by Ron Schwab
“Charlie,” I said, “what happened?” But he did not seem to hear. His lips moved but he only jabbered some unintelligible animal-like sounds.
“Look at his neck,” said one of the guys. Droplets of blood oozed from the tender flesh around his neck where the raw, red outline of a rope had left its mark.
We never did find out what happened to Charlie Weatherby that night. He was hospitalized for a time, but the abrasions on his neck were only superficial, and had not precipitated the damage to his mind. Charlie Weatherby was institutionalized in an asylum and remains there to this day.
For me, the experience scarred my life. I shudder to think of the unforeseen consequences that can result from the hazing and harassment we perform in the name of initiations in our society. And I refuse to tamper with anything that even hints of the supernatural.
Coyote Woman
THERE IS A Pawnee burial ground several miles south of Rose Creek. Most of the remains buried there are those of a medicine band that was massacred by a Sioux war party one crisp fall evening just before dusk.
Medicine band was a term often used in referring to a small group of medicine men, their novices and family members who lived and traveled together much of each year, visiting other villages from time to time to minister to their spiritual and medical needs. Most prominent of this band was the only Pawnee medicine woman, or shaman, called Coyote Woman.
On the night of the raid, the Sioux took Coyote Woman’s ten-year-old daughter, White Fox, captive along with several other Pawnee children, and as they raced off under the cover of descending darkness, Coyote Woman chased after the Sioux ponies on foot. It was a fruitless effort. An hour later she returned to her village and helped the few surviving members prepare their tribesmen for burial.
That task completed, she refused to leave the burial site and ordered the others to go on, declaring that she would remain behind to await the return of White Fox.
She sat down and shrieked and cried and sang the death songs. It was said that her crying and singing were heard many miles away for nearly a month. One passing Pawnee reported that he saw her sitting in the middle of the burial ground, evidently eating nothing, starving herself and wasting away.
What became of Coyote Woman, no one knows, but over the years, the Pawnee and later, the white settlers, reported that for a month or so every fall, coyotes would be heard howling nightly from the direction of the burial ground and later in the full darkness of night, the soft beat of tom-toms would spread over the hills. Some reported from time to time seeing a slender Indian woman walking quietly along the deer trails that crisscrossed the rough landscape. She was often heard chanting softly, and it was speculated that this might be Coyote Woman seeking her lost child.
On at least three occasions over the years, small children, all daughters, were reported missing and never found. In one instance, a small boy who shared a room with his sister claimed that an Indian woman had entered their room at night and she had glowing red eyes and he had watched her paralyzed by fear. The woman gently shook his sister from her sleep, and he said his sister met the woman’s eyes as if she were hypnotized and she rose from her bed in a trance and simply followed the woman out the door and into the surrounding woods. By the time he had recovered his wits and awakened his parents, there was no sign of the girl.
Coyote Woman stories continue to this day. Often the coyotes can be heard on brisk, fall evenings and many have asserted that the soft beat of the tom-toms from the burial ground can be heard more often than not during the fall of year, and this is when Coyote Woman is said to begin her wanderings and visits, seeking a replacement for her lost child.
McDowell's Tomb
ABOUT FIVE MILES south of Fairbury, Nebraska is a place called McDowell’s Tomb. The land on which the tomb is located is part of the state park system now, and the place is rich with history—some fact, some legend, and part, I have no doubt, just outright fiction. I can only tell you what I know and relate my own experience with the tomb.
John McDowell was an early settler of Jefferson County. He lived in Fairbury but owned a small parcel of land along the banks of Rose Creek. He was a strange man, a loner, and no one knew much about him except that he was determined to be buried on the plot of ground he owned. In fact, McDowell decided to construct his own tomb and over a period of some ten years, he walked the distance to his land, sometimes making the trip daily, and others camping there for several days at a time. With shovel and pick axe, he dug a cave into a sandstone wall that loomed above Rose Creek.
Early in the venture, a few of McDowell’s city neighbors took pity on him and offered to help McDowell with the project. They didn’t stay long, though, because the place was snake-infested. They reported that dozens of snakes were coiled in the work place. It was as if they were curious about this gnarled, bearded white-haired man and the project he had undertaken. The neighbors said that McDowell even had names for many of the snakes and spoke to them as he worked.
Anyway, the company McDowell kept assured that his effort would be a solitary one. Over the years, McDowell finally completed his tomb, or mausoleum, as some call it. When it was finished, he had carved out a huge room in the sandstone, and on one wall was a ledge where his coffin was supposed to rest.
The work finished, McDowell wrote out specific instructions regarding his burial in the tomb and paid the local undertaker in advance to see that his wishes were carried out. He also left instructions in his will to his two nephews directing them to have his casket placed in the tomb and to install a steel gate there to keep out unwelcome visitors.
A few weeks later, McDowell died. The nephews, however, resisted carrying out their uncle’s instructions as they didn’t want the embarrassment of having their uncle resting in the homemade tomb. The undertaker tried to carry out his customer’s wishes, but the nephews got a court order stopping him since they were the executors of their uncle’s estate and the ultimate heirs to the land.
Finally, after several weeks of squabbling, McDowell was laid to rest in the Fairbury cemetery.
For years, McDowell’s vacant tomb was visited by hikers and curiosity seekers, although many were deterred by the reptiles that always seemed to congregate. Neighbors claimed that on quiet summer evenings you could hear a shovel clanging against stone coming from the direction of the tomb. Nobody ever bothered to check it out, however.
My last experience with the cave came when I was about fifteen years old. Our Boy Scout troop used to camp along Rose Creek about half a mile from the tomb, and some days we would hike over to the cave to explore. For some reason, though, not long after we got there, snakes—bull snakes, garter snakes, even an occasional prairie rattler—would start to show up and they never seemed to be afraid of us like snakes usually were. About this time, we always moved out pretty fast.
That summer we were camping at our usual site up the creek from the cave. It was nearly midnight and pitch black when a dozen of us were sitting around the dying campfire, listening to the college-age son of our Scout leader spin ghost stories and tall tales. He was an intelligent, basically decent young man, but was a bit cocky and arrogant after having spent his first year at the university. He suddenly had the inspiration that he wanted to take the group on a hike to the tomb. I wasn’t about to go, but Ted, the leader’s son, finally needled and dared one of the seventeen-year-olds to go with him. They took off and the rest of us tossed a little more wood on the fire and waited silently.
About a half hour later, we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the area of the tomb. Our Scout leader came out of his tent like a bolt. “What was that?” he asked.
“Ted and Ralph went to the tomb,” I replied.
“Oh,” he chuckled. “Ted’s just trying to scare everybody.”
We all waited. Moments later, Ralph entered the camp, his eyes round and his lips trembling, his face white as a sheet. Shortly, he was followed by Ted, although we didn’t recognize him at first. Ted’s
dark hair had turned white as snow, his eyes were glazed over, and when he tried to talk words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. While our leader tried to bring Ted to his senses, Ralph related the story.
As they approached the cave, he said they could see a shimmering white light coming from its depth. They assumed someone else was exploring the cave and they crept closer. Hearing nothing, they called out and got no response. They climbed the slope to the mouth of the tomb and entered. There on the shelf where McDowell’s coffin was to have been placed, lay a scrawny old man with long white hair and a scraggly beard. The space around him glowed like radioactivity.
Ted took a few steps toward him and said, “Hey, old man.” The man’s head turned, and where his eyes should have been were deep, empty sockets. Ralph turned to run, but Ted was frozen in his place. Suddenly, snakes began to emerge from the cave walls, dropping from the ceiling onto the young man’s head and shoulders. It was Ralph’s scream we had heard; Ted was mute, frozen in place. Ralph grabbed his arm and jerked him away, sweeping off the snakes with his other hand. Obediently, Ted had followed him, shivering and speechless. Ralph had seen our campfire and raced toward it, weaving through the trees and brush with Ted not far behind.
We didn’t go to investigate. We packed up our gear that night. Ted never really did recover entirely. He spent a year in a mental institution. He never did return to college. He went to work as a bookkeeper in his father’s company, never married and never socialized, and, to my knowledge, never spoke of what happened that night.
The Uninvited Guest
MY WIFE, BEV, has—or had—a penchant for fixing up old houses, and for some years this had us moving like nomads from home to home. Bev would spot a decaying, neglected house calling for her tender touch, and a few weeks later our current abode would be on the market, and, within a month or two, we would be carting our furniture and personal belongings into a dilapidated house. Bev would go to work with sledge hammer and saw while we lived among clutter and dust, and she, with only occasional grumbling contributions from me, would truly transform the proverbial sow’s ear into a silk purse. We inevitably ended up with a lovely restored and unique home . . . and, of course, it was time to move on again.
On a brisk October day some years ago we settled into Bev’s latest rescue project, a two-story monstrosity adjacent to our previous residence that only Bev could love. As a matter of fact, the previous owner was planning to bulldoze it down when Bev intervened to save the dying house, which she, unknown to me, had her eye on ever since we moved next door. The house was as near hopeless as any we had lived in, but Bev and I, along with our two cats, Bennie and Punkin, once again embarked on a new adventure among the rubble of our new home.
I was comforted by the knowledge that by spring the house would be livable and by another spring it would be quite elegant. The cats obviously did not share my sentiments. Normally trusting, affectionate lap cats, they turned hyperactive and spooky, often hiding under the bed and couch, emerging only when Bev and I were both in the room. Bedtimes were horrendous. We always put our cats in the basement at night, and, with the promise of a special snack, Punkin, a plump, little calico fur ball, and Bennie, a rangy black and white shorthair, would obediently trot to their nighttime quarters at the sound of the treat bag rattling. Not so in the “new” house. Here they fought bedtime like infants, running and hiding and yowling mournfully when we captured them and put them to bed at night. Our bedroom was on the second floor, but we could hear the cats crying during the night, and, in the morning, they would charge frantically into the kitchen when Bev opened the basement door. Their behavior was a mystery.
Our first task whenever Bev and I nest in a new house is to carve out a den or study, where we each have some workspace and our separate computers. Being addicted to books, I always install some shelving to store the most treasured of my library, while harboring a dream that someday we can have the room to reunite all of the books in a single place. We fashioned a small study of calm and quiet here, and when Bev was not working on a house project and I was not working late at my law office, we savored those moments in the study reading, writing, or surfing the Internet while Bennie snoozed on my desk, and Punkin purred at Bev’s feet. It was one such night a month after we had moved into the house that we were ensconced in the study. Suddenly, both cats rose up and began to growl, their hair standing on their backs, their eyes fixed on the doorway. Chills raced down my own spine. The room had turned cold as a meat locker.
“What’s the matter with them?” Bev asked.
“I don’t know. They must have heard something . . . maybe a mouse.”
“It’s freezing in here,” Bev said.
“I’ll turn up the thermostat,” I said as I got up and stepped slowly and just a little cautiously toward the empty hallway. Instantly the chill evaporated, and the cats stopped growling. Later, at bedtime, we had a marathon cat chase, and gentle Punkin even nipped me before I plopped her down on the basement landing.
This scene was replayed three or four times a week over the next month, and Bev and I were starting to get as uneasy as the cats about the episodes. Then one night, as we were sleeping, the bedroom door opened. I heard the creaking and sat up, my heart skipping several beats. For a moment I thought I saw a woman in a long gown standing there, but I blinked my eyes and the doorway was suddenly empty. Again, the room turned frigid.
Bev awakened. “What is it?”
The door closed. The room warmed. “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”
I didn’t sleep again that night.
The next day I decided to put my research training to work. I was more than curious. I was scared. I didn’t know if I’d ever get a good night’s sleep in that house again. I made a visit to the register of deeds office and checked the deed records. Based upon a mortgage filed against the property, I concluded the house had been built in 1881, about 120 years previous, by Cyrus and Ida Musgrove. They had owned the property about ten years before it was sold at a tax foreclosure sale. After that the house had changed hands thirty or more times. This was unheard of in a town of 4,000 or so people. It would not be unusual for a residence to be transferred only half a dozen times in that period.
That evening I called on Frank Soloman, a crotchety old guy who lived four houses down the block. Frank didn’t get along with most of the neighbors, but he never seemed to mind me much, and, in fact, if I said so much as a “hello” to him as I walked past his home, he would corral me and talk my ear off. When Frank answered the phone, I identified myself and asked him if he knew any of the people that had lived in the house over the years.
“Lived in this neighborhood over 50 years, but nobody ever stayed in the Musgrove house long enough for me to get acquainted too good.”
“Musgrove house?”
“Yeah. They say some folks named Musgrove built the place back before the 1900s. Then they just disappeared one day. Left all their things behind. Place finally sold for taxes. Ever see any ghosts there?” The old devil chuckled.
“Ghosts?”
“Yep. Some folks used to say there were ghosts in the house. Ain’t heard that for a while, though. But if you wanted to sell a place I don’t suppose you’d brag about them kind of guests, would you?”
“I guess not, but anybody who would think a house was haunted has a bit of an overactive imagination, I think.”
Frank shifted to another subject then, and I let him rattle on a spell before excusing myself. I decided not to say anything to Bev about my conversation with Frank.
A week later, after several more nighttime door openings and another eerie moment in the doorway of the study, I was working on a legal research project at my laptop with my trusty felines snuggled side by side and dozing on my desk. I could hear the clang of metal against stone in the basement where Bev was prying up old brick from a part of the floor. She planned to replace the brick with concrete in hopes of discouraging bugs and other critters from entering from the d
irt and gravel bed beneath. Her vision declared that this mess would someday be a family room. Why was I not doing this physically demanding work? I am a firm believer in equal opportunity for women, especially when it comes to unpleasant jobs.
The research was making me sleepy—I have never especially enjoyed the research part of my work—and my eyes closed momentarily and I started to nod off. My slumber was aborted by hysterical screams from the basement. The cats leapt off the desk, raced for our bedroom and shot under the bed. I rushed down the stairway, fearing the worst, certain that Bev had somehow been injured. By the time I reached the basement the screaming had stopped, and I found Bev standing in a dark corner speechless and petrified, pointing at the floor. I came up next to her and stared at the moldy human skull with empty eyes and a half-toothed mouth grinning up at us.
Having no other inspiration, I called 911 and asked that someone from the sheriff’s office come over. The next day, sheriff’s deputies dug up the remaining bones, eventually assembling a perfect human skeleton. Forensic studies determined that the remains were those of a woman who died more than a century ago. Damage to the back of the skull suggested she might have died as a result of a devastating blow to the head. The sheriff and I surmised that Cyrus Musgrove must have murdered Ida, removed the brick, buried her, and replaced the brick . . . then beat it out of town.
I employed a contractor to replace the basement floor, receiving no protest from Bev, and she continued to work on other renovation projects. The cats calmed down and started accepting bedtime with less resistance. We got through the Christmas holidays with no more strange happenings. Neither Bev nor I acknowledged to the other that there had ever been anything supernatural in our house. We did not believe in such things—or she didn’t, having a mind firmly grounded in science and reality.
