Page 38 - 4 Stories from the New Book by Helen Creighton

ISSUE : Issue 65

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1994/1/1

in, I'm going to turn the key in the door and remember, you're there for the night." I said, "O.K." I said, "I'll go." I said, "If there's no man-living- creature in that house to kill me, there'll be no ghosts. Well," I said, "all right." So he took me over about nine o'clock that night and he put me in, which there was no light or nothing, and I went in. He said, "You'll find a bed right off of the kitchen in the hall," he says. "There's a bed there with mattress on it, and lots of blankets and," he says, "at seven o'clock in the morning I'll come and I'll unlock the door to see are you alive or dead." Well I went in the house and I lit some matches and I went into every room in that house, even up to the attic • there wasn't one soul in the house. I said, "Boys, this here, these fellas I hear tell of, those fellas from the United States, ghost stories, and I likely have one of them right now," I said. "They don't belong to Canada or they wouldn't be going on this way." So I laid down, and I had a smoke laying in the bed, and I had been tired traveling all day and anyway, I laid down. A little shivery, you know, but welcome you know that I got in out of the cold in the fall of the year, and I hauled the blanket over me, took off my shoes, and haided the blanket over me. So I might have ''''mm'''mm'K'mm'''mm'''m' been there ten minutes I and I felt this cold thing '' Quality Cameras Building, corner George & Dorchester Streets. PEOPLE YOU CAN TALK TO. on my back, and it was just like • I don't know, I had a kind of feeling it was • but boys, it started pressing a little tighter and getting kinda bad. Well I commenced to getting a little smaller than I was. So I went to try to turn over, for to see what it would be now, see? But when I'd turn over, there didn't appear to be nothing, but then when I turned back, it would press against me. So 1 kinda reached around like this, you know, with my left hand, which was my right, and not too much. Well I said to myself now, "That's imagination. This is what this is. This is imagination now, that there's something here." So by and by it commenced to bury me down, and the first thing it was on top of me, which was crushing me down, and I looked and the body • it's a body • I could feel the shoulders. It left and I felt the shoulders, but no head. There was no head. "Well now," I says to myself, "now it's only about half-past nine now. I'm going to put in some awful night if I'm going to stay here till seven o'clock with this man." Well anyway, when this noise started, it come from the kitchen, so I laid for a while thinking that he's going to kill me anyway; he's going to crush me right to death. Well then there was noth? ing. So then the noise was in the kitchen, tramping around, thump thump, in and out, in and out. So I put in the night. He left me around pretty good till about between four and five o'clock, and this racket started. The moans • ooohh • dear, oh looka here, she's getting wooly now boys. She's tightening. Every hair on my head was just tightening boys, I said. So anyway, it was in the bed with me again. So it stayed there for a while and by and by it disappeared again and the thumpin' and the moans, and I was laying there with just kinda one eye shut, ye know and it commenced to break daylight. And I looked out, and the first thing this casket slid right in by the bed. A big black casket, and then the lid, or the top of the casket, stood up, and up sat this man. Well he had no head on. Well I could see what I was looking at then, and I said to myself then, "I believe there are such thing as a ghost; if I was just clear to here I wouldn't care." And I said to him, I said, "In the name of God," I said, "what do you want of me?" So the cover went down and there was nothing ever happened. By and by the cover come up again and he sat up again. So I said the same thing, which is about all I could say. So I asked him again. I said, "In the name of God," I said, "what do you want of me?" He said, "I don't want nothing of you, but," he says, "I was murdered five years ago for my money and," he said, "when they did mur? der me," he said, "they never got me. They never got the money and," he says, "I'm going to tell you where it is; come with me." Well I looked pretty silly walking alongside of this ghost, and him with no head. So we come out to the kitchen and there was two

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