A Halloween Story

One Halloween night, when I was around eleven-years-old, my childhood friend and partner in mischief, Skunky Wilson, and I had just finished trick-or-treating when Skunky got one of his brilliant ideas.

"Hey, let's go through the cemetery on our way home," he suggested. "It will cut our walking distance in half."

"Are you kidding me?!" I responded. "You know the legend of the hobo." That legend was almost as old as the town itself.

One October day, not many years after our little town of Booger Hollow (pronounced Holler) came into being, a hobo made camp in the woods near the community. Shortly thereafter, children in the area started turning up missing. It didn't take long for people to begin thinking the hobo's arrival in the woods and the disappearance of children was no coincidence.

As children kept disappearing, fear filled the hearts of the town's people, and the public outcry for something to be done became deafening. So, on Halloween eve the city fathers decided enough was enough. They were going to make the town safe for Halloween night and for all nights thereafter.

By torchlight, they searched the woods for the hobo. When they found him they dragged him to the oldest, tallest, and strongest oak tree in the town center. There, the city fathers hung the poor man, then gave him a pauper's burial.

As life began to fade from the hobo's body, he spewed forth a curse upon them all, vowing that on future Halloween nights his grave will open and his corps will stalk the town in search of a child to steal.

At any rate, Skunky scoffed at my remark concerning the hobo. "You still don't believe in that ole tale, do ya?"

"Of course not. I was just checking to see if you did." I wasn't about to let him know that the story still gave me the shivers. There would've been no end to the teasing I'd receive. So, off we went through the town cemetery.

Well, there was an early morning burial scheduled for the next day, and, as was the custom at that time, the grave had been dug the day before the funeral and was left uncovered. It was this practice of not covering freshly dug graves that would prove to be the cause of many a nightmare for Skunky and me.

You see, earlier that evening Lester, the town drunk, had staggered through the graveyard after finishing off a couple of bottles of cheap wine. As Lester staggered through the cemetery he managed to find the freshly dug grave by falling into it, and try as he might, he just couldn't climb out of the seven foot hole. Finally, he just slumped to the floor and fell into a drunken sleep.

Now, Skunky and I found it very difficult to see where we were going. The night sky was overcast and the clouds blocked the light of the moon; plus, the cemetery was abounding with big old weeping willow trees, casting even darker shadows everywhere.

So, we were nervously making our way through the graveyard when I snagged a foot on something, tripped, pitched forward, and began falling into a fairly deep hole. Skunky reached out and caught a hold of my arm and strained to hold me up. But it was to no avail. The forces of gravity won out, and the both of us ended up in the bottom of a freshly dug grave . . . a grave that, oddly enough, smelled of cheap wine.

"Sku, Sku, Skunky, do you suppose that this is the hobo's grave an, an, and even at this moment he's out a huntin' kids?"

"I don't know, but we'd best find a way out of here or we might find the answer to that question the hard way," was his response.

Just then both of us felt a finger tap our shoulders and heard a voice behind us mutter something that to this day I'm still not sure what. All I know is that all of sudden Skunky and I soared to the top of that grave with one giant leap and left a wake of dust behind us as we frantically ran for our homes.

A couple of days later my dad mentioned something about an article in the local paper. The details were sketchy, but evidently the town drunk had been found in an open grave one morning, yelling for help. When asked what he was doing there, he mumbled something about not being able to get a decent night's sleep, not even in the cemetery, without people dropping in on you.

Well at least he only missed one night's sleep. It wasn't until after the passage of time (and intense therapy) that Skunky or I were able to get a solid night's rest. And to this day, I wouldn't advise anybody to tap either one of us on the shoulder from behind--at least not indoors, unless the ceiling is more than seven feet high.