The Ghosts Who Follow
You Never Truly Walk Alone
Have you ever been alone somewhere and you hear someone call your name? You look around to see who was calling you, but either no one is there or no one seems responsible? As if no one heard anything at all? You figure you're just hearing things, you move on, and that happens a couple times in your life and it's easy to shrug off.
I was walking a friend home from school one day, and I guess really she was the only friend I had. (Plenty of people are happy to use you and call it friendship, but they prove themselves unreliable when reciprocating. At a point I simply didn't talk to or hang out with anyone. Just one person, and I was quite loyal to them until recently when it showed that they actually hadn't cared at all.) I walked her home to make sure she got there safely, even though her dad didn't want me around, and definitely not invited in. It was just something I did, every day, after school, and I'd leave before her dad got home and didn't hang around for long.
She lived a block away from the graveyard that I'd frequently visit, a place where no one would find me, if anyone even bothered to look, and where I could be alone and escape. But most days, I simply walked up the graveyard's steep hill and up onto the next street at the top and head home. We used to play hide and seek there, even sled ride, trying to avoid the headstones and the dead drop onto route 66.
One morning when I arrived back at school, my friend stopped me in the cafeteria. "Who walked home with you, last night?" I thought she was kidding, honestly, because we both knew I didn't have friends, but she was waiting for an answer, so she was serious. "I walked home alone. You know... like usual." "No one stopped you?" "Was someone supposed to?"
She said that after I left her house, she went to go into the basement where they had a fridge with drinks in it. (Right next to the basement bathroom.) On her way down the stairs she felt something rush past her on the stairs and she looked back and saw her cat sitting on the top stair, watching something. It wasn't the cat that ran by her, because whatever it was ran ahead of her. Suddenly something hit the shower curtain in the bathroom and right after that, she heard a girls voice calling my name. They sounded lost and like they were trying to call for me so I'd wait up for them. But it sounded like it was coming from inside the basement, not outside.
She abandoned her idea of getting a drink and ran back upstairs, closing the basement door behind her. Trying to rationalise it all, she was hoping maybe someone in the alley was calling for me to wait up for them. But I hadn't heard anything or anyone at all. There was no one in the alley when I passed by. But now I always think back to the times I swore I heard someone call my name, and I wonder if maybe it was "them".
As far as the graveyard itself went, besides finding an unfamiliar bone bleached out and sitting on top of a headstone, the only other things I experienced was sitting under the trees and watching a plume of mist move past at a rate different from the wind speed, and then gradually just disappear. That and the overwhelming sense of dread coming from the woods that lined one side of the graveyard. The absolute feeling of "stay away". Not that I could blame anyone. I'd ventured into the woods during daylight hours and saw dirt and leaf covered, ruined, and quite small markers with most of the information worn away. I assume they were the half-assed and shallow graves of poorer people who were buried haphazardly in the woods and forgotten. Then again, most of the graves there were sunken in, the coffins obviously haven broken down after over a hundred years.
The iron fences lining some family plots was also broken down or removed by people who had forgotten why iron fences were placed there to begin with. (hint: iron fences were put up around graves to keep the ghosts inside, because iron was thought to ward away evil.)
Honestly, the whole town was haunted one way or another. I'd walk the town at night, when everyone was sleeping, when the air was cool, and it was nice and quiet. It didn't matter what time of night it was, I was out at some point. I'd seen ghosts walking the streets and then disappearing. One had seen me as I had seen them and turned to speak, but disappeared. None of them wore clothes from our time. I seemed like it didn't matter where you went, you were never really alone.
And even if you went over a friends house, if they lived in one of the original houses from when the town was built, there was someone (or something) cohabitating there with the living residents. Thankfully, some of those houses had news records. (I have no idea where my houses records are, I've never had the chance to browse.)
Have you ever been alone somewhere and you hear someone call your name? You look around to see who was calling you, but either no one is there or no one seems responsible? As if no one heard anything at all? You figure you're just hearing things, you move on, and that happens a couple times in your life and it's easy to shrug off.
I was walking a friend home from school one day, and I guess really she was the only friend I had. (Plenty of people are happy to use you and call it friendship, but they prove themselves unreliable when reciprocating. At a point I simply didn't talk to or hang out with anyone. Just one person, and I was quite loyal to them until recently when it showed that they actually hadn't cared at all.) I walked her home to make sure she got there safely, even though her dad didn't want me around, and definitely not invited in. It was just something I did, every day, after school, and I'd leave before her dad got home and didn't hang around for long.
She lived a block away from the graveyard that I'd frequently visit, a place where no one would find me, if anyone even bothered to look, and where I could be alone and escape. But most days, I simply walked up the graveyard's steep hill and up onto the next street at the top and head home. We used to play hide and seek there, even sled ride, trying to avoid the headstones and the dead drop onto route 66.
One morning when I arrived back at school, my friend stopped me in the cafeteria. "Who walked home with you, last night?" I thought she was kidding, honestly, because we both knew I didn't have friends, but she was waiting for an answer, so she was serious. "I walked home alone. You know... like usual." "No one stopped you?" "Was someone supposed to?"
She said that after I left her house, she went to go into the basement where they had a fridge with drinks in it. (Right next to the basement bathroom.) On her way down the stairs she felt something rush past her on the stairs and she looked back and saw her cat sitting on the top stair, watching something. It wasn't the cat that ran by her, because whatever it was ran ahead of her. Suddenly something hit the shower curtain in the bathroom and right after that, she heard a girls voice calling my name. They sounded lost and like they were trying to call for me so I'd wait up for them. But it sounded like it was coming from inside the basement, not outside.
She abandoned her idea of getting a drink and ran back upstairs, closing the basement door behind her. Trying to rationalise it all, she was hoping maybe someone in the alley was calling for me to wait up for them. But I hadn't heard anything or anyone at all. There was no one in the alley when I passed by. But now I always think back to the times I swore I heard someone call my name, and I wonder if maybe it was "them".
As far as the graveyard itself went, besides finding an unfamiliar bone bleached out and sitting on top of a headstone, the only other things I experienced was sitting under the trees and watching a plume of mist move past at a rate different from the wind speed, and then gradually just disappear. That and the overwhelming sense of dread coming from the woods that lined one side of the graveyard. The absolute feeling of "stay away". Not that I could blame anyone. I'd ventured into the woods during daylight hours and saw dirt and leaf covered, ruined, and quite small markers with most of the information worn away. I assume they were the half-assed and shallow graves of poorer people who were buried haphazardly in the woods and forgotten. Then again, most of the graves there were sunken in, the coffins obviously haven broken down after over a hundred years.
The iron fences lining some family plots was also broken down or removed by people who had forgotten why iron fences were placed there to begin with. (hint: iron fences were put up around graves to keep the ghosts inside, because iron was thought to ward away evil.)
Honestly, the whole town was haunted one way or another. I'd walk the town at night, when everyone was sleeping, when the air was cool, and it was nice and quiet. It didn't matter what time of night it was, I was out at some point. I'd seen ghosts walking the streets and then disappearing. One had seen me as I had seen them and turned to speak, but disappeared. None of them wore clothes from our time. I seemed like it didn't matter where you went, you were never really alone.
And even if you went over a friends house, if they lived in one of the original houses from when the town was built, there was someone (or something) cohabitating there with the living residents. Thankfully, some of those houses had news records. (I have no idea where my houses records are, I've never had the chance to browse.)
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