Roaming Through the Graveyard After Dark!!

 

Now when I was a kid – maybe 14 or 15 – I was allowed to hunt by myself at night with a dog. Today most helicopter parents would die if they thought this was going to happen. My brother had plenty of $1500 coon hounds but that was not the hound of choice for me. There was an old dog – probably 10 yrs old that showed up at the house. He was set out at our bridge and wound up at the home of our neighbor Joe Henry. So I called him old Joe.

Joe was probably a cross between a fiest, beagle, and black and white walker, black and white with shorter legs and a longer body. Long ears like a beagle but a long snout like a walker coon hound but with the tenacity of a little fiest squirrel dog. I loved that old dog. Silent on the trail till he got something run up a tree. Then he had that almost beagle yodel. Many a night he and I set out into the mountains but not deep into the woods like when we coon hunted. We liked going around the old orchards where the late apple, pears, and persimmons were putting on fruit and it persisted into the winter.

Now you never knew what you were going to find. Many an opossum was shook out of a tree for old Joe. He treed coons, opossums, big rats, squirrels, or just whatever was willing to run from him. He was slow on the trail and never offered to run a rabbit, fox, or deer. One night he did tree a big ole bobcat. That bobcat was almost as big as he was.  I never would have imagined that. Now we didn’t shake out that bobcat nor shot him out. He was pretty intent watching me as I approached the tree and put old Joe on a leash. But, he never budged from his perch.

Now our family grave yard is in a little section that used to be the place where my dad was born. It was a little hillside homestead with a pretty good orchard down toward the valley and a group of graves up the hill where all my kin are buried. This was attached to a much larger graveyard with many stones dating back to the late 1700’s. Many of the tombstones are just rocks with one at the head and one at the foot as the poor mountaineers laid their dead to rest. Many of those probably had a wooden marker that is lost to the annals of time. I find it amazing how many of those old graves were kid graves. Little short 3 or 4 ft long graves for children and probably 3 times as many of those as there are full adult graves.

At the top end of that graveyard, which is several acres worth of mountain hillside, is a place we called the ivy patch. Animal travel trails weaved in and out among the long abandoned stones and stones so weathered that no one remembered who was there. This was all grown up in rambling rose and blackberry thickets. Old Joe loved to weave back and forth over these trails in search of whatever he could find. It was filled with rabbit but every now and again he would find a groundhog or opossum that were also using them. He was quiet moving with his nose barely on the ground like he was hunting like a sight hound. But when he found a trail followed it and used his eyes to locate his quarry when he got close. I could always tell when he made up his mind that what he was trailing was close by. He stopped putting his nose on the ground and would stare intently in the directions he was going. In a few minutes he would start off with a low bark and then he would sit by the tree not making much noise at all.

Only once did old Joe ever stop and whine in a weird manner. I was probably 14 yrs old and we had come through the old orchard headed up toward the graveyard. It was probably 9 pm in December. Dark came on about 5:30 so it was good and dark. I was wearing dads mining light and was out just running around with old Joe and we had shaken out one opossum in the old persimmon patch. I was coming up the hill being kind of quiet when something caught my eye. We hadn’t made it into the graveyard yet. The graveyard was about 60 or 70 feet on up the hill, about 40 yards away in the graveyard there stood someone in the dark.

I pretty much knew everyone who lived anywhere near the Cote’s Cemetery. I did not recognize this person. It was a little old man, looked to be in his late 70’s or 80's walking with a stick and was maybe 100 lbs soaking wet.  Old Joe didn’t want anything to do with this person. He had gone up the hill and had come straight back to me whining and got right under my feet. I stood and looked at the old man and time kind of froze. He was dressed in a black shirt with bib overalls and had a watch chain hanging into his breast pocket. I never considered that it was a haint or a spirit. But old Joe kept licking at my hand wanting me to move on in the other direction. The old guy looked straight at me for a moment and then turned and slowly started walking up the hill. He had no light to see by and was just moving up the trail headed for the ivy patch.

I decided to take old Joes advice and not go into the graveyard that night. I was armed as was the case every time I ventured into the woods. But my bucket of silver bullets was empty. Now my grandmother used to tell tales about the ghouls who played around the tombstones at night. I had just considered them old wives tales meant to scare us kids. I have thought about it many times over the years. Who could that have been? It sure didn’t match what my mind had conjured about what ghouls look like. The old guys’ hat looked like the gray felt hat my grandfather wore. But, Paw was a big guy like me so I don’t imagine it was anyone I knew or was akin to. Then, why would they be walking in the graveyard in the middle of December after dark with no coat and no light. It was well below freezing. I hate my logical mind sometimes. The incident was odd all the way around.

This thought is so vivid in my mind. I don’t remember seeing any shoes, or hair. The figure was clean shaven and his old scrawny, wrinkled hands were holding onto that walking stick. He was about my height or maybe a little taller. However, he was uphill to me. When he turned to walk away so did I. I headed back for the railroad right of way and on back to maw and paws house via that railroad. I didn’t like to be out to very late when I stayed with them. I had planned to go through the orchard and the graveyard and come out on the back side of their property and walk down to Paws tobacco barn. That plan was totally interrupted this evening and old Joe was fine with that.

I never told any of the adults in my life about the incident. I was afraid they might not let me go back night hunting by myself. It is odd the things we think when you are a kid and the things we think when we are an adult. Here in the later portion of my life I wonder who it was. Was it a grandparent, a great grandparent? Was it someone that lived around there? Could it have been a haint? I have scoured old family photos and have found no one to fit the description. As I ponder these things I think about the old mountaineers that are buried in the graveyard. How many times did they make that walk up that hill to plant one of their loved ones? If the graves could talk! As I remember those distant kin, in-laws and outlaws, I am sure they would tell you like me that Life and Homesteading are a Marathon Not a Sprint – Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride!