A Ghost Story

Click on the image to enlarge. (This image is actually part of a series of tarot cards put out by Mr. Luis Royo...his web site is here....http://www.luisroyo.com/ A visit there will shake your world.)

Don't have many ghost stories, but this one actually happened to me. Back in '89 or so, I was part of a team which would respond to "situations". This of course had nothing to do with my regular job fixing airplanes, but was a secondary duty. So it was off with the coveralls, put away the tools, and on with the helmet, combat clothing and draw a rifle and head out to the situation...in this case my job was to guard the site of a downed aircraft. Set up a little perimeter, just be the guy on the ground. There were two of us.

In this relatively unremarkable case, a heavy dual chopper had an in flight emergency, and set down in a field outside a little town only about an hour across the Quebec border. So Dave and I set out to find the place. Very pretty...late in the year. Leaves were pretty much all down, and blowing in little drifts, and all the little roadside stands were closed for the season. Jack o'lanterns were showing up on every doorstep, and it was a beautiful sunny Saturday.

The day went more or less as we expected...the pilots officers had off loaded the lobsters they were smuggling home from Halifax and then vanished off to a function of some sort, the flight engineer did up his paperwork and went back to the base to find more paperwork, and the technicians from the unit which owned those choppers had showed up to decide what equipment would be needed to get this bird home, and then they too vanished. So it was just me, Dave, the pickup truck, and some village kids. And then they eventually all went home as well.

So guarding a crash site. Not an exciting job, but it had to be done. I had showed up at about noon, and expected a relief sometime around 8. Well, 8 o'clock went by, and the sun was pretty much down, and no relief. Then 9 o'clock. Then 10 o'clock went by. Clearly they had forgotten about us, and it wasn't as if our two way radios could reach all the way back to base. Then a mountie drove up with a message from the base telling us that the relief guys just could not find us, and they had gone back to base. Ahh, well that explained it. Well, it WAS dark and maybe understandable that they missed us. Me and Dave were just imagining how frustrated the poor guys were, driving all over a strange part of the planet looking for us. Our radios were on, but we had not picked up any plaintive messages...pretty much par for the course. You know, in my entire military career, I NEVER had radios that worked! I figure thats just another way that real life deviates from the movies! But, I digress....

The mountie told us he could get a message back to base for us, and I told him that we would wait for their truck in town under the street light. There was only one. Then after the Mountie drove off, the reality settled back in...we couldn't leave our post, and so one of us would have to hike into town, and the other would sit in the nice warm pickup truck. Dave's rock broke my scissors, and so, slinging my rifle, I hiked the 15 minutes or so into town, wondering why it had never occured to me to ask the mountie for a ride. Actually, it was a nice evening. A little frosty maybe, mostly a full moon, a few clouds, and every living soul in the place was inside watching Hockey Night in Canada. And there in front of the church was the street light. Right at a curve in the road...anybody coming down the road could not possibly miss me. So I stood under that light. And waited. And waited.

So, gradually all the house lights went out as the hockey game ended. And the traffic got less and less. And the time went on, and it was getting a little chilly. And my legs were getting a tired of standing so I looked around, and there was the church steps. "Ah, I'll just sit there and wait, and come out into the street if any headlights show up on that road!" And so I made myself as comfy as I could under a sign that proclaimed to all and sundry that Jean Luc and Margarite were being married that day. I missed THAT too! Ah well.

And the imagination started going. Here it was approaching midnight, I was tired from being on duty ALL DAY! And I'm sitting on frosty concrete church steps and there are grave stones all around me. And this little dialogue started going in my head. "Oh right...its the side door of the church and there is a graveyard here. I'm sitting in a bleepin graveyard waiting for some nitwits who can't read a bleepin map! And the wind is picking up a bit and the leaves are rustling like a living thing. And there's one of the residents bony hands reaching around the gravestone just off to the left. Uh huh. Shake your head Bill...naah, there is nothing there. " "I'm finally getting comfortable. No lights on the highway. Wind is rattling the few remaining leaves out of the trees. Motion off to the left. There's that hand again. Clear as day, not more than 20 feet away. Right there in the light, reaching around that gravestone. Right. Its got to be one of those cardboard skeletons they are decorating the town with leading up to Halloween. Just blowing around in the wind, like the leaves. So why don't cha go over and see. Naah, I'm comfy right here thank you, and besides, its not there any more. Just your imagination."

"No, there it is again. Right. Well, this is clearly a case where I will just have to put my fears at rest. I'll just go over there, deeper into that graveyard and see for myself. Oh wait, is that a headlight? No. Blast. Well, lets see. Lets fix that bayonette on this beat up old rifle and see whats in there. Why not go back and stand under the light? Well, if I did THAT, I would NEVER get up the nerve to come back and sit down on the steps would I? And I don't fancy standing there under that light until dawn. Sort it out now, and get it over with."

So I looked around to make sure nobody could see me, fixed my bayonette, and crept up on that grave stone, glad that there was nobody there to see me! I could see that hand reach around, sweep sideways, then go back out of sight. Plain as day. So I stepped softly, and then suddenly jumped around the stone to surprise the resident.

And I flushed a pheasant. Poor thing was just eating the rice scattered from the wedding earlier in the day, and this big thing (me) scares the be-jazus out it. So it beats the air "thump thump thump" and gobbles in fear as it launches right up in my face. What I had seen in the half light was its long white tail feathers, which my overactive imagination had interpreted as a skeleton hand. When you flush a pheasant it makes as much noise as it can to scare the crap out of an attacker, and it nearly did that! I thought my heart had stopped though!

Well, shortly after that, my relief guys arrived, found me standing out under the light, calm and composed and way too happy to see them to complain about their being late. And I have NEVER been back to that town.