American Folklore

The Golden Hand

2009-10-29T18:57:06Z

excerpted from Spooky Oregon
retold by
S. E. Schlosser

He never paid much attention to the neighbors living on his city block until the day the pretty middle-aged widow moved in two doors down from him. She was plump and dark with sparkling eyes, and she always wore dark gloves on her hands, even indoors.

He went out of his way to meet her, and they often "bumped" into each other in the street and stood talking. One day, as she brushed the hair back from her forehead, he caught a glimpse of gold under the glove on her right arm. When he asked her about it, she grinned coquettishly and told him that she had lost one hand a few years back and now wore a golden hand in its place. In that moment, a terrible lust woke in his heart - not to possess the lady herself, but to possess the solid gold hand that she wore under her long black gloves.

He courted the widow with every stratagem known to him; flowers, trips to the theater, gifts, compliments. And he won her heart. Within a month, they were standing in front of a minister, promising to love one another until death parted them. Within another month, he was a widower and had buried his ailing wife in the local cemetery - without her golden hand. It had been so easy. A slow poison, administered daily to resemble a wasting disease. No one - not his wife, not the family doctor, not their neighbors - suspected murder. And the night after the funeral, he slept with the golden hand under his pillow.

It was a dark night. Clouds covered the moon, and the wind was whistling down the chimney and rattling the shutters of the town house. He was deeply asleep when the door to his room slammed open with a loud bang and a wild wind whipped around the room, scattering papers and books and clothing and table coverings every which way. He sat up, startled by the sudden noise, and his pulse began to pound when he saw a greenish-white light bobbing slowly into the room. Before his eyes, the light slowly grew larger, taking on the shape of his dead wife. She was missing one arm. "Where is my golden hand?" she moaned, her dark eyes blazing with red fire. "Give me my golden hand!"

He tried to speak, but his mouth was so dry with fear that he could only make soft gasping noises. The glowing phantom moved closer to him, her once-lovely face twisted into a hideous green mask. "You stole my life and you stole my hand. Give me back my golden hand!" the dead wife howled. The noise rose higher and higher, and the phantom pulsed with a strident green light that smote his eyes, making them water.

He cowered back against his pillows, and the hard shape of the golden hand pressed against his back. And then he felt the golden hand twitch underneath him as the mangled green phantom that had been his wife swooped down upon him, pressing his face against the pillow in a suffocating green cloud. He tried to scream, but it was cut off suddenly by a terrible pressure against his throat, cutting off his breath. The world went black.

The next morning, when the housemaid came into the room with her master's morning cup of tea, she found him lying dead on the floor, with the golden hand clutched around his throat.

The Hairy Toe

2009-10-29T18:46:07Z

excerpted from Spooky Maryland

retold by S.E. Schlosser

Once there was an old woman who went out in the woods to dig up some roots to cook for dinner. She spotted something funny sticking out of the leaves and dug around until she uncovered a great big hairy toe. There was some good meat on that toe which would make a real tasty dinner, so the old woman put it in her basket and took it home.

When she got back to her cottage, the old woman boiled up a kettle-full of hairy toe soup, which she ate for dinner that night. It was the best meal she'd had in weeks! The old woman went to bed that night with a full stomach and a big smile.

Along about midnight, a cold wind started blowing in the tops of the trees around the old woman's house. A large black cloud crept over the moon and from the woods a hollow voice rumbled: "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!" Inside the house, the old woman stirred uneasily in her bed and nervously pulled the covers up over her ears.

From the woods there came a stomp-stomp-stomping noise as the wind whistled and jerked at the treetops. In the clearing at the edge of the forest, a hollow voice said: "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!" Inside the house, the old woman shuddered and turned over in her sleep.

A stomp, stomp, stomping sound came from the garden path outside the cottage. The night creatures shivered in their burrows as a hollow voice howled: "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!" Inside the house, the old woman snapped awake. Her whole body shook with fright as she listened to the angry howling in her garden. Jumping out of bed, she ran to the door and barred it. Once the cottage was secure, she lay back down to sleep.

Suddenly, the front door of the cottage burst open with a bang, snapping the bar in two and sending it flying into the corners of the room. There came the stomp, stomp, stomping noise of giant feet walking up the stairs. Peeping out from under the covers, the old woman saw a massive figure filling her doorway. It said: "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!"

The old woman sat bolt upright in terror and shouted: "I ATE your hairy toe!"

"Yes, you did," the giant figure said very gently as it advanced into the room.

No one living in the region ever saw the old woman again. The only clue to her disappearance was a giant footprint a neighbor found pressed deep into the loose soil of the meadow beside the house. The footprint was missing the left big toe.

You can read more Maryland folktales and ghost stories in Spooky Maryland by S.E. Schlosser.

The Hook

2009-10-29T16:07:10Z

Excerpted from Spooky Campfire Tales

retold by S.E. Schlosser

The reports had been on the radio all day, though she hadn't paid much attention to them. Some crazy man had escaped from the state asylum. They were calling him the Hook Man since he had lost his right arm and had it replaced with a hook. He was a killer, and everyone in the region was warned to keep watch and report anything suspicious. But this didn't interest her. She was more worried about what to wear on her date.

After several consultation calls with friends, she chose a blue outfit in the very latest style and was ready and waiting on the porch when her boyfriend came to pick her up in his car. They went to a drive-in movie with another couple, then dropped them off and went parking in the local lover's lane. The blue outfit was a hit, and she cuddled close to her boyfriend as they kissed to the sound of romantic music on the radio.

Then the announcer came on and repeated the warning she had heard that afternoon. An insane killer with a hook in place of his right hand was loose in the area. Suddenly, the dark, moonless night didn't seem so romantic to her. The lover's lane was secluded and off the beaten track. A perfect spot for a deranged mad-man to lurk, she thought, pushing her amorous boyfriend away.

"Maybe we should get out of here," she said. "That Hook Man sounds dangerous."

"Awe, c'mon babe, it's nothing," her boyfriend said, trying to get in another kiss. She pushed him away again.

"No, really. We're all alone out here. I'm scared," she said.

They argued for a moment. Then the car shook a bit, as if something…or someone…had touched it. She gave a shriek and said: "Get us out of here now!"

"Jeeze," her boyfriend said in disgust, but he turned the key and went roaring out of the lover's lane with a screeching of his tires.

They drove home in stony silence, and when they pulled into her driveway, he refused to help her out of the car. He was being so unreasonable, she fumed to herself. She opened the door indignantly and stepped into her driveway with her chin up and her lips set. Whirling around, she slammed the door as hard as she could. And then she screamed.

Her boyfriend leapt out of the car and caught her in his arms. "What is it? What's wrong?" he shouted. Then he saw it. A bloody hook hung from the handle of the passenger-side door.

You can read more ghost stories in Spooky Campfire Tales by S.E. Schlosser.

Don't Turn on the Light

2009-10-28T19:55:02Z

excerpted from Spooky Maryland

retold by S.E. Schlosser

She commandeered the room in the basement of her dorm as soon as she realized she would have to pull an all-nighter in order to prepare for tomorrow’s final exam. Her roommate, Jenna, liked to get to bed early, so she packed up everything she thought she would need and went downstairs to study . . . and study . . . and study some more.

It was two o’clock, when she realized that she’d left one of the textbooks upstairs on her bed. With a dramatic sigh, she rose, and climbed the stairs slowly to her third-floor dorm room.
The lights were dim in the long hallway, and the old boards creaked under her weary tread. She reached her room and turned the handle as softly as she could, pushing the door open just enough to slip inside, so that the hall lights wouldn’t wake her roommate.

The room was filled with a strange, metallic smell. She frowned a bit, her arms breaking out into chills. There was a strange feeling of malice in the room, as if a malevolent gaze were fixed upon her. It was a mind trick; the all-nighter was catching up with her.

She could hear Jenna breathing on the far side of the room—a heavy sound, almost as if she had been running. Jenna must have picked up a cold during the last tense week before finals.

She crept along the wall until she reached her bed, groping among the covers for the stray history textbook. In the silence, she could hear a steady drip-drip-drip sound. She sighed silently. Facilities would have to come to fix the sink in the bathroom…again.

Her fingers closed on the textbook. She picked it up softly and withdrew from the room as silently as she could.

Relieved to be out of the room, she hurried back downstairs, collapsed into an overstuffed chair and studied until six o’clock. She finally decided that enough was enough. If she slipped upstairs now, she could get a couple hours’ sleep before her nine o’clock exam.

The first of the sun’s rays were beaming through the windows as she slowly slid the door open, hoping not to awaken Jenna. Her nose was met by an earthy, metallic smell a second before her eyes registered the scene in her dorm room. Jenna was spread-eagled on top of her bed against the far wall, her throat cut from ear to ear and her nightdress stained with blood. Two drops of blood fell from the saturated blanket with a drip-drip noise that sounded like a leaky faucet.

Scream after scream poured from her mouth, but she couldn’t stop herself any more than she could cease wringing her hands. All along the hallway, doors slammed and footsteps came running down the passage.

Within moments other students had gathered in her doorway, and one of her friends gripped her arm with a shaking hand and pointed a trembling finger toward the wall. Her eyes widened in shock at what she saw. Then she fainted into her friend’s arms.

On the wall above her bed, written in her roommate’s blood, were the words: “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”

Bloody Mary

2009-10-27T18:23:42Z

excerpted from Spooky Pennsylvania

retold by S.E. Schlosser

She lived deep in the forest in a tiny cottage and sold herbal remedies for a living. Folks living in the town nearby called her Bloody Mary, and said she was a witch. None dared cross the old crone for fear that their cows would go dry, their food-stores rot away before winter, their children take sick of fever, or any number of terrible things that an angry witch could do to her neighbors.

Then the little girls in the village began to disappear, one by one. No one could find out where they had gone. Grief-stricken families searched the woods, the local buildings, and all the houses and barns, but there was no sign of the missing girls. A few brave souls even went to Bloody Mary's home in the woods to see if the witch had taken the girls, but she denied any knowledge of the disappearances. Still, it was noted that her haggard appearance had changed. She looked younger, more attractive. The neighbors were suspicious, but they could find no proof that the witch had taken their young ones.

Then came the night when the daughter of the miller rose from her bed and walked outside, following an enchanted sound no one else could hear. The miller's wife had a toothache and was sitting up in the kitchen treating the tooth with an herbal remedy when her daughter left the house. She screamed for her husband and followed the girl out of the door. The miller came running in his nightshirt. Together, they tried to restrain the girl, but she kept breaking away from them and heading out of town.

The desperate cries of the miller and his wife woke the neighbors. They came to assist the frantic couple. Suddenly, a sharp-eyed farmer gave a shout and pointed towards a strange light at the edge of the woods. A few townsmen followed him out into the field and saw Bloody Mary standing beside a large oak tree, holding a magic wand that was pointed towards the miller's house. She was glowing with an unearthly light as she set her evil spell upon the miller's daughter.

The townsmen grabbed their guns and their pitchforks and ran toward the witch. When she heard the commotion, Bloody Mary broke off her spell and fled back into the woods. The far-sighted farmer had loaded his gun with silver bullets in case the witch ever came after his daughter. Now he took aim and shot at her. The bullet hit Bloody Mary in the hip and she fell to the ground. The angry townsmen leapt upon her and carried her back into the field, where they built a huge bonfire and burned her at the stake.

As she burned, Bloody Mary screamed a curse at the villagers. If anyone mentioned her name aloud before a mirror, she would send her spirit to revenge herself upon them for her terrible death. When she was dead, the villagers went to the house in the wood and found the unmarked graves of the little girls the evil witch had murdered. She had used their blood to make her young again.

From that day to this, anyone foolish enough to chant Bloody Mary's name three times before a darkened mirror will summon the vengeful spirit of the witch. It is said that she will tear their bodies to pieces and rip their souls from their mutilated bodies. The souls of these unfortunate ones will burn in torment as Bloody Mary once was burned, and they will be trapped forever in the mirror.

Bloody Mary Returns: When her evil stepmother kills both her brothers, a young girl must fight for her life using every resource she has at her disposal.

Read the full legend of Bloody Mary in Spooky Pennsylvania by S.E. Schlosser.

Burnt Church

2009-10-26T23:01:22Z

Retold by S.E. Schlosser

She was sophisticated, poised, and cultured. In retrospect, this should have made them suspicious. A teacher like her should be presiding over a girl’s school in London or New York, not seeking a position in a small town in Georgia. But at the time, they were too delighted by her application to ask any questions.

“It will be good for our daughter to learn some culture,” the attorney’s wife told the pastor’s wife.

“And our boy may find some table manners at last,” the pastor’s wife responded with a smile.

School was called into session in the local church shortly after the arrival of the teacher. And soon, the children were bringing glowing reports home. “Teacher” was special. Teacher taught them manners and diction as well as reading, writing and arithmetic. All the children loved teacher.

The parents were delighted by the progress their children were making at school. Teacher had been a real find. A God-send, said the preacher’s wife.

But not everyone in town was so satisfied. The local ne-er-do well – called Smith – had more sinister stories to tell.

“That woman ain’t natural,” he told the blacksmith, waving a bottle of whisky for emphasis. “I seen her out in the woods after dark, dancing around a campfire and chanting in a strange language.”

“Nonsense,” the blacksmith retorted, calmly hammering a headed iron bar on his anvil.

“They say she’s got an altar in her room and it ain’t an altar to the Almighty,” Smith insisted, leaning forward and blowing his boozy breath into the blacksmith’s face.

“You’re drunk,” said the blacksmith, lifting the hot iron so it barred the man from coming any closer. “Go home and sleep it off.”

Smith left the smithy, but he continued to talk wild about the Teacher in the weeks that followed. During those weeks, a change gradually came over the school children. The typical high-jinks and pranks that all children played lessened. Their laughter died away. And when they did misbehave, it was on a much more ominous scale than before. Items began to disappear from houses and farms. Expensive items like jewelry, farm tools, and money. When children talked back to their parents, there was a hard-edge to their voices, and they did not apologize for their rudeness, even when punished.

“And my daughter lied to me the other day,” the attorney’s wife said to the pastor’s wife in distress. “I saw her punch her younger brother and steal an apple from him, and she denied it to my face. She practically called me a liar!”

“The games the children play back in the woods frighten me,” the pastor’s wife confessed. “They chant in a strange language, and they move in such a strange manner. Almost like a ritual dance.”

“Could it be something they are learning at school?” asked the attorney’s wife.

“Surely not! Teacher is such a sweet, sophisticated lady,” said the pastor’s wife.

But they exchanged uneasy glances.

Smith, on the other hand, was sure. “That teacher is turning the young’uns to the Devil, that’s what she’s doing,” he proclaimed up and down the streets of the town.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the preacher told him when they passed in front of the mercantile.

“I ain’t ridiculous. You are blind,” Smith told him. “That teacher ought to be burned at the stake, like they burned the witches in Salem.”

The pastor, pale with wrath, ordered Smith out of his sight. But the ne’er-do-well’s words rang in his mind and would not be pushed away. And the children continued to behave oddly. Almost like they were possessed. He would, the preacher decided reluctantly, have to look into it someday soon.

That day came sooner than he thought. The very next Monday, his little boy came down with a cold, and his mother kept him home from school. When the pastor returned from his duties for a late lunch, his wife came running up to him as soon as he entered the door. She was pale with fright.

“I heard him chanting something over and over again in his bedroom,” she gasped. “So I crept to the door to listen. He was saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards!”

The pastor gasped and clutched his Bible to his chest, as goose bumps erupted over his body. This was positively satanic. And there was nowhere the boy could have learned such a thing in this town, unless he learned it…at school.

At that moment, the attorney’s wife came bursting in the door behind him.

“Quick pastor, quick,” she cried. “Smith is running through town with a torch, talking about burning down the school. The children are still in class!”

The pastor raced out of the house with the two woman at his heels. They and the other townsfolk who followed them were met by a huge cloud of smoke coming from the direction of the church, where the school children had their lessons. The building was already ablaze as frantic parents beat at the flames with wet sacks, or threw buckets of water from the pump into the inferno. Smith could be heard cackling unrepentantly from the far side of the building, which was full of the screams of the trapped students and their teacher.

The fire blazed with a supernatural kind of force, and the pastor thought he heard the sound of the Teacher laughing from within the building when it became apparent that no one could be saved.

The church burnt for several hours, and when it was finally extinguished, there was nothing left. Mourning parents tried to find something of their children to bury, and Smith wisely disappeared from town, his mission against the works of Satan completed.

The teacher’s burnt body was buried deep in the ground and covered with brick tomb. The children’s smaller bodies were interred beneath wooden crosses. Of all the student’s in the school that fall, only the pastor’s small son survived.

To this day, voices can be heard in the graveyard of at Burnt Church, chanting unintelligible words, as the school children and the teacher once chanted in the woods outside town. Sometimes apparitions are seen, and dark walkers who roam the graveyard at night. And they say that a brick taken from the grave of the evil teacher can set fire to objects on which they are placed.

VIDEO: See S.E. Schlosser on Streets of Fear: Burnt Church Road

The Skeleton Thief

2009-10-16T15:49:44Z

A Halloween Treasure Hunt

Materials: Skeleton footprints, Cauldron filled with Candy (prize), decorations

Preparation: Cut out six or seven skeleton footprints. On the back of each footprint, write a “clue” to the location of the next footprint. (Example: Look behind the sink in the downstairs bathroom.) Hide each new footprint in the place indicated by the previous clue. The last footprint should contain the “clue” that leads to the Cauldron of Candy.

Decorations: Decorate the place where the cauldron is hidden to look like a Skeleton’s hideout or a Skeleton Ball.

Story and Treasure Hunt: Read the poem below at the start of the treasure hunt. Then show the treasure hunters the place where you’ve hidden the first skeleton footprint. Instruct the hunters to find all the footprints, which will lead them to the Skeleton’s Ball and the stolen Cauldron of Candy.

The Skeleton Thief
By S.E. Schlosser
A rattle of bones!
Who could it be?
It is a Skeleton,
Looking to see
If that cauldron of candy
We left in the hall
Might make a good feast
At the Skeleton Ball.
A rattle of bones!
Quick, look and see!
Oh no! The Skeleton’s
Stolen our candy!

Follow the footprints,
Uncover the clues,
Find out where the Skeleton
And his crazy crew
Have taken our cauldron
Of candied delight.
We must save our feast
On this Halloween night!

2008 Countdown to Halloween

2009-09-01T00:47:39Z

HALLOWEEN WEEK!!

Story: Bloody Mary Returns
When her evil stepmother kills both her brothers, a young girl must fight for her life using every resource she has at her disposal.

Podcast: Black Magic
A young woman is stolen away from her bridegroom by a former suitor who can control the forces of the dead.

Halloween Game:The Withered Corpse
Play this gross Body Parts guessing game at your next Halloween party!

WEEK 2:

Story: No Trespassing
A girl is stranded in a car after a terrible accident, right beside a creepy old house.

Podcast: Jack O'Lantern
A hunter is stranded in a marsh, with fatal results.

WEEK 3:

Story: The White Wolf
A girl dreams of an evil white wolf, and finds her dream coming true.

Podcast: Rival Witches
The rivalry between two evil witches terrifies the residents of a small town.

WEEK 4:

Story: The Future
A young girl goes to a psychic to find out what is in store for her future.

Podcast: The Hermit's House
A vampire stalks a young woman and her infant child.

WEEK 5:

Story: Sachs Bridge
A photographer visits a creepy old bridge and takes some surprising photographs.

Podcast: Turnabout is Fair Play
An old man turns the tables on a couple of joksters -- AFTER his death!

WEEK 6:

Story: Haunted Christmas
A man hears footsteps following him on his way home from the midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

Podcast: Amber
A game on the Ouji board turns deadly serious.

WEEK 7:

Story: Nine Eleven
A woman sees a strange vision just two weeks before Nine Eleven.

Podcast: Sifty Sifty San
Sam agrees to spend the night in a haunted house to rid it of a terrible ghost.

WEEK 8:

Story: The Ghost of Pearl White
A young girl watches each night as a woman climbs the staircase to the apartment on the upper floor, never suspecting that the woman is a ghost.

Podcast: Rattler's Ridge
The Devil challenges young Adam to a fiddle contest.

The Center of the Tire

2009-08-29T00:09:25Z

by S.E. Schlosser

We were all sitting around enjoying another beautiful day of sunshine and warm weather outside our Rat Lake cabin when Tim was struck with an idea. “Why don’t we go for a boat ride this afternoon on Lake Bitabee?” he asked the general populace – which consisted of his fiancé Arlene, myself (his older sister), two little sisters, and our parents. This idea met with general approval from Arlene and myself, but Mom and the younger crowd elected to stay at the lake and Dad wanted to spend the afternoon fishing.
     After lunch, Tim put the boat on the trailer and drove out the rugged trail that connected the remote Rat Lake to the outside world, and then out on the dirt road that passed as a main thoroughfare in northern Quebec. Dad followed behind in the other car, having elected to fish on Lac Victoria – which lay a few hundred yards upstream from Lac Bitabee.
     We followed the edge of Lac Victoria for two miles. Then Dad turned into a clearing and parked at the edge of the lake, while Tim continued for a quarter of a mile to the Bitabee turn-off. The road leading to the old Mill Pond connecting Lake Victoria and Lake Bitabee was heavily wooded on either side and quite steep ( at least a 45 degree incline). Consisting mostly of loose rocks and sandy soil, it was completely rutted by regular rainfall so that there was no even surface whatsoever. Toward the bottom, the road split to the left to avoid the long, wooded driveway leading to another backwoods cabin. I took one look at the pitted mess and was glad I wasn’t driving!
     Tim, a more-than-capable driver, sent Arlene and I to down the hill to the water’s edge in order to guide him as he backed the boat trailer down the steep incline and around the small bend. “Give a yell when the water is halfway up the back tires,” he told us. We nodded, then scampered and slid down the steep hill to the swampy Mill Pond at its base. To our left was the chattering, fast flowing stream spilling endlessly into the pond after its rapid descent from Lac Victoria. In front of us, and as far as we could see, the pond was awash in lily pads and tall weeds. A few low-slung eyeballs blinked at us from among the floating seaweed, indicating the presence of bullfrogs. The whole place smelled of swampy water and the sudden buzz of a mosquito in my ear made me wish I’d remembered to put on bug spray.
     Then the back of the boat trailer edged itself around the bend, and Arlene and I began waving encouragingly to Tim, pointing him a little to the right to get him lined up properly. Slowly, inch by inch, Tim backed down the incline to the relatively flat surface next to the water. We watched as the trailer entered the swampy water, scattering fish and bullfrogs. Deeper and deeper into the swamp went the trailer, until – as Tim said – the water was halfway up the back tires. I glanced at Arlene when I judge the boat was far enough in the water. Arlene nodded her agreement and yelled out for Tim to stop the car.
      My brother threw the Dodge into park and jumped out of the driver’s seat, eager to launch the boat into the water. In a single glance, I saw him register the fact that he was standing less than a foot from water’s edge. He looked at the back of the car, which was bumper deep in water which now reached – as per instruction -- halfway up the tires. Then he gazed at the boat trailer, which was so deep into the swampy pond that the boat was practically floating away, in spite of being firmly tied down.
     Then he said in a very calm voice: “I thought I told you to stop me when the water was halfway up the tires.”
       “It is halfway up the tires,” Arlene pointed out in what I considered a reasonable tone.
      “The tires of the boat trailer,” Tim practically howled. “Not the CAR! How am I ever going to get it out of here?”
      Arlene and I exchanged sheepish glances. The trailer tires? Who’d have thought?
      Exasperated, Tim waded out to the boat, pushed it off the trailer, and then walked it over to a tree on the far side of the launch, where he secured it firmly. Then he got back into the car and put it into gear. It stuck fast, the tires whirling helplessly around in the muddy water. Shutting off the engine, Tim got out.
     “Maybe if we took the trailer off, it would help the situation,” he said, in what I considered to be a much-too-calm manner. He was starting to scare me. After unhitching the trailer, he dragged it ashore and tucked it to the side of the boat launch area. Before he got back into the car, he explained in minute detail exactly what he wanted me and Arlene to do next; which was to push the back of the car while he tried to rock it out of the muddy water. Wading into the muck – which was rapidly becoming muckier – Arlene and I lined up on opposite sides of the car and shoved with all our might while Tim tried to pull the car out of the Mill pond. No luck.
      Judging from the look on Tim’s face, I felt a retreat was necessary. Let his fiancé calm him down a bit. “I’ll get Dad,” I said hastily and plunged up the rocky, sandy, slippery incline. About midway up the Bitabee road was a grassy spot leading down to the creek where the old saw mill once stood. A very-poorly constructed bridge – mostly a large wood slab with a fish-gutting table on top of it – lay across the swiftly running water. It was a good short-cut to the main road, so I took it; sliding down the grassy slope, running hastily across the smelly, make-shift bridge with its spray-sodden boards and slippery fish-scales, and scrambling up the bank on the other side. The main dirt road lay in front of me, with Lac Victoria to my left. I raced across the street, stumbled over the gaudy green-and-orange log bridge that lay over the dam, and out onto the U-shaped dock that guarded the swimming area in front of Victoria Lodge.
     Dad was fishing at the center of the dock, and turned when he heard the racket I made as I raced across the bouncing boards to his side.
     “Dad, Dad! The car is stuck!” I yelled breathlessly, completely neglecting to tell him why it was stuck and whose fault it was. Dad blinked a few times as he took in my message, then reeled in his line, picked up his tackle, and followed me back out to the road. We took the slightly longer path this time, out to the Bitabee turn-off and then down the steep incline to where Tim and Arlene were still trying to extricate the car from the muddy water.
      Dad tried to rock the car out a few times with all three of us standing almost waist-deep in the water, pushing from behind. Finally he gave up. The car was stuck fast. Instructing us to stay put, he went up the hill to his car and drove a mile up the road to the farmhouse of one of the local families whom we had met at the local church many years previously. Ronnie was out in the fields, but his wife obligingly walked my Dad out to where he was mowing the hayfield atop his mighty tracker so he could explain the problem to her husband. Ronnie agreed to come down to the lake after he finished his work for the day. With fervent thanks to both, Dad returned to the Mill Pond to give us the message, and then went back to his fishing.
       With nothing to do for the next two hours, Tim took Arlene and I out in the boat. The fresh air and lovely lake scenery did much to cheer us, and the warm sun soon dried out wet clothes. We arrived back just a few minutes before the steady, loud rumbling sound indicated the approach of a farm tractor. We climbed up the steep hill to meet Ronnie, and Dad left off fishing to join us. Ronnie parked the tractor at the top and walked down to assess the problem. Then he backed the tractor down the hill, chained the front bumper of the Dodge to the tractor, and asked Dad to put the car into gear to assist the tractor as it pulled the stricken vehicle out of the water. Ever ready to be helpful, Dad jumped into the driver’s seat and put the car into reverse as the tractor began moving up the steep incline toward the main road.
     Tim gave a yell when he saw the wheels of the Dodge spinning backward, but Dad didn’t hear him over the noise of the tractor. Shaking his head in disbelief (and thinking “Am I really RELATED to these people?”) Tim moved over to stand with Arlene and I as we watched the reversing car and the tractor strain back and forth for a moment in a bizarre tug-of war. But the Dodge was no match for the huge tractor. Inch by miserable inch, the car (in spite of my father’s best efforts) slowly crept out of the hole it was digging for itself in the Mill Pond and back up onto solid ground.
     Taking no chances with this sorry lot, Ronnie pulled the car all the way up the incline until it was safe and sound on even ground; taking a moment to wave apologetically to the neighbors – who were waiting further down the road for us to stop blocking the entrance to their driveway. It was only when we’d thanked our friend and sent him on his way that the four of us realized that the boat and the boat trailer will still down by the water! Needless to say, it was Dad and Tim who carefully took the car back down the slope to successfully retrieve them.

It has been many years since this incident took place, but I have noticed that Tim still doesn’t ask me to help him direct the boat trailer into the water. I wonder why?

Row, Row, Row your Car

2009-08-29T00:05:14Z

by S.E. Schlosser

My grandfather had a fairly new silver Dodge Saint Regis back when I was a sophomore in college, which eventually became my car when he got a new one. On the particular late-winter weekend of our story, Grandpa was going away for a visit (or perhaps to a conference) and didn’t require the use of his car until late Sunday afternoon. My Dad, on the other hand, needed the use of car – any car -- since the Schlosser family vehicle had conked out on him and was in the garage being fixed. My Grandpa offered him the use of the Dodge, and Dad accepted gladly. So Grandpa dropped off the Dodge at our house on Friday evening, leaving it to the tender mercies of my family while he went away.

Everything went smoothly on Friday and Saturday. It wasn’t until after church on Sunday that things went awry, when my brother received permission from my father to drive the Dodge to a friend’s home after church. As he was traveling along one of the nice side roads near our home, Tim spied an old country lane (just a dirt trail now, though a hundred years ago it was a main road) that he had used once or twice during the past summer as a short cut over to the town in which his friend resided. A chain usually blocked the old lane from through traffic, but it was open on this particular chilly winter day. A dusting of snow lay across the farmer’s fields through which the lane wound; but Tim had traveled this path before, and was confident that he could go off-roading without difficulty, in spite of the freezing ground and the snow. So he turned the Dodge into the old lane and started down the trail toward his friend’s town.

Unbeknownst to my brother, the melt water from the previous mild days had flooded the nearby Raritan River; and the farmer’s field -- part of the flood plain for the Raritan – had filled up with water. The old lane was now acting as a branch of the river, though this was not immediately visible due to the fact that the river water had frozen during the night and the ice was topped by a dusting of snow. Tim did not become cognitive of this change in topography until the back two wheels of the Dodge broke through the invisible ice and plunged into water up to the trunk. Conscious that his life-expectancy might very well be shortened by this turn of events (due more to my father’s probable reaction than to the flooded condition of the car), Tim ripped off socks and shoes, rolled up the legs of his Sunday suit, and plunged into two feet of icy water to check out the situation. The car was stuck fast in the mud under the water.

Tim hurried in bare feet through the icy rough field, collecting branches and logs to wedge under the tires. When he had accumulated enough detritus, he hopped back into the car with the door open to try to rock the car out of the muddy water. Looking frantically toward the back of the Dodge as he put the car in reverse and gunned the motor, Tim failed to see the wave of mud generated by the car’s backward motion until it slammed into the open door and right on top of his Sunday suit. Wet, muddy, and cold, my brother still struggled to perform the Herculean task of removing the car from the newly-formed branch of the river for another twenty minutes before giving in to the inevitable.

Shaking with cold (not to mention nerves at my father’s reaction to this news), Tim raced back up the lane to the main road and began knocking on doors. At the third house, his luck changed for the better (or the worse depending on how Dad was feeling that afternoon). The master of the house opened the door to his knock and let him borrow the phone. Fortunately for Tim, distance prevented my father from doing more than scolding him for this latest escapade.

Conscious of my grandfather’s imminent return, Dad quickly turned his mind from possible punishments for his wayward son to probable solutions to the problem of the Dodge. Remembering that our neighbor owned a garage and had a tow truck which he might be prevailed upon to use, Dad ran up the street and explained the problem to Bob. Having a son of his own, Bob was sympathetic to my father’s situation, and got out his tow truck on this late Sunday afternoon to rescue Tim. The old lane was only five minutes from our house, but it took Bob a good forty minutes after reaching the dirt road to figure out how to get the tow truck close enough to the Dodge to rescue it without condemning the tow truck to a similar fate.

An hour and a half after the Dodge broke through the ice, it was finally pulled out onto dry, frozen land. Tim took one look at the mud spattered vehicle and aimed it straight for the local car wash, where he scrubbed away at the mud which was all over the exterior of the car as well as inside the driver’s seat. Tim pulled into our driveway a scant half-hour before Grandpa. By tacit agreement, he and Dad decided to refrain from telling my grandfather about the car’s unexpected plunge into the river, since all was well that ended well.

After greeting my father and Tim, Grandpa pulled his suitcases out of his friend’s car and took them over to the impeccably clean Dodge. Visibly impressed by its shining condition, he thanked my Dad for getting the car washed while he unlocked the trunk. Lifting the door, Grandpa hefted up his suitcase and then paused in mid-swing as his gaze was caught by six inches of muddy river water sloshing around inside the trunk.

“Ah, Dave…” said my grandfather to my Dad in a fairly calm voice, (considering the circumstances) “Is there something you should be telling me about?”

It was at this juncture that Tim beat a hasty retreat back into the house, leaving my father to face the music alone!

The Bleeding Sink

2009-08-28T23:54:26Z

An excerpt from Spooky Montana

retold by S.E. Schlosser

I found it extremely annoying that one of the bathrooms on my dorm was permanently closed. Especially since the cause was an urban legend. An urban legend, I tell you! According to the story, years and years ago some bloke got himself massively drunk at a bar in downtown Helena and had passed out in the bathroom on the fourth floor. Apparently, he hit his head on the sink as he fell, and his blood had spattered the sink as he slid senseless to the floor and silently hemorrhaged to death. His death was considered a “sad accident” by faculty, staff and townspeople. But that was no reason to shut up the bathroom for decades! I completely discounted the story of the bleeding sink. That was just an urban legend the students circulated to explain the locked door.

“I’m sick of sharing a bathroom with you disgusting lot,” I grumbled to my roommate. “I’m going to break into the fourth-floor bathroom.”

My roommate’s eyes widened. “Don’t you know that bathroom is haunted?” he exclaimed. “The bloodstains on the sink are as fresh today as they were when the accident happened back in the 1960s, and sometimes you can hear the boy moaning as his life ebbs away on the bathroom floor!”

“Romantic twaddle,” I snapped. “My granny lives in a haunted castle in Scotland with ghost stories that would make your hair stand on end. She’d laugh at me if she found out I ignored a perfectly good bathroom because of a few bloodstains. Besides, the maintenance staff told me the bathroom was shut up pending renovations. No big deal!”

“You’ll be sorry,” my roommate said darkly. I ignored him. He was just sore because I’d lumped him in with the disgusting lot of fellows who mucked up the bathroom on my floor. You’d think someone would teach them to pick up their dirty clothes and clean the sink once in awhile.

When the dorm quieted down for the night – which wasn’t until late – I hurried up to the fourth floor with a bit of wire I’d purchased at a local hardware store. My little brother and I had become expert lock-pickers over the years, since our mother had a bad habit of locking her keys into the house or the car at least once a week. With all that experience, the lock on the bathroom door gave me no problems.

The bathroom was rather old-fashioned in appearance and had a disused air. There was dust in the corners, and a spider web drooped from the ceiling. But I heard no unearthly groaning, no mysterious footsteps. I carefully inspected the sink, the walls and the floor. Other than a smallish orange discoloration on the sink, there was no blood anywhere. Ha! So much for urban legends. There was probably something in the water that caused discoloration over time. I turned a tap experimentally, sure that the maintenance staff had shut off the water long ago. To my surprise, water gushed forth instantly. I smiled. Well, well. It looked like I had a bathroom to myself after all! I carefully locked the door behind me when I left.

I got up late the next morning, and had the downstairs bathroom all to myself. So it wasn’t until evening, when everyone was back in the dorm, crowding in and out of the bathrooms, that I slipped away to use the locked up facilities. It was still early in the evening, and I made sure no one was around before I headed to the abandoned bathroom. With a few twists of the wire, I opened the lock. As I stepped inside, the air temperature plummeted twenty degrees or more and my nose was hit by the pungent, strong smell of fresh blood. A second later, I saw the blood-spattered sink.

Bright-red gore was everywhere – on the porcelain, on the walls, oozing down the sides of the sink. And hovering before it, his feet a good six-inches off the ground, was the luminous form of a college-aged boy wearing old-fashioned clothes in the style of the 1960s. His forehead had a disfiguring dent smashed into it, and blood was dripping down his face. As I gaped at him, horrified and frozen in terror, he turned and looked at me. Then he held out a blood-stained hand. His eyes were desperate, pleading for help, and I heard a low moaning sound coming from between his blood-stained lips. The sound raised every hair on my body and made the skin prickle in sheer, cold horror. I backpedaled fiercely, my legs scrambling to get away while my eyes and head remained fixed on the ghost, on the bloody sink. A drop of red blood fell from his outstretched hand as I stared at him. Then the momentum of my legs carried me through the door, which slammed shut behind me, and the hot, pungent smell of fresh blood followed me through the halls and down the staircases until I was outside into the chilly air of autumn, breathing deeply. My knees shook so bad that I fell onto the nearest patch of grass, stomach heaving. Oh lord! The ghost was real! No wonder they kept the place locked up.

I lay on the grass for a long time, ignoring the chill in the air. This was a natural chill which comforted, not that unnatural chill that had frightened me upstairs. I breathed in and out, in and out, watching the stars above me, bright even through the campus lights. I took comfort from the huge, clear expanse of sky. But I still felt reluctant to go back inside that haunted building. I shuddered once, from head to toe. Oh how my granny would laugh if she knew her big brave grandson was too scared to go back inside a haunted dormitory. It was the thought of granny that got me back onto my feet and upstairs to my room. But I didn’t care what granny or anyone else thought of me. I was never going back to the fourth floor bathroom. Once was enough.

You can read more ghost stories in Spooky Montana by S.E. Schlosser.

The Handshake

2009-08-28T23:44:08Z

An excerpt from Spooky North Carolina

retold by S.E. Schlosser

Polly was the sweetest, prettiest girl in Goldsboro, yes sir. All the local boys were chasing her, and quite a number of the fellows from the surrounding countryside were too. All the girls were jealous of Polly ‘cause they didn’t have no sweethearts to take them to the local dances. They all wanted Polly to choose her man so things could go back to normal. But Polly was picky. None of the local boys suited her, and neither did the fellows from the back country.

Then one day, George Dean came home from university, and Polly was smitten. Polly completely dropped all her other beaus when George came courting, and it wasn't long before George proposed and Polly accepted.

Polly started making preparations for the wedding and shopping for items to fill her new home. George wasn’t too interested in all the fripperies and wedding details. He left the womenfolk to get on with it and started spending time down at the pool hall with some of his buddies. And that’s where he met Helene, the owner’s saucy daughter. She had bold black eyes and ruby red lips, and a bad-girl air that fascinated George. He spent more and more time at the pool hall, and less and less time with Polly, who finally noticed in spite of all the hustle and bustle.

Of course, Polly was furious. She immediately confronted George with the story, and he couldn’t deny it. Suddenly, George had to toe the mark. His pool-hall visits were over, and he spent every free hour he wasn’t at work by her side. That didn’t sit well with George, but his family backed Polly up, so he went along with it.

The day of the wedding dawned clear and bright. The guests filled the sanctuary, and the pastor and the best man waited patiently in the ante-chamber for the arrival of the groom. But George didn’t come. Eventually, they went searching for the missing bridegroom, and found out he'd left town with Helene an hour before the wedding. With dread, Polly’s mother went to tell her daughter what had happened. Polly, all bright and shining and lovely in her long white dress and soft wedding veil, turned pale when her mother broke the news. Then she stiffened, grabbing her left arm as a sudden pain ripped through it. She was dead from a massive heart attack long before she hit the floor.

A few days later, Polly was buried in the churchyard, still wearing her white wedding dress and veil. The whole town came to the funeral and wept at the passing of such a beautiful young girl. George and Helene, who had spent the week happily honeymooning in the Outer Banks, arrived home at the very moment that the black-clad crowd exited the churchyard. Their arrival caused a commotion. The minister had to pull Polly’s father off George before he killed him. And both George and Helene’s family disowned the couple right there in the street in front of everyone. The couple fled town in disgrace.

Time passed, and eventually the scandal was forgotten. Until the day George’s father passed away. It was rumored that he was to be buried in the local churchyard just a few plots away from the girl who had almost become his daughter. Suddenly, the story of Polly's jilting was revived and folks wondered aloud if George would dare attend his father's funeral. But George was too clever for them. He waited at an inn outside of town until it was dark, and then he went to the churchyard to pay his last respects to his father.

As he unburdened himself at his father’s graveside, George heard a sweet female voice calling his name. “George. Sweetheart.” George looked up in sudden hope. Was that his mother, come to forgive him? Then he saw, rising up from a grassy mound under a spreading oak tree, a figure in a long white gown and a soft veil. Her eyes and her lips were yellow flames beneath the veil, and the rotted wedding dress glowed with a white-yellow light. It was Polly.

George’s body stiffened, shudders of fear coursing up and down his arms and legs. He put a shaking hand to his mouth and staggered backward, the other hand outstretched out ward off the specter floating toward him. The spectral bride cackled with angry laughter and swooped forward until its hand closed over George’s outstretched one in a terrible parody of a handshake. The grip of the spectral bride was so cold it burned the skin, and so hard that the bones crunched as it squeezed. “Come along into the church, George,” the glowing bride whispered. Through the veil, George could see maggots crawling in and out of Polly’s flaming eye sockets.

“Nooo! Polly, no!” George screamed in terror, but he could not wrench his hand free. The ghost dragged him step by halting step toward the front door of the church. His hand was a red-hot agony of pain, though the rest of his body was shaking with cold.

“No!” George gave a final cry of despair and wrenched again at his hand. And suddenly, he was free. The spectral bride gave a roar of rage as George ran pell-mell down the church lane and out into the street.

“You’re mine, George Dean! If not in this world, than in the next,” the spectral bride howled after him.

By the time George reached his room, the fiery pain in his hand and arm was seeping through his entire body. He rang desperately for the house maid and begged her to send for a doctor. Then he fell into bed and stared at his hand, which was black and withered, as if it had been scorched long ago by a fire. Black and red streaks were climbing up his arm so fast he could almost see them move.

George was unconscious when the doctor arrived, and the swelling was already extending into his chest and neck. There was nothing the physician could do. The injury was too severe and had spread too far. Within two days, George was dead. Polly had gotten her man at last.

You can read more ghost stories in Spooky North Carolina, by S.E. Schlosser.

Muriel

2009-08-28T23:16:25Z

Excerpted from Spooky Oregon
retold by S.E. Schlosser

She climbed the sand dune swiftly, giggling nervously at her daring, as the soft mist of an early evening fog swirled around her. Around her, her friends were scrambling their way through the sand and long grass, heading steadily upward toward the haunted lighthouse on the summit.

When one of Muriel's friends suggested visiting the abandoned lighthouse on top of the ridge between the sea and the harbor, Muriel had felt a pang of warning in her ribs. Folks said that mysterious lights appeared in the darkened windows of the menacing structure, and some swore that moans and shrieks could be heard coming from the top floors of a building in the foggy weather just prior to a storm.

Muriel half-believed the stories, and the idea of visiting the lighthouse made her nervous. Still, her friends wanted to go, and they had persuaded the caretaker to loan them the key for their excursion. So she went with them, in spite of her misgivings. Now they were standing next to the rickety old fence that surrounded the dark sentinel atop the hill. Before them the dilapidated, box-like structure with its creaky, crooked little porch and ominous tall door loomed menacingly in the growing fog. The cracked glass windows of the house looked like black eyes, peering menacingly down upon the eager faces of the young people who dared enter its presence.

Nervously, the group entered the dusty interior of the old lighthouse, staring around the front hallway and up the steep staircase. One or two of the girls giggled and started exploring the old kitchen and the dusty sitting rooms, while the boys peeked into the rickety cellar.

Then Muriel grabbed her boyfriend Harold by the hand and pulled him upstairs. After exploring several rooms, they wandered up to the third floor landing and looked into a tiny room beside the metal staircase that led up to the lantern in the tower. A moment later, their friends joined them and everyone crowded into the small room. One of the boys bumped into the wainscoting on the wall by accident, and a piece of it broke off on impact. “This place is falling apart!” he exclaimed in disgust.

Then they saw it. An iron panel gleamed through the gap in the wall. They tapped the iron panel and heard a hollow knocking sound ring through the cupboard. The sound filled Muriel with a sense of foreboding.

“Let’s see if we can move it,” Harold said, and together the two boys removed the iron square, revealing a small crawl-space with a gaping black hole in the bottom of it. Everyone gasped in amazement, and took turns looking down into the dark space. One intrepid lad crawled inside and dropped pebbles down into the hole, but none of them heard them reach the bottom of the pit.

All the hair on Muriel’s arms stood on end as she thought of smugglers crawling up the dark hole and into the uncanny old house. Or pirates stashing their ill-gotten gains in the empty rooms, waiting to load them aboard their ship. Anything or anyone might come through such a hole. Her face flushed with fear and her arms grew cold.

Muriel pulled out her handkerchief with shaking fingers and wiped her suddenly sweaty forehead. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, backing away from the crawl space and starting toward the stairs. No one jeered at her this time. They were all frightened by the black hole inside the dark crawl space.

"Let’s go home,” said one of the other girls. The others were quick to agree. It didn’t take them long to swarm down two flights of creaky worn stairs and out into the foggy dusk. As Muriel stood beside Harold, watching him lock the door to the lighthouse, she reached again for her handkerchief to wipe away the telltale sweat of relief on her face and realized it was gone.

“Harold, I’ve left my handkerchief inside,” she exclaimed. “I’ll go get it and come out the kitchen door.”

"Let me come with you," said Harold, but she shook him off. She was a big girl and didn't need help from a boy! Reluctantly, he let her back into the house. “You don’t have to wait,” she called over her shoulder. “Lock the door and go on. I’ll meet you down the hill.”

She turned and marched up the staircase. Behind her, she heard the door snick shut, and the sound of the key turning. And that’s when she realized she was all alone in the drafty, dark uncanny house. All alone. Dread seized her and turned her legs to jelly. She wanted to run. But what a fool she would look if she returned to the others without her handkerchief. Panting with terror, Muriel forced herself across the little landing and started up the second staircase toward the linen cupboard. She paused once, pulses pounding madly. Was that a thump she heard upstairs?
Don’t be silly, she told herself, forcing her shaking legs up another step. It’s just the loose shutter blowing in the wind. And then all the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she realized she could hear something breathing behind her…

The boys and girls all came running back to the lighthouse when they heard several terrible screams, the last one a stifled cry for help. They ran through the house, frantically yelling for Muriel. But the house was empty of all life. At the top of the small, second story staircase which led to the linen cupboard and the iron ladder leading to the tower, they found a large pool of hot blood, still steaming in the cool air of the house. Beside it was a small white handkerchief.

Muriel was never seen again.

You can read more ghost stories in Spooky Oregon.

Bunko Kelly and the Funeral Parlor

2009-08-28T22:45:41Z

A Spooky Oregon Story

retold by S.E. Schlosser

It seems the infamous crimper Bunko Kelly was commissioned one night by a ship's captain to find him - by hook or by crook - 17 men to sail his ship to Shanghai and back. Kelly went on his usual rounds of the local inns and taverns, looking for drunkards to kidnap and send to sea. But he wasn't having any luck.

On his way to yet another bar, he passed the local funeral home. As he neared the opening for the cellar steps which led up to the sidewalk, he heard the sound of men's voices groaning either in pain or ecstasy; Kelly couldn't tell which. Intrigued, Bunko Kelly went down the steps to investigate. He found 22 men scattered around the cellar, slumped around a huge keg in the middle of the floor. They had obviously been drinking from it, and were now suffering from a massive hangover of some sort. A sniff of the keg told Kelly the men - who apparently thought they'd broken into the cellar of the pub next door - had been drinking embalming fluid all evening. All of them were dying.

In this gruesome situation, Kelly decided he'd found a solution to his problem. He'd dump all the men onto his crimping cart, take them down to the dock, throw them into the waiting canoes, and give them to the ship's captain as sailors. He'd get paid - which was all that mattered to him - and the captain would have a crew. At least for one evening!

To think was to act for Bunko Kelly. Quick as a wink, his employees had loaded the men onto the cart, taken them to the canoes, and Kelly was standing on the prow of a canoe, negotiating with the captain to take 22 men instead of the 17 he'd requested. All or none, Kelly told the sea captain. Reluctantly, the captain agreed. He loaded the semi-conscious, groaning men into his hold and set sail up the Willamette River to the Columbia, and from there to the sea.

So Bunko Kelly got paid after all. And the sea captain? Well, when he arrived in Astoria, he put in a request for 17 more sailors to take his ship to Shanghai. Must have given him quite a shock to go down into the hold of the ship and find 22 bodies where his able-bodied sailors should have been. Still, he managed to get rid of the bodies somehow without causing a fuss, because no investigation was ever made into the disappearance of the fellows who snuck into the funeral parlor that unlucky night.

Read more Oregon folklore and ghost stories in Spooky Oregon by S.E. Schlosser

The Ghost in the Alley

2009-08-28T22:15:18Z

Excerpted from Spooky Canada

Retold by S.E. Schlosser

Listen to the story.

Rumors were rife about the alleyway behind the tavern. It was haunted, folks said. Haunted by the ghost of a young girl who had been found murdered in that self-same passage. People avoided the small street after dark, for the spirit was said to be a vengeful one. Of course, no one could name anyone whom the ghost had actually killed, but the tales were enough to keep people away from the alley at night.

Fortunately for the owners of the tavern that backed onto the alley, their front door faced a well-lit road and so business was not slack.

Then one night, while the tavern was full of drinkers, a nasty character named O’Hare wandered into the bar. Women and children were not safe in his presence, but especially not women.
After O’Hare had consumed far too much alcohol, he suddenly announced to the bar that he’d seen a pretty young thing in the alley out back of the tavern. The bartender froze in the middle of polishing a glass, and the men around the bar exchanged covert glances. No one said a word, but everyone was thinking about the ghost of the vengeful young girl. Everyone in the bar looked down at their glasses as he stumbled to his feet. No one made a move to stop him, and there was a quiet air of “he deserves what’s coming to him” about the bar as O’Hare left the building. It’s just too bad that there isn’t really a ghost, thought the bartender, setting down the shining glass and picking up another one to polish. O’Hare sorely needed a lesson in human kindness and respect for others.

At that moment, a horrible scream came from the alley. Everyone in the tavern looked up in shock and fear. Had there really been a ghost out there? Or was O’Hare up to his old tricks and even now accosting one of their womenfolk?

The men leapt to their feet and raced to the back door of the tavern. Pouring out into the street, they were met by an unnatural cold, and their eyes were dazzled by a blaze of light.

The bartender thrust his way to the front of the crowd and saw the body of O’Hare lying in a pool of bright white light. His throat had been torn to pieces, and blood was spilling out in gushes. Above him hovered the semitransparent figure of a young girl, her eyes gleaming with red fire, her mouth covered with blood. She glared down at O’Hare and then turned to look at the crowd. The specter licked the blood from her lips thoughtfully, her eyes on the bartender’s neck. Then she vanished, taking the light with her. At their feet, O’Hare gasped out his last breath and died.

The local authorities were summoned to deal with the body of O’Hare. Though skeptical at first, they were finally convinced, since there had been so many eyewitnesses who had seen the ghost hovering over the dying man.

The bartender resigned his position the next morning and took a job across town, the memory of the ghost’s hungry stare at his neck prompting him to look elsewhere for employment.

Read more Canadian folklore and ghost stories in Spooky Canada.