The Horse Trails

There is a small patch of woods in the area where I live. It is called "The Horse Trails". In the 1960's people would rent horses from a nearby farm and take them on these trails. It used to be a great place to hike back then. My father built a tree house in those woods back in 1963, and it still stands today. Over the years houses were erected and more and more land was taken from this place. In the 1970's kids began drinking on the trails and leaving their empty bottles, and people began using it a place to throw old TVs, washing machines, and even shingles from their roofs. In the mid-seventies through the eighties, there were a lot of car accidents that occurred in there. Kids who were drunk would run off the road and crash a few hundred yards into the woods. The burned cars still remain in the deeper parts of the woods and swamps.

A few months ago, I went into those woods one night with my friend, it was around eight p.m. We used the Horse Trails as a short cut to get to each other's houses quicker and easier. We were walking for about a mile and we came to the part of the woods that led off onto my friends street. We said our 'see you tomorrows' and he was on his way while I still had to walk a mile back to get onto my street. I began my walk back, thinking about my girlfriend and other things. The woods were very dark. The only thing lighting my way was a flashlight that I had brought along. I had just started to whistle when I heard whispers behind me. I'm began to think, 'oh great, time to get a beating from the town hoodlums' when I heard one of the other voices humming to tune to a 1950's song. I don't know the name of the song, but I knew the tune. I also knew that no one who lived near me listened to the music of that time period anymore.

The whispers continued and I began to walk faster. Then the whispers began to turn to a chuckling when I picked up my pace. I could hear those whispers like they were coming from right next to me. I really began to get scared and I began to run. The chuckling then turned to a crazy sort of laughter, the kind that you hear from the patients in an institution. I didn't know what to do, I felt like I didn't know where I was, thats when it got too weird for me.

I was still running from the whispers and the laughter when it happened. I heard very loud stomping. I saw trees swaying back and forth from side to side. I saw a huge shadow coming, it had to be more than twenty feet high. It looked like the shadow of a gigantic football player, shoulders hunched up, and looking very agitated from it's body language. I got off of the trail and hid behind a tree to get out of it's way. I don't want to know what it was or what it would have done if it had seen me, but when it walked down the trail and passed me, the whispers stopped. The huge shadow continued walking on the trail and soon it disappeared in the distance.

I didn't know what to think, but I just got up enough courage to get out from where I was hiding and continue running to where I was bound for in the first place. I've never told anyone local about my occurrence, I figured that they'd all think I was crazy.

For all I know those whispers could have been from the ghosts of greasers that my father used to know, but I've never told him about it. I'll be sure to never go on those trails again.