This story a part of the True Ghost Stories page on Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
From: "CapnMitch" (capnmitch@nospamhotmail.com)
Subject: Re: All Hallow's Eve Post
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 11:42:36 -0600
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
My apologies if this is a repost... I didn't see it out there in the NG, so I assumed it had been eaten by the ether...
Well, I thought I would relate a Samhain story... 'tis the season, after all.
It was around a week before Halloween when me, Jason (if you remember, he's the spook radar station), Bruce (hand-crusher and Jim-seer extrodinare), and Mark (fellow cynic, but dabbler in Occult, more for study than practice... good reading and all that), all decided to play a sort of macho version of tag. I'll explain... it was a game of our own making. Basically, it consisted of us going out into a wooded area after dark, one person gets designated as "it", everyone else scatters like mad and hides... just like we all remember... the macho bit comes about in how we get "tagged". "It" has with him a crossbow, bolts with, instead of points, padded bags about the size of a silver dollar.
Well, it being about a week before Halloween, we decide to go out and play our version of tag out at Mount Lebanon, an area known for Occult activity (mostly rumor and legend, but a few strange things have occured there). We are actually careful not to go within the bounderies of the actual Mount Lebenon property line (there's a Christian retreat up there as part of the property, of all things) so we end up in a wooded area east of the place (I think). We parked Bruce's Monte Carlo by a big incinerator, and headed out into the woods, with Bruce as "it" (he just enjoyed shooting us, I think). We're all scattered all over the woods, all of us with that tingly 'someone is hunting me' feeling pumping up the adrenaline, all of us waiting to hear a twig snap or the twang of a bowstring, waiting to feel the WHAP of one of those damn bolts popping us or hear it whack a tree. The only way to keep from getting shot was to become "it". You can only do this by getting all the way to "it" and tagging him before he can shoot you. So, generally, you hear the crossbow string pop and dash like mad to try and tag him before he reloads. Well as I said, I was out in the woods, waiting, when I hear a tick-tick-tick... FWOOSH!! sound, which sounded for all the world like a gas stove lighting up... a BIG gas stove. I started thinking about the incinerator and figure it must be on a timer... at least, I WANTED it to be on a timer. The 'someone is hunting me' feeling is no longer much fun, 'someone other than Bruce is watching me' started taking over and I began thinking that risking a bolt in the chest might be worth it. If I step out of the woods, he'll shoot me for sure, but if I stay in the woods, the non-Bruce whoever ("that lit that incenerator.." my brain kept yammering at me) might do more than that. Then I hear Bruce saying that maybe we should leave in sort of a higher trying-not-to-sound-scared voice from near the car. I come out of the woods about the same time that Mark does and we headfor the car. The incinerator IS on, and, because it had a padlocked switch, we believe Bruce that he didn't switch it on. The padlock is gone and the panel is wide open, but we manage to convince each other that someone who worked out there must have snuck past a hyped-up and armed Bruce, gone up there, silently unlocked the lock, opened up the panel and switched it on, then snuck back down the open road... sounded reasonable to us! All this time, Jason is missing. Then we heard the howling.
Jason comes bolting out of the woods at a dead run screaming at us to get in the damn car NOW! We don't question him... we start diving in... me into the back seat with Mark, Bruce flipping madly through his key ring and already in the driver's seat. Jason is about twenty yards or so from the car when we hear the screaming from the tree line. We all look behind Jason, and coming out of the tree line is a young girl, obviously terrified, and the howling has degraded into snarling and barking. Close behind her are several large black dogs (I had never seen or heard of Rottwielers (sp?) before, but that's what the memory of them looks like to me) all of them in full pursuit and all of them had their teeth bared in apparent fury. Jason dives into the car and immediately tries to slam the door shut, but Mark brings up his foot and stops the door from closing, kicking the door halfway open in the process. The girl is screaming at us to please help her, Jason is screaming Trust ME, let me shut the damned door, Bruce is wimpering as he tries to stab his steering column to death with the ignition key, and I'm frozen in the back seat, staring at the dogs and this little girl through the heat haze coming out of the front of the incinerator. Jason manages to whack Mark in the shin and slam the door shut as the little girl slams into the side of the car, screaming and begging us to let her in. I remember her sounding so scared, her blonde hair all around her face, obscuring her features. The dogs kept coming at a full run and I was sure that I was about to watch them tear her apart like puppies with a stuffed animal, when the dogs stopped. The little girl stopped pounding on the side of the car immediately, and calmly stepped back as the dogs all sat down at the same time, like they were at a dog show or something. I remember most of all the very adult smile that crept across her face as she locked eyes with Jason, like a woman playing coyly with a prospective lover. It was a sickening thing to witness cross the face of a child... or at least a child-like thing. I have no idea what would have happened if we had kept that door open, or what would have happened if Bruce hadn't at that moment managed to start that big damn canary yellow car and torn down that road. I whirled around in my seat and watched as the girl and dogs were enveloped by all of the dust being thrown from under the tires of Bruce's car.
Happy Halloween...
Capn Mitch
Nautical Naughtiness and High Seas Hijinks
Painter and Maker of Fine Didjeridus