Local Haunting...

One of the things that has fascinated me for my entire life is ghost stories. I am always on the prowl for local tales that are said to be true. I think I may have stumbled upon one… There was an oral tradition of this story passed along for generations until someone wrote it down several decades ago. I just finished reading that account….

Out on Fischer road in Newnan, Georgia there was once a plantation.

One of the slaves on the plantation was rumored to have had enough of the overbearing owner and rose against him one morning. Fearing for his life, he decided to take the quiet approach in unleashing his vengeance upon the hateful man and set about forming his machinations during the night when everyone was sleeping. He didn’t want anyone that worked the house to be involved, so he would climb an oak tree near the kitchen house as he watched. His job didn’t begin until an hour after daybreak, so he spent several days learning the morning routine. He had heard the people working in the kitchen talking about how the owner took his breakfast each day alone, being strict in his observance of silence within the household during this time, so he could go over the day’s plans with no interruptions.

On a foggy Tuesday morning he decided to make his move. When the servers had cleared the dishes from the table and the plantation owner took out his ledgers he knew he had about twenty minutes before anyone else entered the room. He slipped from the tree, stole across the dying grass and, by the light of a late autumn moon, silently raised the window he had been staring through for the past several mornings. Hearing the movement or feeling the air coming in, the owner spun around to see the man stepping in, he began to stand up and shout in anger, but his voice was cut short by the slave’s mad dash toward him and strong hands enclosing around his throat. The slave stared intensely into the patriarch’s eyes as he watched the man’s life slowly leave the glare of hatred being thrown back at him. Once the man’s body went limp he sat him back in his chair, leaning him over the table atop his books he seemed to care so much for. He then lowered the window and locked it in place. He was frightened and nervous as he stood by the door and listened for any movement, but heard none. He knew, through his preparations, that the house slaves were busy out in the kitchen house cleaning the dishes and getting ready to set out breakfast for the rest of the family, who would arrive shortly to spend time with the owner before he set out on the day’s labor. The guilty man spoke often of the lingering odor in the room of freshly cooked bacon and brewed coffee as he tried to control his breathing, waiting for his chance to exit down the hallway and out through the back door. Finally he heard the call of the head cook to the servers to come and get the rest of the food. Taking advantage of everyone’s diverted attention, he slipped through the door and into the darkness. When the alarm began to rise letting the area know something terrible had occurred he was being shaken from his bed in the small cabin he shared with several of the field hands…

Rumors were rampant at the time of the owners death about his poor treatment of his slaves and family. Tales of his cruelty, murderous rages, and vile business practices ran about the community, giving rise to the widely accepted, yet whispered, conclusion that the marks around his neck were placed there by a relative seeking to wrest control of the empire before his reputation cost them the lifestyle of comfort they had grown accustomed to.

A high school has been built on land that once saw the forced labor of slaves and the death of one of the men that drove them, a fitting outcome, yet I have to question the logic of building the school around a cemetery on the same piece of property… Sitting next to a parking lot, gym, and ball field, the old cemetery stands as a silent guardian of whisperings of years long gone, hiding its secrets, buried long ago with the occupants, for generations…

Recent years have come to find many strange occurrences taking place around this hallowed ground. There are numerous accounts of the strange smell of bacon and coffee being encountered at odd hours of the day, sounds being heard coming from the cemetery in the evening, and strange lights are being seen outside of the school when only a few of the employees are on hand.

The first account I heard of this is rife with controversy, including even a purported cover up by local officials… A few years ago there were reports of school buses parked over night in the lot next to the cemetery being vandalized. Eggs and milk were among the items discovered to be thrown on the buses, but the vandalism included the inside of the buses as well, often people were called in to clean eggs from the seats of the vehicles before they could be sent out on the morning routes. Deciding to catch the miscreants responsible, video cameras were installed in secret around the property… What was seen on the recordings was quietly covered up and not discussed by the administration.

Several local administrators watched in silence as a strange orb of light was seen circling the busses at night. Upon first glance they thought they had caught the culprits and waited patiently for them to reveal themselves in the lights of the parking lot. They were astounded to see the light then begin to rise and pass through the bus… The orb of ghostly light was not indeed a flashlight as they had first thought. Several minutes passed after they saw the light fade out. They gasped when it slowly appeared over the hood of the last bus it was seen near. I was told by an eyewitness that a few people left the room when milk was then thrown on the bus.

This wasn’t discussed by the witnesses and a strange code of silence surrounds the events. Recently local residents have reported seeing lights at night near the cemetery. People I know have been there to witness the events, they saw no lights, but did hear several strange calls come from the cemetery between midnight and one in the morning, upon investigation, no one was found inside the cemetery.

The portion of the story that I’m currently digging into is the increasing number of reports being made about a child’s laughter being heard in the parking lot and surrounding area by some of the employees when they first arrive in the morning. I spoke with a member of staff who told me that, as she approached a door that was propped open it slammed in front of her and she distinctly heard this same laughter going down the hall and thought that a student had shut the door on her. She investigated when she went in and found that she was alone in that section of the school…

“I was a bit disturbed when I got out of the car because several people had mentioned to me that they had smelled bacon and eggs cooking when they were walking across the parking lot, I never encountered that… until that morning the door shut. I kept looking for someone else because I felt like I was being watched, but I didn’t see anyone. When the door slammed in front of me I got mad because I heard a girl laughing.. I threw the door open and looked down the hall, but there was nobody around. By the time I made to the other end of the building I was so scared I was ready to go home… there just wasn’t anyone there…”

They will never know...

There is a random phone call or email during the evening hours. Someone has seen pictures on the internet of something that I have carved and they want to know if the piece is still available.

“That piece sold a while back, but I could make another for you…”

The details are gone over, time, money… They want two of a certain hiking stick, the back story is explained; there are two partners that they work for in a office in Atlanta that love to hike….

I look over to see what inventory is available, nothing in the right length. I take up my saw and start walking…

I stand on the porch for a few minutes trying to decide which direction I feel like heading. The breeze is coming from the south, so if I head north the wildlife will be made aware of my presence and that would cut down on any unwanted entanglements… Is it still hunting season? I don’t know.. meh.. I’ll be sure to make enough noise that I wont be mistaken for a deer. Famous last words and all.. I start walking to the north, I know where a good stand of poplar and sweet gum is located that would serve my needs, so I make for it. These days I don’t need to follow any paths or dirt roads, I know where everything in these woods is located. I come to the lip of the hollow I’m looking for and stare down into it remembering the long gone days of being a kid around here. I see the remnants of left over forts, foxholes, and nails driven into trees to build lofty vantage points that were never realized…

I make my way down through the hollow to the creek that lies in its center, without glancing down I walk over stones that have held the same place in the creek for as long as I can remember. Without thinking about it at all I stop dead center in the creek to breath in the wet smell of dirt that takes me back to those childhood days. I continue on uphill toward the trees. I start looking through “my inventory.” I pass a few that I have helped along by the strategic placement of vines.. They are growing nicely and in a few years will make great hiking sticks with twists in just the right places.. I glance around for a several minutes and notice a few that look right. These need to be six feet in length and of substantial strength to handle the workload of two serious hikers.

I spot two sweet gums growing side by side.. huh.. strange.. I check the area to be sure I won’t be disturbed by any snakes or devilish creations that could bring a swift death out here where help would never find me. I look the trees over and decide where to begin cutting. I use a handsaw because anything with a motor was created by Satan; therefore, it was designed to fail at the most inopportune moment, causing mutilation in the process..

I cut the first one down and begin taking the limbs off, then I cut it into sections, one for the main hiking stick, one for a good walking stick and few feet left over for maybe some wands… The second tree comes down and falls victim to the same treatment. I am left with six pieces of good wood to carve.

The wind is blowing stronger so I make my way up to the far lip of the hollow to catch the breeze. Although its winter and Christmas is fast approaching, it has been unusually warm for this time of year. From the top of this hill I can see down toward the lake, this spot is perfect for catching the breeze rolling through the hollows of these woods. I think back to a time when I would be sitting behind a desk worried about sales in a failing industry. I laugh quietly to myself as I hear the distant calls emanating from a murder of crows. I look around and see them, sitting in a group of oak trees off to my left about halfway down the hill. Once the calls subside they fall into that conversation a murder always has about the doings that will follow that evening. Its all a warning to whatever they communicate with, letting everyone know that I’m there and to be careful.

That’s the one sound that gets to me. The call of a crow. The shrill cawing involuntarily creates flashes of memories in my mind. A long, hot, summer’s day spent with my father and uncle in a junkyard as they were looking for a part that would repair the hitch on my uncle’s boat. The pine straw being raked into piles so it could be burned. A summer day spent in a swing on the back deck reading Kathy Sue Loudermilk. The fall of the year spent doing the most dread chore imaginable.. The cutting and collecting of firewood.

I thought about that one for a while… Not too far from here, my brother, myself, and my father were once hard at work cutting down trees and dragging them out of these woods to burn in the fireplace during the winter… I hated that work detail more than any other. Then I had to laugh. Here I am thirty years later, in the same damn woods, doing the same damn thing… I have been condemned to making a living by doing the one chore I hated above all others, gathering wood. Be careful about what type of curses you call down, they can backfire, and they obviously work…

I gather up the wood and head back in. I know there is a problem. I have known since the first tree hit the ground, but I am putting it out of my mind, maybe it will work. I get back to the porch, head inside and get the tape measure. I measure out six feet on each hiking stick and cut the excess off of the large end. The problem presents itself in an undeniable manner. These trees are simply too large for hiking sticks. Damn. They are a bit too mature, the bark is too deep and ridged far too much, sure to break off. I know what that means, an hour on each piece shaving the bark down. That is a meticulous endeavor, one wrong move or slip and the piece is ruined. I cut the ends down and then cut out the places for the hand holds. Sure enough… the bark is just too big. So I set about shaving it with my knife. A couple of messy, painstaking hours later they are ready to be treated. Fresh wood like this is a delicate matter when carving, as it dries it can split, so most carvers season the wood by letting it dry out… but I have a secret concoction that you can treat the wood with to ensure no splitting. When that is over I begin to carve.

The first few cuts are made late in the evening when everyone else goes to bed, it’s the only time of day to be sure you wont be interrupted by the phone. I never sketch out what I’m going to do when I start, I just eyeball it then start cutting with my chip knife, after the first cuts are made I will get out the blue pencil and draw in some lines to finish the piece, but the first ones are always eyeballed.

Old movies are playing on the television in the background as I work. Uriah Heep is deep into his machinations as the handgrip is finished on the first piece. By the time the first piece is completed I’ve traveled with many Dickens characters all through the night. The first stirrings are heard throughout the house as everyone begins the start of their day. I make a quick breakfast of left over chicken before I begin the second piece. The television is tuned to the classical masterpieces channel as I work my way around the second piece, me and it are covered in a gray fog of cigar smoke for most of the process… My youngest son comes in from school as the carving wraps up on the second hiking stick. He comes over and runs his hands over the faces that grace each stick. He then begins asking me if I can carve this or that for some classmates of his and hits the door running before I can answer.. He calls out “I’m going outside to play…” as he straps on all manner of toy guns and knives to protect the yard from zombies and the evil Bigfoot that lives in the woods.

I start the cleaning process of the carvings, only to be stopped when its time to make dinner. Once the chores are done and the carvings cleaned, I put on the first coat of finish, the mess this makes is quite astounding… The heavy coating of bark and woodchips on the floor is the only thing that almost saves the carpet underneath… almost… When the proper amount of finish is applied everyone is asleep again. I move the pieces out to the porch to dry in the night air.

Standing on the porch I hear strange noises that I recognize. I put my hands together and begin blowing air between my thumbs in a loud call. A few moments later I am answered by several owls. I spend an hour or so calling them up from the woods, soon the house is surrounded by screech owls.. What a noise these things make.. I look over at the faces on the hiking sticks I’ve carved, oddly enough, they all look worried.. I assure them that the owls wont bother them as I make my way back inside to sleep for a couple for hours.

The next afternoon I call the customer to let them know that the pieces are ready for delivery, setting up the details of time and place. I hand them off to my son for the ride to their new home that evening and watch as they head up the driveway on his truck.

I think ahead over the next couple of days and entertain the thought of the two gentlemen in their Atlanta office unwrapping the gifts… I smile to myself as I think about the lives these two hiking sticks had, the stand of trees they looked over for years in that quiet hollow, the memories they guarded of days long gone in these woods, the delicate hours of bark shaving they endured, the carving process as they traveled around England with Dickens’ various characters, the Rossini, Sibelius, and Mozart they were serenaded with, the touch of my sons fingers as he thought about playing in the yard, the blood that dripped on them from the palm sander wound I suffered, and the long conversation between a man and a group of owls they were privy to…

They’ve already experienced so much that these people will never know about… I wonder what the future will bring them.

Christmas...

The excitement would start to build a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving. We would gather on the tiny concrete stoop of a front porch on Martin street, where all seven of us lived, to look at the Christmas lights on the courthouse. Everyone would be ohhhing and ahhhing as I danced around, jumping impatiently, trying to see above the tree line, until my father would pick me up so I could get a brief glimpse. Huge lights strung from the top of the courthouse to the four corners of the square in downtown Newnan always heralded the season for me. There they were, it was official.. The countdown was on….

My mother would have us look through the Sears catalog to get an idea of what we wanted, we had to make a wish list. She used the term wish list so we would know that “You don’t get everything you want, but Santa can probably make sure you get some of it..” needless to say, each year it was several pages long. The Christmas tree would be put together by my father, you had to wait in the kitchen… Our job was to decorate the tree under direction of our parents. The main decoration I can remember putting on was the tinsel.. We used so much of it that the tree would often look like a huge tinfoil pinecone.

Activity around the house would escalate as time went by, more comings and goings than usual, odd smells from the kitchen, more people around… then the trip to my cousin’s place. With that one trip we knew it wouldn’t be long until presents and fireworks made their appearance. Most years there was a singing that we attended at an aunt and uncle’s house. Song sheets would be passed out and everyone would stand in their full to bursting home and sing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs.

The Christmas specials would begin airing on television. We would pile up on the floor with pillows and blankets as Santa came to town, Hermey and Yukon vanquished the bumble, and the Grinch made off with the towns goods. The ones that always stuck in my head were Charlie Brown and the Little Drummer Boy, with those specials you seemed to get more of a message. I was too young to fully comprehend it at the time, but the Linus scene when he explained the meaning of Christmas and the lyrics, “I played my best for him..“ always moved me, I could never quite shake them or understand why they made me feel that way.

For us, the culmination of the holiday took place on Christmas eve. I would wake to a house filled sounds and smells that would set my head spinning. Until that moment the only thoughts that seemed to take any purchase in my mind were of toys, but on that morning everything would shift to food and people. I would come down the hallway to discover that my parents were gone for breakfast at a cousin’s house, and hear the dire warning, “Don’t touch anything in the kitchen…” We would wait for what felt like hours for my parents to get home and the car to be loaded before we headed out for my grandparents house. My mother would get to the point of simply pointing to the kitchen door whenever we would run in with the call of, “When are we going to Daddy Doc and Granny’s???” The verbalization of the time would disappear around the seven or eight hundredth dash into the room…

Coming down Doc Perry Rd. was when I could barely contain myself… I would begin looking for the curve in the road that led down to the driveway of that magical little cottage. My grandfather built that place sometime back before calendars were invented. It sits at the very end of the road and was always a welcomed sight for anyone that ventured near it. The construction was the type of a small, plain, mill village house, with four rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. The concrete front porch held a swing, a glider, and a couple of rocking chairs, a small sign by the door let your know that Jesus was well loved in that home. As we walked across the driveway the warm glow from the windows and the loud noise from inside made you feel like you had been traveling for months and were about to get home. The door would open to an explosion of sound and heat. There would be thirty to fifty people crammed into the house, every room was filled with laughter and constant talking. The tree they had in the living room would be piled high with gifts and covered with ornaments that predated all written knowledge. Felt covered elves, angular glass pieces containing tiny Christmas trees with a mirror finish on the back, small drums with two sticks glued across the top, the ornaments of my youth. Green, red, and silver tinsel covered the tree from top to bottom, it would be topped by a tall silver piece with a cut away view of something in it, I never could make it out.

The front room had a couch, two recliners, a huge gas heater filling the no longer used fireplace, the heater would be flanked by a folding chair on each side… my grandfather would make sure there were chains of individually wrapped candy, gumballs usually, hanging by each door so the kids could run by and rip one or three off as they tore through the house. The compact car sized console television sat on one wall, and every surface of wall, mantle, and television was covered by photographs of my grandmother’s children and grandchildren.

The next room was their bedroom, with a full size bed for each of them, my grandmother’s was soft and my grandfather’s was hard as a damn rock, he had back trouble don’t you know. A dresser for each of them, a desk, on which sat a rotary telephone with over large numbers backed by a glow in the dark surface to make dialing at night easier. Over the door hung a shotgun, ancient and well cared for. On top of my grandfathers dresser was a police band scanner that WAS NEVER TURNED OFF, it became the running background noise whenever you were there.

To your right was the dining room, almost filled by a huge table and chairs, a sideboard, and the largest copy of the last supper I have ever seen. Toward the front of the house through the dining room was the other bedroom, my dad and uncle’s room when they were young. During those days it was used by whoever was spending the night. Off the dining room, toward the back of the house, was a tiny kitchen with one of those tables in the center that belonged in a diner, formica top and all.. Next to the kitchen was the back porch, enclosed by my grandfather, that had a large igloo cooler with a pushbutton spout at the bottom that was always filled with ice water, a dipper was hanging on a nail driven in to the side of the table top in front of the cooler. One entire wall of the back porch was covered with shelving that held sacks of potatoes, huge cans of corn, tomatoes and the like. Through the back door was the second porch… he added that on, extended the roof and built a room on the right side that held a large deep freezer.

Every chair in the house was filled with people talking to all the people that had nowhere to sit and roamed throughout the house. My grandfather would be in his glory, surrounded by his family. My grandmother would be in that humming bird state of flitting from room to room and person to person, making sure everyone was comfortable and had plenty to eat and drink….

My grandparents… lord have mercy. Every human being should be able to experience the love and adoration of a matronly, fine, Christian, southern woman… there’s nothing else like it on the face of the planet, that was my grandmother, Zeddie Perry. My grandfather was a man of relatively few words, he was built like a barrel and never stopped working on things. He was busy every second of the day. Doc Perry always wore overalls and carried a handkerchief in his pocket to wipe his head when it was hot out, he carried a pocket watch on a chain that he would let us listen to when we crawled up in his lap and asked… both of them dipped bruton snuff… a habit I never understood, but got the biggest kick out of… he built their house, and a play house out front for my dad and his brothers to spend the weekends in, a one room house with an attic and front porch. His voice… to hear it on video now sends chills down my spine. A cross between Andy Griffith and Carl from Sling blade. I think the thing I miss the most about them was listening to the both of them talk at the same time. I used to listen attentively and nod at each of them in turn, but you could barely keep up with the conversation. Why they did that I’ll never know, but sure as hell, when one of them would start talking, the other one would pick up a few sentences in… not only would they talk at the same time, but they would each be talking about something totally different. What I wouldn’t give to sit for just ten minutes and hear that again.

The heat in the house would be near unbearable and everyone would be laughing and talking at a level of a small tornado. The yells of, “Close that door!” would follow each child as they ran out in to the front yard for the seemingly never ending fireworks war. My grandfather would either make the trip to Alabama or send someone to pick up fire works for everyone. He always had the large bottle rocket types he would come out and ignite for everyone to watch, but he made sure we had plenty of roman candles, small bottle rockets, and firecrackers to go around. The evening would always deteriorate into a battle, it was just the natural thing to do. This was back in the day of the m-80, the largest known firecracker ever made. A large pipe would be driven into the ground and all manner of things would be launched from its end… light an m-80, drop it in the pipe then stick a.. say old tea kettle on top of it. That thing would fly way above tree top level, and blow all the finish off of the outside of it to boot. My signature move was to rip the wooden stick off the small bottle rockets and toss them into a gathered crowd, just as it ignited… a joyous thing to behold.

The call to eat would sound from the house and we would run, hell bent toward the door, because we knew what was waiting there. Everyone’s mother had been busy for last couple of days and the fruit of their labor was waiting in the dining room. Imagine it, and it was there. Extra tables had to be brought in for the food. Ham, turkey, roast, bbq, fried chicken, cornbread dressing, slow cooked green beans with potatoes, chicken and dumplings, sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, lima beans, black eyed peas, my aunt Peaty’s creamed corn that would make you nearly pass out with each bite, my great aunt Reba’s coleslaw in the blue bowl, biscuits, cornbread.. The desserts would have an equally impressive showing, banana pudding, pies, cakes… damn. Everything in that room was home made… the aroma of that food will forever linger in my memory as what home should always smell like. At the table sat my grandparents, great aunts and uncles, parents, and my dad’s brothers.. Everyone would line up and then automatic silence would fill the house. My grandfather would then deliver a prayer, thanking God for the family being together for one more year.. And when he said it, you knew it was true. The line would then begin moving. This was one of my favorite moments.. Get the huge plate and the fork.. Then proceed around the table, the first of many trips of the evening. The part I loved the most was listening to everyone as you walked through…

After everyone was sated to the point of literal explosion we would make our way toward the tree and begin to pass out gifts. Wrapping paper, boxes, toys and bows covered everything as we played into the night and the adults continued laughing and talking.

People would begin calling out merry Christmas as they started loading their cars for the trip home, and we knew the time to go was near… but… a new excitement would start to build. We knew what awaited us at home. Santa’s delivery of new toys. Food was packed, dishes washed, kids played out and then we were crammed in the car. We would be looking at the house as we pulled into the driveway, then the mad dash to the door was made. There it would be. The Christmas tree in all its glory, ablaze, lighting the groups of toys with a glow of warmth and a halo of beckoning… Time would disappear. Everything was torn open, gone through played with, tossed to the side as the next toy was grabbed, a glorious mess was made as the laughter continued. Then it would begin to get quiet. My parents, sitting in their chairs, would begin to nod off , too sleepy to carry on and we knew a call for the end of the evening was soon to come.

The next few days would be spent playing with and cataloging the toys, enjoying more family visits and eating more good food.. New years day would herald the end of the holiday season, always accompanied by a sense of sadness and loss, yet it would come.

A while back I was pondering these moments from my past and called my older brother to borrow a video tape he has featuring one of the last Christmas get-togethers with my grandfather. He had been in the hospital over Christmas and we waited until he came home to meet down there. The moment I put the tape in and an image popped up on screen I began to cry. I realized then what I missed the most about it all..

The sound.

I closed my eyes and listened to the voices of the people gathered there and wept unashamedly as I heard each person. I could tell from the sound who each one was, and even where they were in the house as my brother roamed the rooms with the camera… the booming voice of my grandfather, the urgent pleas of my grandmother to “get you something else to eat”, my great aunt Reba asking him what in the world that contraption was he was carrying, a cousin asking where the tea was, “hell, I think its all gone..” that was my uncle Thomas, my aunt Peaty’s infamous reaction to a gag gift of a framed photograph of someone she didn’t like.. “you shitass.. that’s all I need is a framed picture of…” Then I heard it… the laughter of my dad… dear God, the sound of his voice sent me right back to our front porch and him holding me up so I could see those lights on the courthouse. All at once every Christmas I had ever experienced with him enveloped me, the decoration overload, the noises, the songs, the laughter… I waited for it to pass, but it wouldn’t, so I gave into it and cried until I could no longer see straight. Even in the cacophony of voices I could discern each individual person as I let the memory of the moments I shared with them wash over me.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I understood what it was about the Charlie Brown and Little Drummer Boy specials that touched me so much. I understood about the birth of Jesus and the saving of mankind, but for me it held a different meaning. Love, loyalty, family and friends. To experience life with people that you love that much is truly a blessing. You grow older, times change, people come and go… but there is a core of people there that will forever be with you, if not in person, buried deep within your heart, wrapped forever in your soul. It is for these people that I am truly thankful.

my dad getting his leg lamp from a Christmas story

my grandparents, Doc and Zeddie Perry

me on the floor playing at my grandparents

my older brother, my dad, and me when i got one of my favorite gifts.. a castle

my dad & my cousin playing with our new toy

me sitting on the floor in front of the huge space heater at my grandparents

some of my first steps

julie and my dad at my cousins for christmas

the year i got the gi joe training center.. excellent

in front of the tree at my grandparents

my dad enjoying the aftermath of Christmas dinner at my grandparents

me & my cousin tommy

the tree at my grandparents

my uncle thomas at christmas time

my grandfather talking to me as a lay on his bed... rips my heart out.

me and my cousin tommy at my grandparents

the lights on the courthouse in newnan back in the seventies..

Hand carved walking sticks and more.. a sale.

001 wizard staff $80

SOLD

002 sweetgum walking stick $30

SOLD

003 walking stick $25

004 walking stick $25

005 walking stick $25

006 walking stick $30

SOLD

007 walking stick $25

008 hiking stick $30

SOLD

009 dogwood owl walking stick $40

010 various wands many in stock $10 each

011 pumpkin king walking stick $40

012 snake/skull walking stick $40

SOLD

013 candles $5 each

014 cedar walking stick $30

015 cedar walking stick vines $40

016 sweetgum faces $20 each

017 whistle $5

018 skull book carving $50

019 tower carving $20

020 hickory walking sticks $30 (one left)

SOLD

if you are interested in any of these pieces email me at :

crickhollowcarving@gmail.com

or give me a call at:

678-423-6541

check out our facebook page to keep up with the latest pieces and where we will be for shows...

A haunting in Newnan..

In the year 1975 we moved from down town Newnan to Doc Perry road. The move was exciting to me as a second grader at Elm Street Elementary because of the destination. My grandparents lived at the end of Doc Perry road, to me, it was a place of magic and wonder that I held close in the deepest parts of my heart. Every holiday was spent there with the extended family, from week long barbecues around the fourth of July to Christmas in their tiny home packed with people. I thought life would take on that magical air round the clock once we got everything done and were set up in the new house.

My parents had the house built to their specifications and it was a tremendous change from what we were used to. We came from Martin street, just off Sprayberry road, near what was then the American Can Corporation. I had lived in the small three bedroom house with a carport converted into a fourth bedroom for my entire life. The new house had two floors and too many rooms to count. The idea that we would have to go up and down stairs was a mind scramble to me, I couldn’t imagine why you would need that much room.

The first night in the new house was one of tossing and turning until I thought I would go insane. The night was cool and dry so we had our windows open.. A whippoorwill had taken up residence in the front yard and would not be quiet. All night the steady call drilled into my head until I was ready to hunt the thing down and pull each feather out of it with slow relish. My brother and I shared a room on the top, or main, floor of the house. We shared a bathroom with my sister, who’s room was next to ours. My parents bedroom was across the hall from ours and my two older brothers had bedrooms downstairs. The style of construction that was used on the place was to dig into the side of a small hill and build the house so that from the front it looked like a single level dwelling. Half of the bottom floor was basically built into the hill, a good design because you never really need to run the air conditioner during the summer, it’s always cool downstairs.

One of the first tasks to be done was the landscaping work outside, the clearing of the yards and surrounding woods was a tall order. During the fall of that year my father and I were the only ones at home on a Saturday, he woke me in the wee hours of the morning to go with him to clear the area on the other side of the driveway. He cut trees as I pulled limbs across the road to a pile that was, at its completion, over eight feet tall. A few times that day, as I was walking back across the road to gather another load of limbs, I noticed the curtains in the front window moving. I asked my father several times where everyone was, every time I asked he ran the list down as to the location of each family member, but I was convinced he overlooked somebody and they were hiding in the house, not wanting to work in the yard. During the evening, as the sun began to sink, he set the pile ablaze with a mason jar of kerosene. My grandfather walked up there and we wound up sitting on the side of the road watching the huge spectacle as they fell into conversation about the clearing process. I had taken to staring across the small field of high, dead grass towards my grandparents house just down the road, it reminded me of a scene from Disney’s cartoon Sleepy Hollow.. My thoughts were lost in visions of a headless horseman riding hell bent across that field when I was snapped to attention by grandfather asking me a question for the second or third time..

“You notice anything strange out here yet?”

“No, what do you mean?”

“Well… this place is covered up in haints.. ’specially up here around ya’lls house. I’m always seeing lights moving around in the trees and hearing strange calls up in those woods late at night.”

“The only calls I’ve heard have been from whippoorwills, they wont go away..”

“Well don’t tell your granny that, them whippoorwills are bad business. That’s an omen. Something bad’s gonna happen when you start hearin’ ‘em all the time…”

My eyes grew bigger with each word he spoke, my heart was beating at least five times faster than it should as panic began to rise from the pit of my stomach. My father saw what was going on as he told my grandfather to hush and reassured me that he was just going on, simply trying to scare me. By this time his words of assuagement held little currency for me. They continued on in conversation about clearing plans, but my paranoia had firmly set in. I was convinced that the house was now crawling with haints, whatever they were, and that each one was carrying a lantern as they called out for my immortal soul.

The first of the cars came down the road as everyone began to return home, I saw my sister, mother, and little brother exit the car as my father called out, “Here they are, lets go eat supper..” We took leave of my grandfather and I walked towards the house on wobbly knees as I saw my two older brothers pull up in an old jeep… I kept looking from the driveway with everyone in it, as they exited the jeep and started helping to gather groceries, to the front window of the, what I now knew for sure, empty house…. My mind was racing as I tried to figure out why those curtains had been moving. During supper I began to ask questions… I wanted to know what haints were when my father interrupted me and explained to my mother what my grandfather had done. My older brothers seized on this opportunity and began to regale me with stories of bodies hanging out of the wall against the hill downstairs at midnight, and ghosts walking around in the woods, just outside the boundaries of the back yard, looking for the rest of their bodies… I made the mistake of telling them about seeing the curtains move, so they began to dare me to go into the living room. All night this went on, “Chicken… you’re too scared to go in there.. I dare you…” All this did was increase my fear and paranoia about the house and ensconce me into the farthest corner of the couch away from the living room, until they pointed out that I was the closest one to the top of the stairs and that the ghosts would get me first when they came up to reclaim their bodies…

The downstairs of our house was initially set up as a rec room. At the far side of the main room was a bar, on one side was a fireplace with a couch, recliners, and television around it. On the other side of the room, between the bottom of the stairs and the bar, was a pool table my parents had picked up. My fear was at its peak, as my brothers continued to goad me, when my father said the worst possible thing he could have, “Clay, run downstairs and get me that crossword puzzle book I left behind the bar.”

Holy shit.

Could he not hear what was going on? My brothers were beside themselves as they silently rolled around, doubled over with laughter. I just sat there until he looked over the top of his newspaper at me and let it be known that I was taking too much time to do what I was told. I began by standing at the top of the stairs looking toward the complete darkness below me. Thirteen steps was all that stood between me and certain death. I finally worked up enough nerve to do a mad dash down the stairs, hit the light switch, run across the room, grab the book, and run back to the steps, all the while sure that I was about to be grabbed by ghosts. I think I actually had the book in hand and was half way back before the florescent lights came all the way on..

The attempts to frighten me and my brother were a constant as we grew up there. The worst of it was always the pronouncement of “Go downstairs and get me…“ The fear train Culminated in a grand finale of the two of us being locked in the huge, walk in, cedar lined closet my mother had built to hold out of season clothes.. My older brother had been on a rant about ghosts in the house for a while when he dared us to go into the closet and count to thirty. We finally succumbed to the relentless barrage of taunting and made our way in. Shutting the door behind us, we did the fastest possible count to thirty we could and grabbed for the doorknob… it wouldn’t budge. He was holding it from the outside, laughing as we screamed for the help we knew wouldn’t come, we were the only three at home. It seemed as if we were in that room for hours whimpering in fear as we waited to be devoured by evil spirits. We noticed, after a while, that all was silent in the hallway so we crept to the door and turned the knob… it was free! We took off straight outside and began to plan our revenge. The revenge was stopped cold when we later found him upstairs and started yelling at him about doing that to us, “What are you talking about? I just got home..” I knew he was kidding, yet he remained adamant, for some reason we just never talked about it after that, I think it was simply too disturbing to think about…

Those early days of taunting and fear laid the foundation for what was to come in our teen years there, some say for what we invited into the house…

One by one my older siblings moved out, my brother and I found ourselves alone in the house with our parents. We moved from our upstairs room to occupy the two bedrooms downstairs that had been vacated by my brothers. Occasionally the subject of ghosts would come up, we would then launch into old tales and stories as we tried to frighten each other. My older brother was there for dinner one night when the subject arose and we began to talk about some things that had happened. We were alone in the house one evening while my parents had gone out to eat. We were upstairs watching television when we heard a familiar sound… The balls on the pool table downstairs had knocked together, one dropped in a pocket and rolled down to fall into the collection box located at one end. We didn’t mention it until I thought, “Wait a second… We are the only ones here…” My brother and I looked at each other as we realized this at the same moment. We went to the top of the stairs and stood listening as we stared into the darkness… I quietly crept to the kitchen window, which overlooked the driveway, to see if anyone was there. I was shaking my head “no” when I came back into the den and looked into the fear laden eyes of my brother. He did the classic “dammit” head jerk as our only hope of reassurance leapt out of the window. Finally, after much silent debate and exasperated hand waving, we turned on the lights of the stairway and headed down to investigate, making as much noise as possible. When we got to the bottom of the stairs I reached around the wall and clicked on the lights. The room was empty, and so was the pool table. There were no pool balls on it at all, they were all in place in the collection box. We made our way slowly around the entire downstairs area, armed with a fire poker and bb gun, searching for what could have caused the all too familiar sound, but we came up empty. We even went outside to check and see if there were any signs that someone had been there, we locked the all doors behind us as we exited the house onto the driveway. We made our way around to the front door and went back in, feeling better, but still slightly shaken from the ordeal. We headed into the kitchen to make ourselves something to eat. We then settled in to watch television and had just started on our sandwich laden plates when… the sound of pool balls clacking together once again came up the stairs. We sat, frozen in place, mouths full of food, as we both stared at the door to the stairs, shut tight against the evil that dwelled down there. I swallowed hard and looked at him. Without a word, we sat the plates down and headed outside, not breathing until we were in the middle of the yard. There was much cussing and bent over, hard breathing as we wondered what was going on. The return of our parents found us outside playing basketball on the driveway, too afraid to go back inside. They wondered why it took us so long to go to bed that night…

When we had relayed a few stories of that nature to my brother he sat back for a minute, then leaned in close to whisper, “We need to have a séance down there…” Our eyes raced from one another until we reached a silent agreement. We discussed it and decided that the following weekend would be good. Over the next few days the plan grew into a large undertaking involving several people and a video camera. Those were the days of the huge, shoulder mounted vhs cameras, one of which my brother had. We decided it would be a good idea to tape it and watch it later to see if anything happened that we didn’t catch. People began showing up Saturday evening as we made preparations for the night. The camera was set on a tripod at the end of the hallway, providing the best angle of the entire room. No one really knew anything about holding a séance so it was decided that instead of a medium, we would use an old Ouija board that a cousin had given to me. I had gotten it out of my closet and set it in the middle of the table, ready to use. When nine pm rolled around we all sat down at the table and began the séance. We used a legal pad and wrote down everything the board spelled out. The gist of the story we got was that there were several entities located there all in search of a way to move on, not understanding where they were or what was happening to them. They seemed to be confused as to why there were people living there where they alone were supposed to be. At the direct stroke of midnight, as dictated by a clock in the room, someone asked, “If there is anyone here, show us, appear to us, give a sign that you are here…” nothing of consequence happened, other than a strange flicker of the candle light. The séance broke up in the wee hours of the morning.

The next day my brother called, telling us to come over and watch the video tape, he thought he had found something. We immediately went over, he hit play on the vcr once we were all settled in. He told us that he had watched the entire tape that morning and saw nothing strange at all, until this one moment. It turned out to be the stroke of midnight when the question was asked… the second the question was asked there was a blip on the tape, the only one on the entire video, followed by what looked to be a light spot moving across the room from the hallway toward the table where we were all seated. We watched it over and over until we decided that it was just a malfunction in the recording process, but we each felt as if something strange had occurred.

Over the following months each weekend saw the Ouija board getting more use, eventually garnering many legal pads of information about the different entities that were communicating through it. The stories they were telling about the group of people there were getting to be downright disconcerting, causing personal information within the group that individuals had thought was known to no one to be made public, it happened when they were just in the room and not touching the board. This led to several people refusing to be a part of the board play. I was a bit nervous about the goings on as activity within the house had increased to a feverish pitch with the introduction of the board. The sound of pool balls had become a regular thing, witnessed by many people that hung out there. We would be gathered in my bedroom watching a movie, when we would hear it, at first we investigated each occurrence, some times finding the table empty, sometimes not. Eventually we just accepted it and paid no attention. At one point we took all the pool balls off the table and placed them on a rack that hung on the wall that my father had purchased to hold the cues and balls when not in use. Half way through a movie on a Saturday night we heard the distinct sound of the balls rolling around and clacking together, we ran into the room and there they were.. All on the table. We quietly headed back to finish the movie.

Along with the pool balls, water being turned on was starting to get to me. I would be alone in my bedroom when I would hear the water in the bathroom sink turn on. The first time that happened I was watching television, alone downstairs with just my parents there upstairs, when I heard a sound. I couldn’t make out what it was, so I hit the mute button on the remote and heard the water running. I went across the hallway and saw that the water, both hot and cold, was on full blast. I began to get paranoid, thinking I was losing it and couldn’t remember turning the water on.. I turned it off and went back to the television. A little while later, it was back on. That began happening with more regularity, and eventually with someone else there to witness it. We had gone to movie gallery to rent a few tapes, then to a drive through to get a huge bag of food, headed home and settled in for a movie marathon. Not long into the first movie one of the guys went to the bathroom and came back, asking. “Which one of you left the water running?” I acted as if someone left it on and chided the group to be sure to turn it off. A little later someone else went across the hall and returned with the same story, it bothered me because I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. That happened a few more times that night, ending with everyone telling me that I needed to get a new faucet in the bathroom. Indeed, I had a plumber look at it once when my mother had called them to work on an upstairs bathroom. I told him that it would be difficult to turn off, like it was loose and would turn back on sometimes. He looked at me sideways and checked It out, telling me there was nothing wrong, it felt solid like it should.

During one séance with the board several people were set up on the floor in front of the fireplace using it when one of the girls headed to the bathroom. She stopped at the beginning of the hall and announced how pretty the candle was in the sconce hanging on the wall, the light was “eerie”.. that one bothered me as I had just returned from the bathroom and knew damn well that candle wasn’t lit, they never were, and no one had gone down the hall toward the bathroom after I got back. Several times after that one of us would be at home alone and go to the bathroom, only to have to blow the candle out on the way…

In discussing this with my brother we termed it as the “paranoia setting in”… it always got worse after a board session.. That phrase came to encompass several things, the worst of which was the feeling of being followed closely while moving around downstairs. The feeling of another person right behind you, so close you could feel their body heat, became something close to maniacal. You would find yourself turning on the spot, swatting like you had walked into a group of gnats. Without fail, every time you would start up the stairs you could hear someone on the steps behind you, leading to you moving at a panic stricken dead run by the time you reached the top. That gave new meaning to the call of “dinner’s ready” coming down the steps from my mother. There were several times I would go outside and around to the front door to avoid using the steps. Other people came to feel this too and it eventually became part of the conversation that floated around.

The sessions with the Ouija board ended abruptly one evening when something happened that I simply could not accept. During a family gathering around the holidays we were talking about it when my older brother and a cousin decided that they wanted to give it a try. A group of us headed quietly downstairs to my room where I retrieved the board for them to use. They sat on the floor as we gathered around to watch. Keeping in mind that neither my older brother, nor my cousin were present during any of the past sessions what followed bothered me a great deal. I was standing next to my other older brother, with whom I had worked at a construction company in Peachtree city. There was an older gentleman that worked there that could neither read nor tell time. He wore a new watch that had been given to him by his children, yet each time you asked him what time it was, he would always answer the same thing, “seven thirty”… His name was Beaman and he was quite a character. Beaman gave nicknames to all the guys that worked there, my brother was known to the people there as “goatman” due to him meeting a guy there at lunch one day to buy a group of goats… the havoc they wreaked around that place was legendary, thus Beaman labeled him goatman from that day forward. For me, Beaman went the more pragmatic route and simply called me “fatboy” from day one… I hadn’t worked there for a while and wasn’t up on any gossip concerning the employees…

The session began as normal, immediately they contacted an entity that gave a familiar name to them. This was the first thing that bothered me, as they had no idea of knowing any names of anything that had been talking to the regular weekend group. Shortly after talking to that one, another presence came through and was completely confused. It seemed to have no idea where it was or why it was there, it described itself as being locked in the dark and said repeatedly that it was afraid. For some reason, my eyes began to water and the hairs on my arms stood on end. They asked it for a name and it spelled out beman. After a few more questions they asked it if it knew anyone there and it spelled out gotman and ftboy.. At this point my brother spoke up and said, “Ask him what time it is..” My cousin then asked the question and the answer came up, 730... Both my brother and I left the room, we stood in front of the fireplace in the other room for a few minutes not speaking, both of us were suffering from watering eyes and goose bumps. After a few sighs and turning round and round in front of the fire he asked me if I had talked to anyone from the construction company lately. I answered no, he then said, “I got a call the other day, Beaman died last week…”

Later that night I kept staring at the box containing the board as it lay on the floor of my bedroom. I had explained the meaning of what the board had said to my brother, he came walking into the room from the bathroom, sat down on the edge of my bed and said, “Well… what do you think?” I stared at the box and said, “I think I’m going to get rid of it.” At that exact moment the door of the bathroom slammed so loud we both jumped. “Yep… I think I will get rid of it, right now…”

The board was then disposed of with great prejudice. But… still to this day, late at night in that house, if you are quiet enough, you can sometimes hear strange sounds all around you…