Ghostly Halloween

Oh NO!

Katie Likes Flowers

In the part of New Jersey where I live, there are many abandoned bits of civilization in the woods. Towns that simply disappeared off the map, either because the state bought out the land to create reservoirs or they just simply faded away as more convenient communities were developed nearby and people died off. The remnants include foundations of buildings, mine shaftsand graveyards. The closest I’ve ever personally come to a haunting was in one of these lost graveyards.

The Cherry Ridge Cemetery is located somewhere off the New York-Tennessee gas pipeline that runs through the area. According to local lore, the graveyard is haunted, and you can hear “moaning, music, laughter, and strange noises” there.* The cemetery served families in the area until they were bought out, creating a large tract of empty land in which to establish reservoirs that would supply the city of Newark, New Jersey, with clean drinking water.

I was hiking along the gas pipeline with friends. The pipeline is buried, and there’s a large clearing around it that makes for a wide trail that easy to navigate, if you don’t mind crawling over the occasional crop of boulders or through marshy spots. We had come to a spot on the pipeline that was high up on a hill, and we could look ahead for a mile or so at the other hills along the pipeline, which teased us with their likeness to a roller coaster. We stopped here for a bit to rest up.

I don’t normally mess with wildlife when I hike. I subscribe to the “take only pictures, leave only footprints” philosophy of responsible hikers. But today was different. There were these pretty, little, purple flowers growing just off the pipeline. And I have to admit: I picked some. I thought I could do something with them when I got home: put them in water, or press them in a book. Again, not things I normally do. My friends kidded with me about this breach in hiking protocol.

We finished resting and decided to head back the way we came. We had planned to visit the Cherry Ridge Cemetery, which we knew was somewhere on our way back. But we weren’t sure of exactly where.

When I came to a certain spot along the trail, I had a hunch the graveyard was somewhere close to our right. Even though there was no trail or markings that indicated the graveyard was anywhere nearby, I slipped into the forest. The rest of the group followed me. We scuttled around for short bit in the leaves and the undergrowth, but then I saw the graves. Most of the graveswere sunken in, the headstones long gone or broken. I was drawn to the back corner of the graveyard.

There I found the gravestone of Katie Rome, who is one of the youngest known occupants of the graveyard. She was just three when she died in 1880. Her mother Lucretia, buried next to her, died only a few years after Katie. As I stood there, I suddenlyknew why I had picked the flowers. I crouched and put most of the flowers on Katie’s grave. I left the rest with her mom.

Michelle, one of the friends with whom I was hiking, said, “Oh, that’s so sweet of you!”

Maybe so, but I can’t help wondering how much of my kindly gesture was really under my control that day. Maybe I had some help from a small, long-deceased child who enjoyed pretty, little, purple flowers in life.

* Zeliznak, Maryann, O’Biso-Socha, Laura, and DiGuilo, Marcia, Journey Into the Past: Visit the Lost Settlements of Vernon, copyright 1992, Maryann Zeliznak.

Reminiscences Of a Relatively Ghost-Free Childhood in Ghost Country

 I grew up in coastal South Carolina - a little town called Georgetown - where ghosts are almost as ubiquitous as the tourists who flock to the beaches. Ghost stories were passed around among us children like so much candy, and there was always the (sort of) hope that one of us would actually see one. None of my schoolmates ever claimed to, although we all knew of people who had…

One family whom we all knew lived in a house reported to be haunted by three Revolutionary War soldiers, and had strange thumps and floating silverware. I babysat in that house as a teenager, but never saw or heard anything; frankly, I think any ghosts would have been scared off by the kids who lived there. Another haunted house was beside the graveyard of Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church, which was pre-Revolutionary War as well. My mother taught the girl who lived in the house and told me that the young lady reported that there were frequently footsteps on the stairs and such ghostly noises. Another friend of mine lived in an old rice plantation house that was haunted. His stepfather was said to have seen the ghost of a woman in colonial dress calming the children when they cried at night, but my friend never saw anything. My fourth grade teacher lived in a lovely old plantation house on the North Santee River that was supposed to be haunted. I never experienced anything there, but there is reported to be a ghost that haunts the grounds and chases people.

Some of the local ghosts were well known; the Grey Man was said to warn people who lived at the beach about impending hurricanes, and there was Alice of the Hermitage who still pined for her lost love and lost ring - her grave always had a path worn around it where people tried to see her ghost. I never saw them either, although one story of Alice looking for her ring was said to involve an acquaintance of mine. I didn’t ask her about it because I was afraid she’d say she never had anything to do with it, and even as a child I appreciated a good story.

Then there was a bit of urban legend told to me by a classmate - the story of the Plat-eye, a sort of monster who would visit people along one of the local rivers and if you didn’t have jelly donuts to feed him, he’d “get” you. Since we had a cabin on the river, this one really spooked me; but no matter how much I begged, Mom wouldn’t buy jelly donuts to take with us to keep me safe from the Plat-eye.

My parents had a strange experience on the river once, though. My father was an avid photographer and would take his camera out in the boat to take pictures of autumn foliage on the river banks - I still have boxfuls of the slides he took. In one of the pictures, there is a white shape on the river bank. It looks rather someone wearing a sheet standing on the riverbank except that when Dad snapped the photo, they didn’t see anything unusual. The image showed up when the slide was developed. They liked to scare me by saying, “Here’s the picture with the ghost in it!” whenever they showed the slide.

I thought I saw something when I was about four, in my own house, but since we were the only ones who had lived there, I don’t know. I was walking down the short hall from my room to the den, and passed by the door to the living room. The sofa was along the wall by the door, so I could see it in profile. I was surprised to see a man in a striped t-shirt sitting on the sofa in the dim living room, with his arm up along the back of the sofa. We rarely had visitors, especially ones I didn’t know. I proceeded another two steps to the den where I asked my mother, “Who’s the man in the living room?”

My mother grabbed me in a panic, saying, “What man?!” - no doubt thinking there was a burglar in the house. She carefully checked, and seeing no one there, told me I must have imagined it. Maybe, but I can still remember the sight of him to this day and my surprise at seeing him there. Our sofa was plain, with no print on it, so it couldn’t have been that. (He hadn’t scared me, but my mother’s reaction certainly had!) This was the same house where my father rang the phones after he died.

Later on when I was in high school, I began going out to the home of my history teacher who was also a friend of my family’s. (He was also the school librarian, and therefore my boss, since I was the library assistant.) He and his wife and daughter lived in an historic rice plantation house and I became a regular visitor during my last two years of high school. (He also told the story of the picture that I have posted on this site.) The house had changed hands several times through the years, and one of the former owners had been buried near the house and an addition had eventually been built over his grave. He had loved the house very much, and from the stories I was told, still stayed around the place. He was said to have caught a guest who was falling down the staircase, and floating lights were frequently seen in both the bedroom in which he died and the family room, which was in the addition built over his original gravesite. Some friends of the family who had been guests there declined a second invitation to stay the night and chose to stay in a motel instead - apparently the ghost was a little too friendly for them.

Only on one occasion did I have a ghostly experience out there. We had been talking about the ghost, and I went over to a chair to sit down. No sooner had I placed my posterior on the chair than the light on the table beside the chair went out! I hopped up very quickly and the light went back on. I found a different seat, joking about sitting on the ghost. It wasn’t much, but it was a little bit freaky!

For someone who grew up in a highly haunted area, I had a rather ghost-free childhood. Maybe that’s a good thing…

She Wolf (c)2007

Trick-Or-Treat: Never to be Outgrown

Two more days until the big one. The day we take the kids around the neighborhood to collect chocolate for us parents. Holloween is my favorite holiday. Not just for the candy, I love the costumes, too. Even the yards are dressed to kill:

Candy gathering is best done like writing a story, which in turn is like going to a party. Go late, leave early. During the first hour people are rationing. One piece of candy from each house. The visit to goody ratio is not worth it. Kids get tired and want to quit early. It’s better to go during the second hour. People are getting tired of the whole deal, and most people don’t want to be stuck with all that candy. They give it out by the fistful. It’s good sense to have a pillow sack for the overflowing plastic pumkins. Bring a wagon if you have one, but make the kids walk, this is for the candy.

The final step in effective trick-or-treating is critical. Watching the kids’ every move when they get home. They have a tendency to stash the candy in another dimension. While they are at school the next day… It’s razoo time!

The Picture

 When I was in high school in the mid 1970’s my class decided to collect some of the local ghost stories. This wasn’t hard because much of our coastal South Carolina town was built in the early 1700’s and ghost stories were abundant. For the project, my partners and I decided to interview our history teacher, Mr. Hall, who lived in an old rice plantation house built in the early 1800’s that was reputed to be haunted. We went out to the house one Saturday afternoon to interview him.  After we had gathered the information on the household ghost (which most of us knew anyway), he and his daughter’s fiancée, Mr. Jones, decided to tell us another story. That story gave us the creepy-crawlies. From the perspective of adulthood, I think that perhaps the story was concocted for our benefit - both of those gentlemen would have delighted in this. I have changed the names, but the rest of the story is as it was told to us in about 1974.

The other two students and I were sitting in the library and Mr. Hall, the owner of the house, pointed to a picture on the wall. It was a very dark painting. You could see that there was a person in it, and a woodstove with a fire, but that was about it. All the details were lost in the darkness. He said that he and Mr. Jones had had an interesting experience with that picture.

Mr. Hall and the younger man, Mr. Jones, who would later become his son-in-law, were sitting in the library of the Halls’ historic home one evening after dinner. The room was a pleasant room, filled to the brim with books. There were comfortable chairs, a fireplace, and on the wall was a rather dark painting. The picture was dark enough that it was hard to make out anything in the picture; it seemed to be a man sitting by a wood stove, but that was all you could really see.

As the evening passed, Mr. Jones happened to look up at the painting. It seemed to be lighter and easier to see the subject than it usually was. He didn’t think much of it and went back to what he was doing. When he looked up again in a little bit, the painting was clearly brighter and the details were easier to see. He pointed this out to Mr. Hall, who was of course quite surprised. As the evening wore on, the painting changed still more. The grate in the woodstove in the painting began to glow as if there were truly a fire in it. A lit cigarette in the hand of the man in the picture began to glow, too. The subject’s face took on a strange brightness - the men could see his features as they had never been able to before, and things in the background of the picture were clear.

While they were telling us the story, we were all staring at it with wide eyes. Here we were in a house that was supposed to be haunted with two people we respected telling us that the picture we were looking at was haunted - or something. The only bit of atmosphere missing was a dark and stormy night.  I still remember how dark that picture was, and how eerie it looked even in broad daylight. The woodstove in the painting had only a dim orange glow to it and you really couldn’t see much in the picture at all.  

The grate of the stove in the picture glowed brighter and brighter, as did the cigarette in the man’s hand. Mr. Hall and Mr. Jones described the picture as becoming rather devilish-looking with the red glow from the stove in the picture. They could see all sorts of details they had never been able to see before, such a  clock in the background.

Finally, they grew too tired to stay up and watch the picture any longer, and went to bed. The next morning, they immediately went to see the picture only to find that it had returned to its original dark state.

We questioned the men at length, trying to come up with some rationale about why the picture would do such a thing. Was it the anniversary of the artist’s death? The subjects? Did it happen every year? They did not know of anything that would help explain the events - and we left with backward looks and goosebumps running down our spines.

Contributed by She Wolf - retelling (c) 2007

For your next trip….

As you plan your next vacation, you may wish to consult the Directory of Haunted Places which has listings for international as well as U.S. hauntings. If you live in or plan to visit the U.K., then you may find The Headless Horseman Online Guide to Ghosts of interest.

Wherever you go, safe travels……..bwahahahahahah………

How Sweet It Is

 

I have so many wonderful Halloween Memories…

this is one of them

and it concerns:

Lizzie Borden

Today I read about a Lizzie Borden Halloween Prop that costs THOUSANDS of dollars.

Robot Lizzie swings an Ax up and down.

Sure, whatever.

When I was a kid this family had a Haunted House set up in their basement and the Dad used to dress up like Lizzie and chase people around with an ax and he’d be screaming ” Forty Wacks! Forty Wacks for you all!”

And the entire time he- well, she is doing that, we’d be screaming for Jesus and our Moms and diving under furniture and swinging our plastic pumpkins like around medieval war weapons  and trying to climb out the windows.

I wouldn’t trade that memory for anything-

not even for THOUSANDS of dollars.

amm

Halloween Game

Here’s another fun way to avoid writing!!

Click the link for Halloween HangmanIts addicting….http://www.dedge.com/flash/hangman/hangman.swf?

Over the Hill with Grandpa

My Grandpa Roy told me this story when I was a kid.

Most of his adult life, my grandpa worked for the movie studios– MGM, RKO, Warner Brothers. At various times he worked for them as a horse wrangler, grip, and greensman. Sometimes he just did whatever needed doing on the set. One day, back in the 1930’s, he was asked to pick up a truck in Hollywood and deliver it over the hill to the WB facilities in the Valley.

Now Grandpa Roy had a grandfather named James who frequently visited him. On this particular day, Great-Grandpa James joined Grandpa Roy for the ride over the hill. Back in 1930’s there were no freeways as there are today, and travel to and from the Valley required negotiating narrow, twisting canyon roads. The route they took that day was over Cold Water Canyon Road.

As James sat in the passenger side of the truck, my grandpa Roy began the ascent up the road. James was quiet, as was his nature, but just before the truck reached the top of the grade, James turned to Grandpa Roy and said “You need to check the brakes before you start that downhill grade. You won’t make it if you don’t.”

Grandpa Roy had always followed his grandfather’s advice so he pulled over to the side of the road. He got out and slid under the truck for a look. Sure enough, there was a problem with the brakes, and had he proceeded down the grade more than likely they would have failed and he would have careened out of control.

I don’t remember what Grandpa Roy said about how he got the truck down the hill. I don’t remember because I got stuck on what Grandpa said next about Great-Grandpa James riding along with him.

You see, Great-Grandpa James was dead and had been for many, many years.

Lori Gloyd (c) 2006, 2007