fascinated. After a while, I swear this is what happened, the shadows pulled open a shadow door. In the hissing and popping of the fire I heard the squeaking of the hinges.

First, low to the floor, came the shapes of small animals, like coons, squirrels, a fox, even birds. Then, bigger ones, like deer, even a bear. I couldn't believe it. They all ignored me and went over to where I had found, and left, Matty.

I watched them form a circle around her, their shapes growing and shrinking with the rising and falling flames from the fire. Movement at the door caught my eye again.

In came the young Indian with his staff. Behind him, other Indians, and then some white men and women. They all circled over to Matty. I froze dead still at the next shadow to move across the wall. It was the man in the hat. The one that Matty shot. He walked upright, straight over to the others, and took a place in the circle that it seemed had been held for him there.

The fire lowered again so the shadows climbed higher. I hurriedly tossed on more wood but it did not catch. The snow in it hissed as it fell into the coals, and the hissing blended with a keening from the shadows. I looked up through the head of the shadow with the hat and through the hole in the roof. I saw the stars there, silent, cold, seeming to look down through the night, watching the shadows, and me.

I took a stick and stirred frantically at the coals, trying to encourage them to light the new wood. But they wouldn't, and the room grew darker, and colder.

The shadows began to circle around Matty's body, holding hands. As the coals popped and whistled from the dripping water, I heard the shadows singing. It was like the keening I had heard earlier, but changed to a more hopeful sound. I started to shiver with the cold and with the fear of what was happening.

The circle turned, the singing grew louder and the shadows grew darker as the fire died down. I broke up some of the coals and pulled bark off the logs to make it easier for the fire to grow. It had little effect.

But then... but then, as I sat frozen with cold and fear, I saw Matty's shadow rise from her body and join the circle. She danced in the middle of it and she danced around with it. She reached out to the shadow with the hat and danced with him in the center.

Suddenly, the fire caught and flared up. The shadows shrank back and then broke the circle, forming a line that moved toward the open shadow door. As the fire grew the shadows shrank some more until only the smallest were at the end as the line went out the door. The fire grew more and the shadow door closed and disappeared, leaving only the real door, closed and blocked with the wood I had wedged around it.

I sat in shock. I turned back to look at Matty's body, which now seemed smaller than before, under the snow. I felt cold all over again, even with the growing fire.

I looked at the wall above Matty's body.

I was alone again with the flickering flames, the weaving shadows, and the hissing and popping of the fire.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Post script: In the years after, when I had a wife and children, I told them that story from time to time. Eventually, each asked if it was true. I just point to the rusty old snowmobile under a tarp at the back of the yard. “Mostly,” I’d say to them. “Mostly.”

Copyright 1991, The Art of Aviation