Graveyard Mayhem

I have two stories to share here in one foul swoop. One of which I can attest to as I am the one who experienced the event. While the other is something told to me by a friend who accompanied me on the occasion of the other story, so I've got no reason to think that he's lying to me about his bit.

The first half is the story he told me, and it goes like this:

One night, my friend Alex (name changed to protect the innocent and all that) was out with a small group of our mutual friends. This was about two years ago, back when we hung out with the same crowd, all of whom were very into paranormal activity. Some people might consider it dangerous, but we really were thrilled by the concept of going out and seeking any kind of possible paranormal activity.

Well, I live in North East Texas, very close to the location where a slightly well known killer named Jerry Animal McFadden murdered three people. It's local legend that where two of the bodies were found (a place the local kids call The Mountain) is haunted by the spirits of said victims. The third victim was found near my grandfather's house, in a ditch on the highway, and as far as I know there's never been any report of activity down there.

One night, while out with this mutual group of friends, Alex decided that, on the way to the Mountain, it might be fun to make a detour down into New Mountain Cemetery. It is an old, un-cared for plot of land where, many years back, segregated black people were taken and haphazardly buried. It's a very unfriendly place.

The vibe there is quite nasty and, I feel, with good reason. I wasn't there on this particular occasion, but when I have gone down, I haven't stayed very long. As a matter of fact, I once went to this place with my now ex-girlfriend, and she made me promise never to go back. I don't know why, but apparently she felt a particularly dark presence keeping close tabs on me the entire time we were there.

But I digress.

So Alex and this group of friends pull off on the left side of what is a long little dirt road that goes deep down into an uninhabited portion of woods, finally emptying out into the cemetery which is to the right of the dirt road. The landscape is quite hilly and soft. It isn't the kind of place that seems logical to bury your recently departed, and perhaps this is the point. As I said, I don't think the people buried there were exactly held in high esteem by the bigots that dug their graves.

Anyhow, it's pretty late at night by this point and the cemetery is dark. The moon, as I'm told, was nowhere to be seen and the sky had been overcast for most of the week, so stars were pretty much a non factor as well.

The group go about their standard amateur spiel -- setting up a tape recorder, hoping to hear voices in the white noise, taking some digital photos hoping to capture orbs, wandering the landscape in search of hot spots or places in which the temperature shifts more than a couple of degrees for no really apparent reason.

Everything seems to be going pretty well. No one's gotten any bad vibes, no hot spots are wandered upon . . . but then a couple of these mutual friends start to feel bored. They decide to start horsing around. I'm not entirely sure what went on (this is the only spot where the story is really fuzzy) but somehow one of the numb skulls manages to disintegrate a tomb stone. They don't just bump it and knock it over; no, they shatter the thing to pieces. To this day, no one's told me exactly how this has happened, but I've been out to it, I've seen the crumbled tomb stone. All I can figure is perhaps they got to rough housing and in the dark one of them managed to fall on it (they are very old tomb stones) or someone kicked it.

In any case, the whole graveyard fills with silence. The group are stunned because, lets face it, destroying a tomb stone in a cemetery with a history of negative energy is not a good thing, no matter how you slice it. There's no window dressing to make a situation like this less uncomfortable.

The forest suddenly went deathly quiet.

Where you would generally hear squirrels rustling in the grass and tree frogs singing in the humid summer night there was now perfect silence. If you're from the city you can't comprehend just how excruciatingly spooky it is for a forest to just fall quiet, especially one as large and (once) robust as the one here in East Texas. Most people think it's quiet out in the country, but in this area, that's far from true.

However, at that point, the forest went dead. Alex told me he felt a cold dread creeping up in him, and suddenly called for everyone to pile back into the van. They made a haphazard dash and, in the darkened confusion, possibly toppled another tomb stone. As I said earlier, the soil is very soft out there, knocking them over wouldn't be hard to do.

The group climbed into the van, and from what I hear not a one of them were feeling very macho when, as one might expect in this kind of situation, Alex couldn't get the van to start. The engine, for whatever reason (mechanical or paranormal) wouldn't turn over.

Suddenly, one of the guys (who we will call Curley) in the back jumped out of his seat and piled into the front of the van. Alex, exasperated, demanded to know what was going on. He was started to learn that something had just slapped the back of the van. It was dark far too dark outside to see anything, but Curley insisted that something had smacked, in a very fleshy manner, against the back windshield of the van.

Alex is befuddled and, most probably, a little terrified by this revelation and continues in vain start the van. Suddenly, the sound is repeated, only this time Curley isn't the only one who hears it. A sense of panic sat in as a cadence of extremely hard, fleshy impacts began to rock the van, all directed toward the back windshield.

I've been told that a series of accusations, apologies to the grave bearers and, to quote, "cries for mommy" spread through the van like wild fire, before the engine finally turned over. Alex backed the van up, turned and exited the cemetery quite fast. Curley has apparently claimed that, when the van backed up, it sounded as though it ran someone down, like something being hit by the bumper and then sucked under the back tired. To put it plainly, he said it sounded like they ran over whatever was having its way with the back of the van.

When they finally got back into town, they stopped at the local all-night gas station and exited the van to get a bit of fresh air and calm down. Of course, the calm didn't last very long, as Curley, who had wandered to the back of the van, suddenly stated shouting for the others.

When they came around, they found a series of hand prints pressed in on the dirt-coated windshield. Many hands, from child to adult, were apparently pounding angrily at the back of the van that night.

Alex hasn't really driven the van in a long time, but I hear rumors that whenever the back windshield gets dirty, the hand prints reappear. Wash it all you like, when dirt settles on it again, those hand prints are there. A disturbing reminder of how not to act when visiting such a negative place.

* * * * *

The second half of this is a completely different situation, but one that involves myself and Alex. I'll keep this short, as the first half ran surprisingly long.

Several months after the events in the cemetery, Alex and I got into his truck (which he had started driving in lieu of the van) and drove down to a local dock which, rumor has it, is haunted by the spirt of a teen couple who were found dead there about twenty years ago. I'm not really highly versed on the story, but we decided to go check it out anyway.

Since the escapade in the graveyard, Alex had gotten pretty big on using spells to purify the body and bless the location before he leaves. Apparently, he experienced some adverse effects from visiting the graveyard after it all happened, and he wasn't going to take chances that he might agitate something like that again.

Of course, I didn't know what to think of it all, and when we left the dock after a fairly uneventful time I forgot to even consider doing the purifying ritual, which was probably a mistake, because I'm fairly certain I took something home with me.

At the time, I lived on my own in a triple wide trailer that had apparently been home to more than one death. However, they were all caused by natural causes. In other words, I was never worried about a powerful rage gripping the home and killing all whom entered.

But when I came back from the boat dock, something was different. I started to get sick a lot, feeling nauseous and suffering from nagging headaches that were migraine strength. Then the hallucinating began. I started leaving a light on in the living room at night because I was beginning to feel uneasy in my own house.

I would see shadows snaking across the living room ceiling, which was just off from my bedroom, during the night when I was trying to sleep.

The shadow of what looked to be a full grown adult would appear and glide across the ceiling and walls. Imagine Peter Pan trying to reclaim his naughty shadow, if you will. It was like this. The shadow never seemed to be dejected from the walls. It was like someone was walking through my house, only I couldn't see them. The light, however, could not be fooled, and the shadow of the intruder was projected at the walls and ceiling.

Then there was the television.

I've never told anybody about this particular piece of what went on, but I'm willing to share it here.

I woke up once in the very early morning to find my television turned on. I didn't have cable or satellite, or for that matter an antenna that I could get television with. So I was slightly surprised to see one of my favorite television programs playing on the TV. The show is called Doctor Who. I've been watching it ever since I was a small child.

The funny thing was, I didn't recognize the particular episode. This was funny because I've only ever watched the show on video or DVD, and it isn't a show that really graces the television waves these days in my area. Of course, I didn't have a way to watch regular TV anyhow, so the fact that I was watching my favorite show and it wasn't one I had seen before was a bit of an enigma.

I started to get out of bed and walk over to the TV, but the lead character in the show suddenly spun around on his heel and leered at me. I'm not making this up, and as I said I'm positive it was a hallucination. But the character (called the Doctor, or Doctor Who depending on who you ask) turned and looked at me from the TV. It was disturbing on more than one level, because the character (who has been played by many actors, the one in question being from the 1960s) was always so gentle and kind. Not now, though. His eyes were intense and hard. His voice was callous and mean.

I fell back on the bed and simply stared at the screen. I didn't know what to make of it. Here's the transcript (as best I can remember) of what happened in the next few moments:

The Doctor: "You like mucking about, don't you?"

I didn't think he was addressing me. How could he, after all?

The Doctor: "Not going to answer me, eh? Well fine. I've got time."

A little time passed here, mostly because I was just too out of sorts to answer. Finally, I mustered up a little courage and said,

Thomas: "Are you talking to me?"

The Doctor: "He speaks. Well, it's certainly about time. Going to answer the question, or simply stammer like an idiot?"

Thomas: "What question?"

The Doctor: "I admit, it did come across as a bit of a rhetorical, but it isn't. Now answer me -- you like mucking around, don't you?"

Thomas: "What do you mean?"

The Doctor: "You like to play with ghosts. Come into their home, trample on their memory, walking around all willy-nilly with a swagger to your step. Living isn't so great, you know . . . I could show you what it's like . . . over here . . . It really isn't bad, once you get used to the pain. Well, if you get used to the pain."

Thomas: "This isn't real . . . I'm dreaming."

The Doctor: "We're going to kill you."

This probably isn't a completely accurate transcript, but it's pretty close to how I remember it. That last thing he said to . . . "We're going to kill you." It wasn't even the character's voice anymore. It was hard and cold, so deep and full of base. He came toward the TV screen all the sudden, as though he were going to just come right out of it.

I jumped off the bed and ran from the room, burst out the front door and collapsed in the front yard near a tree. I will admit that I was a bit of a sobbing mess. I had, after all, just been told by my favorite childhood character and actor that he was going to kill me.

Or, more specifically, "We're going to kill you."

I refused to go back into the house. I left the door open and, thankfully, I had slept in my cloths, so my car keys were on me. I drove over to Alex's house and told him about everything except the television bit. It was just too surreal. By the time I got to his house, it felt like it had been a bad dream.

But after I told him about the sickness and the shadows, he came to the house and did a purifying ritual. When we got back there, the TV was off. There was no sign that it had ever been on. The front door was still hanging open as well.

After the ritual, things went pretty much back to normal, but I began having bad dreams about the TV incident. I wound up having a bit of a mental break down and was sent to spend an hour with a psychiatrist twice a week for a handful of months. It was definitely an emotionally trying experience, one that I've not forgotten.

An interesting side note -- the actor who played the Doctor (and was in that hallucination) was Patrick Troughton. He played Father Brennan in the Omen, a film which has a reputation for wired phenomenon on set.

It was probably one of the worst experiences in my life.