Zubrovka,

I certainly hope the funeral director and his son were SEVERELY punished for this breach of faith and sanctity. That is a total disgrace, and certainly casts a terrible light on the profession! But, I suppose, there are "bad apples" in every field, although there are some examples which go beyond tastelessness! Thank you for clarifying that story for me.

BTW, many people ask me how I got interested in the field, and I must say, I ask myself that often. But the truth of the matter is that my back yard borders an old cemetery. There were burials there, but they got less and less frequent. I would always watch, and became interested in how we care for our dead. This also gave me my interest in ghosts.

I would sit in the back yard on summer and fall nights, just watching and waiting to catch that one glimpse of something out of the ordinary. I personally have not SEEN any kind of apparition, but I'm told from some of the old-timers in my neighborhood that they've seen "weird goings-on" in that graveyard. I have, however, heard a great many odd sounds emanating from the mists there!

One night, in 1984, I was reading on the enclosed patio behind the house, when I heard a soft cooing, like that of a small child. It was interspersed with sparse laughter, and words I couldn't make out. It was dark, and there wasn't a moon to see by, and it had begun to fog over, as it does that time of year (late May-early June). I thought that someone was walking on the road on the other side of the cemetery, and I paid it no mind. I went back to my reading (I think I was reading Peter Straub at the time, which was ironic!), but again was disturbed by the persistent cooing. I heard no adults and looked at my watch, trying to reconcile a small child out alone at 10:30 at night.

I got up and went to the light switch and flicked it on, immediately casting a bright flood light on the back yard, far into the distance, where I could see the rusting back gate of the cemetery entangled in the vines and weeds of a now rarely used footpath. Turning on the light was like turning off the child: there was no sound but the crickets and the breeze.

I resisted the age old flaw of calling out into the darkness, remembering all the poor saps in the scary films that did this only to find more than an answer awaited them. I actually thought of that, because this whole incident was beginning to unnerve me. I wasn't going to let a child frighten me, I told myself, so I did the next stupid thing that all poor saps in horror films do: I got a flashlight and went out to investigate what was going on. I walked out about fifty feet, and heard nothing. I didn't need the flashlight yet, as the light from the floodlamp was still bright enough to illuminate my way. The grass in my yard is well trimmed up to the rockery, where my mother (before she herself passed on) would place rocks in ways that mimicked a flower garden. I started walking up the narrow path made between the rockery's two halves, and still heard nothing. I got up to the gate, the light from the house now struggling to pass through the thicket at the yard's end, and I pointed the flashlight out to the gaping darkness and saw--nothing. Just some fog, a field mouse near the foundation of the wall where the gate delineated the two properties, and some vigil candles in the distance.

I stood there for a minute or two, trying to use my ears like radar, trying to get a fix on a sound, any sound, and aim the light in that direction, but heard nothing. Even the crickets had stopped, and the field mouse darted out of sight and hearing range immediately upon being discovered. I began to think about how silly and cliche this all began to seem, and just then the realization of damp night air rocked me back to my senses. I turned out the flashlight and walked back to the house, part of me relieved that I found nothing, and part of me sure that I heard something. I decided it must have been just passers-by and left it at that.

As I walked through the patio I switched the light off, and in that exact instant it was like switching the sound on. The crying started again, and I stopped in my tracks, you know that feeling you get when you think someone has the advantage on you and is watching you. I began to think the obvious: someone is playing a very bad joke on me (actually it was a great joke-if they had known what was going on in my head). I reached for the light and flicked it on: the sound stopped. Now the poor sap in the horror film crept out and I yelled out with a booming baritone something to the effect of "Very funny, folks. Just get off my property, now, OK? Before I call the cops. The darkness was silent. I almost dreaded hitting that light switch again, I even thought of just going to bed and leaving it on all night, but thought of the lecture I'd get in the morning on how electricity doesn't grow on trees, and when I start paying the electric bill, then I can leave the lights on all night ran through my head, so I pulled the light switch dowwn, very slowly, as if to think that the quieter I made the switch, whoever out there wouldn't pick up on the fact that I was trying to trick them-it didn't occur to me that the light going OUT was probably just as big a tip off to the pranksters. And as I expected, the sudden dark cued the minute voice, but it seemed louder, now. I began to get really frightened. Whoever was doing this was good at practical jokes, but I wasn't going to let them get the better of me.

I grabbed the flashlight, ran out the screen door and rushed toward the thicket and gate, anger now replacing fear. I purposely made as much noise as possible, giving the jerks one last chance to vamoose before I discovered them and ruined their fun. I reached the gate, the waif-like sounds still carrying across the night air, and zoned in on the sound. It seemed to be coming from the left of me. I opted to jump the wall rather than fight with the rusted gate. As soon as my feet touched the hallowed ground the silence returned. But I had already pinpointed the source and switched the flashlight on to navigate through the veritable sea of markers, sure I was going to beat them at their game. I reached the spot I thought was the sound's source, keeping my peripheral vision honed for some surprise from the flanks. I was scared beyond belief, wondering what I had gotten myself into, and would I be able to handle a possible group of pissed off or drunk people! I stopped suddenly and looked around, attempting to get my bearings; there was McSorley's mausoleum on the left, the large black obelisk marking the O'Toole family plot right next to it, the flags of the veterans' graves to the right. Everything where it should be. The moment would have been serene if I weren't so frightened. It was, however, anticlimactic. No girl crying, no pranksters, no drunks, no gangs--nothing.

I looked around, thinking they still may be in the surrounding thicket, and I started shining the light in all directions, the fear and the pounding in my head still not completely gone. I searched a part of the thicket to my left, where I saw some graves I had never noticed before, or had forgotten years ago, and it looked like I wasn't the only one who forgot them. They were in terrible condition. Four headstones, and part of one that was obviously destroyed by lack of attention. I shone the light on them to see if I recog- nized the stones, at least the names on the stones, only to find I was com- pletely unfamiliar with them.

Two of the stones belonged to the Herlihy family, amother, father and two sons. The Parents both died within one year of each other in the late nineteen thirties, while the sons both died in world war II. The third stone stone be- longed to a Caroline Miller, who died in 1968. And the fourth stone, when I shone the light on it, froze my blood. You guessed it, it belonged to a little girl of five years old; a Louisa McHale, who died on May 26th, 1917. The very day this all occurred.

This is a true story. I have never heard the little girl since, and can hardly get anyone to believe it, now. I've had some time to think on it, and go over it a thousand times in my head, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. It is not the result of either a fertile imagination or the spook stories of a funeral director. It happened. I'll never say it didn't

CHIAPET (Larry Donovan)