Haunted Holidays

by Roberta Simpson Brown

  “Then Tiffany came in one day and said the boat was bobbing in the water and the little girl was walking on the beach, waving to her. ‘She wants me to get in the boat with her,’ Tiffany told us.

  “That got our attention. We both told her that she must never, ever do that. We decided that night that we had better find where the girl lived and have a talk with her parents.

  “The next day, after we finished supper we went out to watch the sunset. Tiffany had already gone out to play while we were cleaning up the kitchen. When we got outside, we were surprised to find the locked gate open. Then we looked at the lake and saw a boat with Tiffany in it, in the water right off the beach. The boat was slowly sinking, and Tiffany was screaming for us to come get her.

  “My husband raced out the gate, across the beach, and splashed into the water. He pulled Tiffany out of the boat and carried her the short distance home.

  “‘What on earth were you doing in that boat alone?’ he said to Tiffany. ‘You know better than that! Couldn’t you see the boat had a leaky bottom?’

  “‘And how did you get through that locked gate?’ I added.

  “‘The little girl opened the gate and helped me in the boat,’ Tiffany explained. ‘She said it would be fun, but it wasn’t.’

  “The next day my husband went looking for the little girl and her parents. Nobody knew a family with a little girl. Then a man at the bait shop remembered something interesting.

  “‘There was a family with an eight-year-old girl that rented that cabin you’re in a couple of years ago. The little girl sneaked out one night and took their old boat out. It was a windy night and the boat capsized and she drowned. We never heard anything about them after they left.’

  “We still had a week of vacation left,” continued Mrs. Jackson, “so we decided to keep a close eye on Tiffany. We made certain that the gate and the doors to our cabin were all locked.

  “The first night, we thought we heard a voice, but decided it was only the wind. We were going back to sleep when we heard Tiffany call.

  “‘She’s back!’ screamed Tiffany. ‘She wants me to go with her again. She says she wants someone to play with.’

  “We ran to her room, and there was Tiffany, standing by the window, looking into the yard.

  “We ran to her and looked in the direction she was looking. The moonlight was bright, and we could see clearly. The gate that we had locked a little while before was now open and swinging in the wind.

  “We took Tiffany to our room for the rest of the night. The next morning, we packed, cut our vacation short, and headed for home.

  “This year we rented a different cabin. So far we haven’t seen anything unusual, but it doesn’t pay to take any chances.”

  The Fireworks Night

  July 4 brought great excitement to children in the country. This story about a tragic celebration comes from Wayne County and was told to us by Roberta’s Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Lily Simpson.

  Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Lily lived on a farm next to little Janis Miller. She was six years old and eager to see the fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Her father had bought plenty of fireworks and had invited all the neighbors to come watch when he set them off in the field behind his barn that night.

  As the daylight began to fade, the neighbors arrived with chairs and blankets and picked a good spot for viewing the fireworks show.

  Mrs. Miller had made lemonade for everybody, and they were all sipping their drinks and visiting with each other.

  Janis ran around talking to everybody. She was dressed in a white blouse and blue skirt, and wore a red ribbon in her hair. She felt very patriotic that night.

  “I wish it would hurry and get dark,” she said. “I can’t wait to see Daddy shoot off the fireworks.”

  Finally, she got her wish. It was dark enough to begin.

  “Now, Janis, I know you’re excited,” her father said, “but I want you to promise me that you’ll stay here with your mother.”

  “But I want to help you, Daddy,” Janis said.

  “Honey, fireworks are very dangerous. Sometimes they don’t do what you think they are going to do,” her father explained.

  Janis was not happy to have to stay on the sidelines, but when the fireworks started, she got so involved that she forgot everything that had happened before.

  The Millers’ display was indeed spectacular. Janis loved the noise and the beautiful colors that filled the sky.

  Then, one firework did not go up. It flew to the side toward the spectators and fizzled on the ground.

  Without thinking of any danger, Janis ran and picked it up. At that second, it exploded in her hand.

  Janis screamed and screamed before she died, and nobody could do a thing to help her. Her father ran and picked her up, and her mother fainted when she saw her face, or what was left of it.

  Few people ever talked about what she looked like because it was too gruesome. Everybody tried to put that awful night out of their minds.

  They say that most people don’t want to go outside on July 4 near the place it happened. An explosion will fill the air, and the ghost of Janis Miller screams and screams in the moonlight.

  July’s Stormy Fireworks

  Roberta had a strange experience one Fourth of July years ago. She tells the story this way.

  Even though I am called the Queen of the Cold-Blooded Tales, I am deathly afraid of lightning. My family learned early on to stay out of my way if we were outside when a thunderstorm was approaching. If they didn’t, they risked being trampled by my flying feet. I would feel sorry later, but at the moment I was seeking shelter, I cared about nothing in my way. I remember clearly when I decided that I had to do something about my problem.

  We were at a neighbor’s Fourth of July picnic when a little cloud passed overhead. Without any warning, there was a streak of lightning and a crash of thunder. I remember running across their yard, across the street, down our driveway, and into our house, but I don’t remember passing anything or anyone until I got inside our dining room. I looked out the window and saw one of the guests that I had run by—and he was in a wheelchair!

  Fortunately, he was a very self-sufficient man, and there were lots of people around to give him assistance if he had needed it, but that didn’t excuse my blind panic. Of course, I had hoped that nobody had noticed my dramatic exit from the picnic, but it had been impossible to miss. My wheelchair friend teased me for a long time after that.

  He would say, “I may need some help, Roberta. I think a storm’s coming.”

  I knew I had to find some way to act in a rational manner in storms. I had to, because I had to be able to function in daily life regardless of the weather. I began to read everything I could find about lightning. I thought about my family background to find a reason for my irrational fear. I came up with some interesting information.

  I knew that part of the problem was that lightning had often shocked me when I was caught in storms walking home from school as a girl. Barbed-wire fences ran along the dirt road where I had to walk, and lightning would strike, run along those fences, and shock me. I can still feel that tingling sensation!

  I also knew that my fear had increased when we got electricity in the house when I was about nine years old. Maybe things weren’t grounded properly then, but lightning would strike, run into our house, burst lightbulbs, and shock me. I was even shocked once in a car when we stopped to let a friend out at his house. I realized then that lightning could get me anywhere.

  I was sure, too, that my mother passed on some of her fear of storms to me. She was afraid of them because she had survived a tornado when she was a girl. Eventually she persuaded my father to build a storm cellar under our back porch. It offered protection in the storms and was also a good storage area for potatoes and canned goods. When storms approached, neighbors would sometimes join us in the cellar for shelter, but I was always the first one inside it.

  I never met my mother’s mother, Grandma Fanny G
entry Dean, because she had died when my mother was only nine years old; but I had heard about her fear of storms through my mother. One of Grandma Fanny’s stories helped me finally deal with my fear.

  Grandma Fanny had always been afraid of storms. When my grandfather was away from their little Adair County farm, Grandma would watch the weather carefully. If a cloud came up, she would hurry off to stay with her neighbor, Mrs. Withers, because she thought Mrs. Withers’s large house would be safer than her own.

  One Fourth of July, Grandpa Mike Dean had some business in Russell County that would take all day, so Grandma Fanny stayed home alone. She had plenty of chores to do before he got back home that night. No fireworks or celebrations were planned for that night, but Grandma Fanny ended up with her own fireworks.

  At noon, Grandma Fanny heated up some leftover pinto bean soup and cornbread, and just as she finished eating she heard thunder announce the coming of a very black cloud. Grandma Fanny closed the doors and windows and hurried up the road to stay with Mrs. Withers until the storm passed. The lightning was striking in the distance, and the whipping wind had already reached the road where Grandma Fanny was hurrying along.

  She arrived with little time to spare before the storm broke. Grandma Fanny knew it was not safe to sit by doors, windows, or fireplaces when the lightning was bad, so she chose a chair in the corner by a china cabinet.

  “That’s a good choice,” said Mrs. Withers. “Lightning struck the house once and shocked my mother who was sitting in that very chair!”

  “Oh, my!” said Grandma Fanny. “Maybe I should sit somewhere else.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Withers. “I was just going to say that she didn’t die from the lightning, but she was scared of lightning ever since. She said that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, so she would sit in that chair after that when she was here because she thought she’d be safe. She died of natural causes, not lightning, but I always think of her when it storms.”

  Grandma Fanny knew that what Mrs. Withers’s mother believed was not true. Even though Grandma Fanny did not know some of the things we know today—such as the fact that the Empire State Building in New York is struck by lightning two dozen times or more each year, or that the shuttle launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida is struck over and over, sometimes more than once in the same storm—she knew of a neighbor man who had been struck by lightning five times. Lightning doesn’t have a memory, so it does, can, and will strike the same place or object more than once.

  That knowledge, of course, did not comfort Grandma. She became more and more fearful that she had picked the wrong place to sit. Mrs. Withers seemed to think it was the safest place, though, so she remained in the chair.

  Grandma Fanny was sitting very still and growing more and more uneasy with each lightning strike outside, when suddenly she felt a push and she fell forward out of her chair. Mrs. Withers ran over and helped her across the room to the sofa. At that moment, lightning struck the side of the house just where Grandma had been sitting. The force of the strike knocked over the china cabinet, and glass shattered and flew into the now empty chair. Grandma would not only have suffered from the lightning strike, she would also have been cut by the flying glass if it hadn’t been for that strange push.

  Grandma told Mrs. Withers, “Something pushed me out of the chair! Maybe it was your mother.”

  “Oh, yes, it was Momma,” replied Mrs. Withers. “She came back from the dead to save you from the lightning!”

  “Maybe she did,” agreed Grandma.

  Grandma Fanny waited until the storm was over. Then she said, “I think I’ll go on home now. I’ve still got chores to do, and I’ve had enough fireworks for one day!”

  After that experience, Grandma Fanny decided that she was as safe at her house as she would be anywhere else. She didn’t know if Mrs. Withers’s mother had come from the grave to push her to safety or not. She didn’t know if she had a guardian angel watching over her or not. She did know that some power beyond herself had saved her from injury or death in that storm, and she figured that power would be with her regardless of where she was in a storm. She never forgot that July 4 and passed the story on to her children.

  I learned a lot from Grandma Fanny’s story.

  “Don’t run from a storm,” she would say after that. “Take the best precautions you can and leave the rest up to the Lord.”

  I am still afraid of lightning, but if I am caught in a storm while driving, I can maintain control of myself and stay rational. I hurry to shelter if I am outside, but I haven’t run by any other friends in wheelchairs.

  Oh, I still come inside and stay away from windows, doors, chimneys, and electrical sockets when it is storming. I unplug the television set and my computer. I don’t cook when lightning is striking. I never take a bath, wash dishes, carry an umbrella, eat with silverware, wear jewelry, or talk on the phone during a thunderstorm. I always remember (and I advise you to remember, too) that if you can see lightning, it is capable of striking you. You might want to reconsider if you like to stand on the porch or in front of an open garage door and watch a storm approach. A friend of ours dashed to the yard in a storm to bring in items from his yard sale, when lightning struck and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It can happen.

  I like to think we all have guardian angels like Grandma Fanny did that day. I don’t want to try their patience, though. When it storms, you will find me inside somewhere doing what I can to protect myself before I call on those angels for help.

  A July Day Revisited

  Uncle Buck Rooks worked all day in the fields and was ready for a quiet Fourth of July night at home.

  Uncle Buck was really Lonnie’s grandfather, James Milton Rooks, but everyone called him Uncle Buck. Lonnie’s mother, Lena Rooks Brown, told him many stories about Uncle Buck. He often encountered things that were most unusual.

  On this July day, his wife, Zona Mae, met him at the door as he came in.

  “Buck,” she said, “we are out of lamp oil and sugar. Could you ride to the store and get me some?”

  That meant a trip through the Smith Woods in the late, late afternoon to get to the store, and Uncle Buck wasn’t eager to go. All kinds of tales were told about those woods. He wasn’t a coward by any means, but it wasn’t a place to be caught at night. Besides, he was tired.

  “Can’t it wait until morning?” he asked.

  “Not unless you want to sit in the dark tonight,” Zona Mae told him.

  Uncle Buck knew he had no choice. He had to go. He saddled his horse and started into the woods. He had never taken the shortcut through the Smith Woods, but he had heard it led past the old Creech farm and came out right at the front of the store. Mr. Creech had died the year before.

  As Buck told the story, he figured he was about halfway to the store when he came upon a field carved out of the thick timber. At the back of the field was a small cabin. He didn’t think anyone lived there, so he was surprised to see an old man plowing in the field near the woods.

  “Hello!” Uncle Buck yelled, but the old man didn’t look up.

  Uncle Buck rode on without attempting to get the man’s attention again. It wasn’t a good time to start a conversation anyway, since he was in a hurry.

  The shortcut took Uncle Buck right to the country store. He was glad he had come this way, because he knew that returning the same way would allow him to get back home before dark.

  He talked for a few minutes with the store owner and bought his oil and sugar. As he turned to go, he thought of the old man he’d seen plowing. He turned back again.

  “Has anyone moved to the farm back there in the shortcut?” he asked. “I thought nobody lived there.”

  “No,” said the store owner. “Old man Creech used to live there, but he died last July 4. They said he worked in his field all day and then went in and died quietly. His heart gave out on him, I heard. Why? Why do you ask?”

  “I took the shortcut here today and passe
d the little farm. It just got me to wondering, that’s all.”

  Uncle Buck thought it best not to say he’d seen an old man plowing the field. He thought he’d look for the old man on his way home. He knew what he’d seen! He wasn’t crazy. He would get the old man’s attention this time and find out who he was.

  When Uncle Buck reached the field, it was empty. There was no sign that anybody had been plowing. The little cabin looked as empty as the field.

  Uncle Buck never bothered to try to find an explanation. It was obvious that no living person was there in that field. Maybe the ghost of the old man only wanted a quiet July night like Uncle Buck did. Maybe he had come back to revisit his last day on earth. If so, it wouldn’t be right to intrude. Besides, Uncle Buck believed it was bad luck to disturb the dead.

  Black Dog at the Foot Log

  Roberta tells this story about her sister on a memorable Fourth of July when they were young.

  We Simpsons had black dog stories and legends in our Irish history. I liked to hear black dog ghost stories when I was a small girl, because a black dog ghost comes to save someone in danger, not to frighten anyone. It was a comfort to me to think there was a ghost dog out there looking out for me in case I needed help.

  According to legend, a black ghost dog appears between the person in danger and the danger itself. One must never pass a black ghost dog because the danger beyond the dog is usually deadly.

  One night, my sister Fatima and my cousin Len encountered a black ghost dog that saved their lives.

  Some of our city cousins often came to visit every summer where we lived on Grandma Simpson’s farm. It was always a treat for my older sister, Fatima, and me to have their company. My sister was always especially happy when one of the male cousins came, because he was her age and could escort her to social events at neighboring churches to which she would never be allowed to go alone at night.