“Late one night, a fellow came by Grandpa’s house, frightened out of his wits. He had just passed Buckhorn Cemetery, and there was something white floating about making the awfulest racket he had ever heard.
A couple of the men had enough courage to investigate that awful scene. A sheep became entangled in a barbed wire fence and was jumping and bleating, trying to free itself. They freed the sheep and solved the mystery.
—Betty Riddle – “Reflections on Mountain Heritage” published by the Gilmer County Genealogical Society, Inc.
If you’d like to pick up your own copy of “Reflections on Mountain Heritage” you can find it here for a very reasonable price.
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Hi Tipper,
I visited friends over in Suches Georgia when I was a youth. Kids back then really liked scary movies and they were mostly viewed on Saturday nights. A friend and I had watched a movie that showed black cats and demons. I had to leave quickly after the movie ended and I was really “wired tight.” I was driving down the dark roads towards Blairsville and was near Winfield Scott State Park. The trees appeared really close to the road in the darkness and looked bent towards the center of the road-eliminating any chance of moonlight to show my way. Again, I was really “wired tight” from the movie…the darkness and the silence. Suddenly… there was a low “whaaaa, whaaaa- like the cat from the movie. I had to be imagining this sound. Then….a paw touched my shoulder. I went clear out of my seat-surprised I did not have a wreck. My buddy had a cat. I had left my window down and it had fallen asleep in my back seat. My friend and his folks said I had lost all color and to hang around a bit before starting back to Blairsville.
Love the posts and the letters from followers. What a nice neighborhood!
One of my neighbors is bad to let their grass grow knee high before they mow it. This year it got so high it is falling over. Well for Halloween decorations they have put sculls, skeletons, gravestones and jack-o-lanterns out in that mess. They have a tree with black and white garbage bags tied in it. I’ll admit it looks Halloweenie and I’ll admit I’m scared when I walk by even in broad daylight. Not by the decorations though. I afraid I’ll get snake bit and there ain’t no telling what else might come running out of that jungle.
I know a fellow who has fun with his electronic, remote-controlled predator call at Halloween. He places the speaker in the shrubbery and awaits his approaching “victims”, then bumps the button that calls forth pitiful cries of various wild creatures in distress: fox pups, rabbits, coyotes, fawns. He doesn’t scare little kids, just the ones old enough to run and a few neighborhood dogs.
My grandma used to tell me spooky stories. Sometimes about tokens (signs of death). She also told me a story about her fear of cemeteries. When she was young it was her chore to bring home the cow in the evening. In order to do that she had to past the cemetery. She said she always ran as fast as she could till she got past the cemetery…till one night while running she stumped her toe on a tree root and it hurt so bad she had to sit down and hold her toe. That, she said, cured her fear of passing by the cemetery!
Nowadays with all the solar led lights in the cemetery it is not unusual to see lights there.
I think I posted this before, probably about this time last year, but I had one of those what-is-it experiences at a cemetery. After church one night I was sitting in the car waiting for my wife. Way over at the edge of my vision I saw this moving light down by the woods. So I turned to see straight on and watched. Sure enough, there was a light that would fade, dissappear, then reappear brighter. That happened several times. I figured out something was moving back and forth between me and an led light. It was some kind of fabric the light would shine through sometimes, then get blotted out sometimes. At last I realized it was an American flag at the grave of a veteran moving in the wind.
There was an old log house on the right coming down the road to our house. A couple of other fools and I would hide in there and light an old oil lamp as people walked down the road. They would walk faster and start running when we carried the lamp to another room. Word got around that the house was ‘hainted” and it wasn’t uncommon for them to start running as they approached the house.
I had to read these stories to my 2 grand kids. 7 and 8 yrs old. They loved them. So did i.
When darkness falls over the land one can surmise many things that can be scary. I remember my Daddy telling a story about him and a friend walking down the old red clay road at night when they felt a presence go between them yet not making a sound. Scared the tar out of me which I think was the intention. Back in that day there were hardly any motor vehicles out in the country so most times they would be walking.
I remember one time my husband and I left after work to go up to my Aunt’s cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. We didn’t get to their little road till about midnight and started back on the road not knowing that they had just worked on putting in the road and it had rained for two days. Needless-to-say, my Daddy’s truck got mired down in the mud and we had to get out and walk through the forest back a long ways to the cabin. You know it is pitch black dark at night in the forest. I was hanging on to my husband and praying all the way back to the cabin. We did get there safely and found my Uncle in the nice warm cabin lit by an old oil light. I slept well that night until the next morning when my Uncle said a bear had been hit out on the highway the day before, and troopers were looking for it as it was wounded. I must be a scaredy-cat cause I sure don’t like walking anywhere in the dark of night.
Remembering how dark it used to be in the country. It was on a Saturday night and I was going to spend the night with a cousin I practically grew up with. Dad was called to preach at a sister church and he was going to take me to my aunt and uncle’s house but he was running a little late so he let me off at the proach of the road. I had about a 2 mile walk and it was getting dark. By the time I had walked a mile it was pitch dark. I couldn’t even see my waist let alone my feet. It was a gravel road and I was trying to stay in the middle but I would walk off the gravel and into the ditch. Sometime or another I got to thinking about mad dogs. It was a common problem back in the 1950’s. I knew if I ran on to one I wouldn’t know the dog was there until it bit me. I stumbled into the ditch one more time and shortly after I saw the porch light of my cousin’s house. I was going to be safe now!
I agree with Miss Cindy. “I have learned that things I see in the night may just as likely be in my head.”
Some grown ups don’t even like to come down my lane after dark and pass the old cemetery where it is said to be the resting place of a mama and her babies. Trick or treating at my house hasn’t happened since my grandkids got too old to come scare me. They enjoyed ‘scaring Nanny’ more than the treats they got.
Speaking of spooks, I heard as a kid that if an owl alights on a rooftop, someone in that house is going to die. Has anyone else heard that one?
I’ve heard if a bird flies into your house, some one will dye
That’s what my mamaw believed and my mother once panicked over a bird getting in the house. We told her that was just an old superstition she learned from mamaw.
Cute story and so appropriate this time of year. I have candy ready for trick or treat but have a feeling I will end up eating most of it. I will miss the kids.
I heard my father in law say when he was a teenager he was walking by an old country church cemetery one night and he could see something white raising up and down on one of the graves.. He was very scared and ran home. He told his daddy about it and his daddy told him there was no such thing as a ghost and told him to go back the next morning. He did go back and he said it was sheet of newspaper someone had put on the grave. He always said if his daddy had not made him go back he would have always believed he had saw a ghost.
I enjoyed the ghost story. I was glad to see the listing of the Gilmer County, GA available history (and a poetry) book. I’ll check to see which of them I already have and seek to order the rest. I guess they are seeking to have “clearance.” That happens at times. The 8th printing of our Fannin County History Book entitled FACETS OF FANNIN: A HISTORY OF FANNIN COUNTY, VOLUME ONE just had its 8th printing. I was editor (and wrote much of the front part of it, back from 1987 to 1989 when it came out. It is a large 680+ page harbound book It may be purchased from Fannin County Heritage Association, P. O. Box 2062, Blue Ridge, GA 30513-2062. I think it sells for $80 + $5.00 shippping. But better still, go to Blue Ridge the First Saturday in December for the big parade, music, and find the Heritage Foundation Baugh House Museum on West First Street. I hope to be there in person to sign the book! And also the Cemetery Book. And the History of Schools Book. Also there is a history of Fannin County Mills book, but I did not help w/the mills book. Dale Dyer and I both hope to be there. We were the main ones to “engineer” these books and we were founding members of the Fannin County Heritage Foundation. I am now a Nanogenarian and he is a Centarian. Is that old, or not??? And we’re still writing columns for THE NEWS OGSERVER, Blue Ridge. I hope to have another of my poetry books published soon; hoped to have it by this Christmas, but COVID-19 (and my f23 great grandchildrn and so many birthday parties to attend, masked and distancing) left me behind with getting my poetry book to publisher. I had two in past, but both are out-on-print now. Sorry.
I have learned that things I see in the night may just as likely be in my head. When it’s dark and I can’t see then what I can see is the inside of my head. I try to remember when I have to be outside at night.
I guess that’s why Trick or Treat is always after dark, to heighten the scary factor.
It’s that time of year, when a full moon on a crisp fall night let’s one’s imagination run away. Let alone being in the vicinity of a cemetery and a frightened sheep crying into the night. It’s easy to visualize.