Several of the true stories told here in Musings & Memories are stories of  encounters with ghostly spirits or apparitions, but this was a ghostly encounter of a different kind! It was perhaps the most unearthly experience of my life.

In Pickens County there is an old, abandoned cemetery, dating back to before the War Between the States, situated out in the woods and invisible from the gravel road that passes by it. It is located behind the former site of a Church, long since gone, which "split" into two factions, one Missionary Baptist and the other Free Will Baptist. Along side of this cemetery runs an old abandoned road, barely visible. All the tombstones, however, face the public road still in use to this day. Many of the stones have been knocked over by falling trees and such, while others still stand upright. 

One stone in particular is striking, first of all because it is an obelisk and secondly because it marks the grave of a young Confederate soldier who died very early in the War, before the days when thousands of mangled bodies would litter battlefields after a single day's fighting, and dead soldiers were buried in anonymous mass graves, and sometimes not buried at all. He died when a single death was still worth marking, and when the body of a young boy who died in service to the infant Confederacy could be brought home for a dignified, Christian burial among his home folks.  

Back in my early days, in my late teens and early twenties, when I was riding my ol' mare, Bess (see Some Horse Stories), I would sometimes ride by this cemetery, and, sometimes, stop and go into it to look at the stones and read the inscriptions. It is a very peaceful, beautiful place, despite the neglect - or perhaps because of it - with hardwood trees standing all amongst the stones, and generally it gave me a real sense of peace to be there among the last remains of those early settlers. There was certainly nothing frightening or spooky about it.

I say "generally" because there was one day, which I will never forget, which was quite different. I believe it was in the Fall, after the leaves had fallen from the trees, and just a little nippy though still very pleasant. The day was bright, clear and still, with not a cloud in the brilliant blue sky. I turned off the gravel road onto that long ago dirt road and, as I got to the cemetery, the wind suddenly began to blow and the sky to darken. Simultaneously, a great, thick cloud of tiny black flies swarmed out from the cemetery, enveloping ol' Bess and me.

Nevertheless, I tied Bess to a sapling and ventured into the cemetery - but without the sense of peace which normally accompanied me there. The combination of deepening darkness, fierce wind and thousands of tiny flies seemed to me to be some sort of warning, or perhaps an announcement of the presence of "beings" other than Bess and me. The entire time I remained in the cemetery, the skies remained dark, the winds blew, and the swarms of flies choked the air around me. Being somewhat hard- headed, however,  and feeling that the spirits were trying to intimidate or test me, I would not flee. 

When I finally did decide to leave, the strange signs continued until I stepped back into that old abandoned roadway. The instant I did so, however, all ceased - the wind suddenly died away, the darkness evaporated, and the flies were gone. In an instant! All that remained was the clear blue sky and abundant sunshine which had been there all day until ol' Bess and I approached that haunted place. It was as though it had never occurred! I untied Bess, mounted her, and we went on our way.

Although I have visited that cemetery many times over the years since that day, nothing like this ever occurred again. Were the spirits testing me? If so, I must have passed the test!

Copyright July 9th, 2008, by Tom Woodard

NOTE: Should you ask how to find this old cemetery, I will not tell you. There are far too many people these days who have no respect for anything, not even the final resting place of the remains of the dead, and who think it great sport to desecrate such sites by breaking and tumbling the old gravestones. If you know of the "hiding place" of some old cemetery or venerable building, try to keep it to yourself, to avoid the possibility of its being vandalized by such 'pond scum'.     

NOTE: A friend of mine remarked about this story "Something very real yet somehow surreal." This is exactly what I experienced, something very real and at the same time very surreal. It remains so even to this day. I know it happened, yet it remains surreal. It was, and remains, a "How can this be?" experience.

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