Freetown Forest Ghost Story

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a short story I wrote a while ago inspired by the ever-spooky Freetown Forest.  Please note it's entirely fictional.  I was going to post it to Reddit, but it turns out I hate Reddit.  So here...

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I looked around the room, absorbing the sight of their pale, anxious faces and the only thing I could think was I am so glad I smoked that blunt earlier.

Maybe this isn’t the best place to start the story. In fact, you’re probably thinking I’m a pretty lousy storyteller right now.  Well, I guess you’d be right.  I’m great at telling false stories and spinning beautiful and elaborate lies, but I’ve gotten a bit shaky at telling the truth, and that’s what I’m trying to do here.

I’m trying to tell you a real, honest to God ghost story.

So let me start at the beginning; Hi, my name is Jacob McClellan and I am a con artist.  Or at least I used to be.  My game was ghost hunting, and I was good at making people believe their homes were haunted.  And so, I recently found myself called in by a group of concerned neighbors who thought they might be experiencing a group haunting from the local woods.  It was on a cool, crisp New England afternoon, and I was sitting in the rather formal parlor of a colonial home, looking upon the faces of my newest victims/ clients as they told me another improbable story about the woods behind their house.

“This area has a… history” began a heavy set man with an impressive mustache.  He made sure he emphasized the word “history” in a dramatic manner, pausing to elevate the sense of suspense, his eyes roaming across the room as though he was telling a group of boy scouts a frightening tale around the campfire.

“Yes sir, I know quite a bit about the history of the Bridgewater Triangle and the Freetown Forest” I nodded, doing my best to seem professional in spite of the head high I was experiencing.  “There have been reports of spirits dwelling in these woods since the Native Americans inhabited these parts.”

A man sitting to the right of me snorted to show he disagreed.  His appearance can only be described as that of a soccer dad-- sensible white tennis shoes, conservatively fitted jeans with a high waist band, and a track jacket.  He even had the baseball cap with the local soccer league emblem on it.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this is going to help.  ‘Spirits’ haven’t been watching us from the woods at night, or setting off my damned house alarm.  It’s clearly those crazy devil worshippers.”

There was a lot of talk about devil worshippers and even voodoo practitioners dwelling in the Freetown Forest, but it was just a bunch of garbage.  Sure, some goth kids would occasionally steal Daddy’s vodka and sneak off to spray paint some demonic symbols on the trees, but the urban legend far outweighed the reliable evidence of the situation.

Mustache Man grew red in the face as he addressed Soccer Dad.  “Oh cut the shit Jerry, we’ve already gone that route with the cops.  No footprints, no fingerprints, nothing caught on the security cameras… what other choice do we have but to entertain the possibility that there is.... something out there we can’t explain!”  He had implemented that dramatic pause again and I tried not to snicker.  I really was quite stoned.

“Language Arthur” Mustache Man’s wife chastised him.

I realized it was time to de-escalate the situation a bit.  I turned my attention to Soccer Dad.  “Jerry is it?” I asked, and he gave me a short nod.  “I can certainly understand your hesitance to investigate this scenario from a paranormal angle.  It’s only rational to reject notions that we have little scientific understanding of.  This is why I use a scientific approach when it comes to my studies-- don’t think of me as a “ghost hunter” or a “paranormal investigator”-- I am first and foremost a scientist.”

“Got a degree in ghost science eh?” Jerry retorted, and his wife stopped texting for a moment to smack him in the arm.

“No, but I do have a degree in physics” I responded, to which they all looked quite surprised.  This was actually not a lie, and I produced my diploma to prove it.  Few people believed that the weirdo ghost guy had gone to college, so I always had to be prepared.

“So what got you into this line of work?” Jerry asked, after giving my diploma a hard study.  It could hardly be called a “line of work” but I didn’t confess this to him.  I barely made any money off the con and spent 40 hours a week working in a cubicle doing IT support for a company in Providence.

I gave him my best “mysterious” look, which I must say is quite good.  “It’s a long story Jerry, but suffice to say, I’ve seen a lot of things in this job.  Things that defy scientific explanation, but can be measured and categorized.”

“What exactly do you measure?”

“Have you ever heard of the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy?”  Jerry gave a half-shrug; a noncommittal way of escaping having to admit that he had no fucking idea what I was talking about.

“Well, to provide you with the short summary, this law states that mass and energy cannot be created or destroyed.  And so I propose to you my theory-- the theory of the conservation of the soul.  Energy may change forms, but it still always exists in some state within the Universe.  I believe the same can be said for the soul-- when we die, our souls are not destroyed, but take on another form.”

“That’s a lovely thought” Moustache Man’s wide intoned once I was finished.

“Obviously it’s difficult to measure a soul since we know so little about its physical properties” I continued.  “But all living things give off some electrical current, and I’ve found that spirits do as well.  That is one of the first tactics in my multi-pronged approach to scientifically seeking out the paranormal.”  Truthfully it was my only tactic, and that was just because I looked really smart walking around with an electromagnetic fields reader and mumbling scientific sounding things about frequencies and axises.  Cheap EMF readers could be found in any standard ghost hunter’s kit (yes, these things exist, look it up on Amazon), but I used an expensive one that looked more elaborate.

“So what if you do pick up measurements to suggest there is something paranormal in our midst?”  Moustache Man asked.  I kinda wanted to slap him for using the word “midst” in a regular conversation.

“Well, first thing is to see how intense the energy is that these spirits are giving off.  Jerry, you said that your security system was being set off?  This could be why.”

“What if the spirits are… intense?” Moustache Man’s wife asked.  “How can we get rid of them?”

I gave her my kindest, most calming smile.  “I’ll worry about that if and when that time comes.  For now I’ll just do a preliminary assessment.  I’ll start with your homes today, and then this weekend I’ll spend a night out in the forest.  I’ll report back what I find, and we’ll go from there.”  I didn’t add that I’d never had to deal with getting rid of “intense” spirits because I’d never encountered any.  Nor did I add that I’ve never in fact found a glimmer of proof that spirits even exist.

Once they all seemed properly appeased they paid me my 50% up front fee, which was modest.  Most ghost hunters do the job for free because they’re freaks about finding a link to the afterlife, and snooping around creepy old houses or trodding through dark woods gives them a major hard on.  The funny thing is, the fact that I charge makes me seem more legit, and so I tend to get more customers than even the most active ghost hunters in the region.  I’m sure it’d boil their blood if they knew how few fucks I actually give about the whole thing.

I spent the afternoon walking around the various homes with my EMF, jotting occasional meaningless notes and scribbling down equations I’d learned during my undergrad that had nothing to do with my inquiries.  Physics equations are about as indecipherable and mysterious to the average person as the etchings on the nearby Dighton Rock.

I suppose I should explain the Dighton Rock, even though it hardly has any bearing on this story.  The Dighton Rock is just one of the many mysteries of the area they call “The Bridgewater Triangle”, which is 200 square miles of forest and swamps that crosses through over a dozen towns in southeastern Massachusetts.  The Dighton Rock is particularly weird because it’s really the only mystery that you can physically point to in the region-- everything else is urban legend and ghost stories.  The 40-ton boulder was discovered by early settlers in the 1600s and the strange drawings and carvings on its surface has made it a piece of speculation ever since.  There have been thousands of articles trying to interpret the thing, but not a single one is verifiable.  This has led me to believe the rock was just a doodle pad for some bored Native Americans back in the day.

Anyways, it’s not important that you know all about the stupid rock-- what’s important is that you get a sense of the weirdness of the Bridgewater Triangle.  That may help you better grasp why these people were so freaked out. It will also help you better understand the series of events that are about to follow.

After finishing my routine of inspecting the houses I’d found nothing unusual (unless you include a horrifying collection of creepy china dolls at Jerry’s house).  I then decided to screw around in the adjoining yards for a bit to really ham up the act, but I quickly got a strange sense of someone watching me from the woods.  I knew it was probably one of the local kids, and that they were probably laughing at the nerdy ghost hunter, so I gave the middle finger to the forest and then I headed home just as the sun was setting.

Home is the second floor of a two family house in a dirty old industrial city called New Bedford.  When I arrived I was greeted by the aroma of fried chicken seeping up from downstairs, so I decided to be friendly and stop by for a quick, neighborly hello in an attempt to score a free meal.

My downstairs neighbor, Madison Connelly, is something of a childhood friend, though I think that’s stretching the definition.  Her brother and I used to pal around until I turned 13 and lost both of my parents and had to move to the west coast to live with my grandmother.  I came back for college and started renting this cheap but dingy place.  I ran into his sister at a bar shortly after graduation and while I didn’t recognize her, she somehow knew who I was.  She was kinda cute so I bought her a drink and soon she was yakking about how she needed an affordable place to live while she finished her nursing degree, and I drunkenly divulged that my landlord was looking for a first floor tenant.

All of this wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that she seemed to have an inexplicable need to mother me, which quickly squashed any desire I had to hook up with her.  Still, she was sweet and a great cook. Mostly we got along fine.

I knocked on her door and she opened it quickly, a wave of mouthwatering scents bursting out in the process.  “Let me guess, you could smell dinner?” she joked, not even bothering to say hi.  She left the door open so I followed her in.

“Maybe I was just stopping in to ask about your day?”

“Since when do you care?” she yelled, already back at work in the kitchen.  This threw me off guard-- she was normally kind to the point of absurdity.  She emerged a moment later and I saw that she already looked guilty for the dig.  “Sorry I’m having a shitty day.  Hence why I’m cooking the fried chicken.  Comfort food…”

She trailed off and I could tell she wanted me to ask her about her day but I didn’t really feel like it, so I gallantly offered to go pick up a 6 pack of IPAs (her favorite) and she lit up a bit.  When I returned from my short jaunt to the package store she had already laid dinner out on her crappy little Ikea table and I congratulated myself on timing things so well.

By the time we finished dinner we had polished off the 6 pack and she had brought out a bottle of vodka and some cranberry juice to make Cape Codders.  It was clear by the vodka that she really had gone through an awful day, and part of me knew I’d ought to make an excuse and just head on upstairs, but I’m a sucker for drinks and I had nothing in my bare apartment.  So we sat on her sofa and enjoyed our beverages and talked about the last season of Game of Thrones and a bunch of other equally deep topics.

I was actually enjoying myself tremendously when she finally decided to tell me about her bad day.  “Keith broke up with me” she announced as she poured us both another drink without asking.

I felt surprisingly more bothered by this than I thought I would (the break up-- not the drink).  I didn’t really know much about her boyfriend aside from the fact that he was a hipster sort with trendy facial hair and jeans so tight that it seemed like he’d need vaseline and a shoe horn to get into them.  I’d hung out with the happy couple a half dozen times and run into them at the local drinking establishments about as often, and I didn’t particularly like or dislike him.  But for some reason I disliked that he’d broken up with her, and not the other way around.  It hardly made any sense, she was cute, and smart, and ambitious-- he was a pretentious deadbeat who lived off his mom and still and thought his band would “make it big soon”.

“I didn’t like him” I said, even though that wasn’t true-- up until this moment I didn’t care about him.  But it seems like that’s what you’re supposed to say I guess.

“You could have told me earlier” she huffed, and I realized it was in fact, not the right thing to say.  “If you thought he was so wrong for me why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m just-- it’s none of my business.”

She gave me a strange look and shifted away from me on the couch.  “Well, he’s out of the picture now.  Said that his band would be going on tour soon and he’d want to be free to sleep with other girls.  He wanted to take a break… like I was going to let him go off and screw groupies and then welcome him home like a hero.”

“So really, you broke up with him in a way” I speculated after a healthy swig of my drink.

“I guess so” she responded, picking at a loose thread in the couch in a self-conscious manner.

I felt a little bad about being so shitty with words and emotions and such, so I thought I’d share something interesting to divert the conversation.  “I’m going camping this weekend in the Freetown Forest.”

Her response was immediate; a strange mixture of looking sympathetic and appalled.  “Jake… why?”

“Ghost hunting” I said in a spooky tone that I intended to sound like Bela Lugosi but sounded more like a deaf granny.

She rolled her eyes.  “Right, that.  What’s the point of it all?  You admit you don’t make any money,so do you just like conning people?  Are you some kind of sociopath?”

“Ohh, big word Nurse Connelly” I teased.  I knew why she was reacting the way she was, but I didn’t want to give into it.  She kicked me from across the sofa and I was pleased to see I’d made her laugh.  “No, it’s not just about the con, though I do think it’s funny as all hell.  I don’t even know why I started doing it.  I just did.”

This sobered her significantly and she turned her blue-eyed gaze away from me, suddenly studying the ice in her drink.  “Don’t you think it’ll be weird for you to go there?”

“What because of my parents?  They died in a car accident on the highway, it wasn’t like it was in the forest.  I don’t see the connection.”

She bit her lip, giving me an indecisive look before downing the rest of her drink.  “That’s not the story my mother told me.  I mean… my mom can be dramatic so who the hell knows.  But before you go do this maybe just… give your grandma a ring or something.”

“What fucking story did your mother tell you?” I asked, suddenly angered by the thought that there was some suburban gossip going on about my parents after their tragic deaths.  Mrs. Connelly was a housewife, and with that title came all the stereotypical attributes; an obsession with tanning and Zumba, and an issue with booze.  I didn’t tend to believe anything she’d have to say.

“Just nevermind” Madison said, giving my shoulder a playful shove to alleviate the tension.  “You know my mom… she’s a lunatic.  Hence why I live here now.”

“And I thought it was just because you like to bug me” I retorted.

“Hey, you’re the one who came here looking for dinner” she reminded me.

Despite Madison’s successful effort to remove the strange comment from my memory for the time being, the next morning it had returned at full force.  It was there when I opened my eyes, when I brushed my teeth in front of my grimy bathroom mirror, and even when I was yelling at the soccer moms who drove their cars like shit and made me get stuck in traffic for an extra half hour.

As I sat at my cubicle trying to play an online chess match to pass the time, I realized why it was bugging me so much.  Sure, Mrs. Connelly was a bit of a drunk and true she had a thing for drama, but there were aspects about my parent’s death I’d always found suspicious.  For one, the questions the cops asked after their accident-- “Did you ever see either of your parents get in a confrontation with anyone?”  “Do you think there might be anyone who would have a reason to want to hurt your parents?”

My grandmother had told me it was all “pish posh” (her word for everything she refused to condone).  She explained that cops just have to rule out foul play in all accidental deaths.  It made some sense but still struck me as odd, even amidst my grief.  Then there was this moment before I left with her to move out to Cali that I could have sworn I saw a man drive by in their supposedly smashed up car.  True, they drove a generic tan Camry, the sort of car you might see ten of in a single mile of highway driving.  But it had the same bumper sticker my mom had put there that said “Well behaved women seldom make history”.

After losing the third chess match in a row I gave up trying to distract myself and decided to take Madison’s cryptic advice and call my grandmother.  She answered on the very last ring as she was starting to get slow and was a bit deaf now.  “Hello?” she answered quite loudly.

“Hey Grandma, it’s Jake” I said, trying to keep my voice down.  I suspected that most of my coworkers were wearing headphones and watching porn or something, but I couldn’t be too careful.

“I can’t hear you!” she responded in an impatient tone.  “If this is about the upcoming election kindly fuck off.”

“Jesus!” I shouted in spite of myself.  “Grandma it’s Jake!  I’m just calling because I have a question for you.”

“Oh Jacob, sorry for the foul language.  These candidates have been pestering me non-stop.  I tell them, I always vote democrat regardless of how shitty the candidate is, so no need to keep interrupting me from my programs.”

“That’s nice Grandma.  Listen, I have sort of an odd question… did my parents really die in a car accident?”

“Ohhh… oh my.  Have you been looking them up?”

“No” I said dumbly.  Despite the advent of Google and my proficiency with technology, I had never thought to look my parents up.  Why would I?  They supposedly died when they blew a tire and swerved out of control driving up 24-N on their way to work in Boston.  Not a lot of mystery to unravel there.  “An old family friend mentioned something.”

“People can’t mind their own damned business” she huffed.  “First off, understand that I kept this from you for your own good.  Reporters kept coming around-- that’s why I moved you to the west coast as quickly as possible.”

“Reporters?!  What the hell Grandma?”

“Your parents… their death was very strange” he tone suddenly change from the sweet grandma-tone she reserved to me to that of an aging woman who sounded weary.  “They were driving to work that morning and it seems they just pulled over suddenly.  The police were never able to figure a reason for it-- they hadn’t gotten a flat or anything.  In fact, the car had stayed running until the tank went dry.  It’s like they just fled the car and went into the woods for some reason.  I like to think maybe they saw someone out there… maybe they were trying to help someone in trouble.”

I started getting a bad feeling in my stomach and wished I hadn’t drank so much the night before.  I thought I might throw up the remnants of the jelly doughnut I’d had for breakfast, so I clamped my hand down hard on the edge of the desk, as if stabilizing myself.

“They wandered fairly far into the woods, a mile or so and then their tracks just stopped.  Their bodies were found… of damnit this is hard to say… their bodies were found hanging from the trees.”

“Like… suicide?” I asked, barely able to get the word out.

“No… now this is very strange Jacob, and it still haunts me, honest to God.  This is why I never wanted you to find out.  Their bodies had been impaled by the branches, about 30 feet above the ground.  The police suspected some sort of foul play but who would want to go thru all that work to hurt your parents?  They were good people.  They thought maybe it was some kind of psycho, but they could never make sense of how they would get the bodies that high.  There was no equipment around, no way to hoist them to that height.”  I didn’t respond.  It felt like she was pulling a cruel prank on me, but this woman had raised me for half my life and I knew she would never do such a thing.  After a long pause she resumed.  “You know, they say those woods are haunted.  The Freetown Forest… when your grandfather was still alive he used to go hunting around those parts.  Said he’d seen some strange things…”

“I know” a mumbled, and then I made some excuse that I can’t even recall and ended the conversation.  I stumbled to my supervisor’s office and claimed to be sick, and she must have believed me because of how pale I probably looked.  On the ride home I suddenly snapped out of the stupor that this revelation had induced and I was filled with a sense of white, hot rage.  I slammed my fists on the steering wheel, screaming at the red light, but really at nobody in particular.  I was furious-- not with my grandmother for not telling me, but somehow all my rage was directed at Madison.  Suddenly I realized why she was always mothering me, why she was so sweet-- she felt sorry for me because she knew.  All along she knew that my parents had been murdered and she was just sitting there pitying poor stupid Jacob who was too sensitive to know the truth.  I wondered if her brother also knew.  I wondered if she’d told that stupid asshole Keith.

When I got back to the apartment I wanted to go pound on her door and scream in her face, but she was still at class so I went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of whiskey that I proceeded to drink like water.  At some point I must have passed out, because when I awoke it was dark and I was drenched in sweat from a number of unspeakable nightmares.  They had been vivid dreams of trees with wretched faces that screamed human screams and reached down from the night sky with talon like claws, blocking out the stars and moon and pushing me deeper and deeper underground.

As I returned to reality the dreams slipped further away and all I was left with was a pounding headache reminding me about the fifth of cheap whiskey that I had chugged down earlier.  I turned the cold tap on in the kitchen sink and stuck my head under it, letting it soothe away the pain.  As a drank from the spigot there was a knock on my door and I abruptly stopped what I was doing.

“Jake, are you there?  It’s Madison… I know you’re there, I can see your crappy Volvo parked in the driveway.  This is the third time I’ve tried knocking, I heard you shouting and I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Shouting? I pondered, confused.  I realized then I must have been yelling from the nightmares, and while my anger at her had evaporated I was still sore that she clearly thought of me as some kind of big baby to be coddled.  I said nothing until I heard her sigh and start to head back down the stairs.  I was about to resume my sink cleanse when I heard her shout, “if you don’t respond soon I’m going to call the cops.”

I doubted she had the audacity-- she too had a healthy stash of weed and I doubted she wanted some officers snooping around over a stupid nightmare.  Nevertheless, that was the last thing I needed was to deal with, so I sprinted to the door and threw it open, only to find her still standing on the steps, pondering what to do next.

“Were you ignoring me?” she asked pointedly, her gaze accusational.

“I was sleeping.  I just woke up.”

“You must have been having a nightmare… I guess that’s why you were screaming.”  Her tone was kind but it started to piss me off all over again.

“Or maybe I skipped the afternoon at work and dropped a bunch of acid and had a bad trip.  Goodnight.”  I tried to close the door but she was rushing back up the stairs now, and short of slamming it in her face (which felt far too melodramatic) I was out of options.

“You’re pissed at me, I can tell” she said, and I saw a level of self-conscious hurt and remembered the whole thing about her dipshit hipster boyfriend dumping her the night before.

“I’m not pissed… I’ve just had a bad day.”

“Can I come in?” She asked, but she had already brushed past me and was in my crummy apartment before I could refuse.  Not looking at me she asked, “Did you talk to your grandmother?”

“Yes.  Thanks for helping me find out my parents were murdered.  I’m a lot happier now.”

She looked back at me now with those innocent blue eyes and I could see that she felt quite badly about how it had all played out.  “I’m really sorry Jake… I just had too much to drink and I was worried about you camping in the Freetown Forest.”

In process of hearing the news about my parents I had totally forgotten about my faux ghost hunting plans.  I sat down on the unmade futon that doubled as my bed and folded my hands, thinking hard.  Clearly, something fucked up had happened to them, but ghosts?  I had my doubts, and those doubts ignited a desire in me to investigate further.  “I’m still going” I said after a while, and she threw her hands up in exasperation.

“Why?  Do you realize how creepy that is?  Those woods are fucked up Jake… there have been reports of aliens, strange creatures, ghosts, satanic cults…”

“You seem to know a lot about it” I said in a sarcastic tone, wishing vehemently that she’d go away and leave me to brood.  I already knew all about the Bridgewater Triangle… I’d been studying it since my parents died, which now struck me as a strange coincidence.

“My mother thinks of herself as something of an expert on the supernatural.  Mind you, the woman has no common sense, let alone a sixth sense, but still…”

“Still I’m going” I said, this time more confidently.  “Don’t you see?  The reason I started this whole stupid ghost hunting business in the first place is because I’ve been looking for answers.  Clearly some subliminal part of my mind knew that what happened to my parents was about more than a flat tire.”

“And what if you go out there and the same thing that happened to them happens to you?”

“What, ghost trees murder me?  Come on, there’s got to be a reasonable explanation…”

“Whatever the explanation is, who cares?  What if it happens to you?”

“Then you’ll have to let the landlord know he needs to find a new tenant for the upstairs apartment” I replied with a smirk.

“You’re such a moron” she seethed, and as she stormed from the apartment, slamming the door for good measure she shouted, “I’m coming with you!”

Once she was gone I laid back down on the futon, my mind racing.  I was going to be more prepared than usual for this little excursion.  I would try all the silly ghost hunter tricks in the book.  I started making a list and looking up hunting ideas on my laptop, but at some point I fell asleep.

The next day I called out of work, still playing on my feigned sickness.  I had decided I’d bump up my camping trip by a day.  I was too eager to get out into that forest, to see what there was to discover.  I spent most of the morning packing studiously and was filling my trunk when I heard someone clear their throat behind me.

“Going someplace?” Madison asked, tapping her foot impatiently.

“You know where I’m going” I huffed.  I did not have time for her mothering and smothering.  She was just the kid sister of some dude I played Pop Warner with ages ago.  I owed her nothing.

“I told you I’m coming with you, and I am.”  She gestured to move around the car and I blocked her grabbing her by the shoulders.  “Aren’t you supposed to be in class or something?”

“Class got cancelled today.  Lucky me.”

“You don’t have anything packed” I reminded her.

“Oh, I already packed.  But I’m quite sure that if I run inside to get my things you’ll take off, so give me your keys.”

I did as asked, and she nearly left but first she paused.  “Give me the spare key in the glove compartment too.”  I felt my teeth grinding but I acquiesced.  As she sprinted into her apartment it dawned on me that maybe we were better friends than I realized given how well she knew me.  When she returned she had a tidily packed Northface backpack on her shoulders, and it was fairly adorable but I still didn’t want her coming.

“Listen Madison, what if something bad happens to you?  I’d feel awful…”

“Shut up Jake” she responded as she climbed into the passenger side.  “Anyways, I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”  And with that we were off to the big, bad Bridgewater Triangle.

It was still daylight when we arrived, so we hiked around a bit first.  It was actually quite beautiful; the leaves were starting to change color and the trees had an old growth look that city kids don’t see too often.  It was almost enjoyable except for a strange, pervasive sense of silence.  I got the feeling that maybe those weren’t kids watching me from the woods the other day. 

Eventually I self consciously took my EMF from my pack, and started scanning around for any strange electromagnetic emissions, but nothing happened and after a while I felt foolish so I stuffed it back into the pack.  Eventually we were far enough in the woods that it seemed we could set up camp without getting harassed, and then we made a little fire to cook some canned goods on.

“Your customers would be pleased to see how scientific this all is” Madison jabbed between mouthfulls of spaghettios.

“Shut up” I mumbled, but I couldn’t help but smile.  Aside from an eerie feeling that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, there was nothing wrong with this place.  In fact, in another world this little makeshift picnic in the fall-time forest could have been seen as romantic.

“Have you ever read about the Thunderbirds that supposedly live out here?”

“Yes” I laughed.  “Prehistoric looking creatures with massive wing span.  Gotta love a good old fashioned urban legend.”  And yet as I said it, I suddenly had a mental image of my parent’s body hanging impaled from the trees.  Trees just like these ones…

Sensing my shift in mood Madison pulled out a bag of pot.  “Look what I brought” she grinned.  “Unless of course, you think it will muddle your scientific sensibilities.”

“Well, certain studies have argued that the cannabis plant has properties that induce heightened sensitivity to the psychic and paranormal.”

“That settles it then” she responded, and soon we were lazily lying on the floor of my tent, as stoned as Willie Nelson fishbowling a tour bus, watching the sunset.  I felt myself drifting asleep and I knew this was the time when I should be setting up my “professional ghost hunter equipment” but I felt too lazy.  I flipped my EMF on for good measure and sunk into the warmth of my sleeping bag.

I don’t know how much time passed when I woke next.  If I was any good at ghost hunting I would have been keeping a careful log of times, but as I already told you, I was nothing more than a con man.  I felt frantic and unsettled when I woke up, and sat up straight, nearly waking Madison, whose head had been perched on my shoulder.  I realized suddenly that my EMF was whining and whirring, and I turned on my flashlight to see what was happening.

The readings were jumping all over the map and while part of me felt sure that it was just malfunctioning (when was the last time I’d changed the batteries on the thing?), part of me also felt a cold dread.  The flaps of the tent were still open and outside the screen was sheer darkness.  I felt certain that someone was watching us, and that this someone was very nearby.  Frantically I zipped the flaps closed so they couldn’t see us, and then I shut the flashlight off, burrowing back under my sleeping bag like a child hiding from the boogie man under his sheets.

My heart was beating so loudly I could hear it in my ears and I realized I had never felt fear like this before.  Get a grip I reminded myself.  You were here to investigate, so stop being a whimp and investigate!

Pulling some unknown source of strength from within me I slipped quietly from the tent, grabbing my pack as I went.  Outside the sense of being observed was even more intense, and I pointed my light in every which direction, looking for the perpetrator.  I was tempted to shout something macho out like “I know you’re out there and I have a shot gun!”, but I didn’t want to wake Madison up in a panic, so I took a few deep breaths and stepped off into the woods.

I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to do that evening.  Even if I had seen something clearly, and even if I had the right equipment to capture it, I was in no state of mind to hold a camera steady.  Instead I wandered into the darkness like a madman, holding my flashlight like a sword.  As I walked sound rose from around me in a cacophony, getting louder and louder.  At first it was just the whisper in the trees, then it was the crunching of the dead leaves beneath my feet, but eventually there were unmistakable sounds of things rustling in the underbrush around me, growing ever nearer.  And then came voices, like whispers, speaking out to me in a garbled chorus.  Finally, when I thought I couldn’t bare for it to get worse, it got dead silent.

And that’s when the ground began to swallow me whole.

At first I thought something from the darkness had grabbed my ankle and I shook my foot hard, yelping in a state of panic as I tried to free myself, but then I realized both feet were frozen and I was sinking as though some creature from beneath had latched its hands around me and was pulling me to my grave.  The more I struggled the harder it pulled, and it was at my knees when an attempt to jerk myself free resulted in sending my flashlight spiraling off into the underbrush, leaving me in next to complete blackness.

I heard a horrible scream and realized it was coming from me as I tried to claw my way to safety.  I was now past my hips and the ground around me was offering no reprieve; I could not get a firm grasp.  Later I would discover that several of my nails had broken off entirely, creating a bloody mess in my attempt to escape.

As I sunk to my chest I remember very little except for one distinct image; a shadowy figure, impossibly tall and slender, standing beyond the dim light of my lost flashlight, staring down at me.

I don’t know if it was hours, minutes, or mere seconds later that Madison arrived, but she apparently managed to dislodge me using a sturdy branch she found nearby.  I returned to reality sometime later, when my head was resting on her lap and she was stroking my hair back in a nearly frantic manner.  Strangely, my first rational thought had nothing to do with my near death experience, or with the dark figure hovering over me.  It was a realization that this whole time she had not been trying to mother me-- she just kinda liked me.

Later, Madison would tell me that it was obvious that I had just fallen into quicksand.  The area is known for this, and I suppose it is a rational explanation for all the disappearances, though it certainly doesn’t explain the cruel death my parent’s faced.

What she could never explain, was the dark figure, which she apparently didn’t see.  And while there’s a thousand logical explanations for what I saw, I will never forget the way I felt when it was watching me die.  But I’ll also never go back to those woods again.

Yes, my ghost hunting days are over, I even returned the money that those poor neighbors paid me to solve their supernatural problem.  I know now I’ll never solve it, and I know now I’ll never have answers.  I won’t even go near those 200 square miles anymore, not even to take Route 24.  But sometimes, even when I’m on the outskirts of the forest in the safety of my car, I still get that same sensation that something out there is watching me.