Haunts

Some of the adults were often telling ghost stories to the children. It was menacing at times for them to repeat the same stories all the time. Uncle Luke was the worst one, to tell of ghosts lived just down the road. He picked areas that he knew we would have to at one time have to travel. As I slowed down to go around the curve for the rest of my life I will sense that there is a ghost riding in the back seat of my car. In Uncle Luke’s stories, the ghost that rode with you to the curve was Hank Brown. He was buried in the Sledge Cemetery; the cemetery was abandoned by caretakers. The ground that the cemetery was on was on the hillside and could not be seen from the road. It was just past the creek before the Old Phillips home place. The Phillips house was already falling down in the early seventies. Uncle Luke had one arm that was missing. He loved to scare little kids with the nub that been left when he was working in his grandfather’s saw mill. He had lost the arm as a teenager. It was told that they took his arm with him to Doctor Bayle’s office in Anderson. The arm could not be saved, so it was buried in the back yard.

His nub did not really scare me as bad as he wished that it did. The moment he came into our house he started picking on the kids. He nudged my little brother and I as soon as he came in the door. If my cousins were there, which was most of the time, he would punch all four of us as he came into the kitchen. My grandmother always fussed at him because I was afraid of my own shadow anyway. She did not realize that the stubby arm did not scare me as bad as the ghost stories he told. It always got her gourd because it was so hard to get me to go outside in the dark to do anything. I would freak if I had to take the dish water out. The dishwater only took a minute to dump. It only took a second for me to dump. I ran with the dish pan just far enough that she would not fuss that it was too close to the house. Going to get clothes that had been drying on the barbed wire fence would terrify me. I could always feel as though something was following me. I got chills that ran all the way down my back as well as all through me when I was out in the dark around the barn lot grabbing clothes.
Uncle Luke usually did not eat with us as many of the visitors did. He ate with us more after his wife died. He was married to Aunt Mae; this was my granddaddy’s oldest sister. She was the sister I remember dying first. There had been another to die, Myrtle; she died before we came from up-north. Uncle Luke was known for his tall tales and being full of crap. He was much younger than Aunt Mae. I think this made him have an air of great self worth. His hair was always burred off close, and his head was shaped like a jug. Thus, he was called Jug-Head by many of the elder men in the community; His looks and air made the stories he told of ghosts even more believable to me. He traveled around the area at all hours of the night, so this made me know for sure that he telling about real ghosts that followed the living as they passed the stretch of road between our home and the dump.
The ghost that I imagined the most vividly was the one that rose in front of the doctor and my great-granddaddy. The two men were headed to Lexington to deliver one of the Robertson children. This was Grand dad’s daughter and the doctor’s sister in law. The trip was made in a horse and flat bedded wagon. It was close to midnight as they made the Ford Bridge that was just before the cemetery. The horses were already starting to fidget as the two men in the wagon started across the creek. Each of the horses almost stopped at the far side of the bridge. Grand Dad was cussing for them to get on; Doctor Bayle’s had the whip beating them to make them go the five miles to Lexington. He was slashing the whip and Grand Dad was yelling his devilish vocabulary that only he could spit out. Both men were unaware of what the horses were sensing up ahead. The creek bottom was to the left for a short piece and begins the hill that Sledge Cemetery sat upon. The path to the cemetery is more than just a path, somewhat of a road that wheels of wagons had made. This is where both of the men realized that the horses were spooked by what was raising in the road in front of them. Grand Dad and the doctor both had pistols strapped to their sides. Grand Dad was as usual a bit tight so reaching for the gun was what he thought of first. He fired the gun until all the bullets were gone. Doctor Bayle’s gun was still at his hip until Grand Dad grabs it and uses it also. Doc was only thinking go! Go! Go! He beat those horses as hard as he could. All during this time the white figure in the road was moving right in front of them as though it was floating backwards. The noise was as the men told it as the wind was their names to them. Doc Bayles said he was so afraid he never even thought of the gun that he carried on his hip. The flight of the monster would end at the curve just past the Andrew Phillips house. The two men rounded the curve whipping the wagon behind the house. Looking back down the road there was nothing there. It was the calm of night as if nothing had ever been there. Where the name Hank Brown come from neither men could ever say; it was just like both men new that Hank was who was chasing them even though he had been resting on the front corner of Slegde Graveyard for nine years. He had drowned when the creek sweep him and his horse to the Beaver Dam. The Beaver Dam is the next bridge along second creek.