"Your brother tells me you've posted a few of my stories on the Information Superhighway, or something to that effect," Grandpa chuckled.

"I hope you don't mind," I said.

"Not at all," he replied, during a recent long-distance call from Hawaii. "You should post the one about the Macabre Farm, my friend's farm in Iowa."

"I'm all ears."

* * * * *

One of Grandpa's war buddies, a fellow named Ervin "Tex" Cobb, owned a farm in Iowa several years ago. Grandpa visited the farm a few times on his way across the country. The last time he visited was in 1959, driving out to Chicago from Garden Grove, California. Tex's house was constructed sometime around the turn-of-the-century.

"I've slept in haunted houses," Grandpa said, "and I can tell you right now, this one was not haunted."

But there was something outside, Grandpa said. On a windy, crisp October night, he heard it. Moaning--not just the moaning of a tormented, solitary individuals--but the collective moaning of several souls. Grandpa went outside to investigate and, by the light of the moon, many yards away, he could make out the silhouettes of dozens of people roaming around in a vacant field adjacent to the farm grounds. They would congregate under a large tree, then they would proceed to wander aimlessly. They wept, they stumbled, they appeared--from a great distance--to be completely confused, searching for someone or something.

As Grandpa stood and watched this bleak ritual unfolding in the neighboring lot, he felt a hand clutch his shoulder. His heart almost stopped as he turned to face Tex.

"Let's talk," Tex said. "I've got a pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen."

Tex told Grandpa about the mysterious apparitions. In 1953, a Northwest passenger plane--one of those rambling prop plane "puddle jumpers" that carried some three dozen passengers, lost radio contact with Des Moines late one night, during a horrible thunderstorm. Lightning hit one of the engines and it went down about a half mile from Tex's house. Tex and his wife, Helen, heard the roar of an engine and they raced to their window, only to see a fireball smashing into the field. Fire engines and ambulances were called out from three counties. The rain helped fire crews extinguish the fire. There were no survivors. The following morning, Tex found the charred remains of a little girl clutching her teddy bear in the middle of his corn field.

"It was the worst thing I've ever seen," Tex said, rubbing his eyes as the two men sipped their coffee solemnly. "Nothing I saw during the war could prepare me for this."

"And the figures outside?" Grandpa asked.

"The passengers. Every now and then, they wander the fields out there, searching for baggage, searching for loved ones."

Tex told Grandpa about seeing the apparition of the dead young girl standing on his porch, her teddy bear in her arms, staring up at him with her blond curls and bright red dress. "Jus' staring," Tex said. "It was as if she wanted me to help her, as if she was beckoning me."

Tex told Grandpa that the passengers appear less frequently with each passing year, but their appearances are random and their sad moans always awaken Tex and his wife, as well as the neighbors down the highway. Tex also said that, even though crews thoroughly cleaned up the neighboring field, he often still finds pieces of airplane wreckage.

"The other day, I found a 'Life' magazine from the year the plane crashed. It had a picture of a man and his wife and four kids. Jesus, it was hard to look at."

Grandpa and Tex went out to the porch and observed the pathetic apparitions wander around the field, searching and crying. As they watched, Tex said that once he saw the apparition of the plane wreckage itself, the fire still crackling, the smell of smoke in the air. Then, as the two men watched, without warning--around 2:12 a.m., the ghosts faded into thin air. Silence returned to the farm, and the only thing the men could hear was the wind whistling through the corn fields.

Grandpa left the next morning for Chicago. Before he reached his Buick, he found a small black patent leather shoe sitting by the mailbox. He left it where it was, got in his car and drove away.

Tex died of a heart attack in 1969 and his wife moved away from the farm. The last time Grandpa drove past the area, he noticed that a new processing plant had been constructed where the plane crashed many years earlier. He found out from the manager that employees often complained about hearing screams, and they always felt as if they were being watched. One foreman spoke of seeing a small girl holding a teddy bear. "Nobody will work the graveyard shift," the manager complained to Grandpa.

"I can't say I blame them," Grandpa said.