Ghosts

The Good in the Boogerman

I was tantalized by the occult when a child, Naturally, since I was raised by a good Southern Baptist mother, I was deprived of as much supernatural exposure as Mother could manage. Fortunately, Daddy’s mother was extremely superstitious.

It goes without saying, Mother would never contradicted her to her face. Sometimes when Mamaw had a gaggle of grandchildren running wild around her, she’d launch into a ghost story, usually purported to be true. The wild grandchildren would immediately settle down at their mother’s knee to listen, enchanted and big-eyed with belief

Mamaw petrified us with tales of ghosts, spirits, deranged ax-murderers, boogermen, and bodies found in wells, totally unconcerned about the nightmares she was inspiring.

As soon as she could, Mother initiated damage control. “There are no ghosts or Boogermen!”

To this day, I don’t know why Mother took that stand, considering the good effect fear of ghosts and the boogerman had on those wild kids. Mamaw knew exactly what she was doing.

Sing at the table

Sing in the bed

Boogerman’ll git you

By the hair of the head!

Terror at the Camp Out (Halloween Story)

Scary0004

repost of Halloween story. Original art by my mother Kathleen Swain

The backyard campout was all Billy and his friends could talk about. My cousin Sue and I furiously watched them build a tent out of old quilts stretched over the clothesline, furious we couldn’t camp out with them. No girls allowed!

The boys kept reminding us all day what a great night they would have while we slept in the house. However, watching ghost movies had their teeth chattering even before they headed out for their camp-out. Those smart-alecky boys were spooked even before they straggled out to the tent with only one failing flashlight between them and the terrifying night.  The further they got from the door, the faster they ran, expecting to be grabbed at any second. The lights in the house blinked off one by one, leaving them totally alone in the blackness.  Sue and I gave my parents plenty of time to go to sleep before slipping out to fix Billy and his buddies.  We made a wide loop behind their tent and lay in the bushes quietly listening to the boys telling the story of Maggie Parker.

“Maggie Parker was a witchy old woman who had lived deep in the woods not far from us.  There was gold buried behind the house haunted by the ghosts of her seven husbands all buried in a row.  If you were brave or crazy enough to go out there on a dark night and wade through the thick vines, you could see ghostly eyes shining on each of the seven tombstones. No one knew how her husbands had really died, but the rumor was she killed each of them after she got their gold.  Someone else said she kept her crazy hired man locked in the shed and only let him out to work. If he ever got loose at night, he would kill her or anyone else he crept up on.  Froggy told about his daddy’s grandma’s uncle who went out one night looking for Maggie Parker’s gold and was found four days later in the woods by some hunters. His hair turned white and he never spoke another word.  He was led around like a child for the rest of his life.  He screamed in his sleep and shook in his bed so bad, they had to lock him in a shed at night.  One morning a few years later they found him lying in his bed, eyes wide open, like he had seen a ghost………..scared to death.”  The stories got scarier the later it got.

The only sound was the chirping of crlckets as they lay in their lonely tent, talking in low voices about the last movie they had seen.  An angry village mob had tortured a poor crazy old hermit, cut his legs off, and left him for dead. He somehow managed to survive by dragging himself into a cave. The frogs were croaking loudly as the darkness fell. In his fevered sleep, he dreamed he had his legs back.   He rose and walked on his stumps, leaving bloody prints behind him. The frogs got quieter.  Just before he knifed his torturers……..….total silence.  The last thing you could see was him raising his knife and hear the screams of the dying.

The longer they talked, the more scared they got.  Finally they got so tired they just had to try go to sleep.  They could hear the frogs just outside their tent. The frogs got louder. It was horrible. Suddenly………..dead silence.  Too scared to breathe, they waited for the knife!!! Finally…..the frogs started back up. Just as they exhaled nervously, they were grabbed from behind!  They exploded outward, disintegrating the tattered tent, falling and grabbing in their fight for survival, their fear fed by the maniacal screaming in the dark.  A ghostly figure was staggering around in tattered rags, arms outstretched. They beat each other and everything else in their path trying to reach the safety of the house. In their wild terror, they ripped straight through the latched screen door of the kitchen, shattering it. The ghost was right behind them!

My parents were jolted awake by the crashing screen door and screaming campers, sure they were being murdered in their beds.  The pulled the tattered quilt from around the ghost revealing Foggy, who’d gotten tangled in the quilt, thought the ghost had him, and was as terrified as everyone else.  When they finally calmed the boys and did a head count, they found everyone alive but battered.  Sue and I came staggering out of my bedroom rubbing sleep out of our eyes and trying to look like we just woke up though we both had wet grass stuck to our feet and dirty pajamas. Our plan to scare the boys had worked far better than we dreamed it would, and the best part was, we had more fun at the camp-out than anyone else!

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 4

dog-trotScary stories are best when told by a true believer.  On a cold, dark night, the women and children clustered cozily around the fireplace at Aunt Ader’s old house while the men were out hunting.  By the firelight, mothers in straight back wooden chairs bumped rhythmically back and forth to lull their little ones off to sleep, as their older kids stretched out pallets in the front room enticed by oft-repeated family tales, some funny, some sad, some terrifying.

I recall this sad story as deliciously heartbreaking, though I never knew any of these distant relatives of relatives.  My Great-Aunt Jo told of her pregnant Cousin Lou on her daddy’s side from way over in Alabama.  Back before Aunt Jo was born, Cousin Lou left her baby Jessie Mae on a pallet under the shade of an oak while picking beans with her family nearby.  Lou looked back often to check her sleeping baby.  It was resting so well, she picked on a bit longer, hoping to get enough beans to can a few jars. Little Jessie never made a peep.
When Lou’s basket was filled, she came back to retrieve the baby and was horrified to find the shade had shifted and the baby burned beet-red in the sun.  Lou and her mother, Ruth, rushed to sponge the baby with cool spring water. For three days, Little Jessie lingered between life and death, before dying.  The family had to restrain poor grief-stricken Lou from pulling the baby from the coffin at the burial.  She gave birth to a seven-month baby a few days later that only lived a few hours.  Though she went home to live with her husband, all she did was pine for her lost babies.  She became catatonic, unable to eat, dress herself, or leave the chair where she rocked her dead child’s rag doll. 

A few months after her grieving young husband took her home to her mama, Ruth, it became obvious she was pregnant again.  It was hoped the new baby would bring her back to life though she never responded to the new baby Sally, just kept rocking Baby Jessie’s doll.  Ruth was left to raise little Sally and manage her sick daughter.  On good days, Lou was like a docile child, sitting quietly or doing simple tasks.  On rough days, she cried and rocked her rag doll.  On her worst days, she wailed and tried find her baby or throw herself in the well.  When she finally roused enough to try to hang herself, Ruth had to put her in the asylum where poor, deranged Lou managed to hang herself after a couple of months. Because she’d killed herself, she was hastily buried at the asylum and couldn’t have a Christian burial with her lost babies.  Afterwards, people swore they could hear Lou crying, trying to get to her babies’ graves in the church cemetery dark, moonless nights.  I still get tingles thinking of it.

spooky-halloween-scare-october-holiday-8

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 5

blackdog2

As the fire burned low, the lap babies had been put down and knee babies were sleeping quietly on pallets, the chatter from the older children slowed as they; too, drifted off to sleep at the feet of their mothers, aunts, and grandmother.  Desperate for ghost stories, I hung on the words of my superstitious Maw Maw. She held grandchildren spellbound with all the scary tales she knew.  Should she falter, one of my aunts urged her on…”Mama, remember about the big black dogs running through the house.” Her stories were more terrifying because she believed them with all her being.

“Oh yeah, lots of times, late at night, if the wind was still, and the night was dark, me and Granny could hear them ghost dogs, howling and scratching at the door, trying to get in…but once in a while, if the moon was full, we’d see them big, black devil dogs blowing right into the room where me and Granny was, made of black smoke from the fires of hell with blazing coals for eyes.  We hid under the covers, ‘cause Granny said ‘if you ever looked in them fiery eyes, you was bound for Hell’.”

Opportunities to hear scintillating stories like these were rare, usually limited to visits with Maw Maw, my paternal grandmother. Mother could hardly snatch her spellbound children from the writhing mass of cousins clustered around Maw Maw’s knees. Daddy ruled the roost, and he liked the stories as much as anyone.  Mother held the ridiculous notion that tender minds didn’t need to hear scary stories, more concerned about the nightmares she’d be dealing with in a few short hours than the extreme pleasure they afforded us at the time.

I do wish I could hear and savor those stories again, unmolested by that nagging voice in the background.  “There’s no such thing as ghosts.  Those stories are just pretend, like cartoons. Now, go on to sleep and forget about them.”

Maw Maw by CarMettie Swain Knight, a champion ghost storyteller

Aunt Ader’s Place Part 5

blackdog2

As the fire burned low, the lap babies had been put down and knee babies were sleeping quietly on pallets, the chatter from the older children slowed as they; too, drifted off to sleep at the feet of their mothers, aunts, and grandmother.  Desperate for ghost stories, I hung on the words of my superstitious Maw Maw. She held grandchildren spellbound with all the scary tales she knew.  Should she falter, one of my aunts urged her on…”Mama, remember about the big black dogs running through the house.” Her stories were more terrifying because she believed them with all her being.

“Oh yeah, lots of times, late at night, if the wind was still, and the night was dark, me and Granny could hear them ghost dogs, howling and scratching at the door, trying to get in…but once in a while, if the moon was full, we’d see them big, black devil dogs blowing right into the room where me and Granny was, made of black smoke from the fires of hell with blazing coals for eyes.  We hid under the covers, ‘cause Granny said ‘if you ever looked in them fiery eyes, you was bound for Hell’.”

Opportunities to hear scintillating stories like these were rare, usually limited to visits with Maw Maw, my paternal grandmother. Mother could hardly snatch her spellbound children from the writhing mass of cousins clustered around Maw Maw’s knees. Daddy ruled the roost, and he liked the stories as much as anyone.  Mother held the ridiculous notion that tender minds didn’t need to hear scary stories, more concerned about the nightmares she’d be dealing with in a few short hours than the extreme pleasure they afforded us at the time.

I do wish I could hear and savor those stories again, unmolested by that nagging voice in the background.  “There’s no such thing as ghosts.  Those stories are just pretend, like cartoons. Now, go on to sleep and forget about them.”

Maw Maw by CarMettie Swain Knight, a champion ghost storyteller

Aunt Ader’s Place

Aunt Ader’s House was reminiscent of the two pictured here.

dog-trotI had no idea who Aunt Ader was, or that her name should actually have been pronounced Ada, but her old farm house was a wonder.  Uncle C H, my Aunt Jenny’s on-again off-again husband apparently enjoyed some claim to it, because over the course of my childhood, several of my relatives rented it, probably when they’d fallen on hard times.  It stood high on a hill surrounded by several huge oaks.  A rutted red-dirt drive curved its way up toward the house, dusty in summer and rutted deeply in rainy weather.   In the spring and early summer weeds sprigged up between the tire tracks, kept short courtesy of the undercarriage of the vehicles making their way up the hill.  Though Aunt Ader’s forebears had been prosperous landowners a couple of generations back, the land had been subdivided and sold off long before I came to know it.  To the eyes of a small child, it was welcoming with its deep front and back porches and wide, breezy dogtrot.  An enormous living room and kitchen opened off one side with three bedrooms on the other.  Fireplaces on either side furnished the only heat.  Bare lightbulbs dangling on cords sufficed to light the big, high-ceilinged rooms, welcoming ghosts to the shadowy corners. Rain on the tin-roof could be pleasant or deafening, depending on the intensity of the storm.   I was never tempted to stray far from the light, though the sunshine from the huge windows flooded those rooms in the daytime.

A water heater stood in the corner of the enormous kitchen next to the galvanized bathtub hanging on the wall.  The old wood stove was still in use, though the only indoor plumbing was water piped in to the sink in the one piece enamel sink and cabinet combination standing beneath the window, looking out over a large field with several pear and fig trees.  Several unpainted shelves served as storage for everything that couldn’t fit into the sink cabinet and pie safe.  A cord exiting the round-topped refrigerator was plugged into an extension cord connected to bare light bulb dangling from the center of the kitchen ceiling.  The light was turned off and on by a long string.  Strips of well-populated fly-paper hung near the windows.   An unpainted toilet stood slightly downhill about three hundred yards off to the left of an old barn.  We were warned away from the hand-dug well, enclosed in a wooden frame with a heavy wooden trap cover that stood a few feet from the back porch.  Mother was so adamant we not go near, I was sure it was surrounded by quicksand, just waiting to suck a foolish child in.  A bucket hung from a chain from the roof of the creaky structure.  Pigs were pinned up near the barn, though not far enough away to miss their smell, explaining the fly problem.

To be continuedwarhome2

Terror Most Delicious

Maw Maw by CarPictured Above, Mettie Martha Knight Swain, my paternal grandmother

Desperate for ghost stories, I hung on the words of my superstitious Maw Maw. While the men were out hunting, the women and children of the family gathered to share the long evenings.  As the evenings stretched on, lap babies were rocked to sleep and knee babies drifted off in their mother’s laps and were put on thick pallets of quilts on the floor to sleep.  Earlier in the evening, the women took turns telling tales of their youth but as it got later and more little ones drifted off, they moved on to scary stories.  At the peak of the evening, when the most impressionable had nodded off and the lights were low, one of the daughters would encourage Maw Maw to tell a story.  She held her grandchildren spellbound with the scary tales.  Should she falter, one of my aunts urged her on…”Mama, remember about the big black dogs running through the house.” Her stories were more terrifying because she believed them with all her being.  Once she started, I was too deliciously terrified to even risk a trip to the bathroom alone.

 “Oh yeah, lots of times, late at night, if the wind was still, and the night was dark, me and Granny could hear them ghost dogs, howling and scratching at the door, trying to get in…but once in a while, if the moon was full, we’d see them big, black devil dogs blowing right into the room where me and Granny was, made of black smoke from the fires of hell with blazing coals for eyes.  We hid under the covers, ‘cause Granny said ‘if you ever looked in them fiery eyes, you was bound for Hell’.”

 Opportunities to hear scintillating stories like these were rare, usually limited to visits to Maw Maw, my paternal grandmother. Mother could hardly snatch her spellbound children from the writhing mass of cousins clustered around Maw Maw’s knees. Daddy ruled the roost, and he liked the stories as much as anyone.  Mother held the ridiculous notion that tender minds didn’t need to hear scary stories, more concerned about the nightmares she’d be dealing with in a few short hours than the extreme pleasure they afforded us at the time.

 I do wish I could hear and savor those stories again, unmolested by that nagging voice in the background.  “There’s no such thing as ghosts.  Those stories are just pretend, like cartoons. Now, go on to sleep and forget about them.”

cousinsTop Left Cousin Ricky Compton, Sister Phyllis Swain Barrington holding Sister Connie Swain Miller, Cousin Allen Lee, Linda Swain Bethea, center, Standing Aunt Ola Bea Shell holding Cousin Trudy Shell

First row, Cousins Sandra Shell, Gary Shell, and Leslie Shell in right front corner.

If You Can Hear Us……..

Scary0004

Our community, like all small communities, had its well-loved ghost, Sally Macon. Like all kids, my sisters and Bud’s sisters, loved to play seance. We grew up within three miles of each other, so they spent a lot of time together. All the girls had gotten hooked on the Gothic Soap, “Dark Shadows,” featuring ghosts, vampires, and spooky seances. The girls were hidden in Connie’s dark bedroom around a flickering candle, calling to Sallie. “Aunt Sallie, if you hear us, make yourself known.” they chanted in unison. Mother saw the flickering candle light under the door and listened in long enough to realize what was up. She eased outside, scratched on Connie’s window and moaned, “Woooooo!”

Terrified they’d actually raised the dead, the four girls nearly beat each other to death tearing out of the room. In their haste, they ran over Daddy, stretched out napping in his recliner. In his panic, he started yelling, “Get out! Get out! The house in on fire.” By this time, of course Mother was back in, surveying all the excitement. The four girls eventually walked back from wherever they’d run, to find out Aunt Sally hadn’t come calling after all.

good pic of Dad

Terror at the Camp Out (Halloween Story)

Scary0004

The backyard campout was all Billy and his friends could talk about. My cousin Sue and I furiously watched them build a tent out of old quilts stretched over the clothesline, furious we couldn’t camp out with them. No girls allowed! Continue reading →