At least I seem to be stuck for material to make my goal of posting each day this month of November. So I figure I will get one last Halloween story out of my head and maybe that will clear my mind for writing something different.
As far as I can remember my father only told a ghost story one time. The story was about a house that was about two miles from where our farm is. One Saturday night a farmer was sick and asked for his children to stay with him instead of go to a dance that night in Pesotum. His children decided to go to the dance. As they were leaving he told them that if he died while they were gone that no one would ever sleep peacefully in his room again. Well, I suppose it comes as no surprise that the farmer did die and that afterward anyone who tried to sleep in his room was bothered by a ghost all night. He would do things like pull the blankets off and make his eyes glow while he stated at you from the foot of the bed. After a while people got the message and stayed out of the room.
At some point another family came to live in the house and had the same experiences with the haunted bedroom. No one would spend the night in there. The farmer who lived there had a daughter who was seeing a young man. He heard the story about the haunted room and to prove his bravery said he would spend the night there. He took his gun with him and before going to sleep he put it on the nightstand. The young man did have some trouble sleeping, however until he looked at the foot of the bed and saw what seemed like glowing eyes everything had been quiet. Now why he thought he could shoot a ghost I don’t know, however he did grab his pistol and fired a shot at the glowing eyes. The family in the house heard the shot followed by a scream. When they came into the bedroom they saw the young man holding his foot. It turned out that he had seen the reflection of the moon on his big toenail and had shoot himself in the foot. Now I cannot swear that this actually happened. Although it is certainly within the range of human stupidity.
I think this story has stayed with me for all these years because my father is not a big story-teller. He may only say two sentences in a row on verbose days. Still there does seem to have been something funny about that house. I remember even though it looked like a livable nice house that nobody lived in it for several years and then it was torn down. In the way that kids do I could sense that adults were afraid of something about that house. And most seemed to believe that odd things did happen there. In addition to the ghost another story was that the Virgin Mary sometimes appeared in that room. Since I was pretty young it didn’t occur to me to question why in an area where most people were Catholic why they would be afraid of an appearance by the Virgin Mary.
So like I said the house was torn down and the land where it stood is now a farm field. The only thing to mark this place where likely at one time a lot of drama happened is a clump of peonies that once grew at the start of the driveway. They come up every year in the strip of grass between the field and the ditch along the road.
From what I can remember Billy was a member of a family that didn’t farm, but who owned land that they rented. Billy had an income from the rents and lived in a house in Urbana. To occupy his time he walked long distances collecting junk that he stored in his house. I never had a direct encounter with him although I did see him a few times as he walked along the highway. From brief glimpses he seemed small and wiry and oblivious to the traffic passing by. Most of what I know about him is from stories that the neighbors told.
The family that had the most to say about Billy lived in a house that his family owned. Billy’s family still kept some cattle on pasture next to the house and Billy would show up there I guess to visit the cows. The cows were at the end of a long circuit that he would make starting in Urbana. The distance was around 15 miles and for a time he seems to have made the trip frequently. The family that lived in the rented house had four teenage sons. Billy wasn’t liked much by these sons and once in a while there would be a fight which ended in Billy getting chased away. As he left he would shout that he would “Pray them all dead”.
I had never heard of anyone saying they were going to pray someone dead before, however it wasn’t the first time that Billy had made that threat. It turns out that Billy was mostly known for that threat. Some people just thought it was bizarre while others actually were afraid of him. Supposedly one older woman in Philo that he had said he would pray dead did die. So in some minds that gave him credibility. I heard that our Road Commissioner took him seriously. I’m don’t know what process he used to pray people dead although if it had been effective from all the threats he made along his path then the area along that road would have been a wasteland. I know that the boys that he said he would pray dead didn’t die or even get sick.
My opinion is that you could store up quite a lot of bad Karma using prayer as a way to kill people and maybe that is what caught up to Billy since he died in an odd way. One night in the mid-seventies as he was walking along the highway he probably thought he was standing far enough away from the road. Still the truck that was coming up behind him had unusually long side mirrors and he was stuck on the head by one of them. He was not killed instantly by this and some saw that as a sign that there was something supernatural about Billy. Still the man who prayed people dead never did regain consciousness and thus was unable to tell the driver of the truck that he would pray him dead. When he did die after a few days his family went to his house and found it was full of garbage. From what people said it took several garbage trucks to take it all away.
Now, if there ever was a prelude to a ghost story I would think that the story of Billy would be one. Still I have heard of no sightings of Billy along his regular route. Although angry, obsessive people are suppose to make good ghosts Billy must have decided he had enough of walking along highway 130.
Back when I was a youth soaping windows was a common activity during the Halloween season. If you don’t know what that is it is simply to take a bar of soap and rub it on a window. Most often the window was a car window. Since I lived on a farm in the country I didn’t have to be concerned much about anyone soaping the windows of my parents car unless we went to town. To keep from getting soaped on those occasions I came up with the idea of making a dummy to make our car look like it was occupied. When we were visiting my uncle and aunt in Villa Grove I found out that this dummy was fairly convincing . My uncle Dan was out for a walk when we got there and upon seeing our car with the dummy he said he went to our car thinking it was my father sitting in the drivers seat. I was pretty proud at the time, however looking back on it Dan often had a few beers in him so he may not have been so hard to fool.
Once Uncle Dan and another uncle were drunk and started walking up to houses on their knees so that they could trick or treat. I remember that my mother was disgusted by this, however us kids thought it was extremely funny. Another time Dan was drunk and offered to give anyone a dime who would kiss his forehead. Again us kids thought this was a good deal since a dime was worth something then. Still some of the adults were disturbed by Dan’s generosity.
Anyway back to the dummy. That dummy proved very effective in keeping our car from getting soaped and I decided to see what more he could do. One night one of the neighbor boys named Neil was plowing for the farmer across the road. He left his car parked along the road so that he could drive home when he was done. I went out and put the dummy in his car. The next morning I was surprised that the car and dummy were still there. It turns out that Neil was scared to see someone in his car and walked home. Neil’s mother had called my mother to tell her about the man in the car and found out about the dummy. With it being Halloween most everyone but Neil thought the trick was funny.
Strangely many years later Neil was murdered by his wife. She had become involved with another man and decided that it would be easier to hire someone to kill Neil than to get a divorce. The man who was hired for the job was supposed to make it look like a break-in. He failed the first time when Neil heard him in the garage and instead of coming out stayed inside and called the police. The guy got away and a few weeks later tried again and was successful. However it didn’t take the police long to figure out what had really happened and the wife was charged with murder within a few days of the crime.
Another story from my youth involves me being scared for a time. Me and some friends were driving around at night when my friend Steve started telling a story about a woman who seemed to be a witch. He told of some odd things that went on at her house, the details of which I am sorry that I don’t remember. I do remember that we decided to drive by her house, which was located at the start of what was called snake road. Now snake road would not appear out of the ordinary to most people unless you lived in Central Illinois where most of the roads are straight for miles and miles. Snake road which had a couple of curves stood out in that environment. I can still remember driving by the old farmhouse where the witch was supposed to have done some things like disappear and reappear. There were three of us in the car and two of us were worked up to a state of fear by Steve’s story. Once we got past the house Steve told us that he had made it all up. I do remember being a little disappointed that it wasn’t true, still I respected Steve’s ability to tell a convincing story.
I think Steve was convincing because he seemed like a matter of the fact guy. He often carried a slide rule and was into computers before most people. He didn’t seem like the type to come up with a story about witches. So I think that made him more believable.
Sadly, about twenty years ago Steve was killed in a car accident on a foggy morning on his way to work. I can remember visiting him in the town where he worked on computers for an insurance company. Frequently he would be interrupted by someone calling from work to ask a question about the computers. He was still the same matter of fact responsible guy that he almost always was.
Now, I started out to tell a few stories of Halloween and at first had only thought about the first part of each story and not the second part about what happened later. I was struck by how the first part as with most scary stories involved an unfamiliar horror while the second part was of the more familiar which turned out to be a horror.
The house here is not connected to this story. I took it about a year ago in Danville and thought it might make a good Halloween picture someday. The last two stories both are from where I live. One in the house and one on the road in front. And actually neither for some reason are scary to me since I never felt threatened.
The first happened this time of year two years ago. I was walking on the road that runs in front of our house shortly after sunset. I sensed more than saw something coming toward me from my left. I reacted by jerking backward slightly and then I saw a white tubular object pass in front of me at shoulder level. I watched it as it passed and it started to rise and look back at me. I sensed that it was intelligent and aware of me. The object after looking back rose a little more and disappeared. In its movement it reminded me most of a snake. I didn’t feel threatened by it and my feeling was that it was surprised to see me. I have no idea what it was, however it was as real as anything I have ever seen. In some ways it reminded me of a cartoon animation. It definitely was unlike anything that I have seen before or since.
The second experience is one of hearing and not seeing. I often work on a computer in the basement. For a time nobody, but me was home on a regular basis although people would come and go. During this time Occasionally I would hear the door open and someone walk into the kitchen. Most often there would follow footsteps as if someone was moving around upstairs. More than a few times I would go and see who was home only to find that no one was there. I would puzzle over this however it didn’t disturb me. Our house is more than a hundred years old and a lot of people have lived here and some have even died here. So I suppose that if there are such things as ghosts there could be some here.
So these are my scary stories. At least the ones with a supernatural element. What they mean I have no clear idea other than if they aren’t the result of some trick my mind was playing then there is on occasion some odd things going on around here.
The picture is of Harold’s in Danville, IL. Some people say it can be a scary place to go into at night. I don’t know since I have only taken pictures of the place. Still in general I have mostly found the bars that are supposed to be scary to be a disappointment. Although I don’t go into bars much anymore so that may have changed. Maybe the scariest experience I ever had in a bar was when the working class bar the Dodge House in Champaign changed to the Office II. I went in there late in the afternoon on a Friday and it was filled with office drones freshly released from their cubicles. Most of the guys were wearing ties. I still remember how unsettled I was by seeing this.
Now with this being the Halloween season a more proper subject would be the supernatural type of scary. My strongest memory here is of a abandoned farm house. Back in the 70′s when I was in high school my father had worked out a deal to remove some woodwork from the house and I was helping him. The house had been built by my great-grandfather probably in the 1880’s and hadn’t been lived in for years. While we were there I had the strange feeling of the presence of a young woman. Think what you will of my state of sanity, however that is what I felt. Strangely while we were removing the woodwork we found some letters that had somehow gotten behind the woodwork from a young woman to her boyfriend. I wish now that I had investigated more and found out if there was any story in these letters, however looking back on it I seem to have been fairly incurious about many things in my youth.
Sometime during these days my friend Tim and me were driving around in the country one night. I decided to show him the house we were working on. We pulled into the lane leading up to the house and saw a glowing light coming from one of the upper windows. By glowing I mean it was much brighter than what you would get from a light bulb. And there seemed to be some solid mass to it. We both looked at each other and without words knew that we each just wanted to get out of there. So I backed down the lane and drove away. When we talked about it later we agreed that we each had the feeling that we weren’t supposed to be there. Now however I do wish that I had investigated more. There definitely should not have been any lights in the house since there was no electricity. However I would guess that there could be plenty of worldly explanations for what we saw. At least I have found that to be the case now that I tend to check further into odd things that I see.
Well, I do have some more stories, however I will save these for another post. I have a goal of keeping my posts to a reasonable length. I took a week where I didn’t get on the computer much so I did miss my goal of posting at least every couple of days. Hopefully I can get back into the habit.
