Things That Go "Jump" in the Night

My Daddy was an amazing storyteller. He could spin a scary yarn that would make your hair stand on end and keep you awake for a week at a time. The town of Coosada where I grew up was blessed (or cursed in my case) with the historic gravesite of the first governor of Alabama, William Wyatt Bibb. The fact that this graveyard backed up to our property gave way to a sort of year-round open season on ghost stories and tales of haints in the neighborhood.

The first story I remember Daddy telling was the one about his building our house back in the early 60's. He always swore that it was the truth, but I never heard the exact same version twice, so now that I'm grown, I have my doubts. The story goes that as Daddy was looking over the property on which he would build our house,  a man walked up behind him and started talking to him as if he were a neighbor. He told Daddy that he had once owned all that land, and he hoped Daddy would be happy there. Daddy supposedly carried on a nice, long conversation with this man. Somehow, Daddy later recognized the fact the he had been speaking to the ghost of William Wyatt Bibb. That story never really scared me much, but it was the jumping off point for a hundred more tales of haints and goblins of sorts that kept me shivering under the covers for my entire childhood.

One such tale was often told to us on our many camping adventures. These campouts were some of the most enjoyable family times in my memory, even if they were only in our back yard. (We never knew other people actually left home to go camping.) Daddy would get us out in the back yard (which was a stone's throw from the graveyard) under a lean-to made of poles and plastic sheeting. We'd hunker down around a campfire with marshmallows and hot dogs, and when the noisy creatures of the night cranked up their croaks, squawks, and chirps, Daddy would crank up the spooky stories. He told of scary men with blue gums that had such dark skin that you couldn't see them at night. They would sneak up on you in the dark and eat you. He told us to be on the lookout for their white eyes. On most campout nights, this was the point at which I got a horrible stomachache and had to go back inside. Luckily, Mama would always be expecting me, and she'd save me a spot in her bed. I don't know what other tales came after the blue-gummed dark man, but my sisters were brave enough to stick around for them.

One scary story often leads to another, and pretty soon we all came to the conclusion that our house was absolutely and utterly haunted. From time to time, heavy objects and figurines would literally levitate off the built-in book shelves in our den, float in mid-air for a moment, and come crashing to the floor. I'm not sure I ever witnessed these events, but I did hear the crashes, and the explanations of them was told to me often enough and sincerely enough that I came to believe I saw these things levitate myself.

There was a time when my sister Janet and I actually did witness one of these levitating objects in our bedroom. We had a little stuffed beanbag turtle on the headboard of our bed, and we were sitting on the bed talking before lights out, when the closet door flung open, and the turtle was catapulted across the room into the closet by some unseen force. The closet door then slammed shut. I think Janet and I could have won the Olympic long jump at that moment, because I don't think our feet touched the floor from our bed to Mama and Daddy's bedroom door across the hall. I like to think that Pam and Donna Jo were playing pranks on us, but I really can't say for sure.

Needless to say, I very seldom got a good night of sleep at our haunted house. I was always afraid of things that go "jump" in the night. I wouldn't go near windows because I was afraid of what monsters would grab me from the other side. I wouldn't let my feet touch the floor after lights out for fear of what monsters would grab me from under the bed. I kept the cover up as high as they would go with smothering myself to death for fear of vampires that might sneak in and bite my neck. I could always hear the pacing of ghastly feet pacing the hallway outside my door, and I often heard haints scratching on the window screen trying to come in. A kid with a big imagination can take spooky stories and  stretch 'em from here to the moon and back!

If you keep up with my future blogs, you will hear many more of the spooky stories from my childhood that still haunt the corners of my mind. They are misty, water-colored memories of the way we were........Or were we?...