SUN UP TO SUN DOWN

In January of 1957 when moved to the new plantation area. We used a mule-drawn wagon. The house was big. It had two double doors as a front entrance, a side door, and a back door. It was made of wood and sat on wooden blocks that were about two and a half feet off the ground. A dirt road faced the house and the graveyard was located forty-five feet away from the front of the house. The graveyard was a very dark and eerie place at night. It was mostly overgrown with bushes, small trees, and a few tall cedar trees. The big tree limbs rubbed together when the wind blew and made a peculiar sound. It was a very old graveyard and a white church was located about five hundred feet down the hill from the graveyard.

After being there for three days my mother said that she heard some strange noises in the house. She said that some noises came from the kitchen. Also, my mom would say that if the dishes where not washed that night after going to bed there was a sound as if someone was washing them.

Every night my father had to work until late, so my mom will get all the children together and stay in one room until father came. Mother got so tired of being scared that she would complain about the noises to father, but there was nothing he could do, however, to amuse her every night before they went to bed he would check the kitchen to scare away the ghosts.

Father mentioned to us that in several occasions he would see the shadow of a woman walking across the field in front of the tractor he drove during the nights. He said that she seemed to be wearing a long dress and she would never look in father’s direction and once she had walked in front of the tractor she would disappear. Things got stranger by the day.

During the summer months, tall patches of green grass grew in a cleared section of the graveyard and our cow would often break out of the small pasture and go straight into the graveyard. My mother would always send my oldest brother and I to get the cow and every time we would look back toward the house, and noticed that a white mist would appear under the house. We would call our mother and tell what we saw, but she would only said “it’s nothing”, but to tell the truth, I believe she was frightened too.

It was rumored that a pot of silver dollars was buried in the vicinity where we lived. One evening, just before complete dark came, my father, my brother, and my mother were cutting the grass down in the garden about seventy-five feet away from us and all of a sudden, we heard the cries of a baby coming from the house. My father called to my mother and told her to go and tend the baby. She raised up and said “Okay”, but we could still see her standing there digging and cutting grass. Father called to her again but this time he did not get a reply. So, he told us to go down and tell her what he had said. From where we were standing, we could still see the figure of a lady working in the garden in the same location my mother was supposedly working. I ran to where my mother was working but when I got there, no one was there. The figure of the lady, who I thought was my mother suddenly disappeared. I became very frightened and ran back to tell my father.

The next day my father asked my mother what she had done after he told her to tend the baby. My mother told him that she had gone into the house and that she had struck an iron pot while digging grass in the garden. She was trying to get the metal part of the hoe into the pot’s handle, but when she rose and said “okay” she went back into trying to retrieve the pot. The pot disappeared into the ground and broke the hoe handle as it did. Afterwards, she went into the house and the baby was not crying nor had she ever been crying.