Haunted Holidays

by Roberta Simpson Brown

  This was a time when families wore new clothes to the Easter church services, came home to a delicious meal, and then conducted an egg hunt for the children in the family. Tina, the family’s young daughter, had received an Easter gift early, a rabbit that she named Bonnie Bunny, and she played outside all day with her.

  The sun was going down when her mom called everybody in for supper. Tina put Bonnie down for a second while she got up from the ground, and that was all the time Bonnie needed to hop away.

  Tina ran after her calling, “Bonnie, stop! Come back!” Bonnie had a head start and great running ability, so she disappeared into the woods by the road before Tina could possibly catch her.

  Tina hardly touched her supper.

  “Do you think she’ll be okay?” asked Tina.

  Tina’s father thought of Mr. Tate’s hunting dogs that ran loose beyond the woods. He didn’t have much hope for Bonnie, but he smiled and said, “We’ll have to wait and see. Let’s say a prayer for her before we go to sleep.”

  Tina said her prayers and went to sleep. Her mom and Great-Great Grandmother Alley went to choir practice for the sunrise service at the church. All was quiet in the little town except for the occasional strains of music floating from the church.

  Then, as they were walking home from choir practice, a neighbor, old Miss Bea Claiborne, vanished, and Bonnie Bunny came back in a dream. Great-Great Grandmother Alley and Tina’s mother did not know about either occurrence until morning.

  At an early breakfast on Easter morning, Tina’s father related the disturbing news that Miss Bea had not made it home the night before.

  “She walked out in front of us,” Tina’s mother said. “I can’t imagine what could have happened.”

  Of course the sheriff and his men were out looking for the old lady, but there was no news yet.

  “I talked to Bonnie in my dream last night,” said Tina. “She said she couldn’t live with me anymore.”

  “Why?” asked her mother.

  “Because she’s in heaven now. But she said she will come visit when I need her,” said Tina.

  The three adults at the table were trying to think of something to say in response when Tina pointed at the window and exclaimed, “Look! There! She’s here now!”

  They all rushed outside, and watched Bonnie hop very close and then hop away. She kept up the routine. Back and forth!

  “I think she wants us to follow her!” said Great-Grandmother Alley.

  Bonnie hopped slowly enough for them to keep in sight of her. At a small drop-off in the road, she hopped down the bank. Tina, her mom and dad, and Great-Great-Grandmother Alley looked over. There lay Miss Bea Claiborne! She had twisted her ankle and had fallen down the bank.

  Once they had taken care of rescuing Miss Bea, they went home and got ready to go to church. Tina dressed quickly and was outside with Bonnie when the others came out.

  “It looks like Bonnie is back to stay,” said her mother.

  “No,” said Tina. “We are saying good-bye. She came to help find Miss Bea. She has to go back now. I told you she’s not real.”

  “Of course she is!” said Tina’s mom.

  She reached down to pick up Bonnie, but her hands went right through the little rabbit. It was Easter, and Bonnie Bunny had come and gone.

  Easter Cross

  Grandfather Simpson traveled all over Kentucky. He worked where he could find work, and then came home when he could. He was the grandfather Roberta never met, but everybody says he was the true storyteller in the family. He told Roberta’s sister Fatima this story. He knew the people involved.

  It was a beautiful, sunny Easter morning somewhere near Madisonville, Kentucky. After returning home from church, Steve and Grace Hawkins decided to take their three children on a picnic.

  The park they chose had plenty of space for the children to play after they had eaten, but the play area was bordered in back by thick, dark woods.

  The Hawkins twins, Ralph and Rachael, were almost nine, and the baby girl, Lana, was only four.

  “Keep an eye on your sister,” called Grace to the twins. “And don’t any of you go into the woods.”

  The children had brought a ball, and they played happily in the open space in the park. Steve and Grace packed up the remains of the picnic and sat back to relax and enjoy the scenery.

  “Didn’t there used to be a cross over there by the road?” asked Steve.

  “Yes,” said Grace. “A child was killed there a few years ago and the family put up a cross at the site. The city made them take it down.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Steve. “I remember that now. Officials said it was distracting because it was too tall or something.”

  Just then a car pulled in, and Steve and Grace were surprised to see her sister’s family. Suddenly there were three more children to play with the Hawkins children. They were all delighted.

  Time passed quickly as the two couples caught up on family news and local gossip. The children ran and squealed as they became involved in their ball game. Before they knew it, the sun was going down and it was time to leave.

  “Come on, children,” called Grace. “It’s time to go home.”

  Grace’s sister and her husband gathered up their three children, and Grace and Steve told Ralph and Rachael to get in the car.

  “Where is your sister?” asked Steve.

  “I don’t know,” said Ralph. “She was sitting in the grass by the woods watching us play the last time I saw her.”

  They all looked quickly around the park, but Lana was nowhere in sight.

  “Lana!” Grace called, as she ran toward the woods. “Where are you?”

  There was no answer. Grace realized that her little girl was gone.

  Both families searched in the woods close to the park, but they saw no sign of Lana. They decided that they needed help because it was getting dark fast, so they called the sheriff.

  Help came, but the hours were a blur for Steve and Grace Hawkins. At first, they scolded their children for not watching their sister, but they apologized after realizing they had really been the ones who had been neglectful.

  “I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to her,” said Steve.

  “Me either,” said Grace. “What was I thinking? She is only four years old!”

  Darkness came, but the moon came out, giving a little more light for the searchers. The hours dragged on.

  Finally, the searchers came to the front of the park to regroup and discuss what to do next. Everybody was focused on the park until they heard a faint voice.

  “Mommy!” a child’s voice said.

  All turned to look toward the street where the voice came from.

  There stood Lana, safe but exhausted.

  Grace and Steve ran over, and Steve scooped her up in his arms.

  “Lana, what happened?” Grace asked.

  “I went after a bunny rabbit, but I got lost. I called, but you didn’t hear me,” Lana told her. “I just walked and walked, but I couldn’t find my way back until I saw the cross.”

  “What cross?” asked Steve.

  “The one by the road,” said Lana.

  “There hasn’t been a cross there for a long time,” said Steve.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the place where the cross used to stand.

  They all looked. With the moonlight shining on a large tree it did give the appearance of a cross! They stood looking, awestruck.

  “I followed the cross and it brought me here,” said Lana.

  As they watched, the moon went behind a cloud and the image of the cross disappeared.

  Thanks and good-byes followed, and then they all went home.

  They wouldn’t remember much about the food or the games, but no one there would ever forget the miracle of the cross.

  Mother’s Day

  Tributes to mothers go back to the early Greeks, the Romans, and Christians who honored Mary, the mother of Christ.

  In the United States,
Mother’s Day began around 150 years ago. Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a “Mother’s Work Day” to raise awareness of poor health conditions where she lived. After she died in 1905, her daughter, also named Anna, campaigned to create a special day honoring mothers. In 1914 Anna’s hard work was rewarded when Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday.

  Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May. It has become the most popular day of the year to dine out, and also has the highest number of phone calls.

  Anna Jarvis was angered by the increasing commercialism connected with a holiday she had meant to represent sentiment instead of greed and profit. It is said that before her death in 1948, she confessed that she was sorry for starting the Mother’s Day tradition.

  Despite her regret, however, the holiday is a wonderful time to honor and express appreciation for our mothers. As the stories in this section will show, mothers are with us always.

  Mother’s Day Tea Party

  Roberta has a story about her Aunt Maggie and a special tea party her uncle told her about.

  Little toy tea sets were popular when I was a girl. I had one that Aunt Maggie sent to me, but I had no idea of what a tea party was. I loved the beautiful designs in the cups and saucers, and I played with my tea set every day. Aunt Maggie had had tea parties when she was growing up in the city, so she thought that I would enjoy pretend tea parties, too.

  I knew nothing about English tea, Japanese tea, or any tea drunk for pleasure. We used tea to cure all kinds of ailments, so to me tea was medicine. Mom said Grandma Simpson seemed to know about a bark, root, or herb that could be brewed to treat anything.

  We drank coffee or milk with our meals, and we never drank anything but water between meals, so I pretended that my doll and I were eating regular meals when I played with my tea set.

  After Aunt Maggie died, teatime became special for my uncle, as it had been for his wife. He always knew how much Aunt Maggie enjoyed her teatime.

  Years earlier, Aunt Maggie was expecting a baby. She hoped it would be a little girl. She saw a lovely tea set at the store and bought it and put it aside.

  “What if it’s a boy?” her husband asked.

  “Then he’ll have to learn to like tea parties,” said Aunt Maggie.

  Aunt Maggie looked forward to pretend parties with her child when it was old enough to play with the set. Sadly, that was not to be.

  Aunt Maggie learned country ways when she married my uncle and moved from the city. She learned how to grow a garden and can food. She kept her canned fruit and vegetables on shelves in the basement, where they would be handy when she needed them.

  A few days before her baby (which turned out to be a sweet baby girl they had decided they would call Jean) was due, Aunt Maggie went down to the basement to get a jar of green beans for supper.

  As she turned to go back upstairs, she tripped on an empty box that had been left near the shelves when she had brought some canned fruit down earlier. She lost her balance and fell hard on the basement floor.

  My uncle heard her scream and ran to the basement, where he found Aunt Maggie in great pain. He rushed her to the doctor, but she died in childbirth giving life to Jean.

  It was hard raising a baby alone, so family members pitched in to help out. They were amazed at how fast Jean grew and learned. She would puzzle them sometimes by looking at someone they couldn’t see and saying, “Mama.”

  Eventually my uncle remarried, and his new wife loved Jean as her own. One day she found the tea set in the closet and got it out to show Jean. Jean loved it right away. She was only four years old, but she played with the tea set every day.

  That Mother’s Day, Jean got out her tea set and carried it from her room to a small table by the basement door. She had never done that before. She always played with it in her room.

  My uncle and his wife began to hear Jean talk. To their surprise, they heard a muffled voice answering the little girl! They couldn’t hear what was being said, but they hurried to see who had come inside their house uninvited. There was nobody there but Jean, looking happily across the table.

  “Is somebody here?” my uncle called out.

  There was no answer.

  “Jean, who were you talking to just now?” he asked.

  “Mama,” Jean answered. “She came to have tea with me because it’s Mother’s Day.”

  “Where did she come from?” his wife asked her.

  Jean looked at them both very seriously and pointed down toward an area in the basement just beyond by the kitchen door.

  “She came from down there,” Jean told them. “That’s where she stays so she can visit me.”

  My uncle turned pale. He had never told Jean or his second wife exactly where he had found Aunt Maggie that day. Yet Jean was pointing down, and he knew that under the kitchen floor in the basement was the exact spot where Aunt Maggie had taken the fall that resulted in her death.

  Was Aunt Maggie the unseen presence through the years that Jean had addressed as “Mama?” Had Aunt Maggie picked Mother’s Day as a special day to come back in spirit form to have a tea party with her daughter?

  It was a lovely thought that maybe she did!

  A Mother’s Way

  Mrs. Karnes was a neighbor who sometimes joined Lonnie’s family in storytelling sessions when Lonnie was a boy. His family had moved from Adair County to Russell County because Lonnie’s dad liked to build houses, sell them for a profit, and move on to another.

  On Mother’s Day everyone finished their chores early. Only necessary work was done on Sundays—gathering eggs, feeding the chickens, feeding and milking the cows, and feeding the mule and horse. Of course, meals had to be prepared and dishes washed, but that left plenty of time after supper for visiting and storytelling.

  Most families finished their chores about the same time. It was getting dark when Mr. and Mrs. Karnes came to Lonnie’s house that Sunday to sit and talk until bedtime. The conversation turned to mothers because it was Mother’s Day, and the different ways people celebrated with their moms.

  “My mother planted flowers at every place we lived,” Lonnie’s mother said. “There was nothing she liked better.”

  “My mom liked flowers, too,” said Mrs. Karnes. “We made a point of taking a walk together on Mother’s Day so she could pick the ones she especially liked. She would always gather a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers and bring them home.

  “I never had her way with flowers,” Mrs. Karnes continued. “We would walk the same path by the fencerow, across the field, down by the woods, and follow another fencerow back home. If she could see the flowers along the way, I should have been able to see them, too, but I’d walk right over them.”

  “Maybe I’ll leave you my gift of spotting flowers when I die,” Mother joked.

  “I laughed,” said Mrs. Karnes, “because I still had Mother around to find wildflowers for me. I didn’t need to do it myself.”

  “I noticed that some beautiful ones have bloomed out,” said Lonnie’s mother.

  “I noticed that today, too, for the first time!” said Mrs. Karnes. “After Mother died last winter, I still needed to take that Mother’s Day walk today. I took the walk alone, and I had no luck at first finding the rare blooms. As I was walking along a fencerow on my way home, I suddenly felt a presence beside me. I felt like it was Mother. I looked around me and then I saw all kinds of pretty flowers in the field along the fence. I wanted to pick some, but I was so unnerved that I hurried along home without picking the flowers.

  “When I got near the front porch, I noticed something by the steps. When I got close, I saw that it was a beautiful bouquet of fresh wildflowers!”

  “I guess she did leave you her way with flowers,” Lonnie’s mother said to her.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Karnes, “I think she did. And I think she left a last bouquet for me. My whole family was busy doing other things and had not been out of the house, so I know they did
not put the flowers there. I can hardly wait to see if she comes again next year to take a walk with me.”

  Aunt Viney Rocks!

  This is a Simpson family story that we never took too seriously, but we always enjoyed it because it was about Aunt Viney (Roberta’s great-aunt), who was a stubborn, colorful character. She was not a mother herself, but her involvement in Roberta’s family reflected her mother-like connection to everyone.

  This is the story Roberta tells about her aunt.

  Aunt Viney always came to visit at Grandmother Simpson’s farm on Mother’s Day and stayed for a week or two. She enjoyed the good food we always had for Mom and Grandma. It was a time when crops were planted, flowers were blooming, and the clocks were set forward one hour.

  Back then where I grew up, time was either “fast time” (Eastern Standard Time) or “slow time” (Central Standard Time). Aunt Viney never cared for fast time, so her body operated on slow time. She didn’t bother changing her clocks. She depended on her own body to tell her what time it was. It seemed to work well for her. She got up at the same time every morning and was usually ready for bed at the same time every night. Sometimes, she would look up at the sky; I think she got some help from studying the position of the sun.

  When she was visiting us, she liked to take early morning walks through the pasture looking for berries and wild greens. There she would inevitably encounter Uncle Josh’s “butting ram.” Everybody but Aunt Viney tried to avoid confronting that ram, but Aunt Viney let nothing get in the way of what she was pursuing. The ram would spot her and paw the ground. Aunt Viney would raise her cane and call out to him, “Butt me if you dare!” That animal never had the guts to take her on! Even this aggressive ram seemed to realize that Aunt Viney was one stubborn lady with an iron will, so he didn’t waste his energy on a useless battle.

  She would invariably return from her walk with greens or berries to cook for supper. She would sit in the old rocking chair and “look” her gatherings to see if there were any worms or insects in them. Then she would pass them to Mom or Grandma to cook later. As the sun moved high in the sky, Aunt Viney would begin to get sleepy. She would sit in the old rocking chair and would doze off for her afternoon nap. After supper, she would reserve that rocking chair, where she would rock and listen to music or stories provided by our family members. On Mother’s Day, she always rocked while Mom and Grandma prepared the meal. Her contribution was to provide berries and greens. She was not too fond of cooking.