Florence

When my friend, Nate, told us he wanted to take us to the local cemetery to see a ghost late one November night, I only went along because Nate isn't a prankster.

Nate drove with Jason in the front seat while Jake and I sat in the back giggling and joking around.

It was illegal to be in the cemetery after dark (because of the fear of vandalism) and the police station was near by, so as soon as we entered the gates (which remain unlocked during the winter months) we turned off the car lights.

It was creepy, of course, but that just goes along with the territory. There was a specific path you needed to take in order to get to the point where Nate wanted us. You would first enter by the main gate, drive to a fork in the road, make a left and drive straight until the road began to curve. At that point you would make a final left and drive down the road just a few feet. Then you would put the car into reverse and back up into a short dead end so that the cross section was in front of you. You could see all the way down the street, that is lined on both sides with strikingly high pines.

We took this route exactly, turned off the car and just waited. Because I didn't think I would see anything, and because I needed to relieve some of my nervous tension, I began to tease Jake. He teased right back, so we were both surprised when Nate exclaimed "did you see her? did you see her?" We quickly looked up, and I could see something! There was a pale green mist on the road, only about two feet high, about twenty feet from where we sat. She moved from one side of the road to the other, then up the road a little, then down. Sometimes she would disappear, only to come back a minute or two later. I had the strangest feeling watching her; I had always thought if I were to see a ghost that I would be scared stiff, but I wasn't scared at all. I was simply surprised!

We watched her for a long time, and finally decided it was time to go home.

Information of this sort spreads fast, and soon our whole high school knew about the ghost. Supposedly, she was the ghost of a young girl whose gravestone is on that road. Her name is Florence (I'm omitting the last name). There were all kinds of rumours about how she died and why she was sticking around in ghost form, but the truth is that most of it was just gossip. Nobody really knows for sure.

We went back a few times to see her again, and were almost never disappointed. However, sometimes when we'd arrive at our spot, other kids from school were already there.

The last time I saw her was the strangest. Jake and Shannon (another friend) and I had agreed to meet Nate at the cemetery late one night a couple of weeks after we first saw her. We were sitting in the car waiting for Nate to arrive and watching Florence move up and down the road. Suddenly we spotted a big vehicle headed in our direction. "it's just Nate," somebody said, and we turned our attention back to Florence. All of the sudden she grew really bright, the brightest I had ever seen her and then just disappeared. At that point we realized the huge truck headed our way was not our friend's and we decided to get out of there as fast as we could!

We began to speed down the street when a couple of police lights turned on and we knew we had been caught.

So, was Florence trying to warn us to leave quickly?

Jake, Shannon and I have always agreed that she was trying to warn us - unfortunately, we weren't quick enough!

That was seven years ago and I've only been back to try and see her once. It was few months ago, but she never appeared. Maybe she was tired of being the entertainment of lame high schoolers who had nothing better to do on a Saturday night!