Share your spooky stories mini-contest

[Anne]

It's time for some scary stories... 

Do you have a good ghost story to share with us? Any experiences that you've had in the realm of the paranormal that will give us a chill? Bonus points for stories involving your cat or cats!

Let's sit together by the virtual fireplace and share some of the stranger tales - involving tails or not - that we've experienced. 

As a bonus, we'll be giving away a cute halloween-themed cat toy by Cat Claws! 

spider-toy.jpg

• Anne
• Oct 5, 2016

Made exclusively for Cat Claws to our exacting quality standards and comes with a bag of our Certified Organic USA-grown Catnip. Made from soft plush with a velcro closure so you can refresh the catnip stuffing anytime the catnip becomes stale. 

Everyone is welcome to join but please note that the prize can only be sent to a US address. All you have to do is participate in this thread - we'll run a mysteriously random draw on Friday, October the 21st, to declare the prize winner!

No hard and fast rules here, but we're not looking for anything too fancy or literary, just your own experiences. Please keep it reasonable in terms of length. Also, remember, this is for FUN so user your own judgement and keep things lighthearted and not too morbid, please. 

Ready...  set... Boo!

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• Anne
• Oct 5, 2016

 

[Mamanyt1953]

I don't know how scary it is, but I share my home with one kitty, and two spirit kitties.  It is so odd to wake up in the middle of the night and feel the warm weight of three bodies curled along my legs, purring away. 

 

[Draco]

this happened Monday night, few days after landscapers cut away my nice large privacy bush in front of my window. In place they planted smaller plants. I was watching TV when I noticed my cat acting strange at the window. I look up, and I see.. a HAND! Scared the bejeezus out of me! Then I realized it belong to my upstairs neighbor (who has some sort of mental disability, not sure what though). Soon as she saw me approach to tell her to go away, she ran off. New property rules, you are not allowed on the garden beds. She broke it too.

Of course, I contacted the management and her father and told them about the invasion of privacy and how my previous complains of removing the bush became a reality. I knew it was going to happen. (I live in a co-op, landscaping was not my choice)

I get it, my cats are cute, but do NOT come to my open window and coo over them like a psycho and invade my privacy like that.

View media item 379583

 

[margecat]

It was a rainy late afternoon many years ago. It was becoming dusk. I was in the back seat of my parents' car. As we rounded the turn onto our road, I looked to the left. I saw what looked like a 17 year-old boy, tall, thin, and dressed in a long, black coat.  He sort of glided through the gate of the house on the corner, and up to the front porch, and stood as if he were waiting for the door to open.  It looked odd to me. He seemed solid enough, but something was odd about him.

Later that night, I remembered the date and something about the gate.  Many years before, a 17 year-old boy had been accused of harming a 3 year-old child, ran from the police, pulled a gun on the police, and was shot and killed near that spot. That house, by the way, was unoccupied at the time I saw him.  So unoccupied, in fact, that the hedge had totally grown over the gate, and you could not walk through it.  And he didn't jump over the gate, nor over the stone wall. How did he, then, arrive at the porch? I made a point the next day to check. I was right. You couldn't walk through the hedge over the gate. I wonder if the boy who was killed had knocked on the door in order to get help while running from the police?

 

[hellogatsby]

this is kind of a double spooky story for both my boyfriend and I. My boyfriend used to live in the back house and his mother had the front property before he moved out to live with me. We started dating back in 2014 and by September things had become official. October 2014 was the first holiday month we were spending officially as a couple. 

Well any who every time I would walk by his house towards the back to get into his  side of the house i would see this smokey gray cat just lingering around. Had a funny walk to her and looked like she could be possibly blind since whenever i could see her kind of close her right eye was really cloudy and murky. For the longest i just thought it was my boyfriends mother out door cat since she had one named Phantom but was a brown tabby. On occasion this gray cat would meow like she was hunger and after a week or two of going over to his house i finally asked him "Mario i think your moms cat is hunger, its just out there meowing" he must have thought i was talking about Phantom so he looks at me and says " Go ahead a feed him, there a little shed in the back and next to it is a table with a jar of food, just shake out a little since ill feed him more at dinner" Didn't even bother to ask questions,  went to the back grabbed the jar and shook a bit of food out of the jar in an empty bowl and took it to the cat. I noticed it didn't come near me so I just left the bowl and went back to his house. I kept doing this for a couple of weeks and everytime i would put a bit of food the cat would just sit in place not really moving to go eat. Maybe it was just waiting for me to leave so it could eat in private, who knows. 

About a month later wew were about to head out and we had to go back because he forgot to feed the cats so while he went to the back to grab the jar of food he shook it and out ran Phantom and mario began to feed him but me thinking there was another cat i started to make noises for the other cat. mario looked at me puzzled and asked "What are you doing" i told him that i was calling out to the other gray cat his mom has and he slowly said "gray cat?!?... Leslie what gray cat are you talking about"? I gave him the description of the cat and how i had been feeding it and that i assumed it was a girl cause it looked thin and most girl cats are thin. his eyes grew to the size of saucers and both he and i went into his mom house and when he took out a picture he asked "Is this the cat you saw" I looked at the picture and saw a picture of his mom with a grayish cat on the kitchen counter begging for treats. i said "yeah its the same one" He looked at me and said "Leslie that cant be, that was my mothers cat Gracie, Phantoms mom. she was killed by a stray dog. When my mom came home the dog had mauled her face and practically ripped her up" 

Need less to say I was very creeped out ever since. 

 

[DreamerRose]

Many years ago, when we lived in Atlanta, we were coming home from a vacation on the NC coast, and stopped in Edgefield, SC. I had discovered that some of my ancestors were buried in a family cemetery there and I wanted to make some gravestone rubbings. We had a difficult time finding the cemetery; it was on a small country road behind an abandoned church, and it had gotten to be very late in the day. A fine mist was falling, and dusk was settling in. The gravestones were old, 18th Century, and the engraving on them was very faint. Some of them were broken, and some had fallen over. Tall weeds filled the cemetery. We looked through the weeds for the right gravestones as it got darker and darker. Mist and fog swirled around us. It was so creepy, my children got scared and begged to leave and I got so spooked myself we got back in the car and left without the rubbings.

 

[Alicia88]

This isn't my personal story.  My mom told me about it.

When she was a kid, she had a blind cousin.  One night, she saw him in her room.  He told her he was dead and he gave her the name of the person who had killed him.  The next morning, his body was found.  The police didn't make any arrests, but the man my mom's cousin named was at his funeral.  And no one would listen to her.

 

[Winchester]

Years and years and years ago, Rick and I had separated. Our son and I were living back home with my parents. My brother and I were the only ones home for about a week as my parents had taken my son camping at a state park. One Saturday night, I got home around 10 or so and was sitting in the kitchen. I picked the phone up to make a call to a GF and got no dial tone.  And then I heard, "I know you're home. It's about time. I'm coming to get you." click 

Grabbed my cigarettes, car keys, and purse and went out and sat in my car. 

About an hour later, my brother came home and asked me what the heck I was doing in the car. We went in the house and I told him what happened. We had a phone in the basement, so, of course, we thought somebody might be in the basement. But we weren't going down to find out!

So I made coffee and we're sitting at the kitchen table and I'm drinking coffee and smoking like a fiend. Talking. Suddenly we heard a huge crash in the basement. Randy and I stopped dead and looked at each other. He got Dad's gun. He started down the steps and it was like a comedy. He's going down the basement steps and I'm right behind him, literally hanging on to one of his flannel shirt tails.

We started walking around and there was nothing amiss. Walked through the doorway into Dad's work area. The trailer hitch that Dad had been painting was on the floor. That was the crash we heard. The thing is....how the heck does a heavy (really heavy) trailer hitch end up on the floor? It had been on a big table when Dad was painting it! And who the heck was on the phone? 

We never did find out what happened that night. I do know that neither my brother or I went to bed until dawn. We spent the night drinking coffee, me chain-smoking, and playing Canasta.

We never liked that house and always said there was something funky going on, even though our parents had had it built. I would never go into the basement alone, even during the day. We used to hear voices at night while we were in bed. One morning Mom was making breakfast and the blender turned on. It just came on. Mom tried to turn it off and it wouldn't go off. Dad told her to unplug it. It wasn't plugged in! When it finally did turn off, Dad threw it in the trash.

My brother was alone in the house one night. Around midnight, he knocked on our back door. I opened the door and Randy was white. He came inside and said he wanted to spend the night on our couch. He said he was in bed and started hearing voices. All kinds of voices. Some kind of party or celebration. Then pounding sounds. He got out of bed, threw on a pair of jeans, left the house and drove to our house. We went back to the house, but couldn't find anything.

 

[Alicia88]

 
Years and years and years ago, Rick and I had separated. Our son and I were living back home with my parents. My brother and I were the only ones home for about a week as my parents had taken my son camping at a state park. One Saturday night, I got home around 10 or so and was sitting in the kitchen. I picked the phone up to make a call to a GF and got no dial tone.  And then I heard, "I know you're home. It's about time. I'm coming to get you." click 

Grabbed my cigarettes, car keys, and purse and went out and sat in my car. 

About an hour later, my brother came home and asked me what the heck I was doing in the car. We went in the house and I told him what happened. We had a phone in the basement, so, of course, we thought somebody might be in the basement. But we weren't going down to find out!

So I made coffee and we're sitting at the kitchen table and I'm drinking coffee and smoking like a fiend. Talking. Suddenly we heard a huge crash in the basement. Randy and I stopped dead and looked at each other. He got Dad's gun. He started down the steps and it was like a comedy. He's going down the basement steps and I'm right behind him, literally hanging on to one of his flannel shirt tails.

We started walking around and there was nothing amiss. Walked through the doorway into Dad's work area. The trailer hitch that Dad had been painting was on the floor. That was the crash we heard. The thing is....how the heck does a heavy (really heavy) trailer hitch end up on the floor? It had been on a big table when Dad was painting it! And who the heck was on the phone? 

We never did find out what happened that night. I do know that neither my brother or I went to bed until dawn. We spent the night drinking coffee, me chain-smoking, and playing Canasta.

We never liked that house and always said there was something funky going on, even though our parents had had it built. I would never go into the basement alone, even during the day. We used to hear voices at night while we were in bed. One morning Mom was making breakfast and the blender turned on. It just came on. Mom tried to turn it off and it wouldn't go off. Dad told her to unplug it. It wasn't plugged in! When it finally did turn off, Dad threw it in the trash.

My brother was alone in the house one night. Around midnight, he knocked on our back door. I opened the door and Randy was white. He came inside and said he wanted to spend the night on our couch. He said he was in bed and started hearing voices. All kinds of voices. Some kind of party or celebration. Then pounding sounds. He got out of bed, threw on a pair of jeans, left the house and drove to our house. We went back to the house, but couldn't find anything.

Time to burn the house down.  And never go near the property again.

 

[Anne]

Great stories, everyone. Definitely spooky! Keep 'em coming!

 

[Winchester]

Are we allowed to post more than once? If not, just delete.

Anybody believe in orbs? We went to Gettysburg one weekend to take one of the ghost walks. It was very interesting and they started talking about orbs. Evidently, the redder the orb, the angrier the spirit. 

This picture was taken during the ghost walk. The building used to be a girls school/college. Legend has it that the girls were studying in the room right below the orb. It was cold and snowy and there was a boy who they let in the building to warm up. But one of the schoolmistresses heard the boy and tried to open the door. The girls made the boy go out the window, where he froze to death. The orb is said to be his spirit (we think it's just a dust speck on our camera, but it did show up on other people's cameras, too).

View media item 380271
We knew people who were camping at Gettysburg that weekend and visited with them. Way back in the back of the campground, there's a monument. There are supposed to be orbs back in there. The guys posed by the monument and I took a couple pictures. When we came back to the campsite and looked through the pictures, there was an orb hanging right between Rick and my brother. I can't find those pictures and I've been looking all over my computer. If I find them, I'll post them. It wasn't an orange/red orb, so evidently the spirit wasn't real angry.

Gettysburg has a lot of interesting ghost stories!

Interestingly, we went to a haunted cemetery in Connecticut on a ghost walk one time when we visited my GF. Took a ton of pictures. No orbs at all. 

 

[louann jude]

I have always had dreams. You know the ones that don't make since when you have them but you know they mean something. Then after a while you look back and say yeah that was why. 

My Papaw Howell passed away from a short battle of Melanoma in October of 97. 

In about May of '98 I started dating this guy that my Grandmaw was crazy about. We didn't have a phone so he would call her house, she lived next door, and she would always holler for me when he called. One night I dreamed that He had called and my my Grandmaw yelled for me to come out to talk to him. As I was walking to her house I looked up and seen my Paw just standing there and he had this really sad look on his face. Then I kept walking and when I got in the house he reappeared. Then he was shadowing my Grandmaw. If she was walking he was one step behind. She was washing dishes he was behind her helping. I woke up thinking it was so weird. 

A few nights later I dreamed we were back at my Paw's funeral. Me and Maw was sitting there playing with this beautiful little baby. At first I thought it was a girl because it had the prettiest head of coal black hair. With big brown eyes. We started dressing him in this baby blue outfit and we were just having a good time. Then someone came in and said it was time for the service and we left the dinning hall. 

When I walked in the church there were four coffins in there. They were all in a circle and the one was open with my Paw laying inside, the other three was closed. After the service my Paw's coffin closed and moved turned clock wise and the other coffin opened up and was empty. I woke up and was gasping and couldn't shake the feeling of something was wrong. 

My grandmother passed away July '98. Nine months after my Paw. Nine months later my Aunt Louise, their daughter, died of cancer. A year later my cousin was at work and his wife went to the store and left their six month old baby with a friend. While she was gone he drowned in a bucket of mop water they said he fell in. 

As if the dream wasn't freaky enough. My oldest son was born March 2001. He was born with a full head of coal black hair and big brown eyes. Nine months later my cousin had her baby Katie, Nine months after that my nephew Jacob was born. Then the next year my cousin had Corey. 

Me and my sister and my cousins Stephanie and Gena lived beside of our grandparents. We were the closest to them out of all of them. 

View media item 380273View media item 380274My oldest son when he was about 9 months old. 

My Maw and Paw.

 

[rubythecat]

Once, I was sleeping with my cat Ruby, and we heard a thumping noise. She searched my room and then came back, the thumping noise returned, finally Ruby got fed up with it yet again and she ran around the house searching.. Finally I got out of bed and I put the leash on her, we looked around and found out that our neighbors were just having a party with music that had a lot of bass.

 

[NewYork1303]

My father moved into a house that had been foreclosed on. The house was in terrible shape, so he had to work to get it back to a livable state. One noticable problem was that the floor was soaked in cat urine. As he was cleaning up the house, my sister and I went and helped him on a few occasions. There were some strange problems right off the bat since things would disappear from where you set them and reappear later in different spots. Things were also getting knocked over randomly. We were in his living room one time and there was a glass of water that got knocked off the table right in front of us. Once he had gotten everything fixed up, we went to visit the house again to see how it had turned out. When we came into the house, I looked down the hall and there was a beautiful fluffy flame point cat sitting in the hall looking at me. When we made eye contact, it took off down the hall and slipped into one of the bedrooms that had a lot of his furnishings in there. I asked my father when he had gotten a cat, since he's allergic. He told me he didn't have a cat.

He later told me a story about being asleep at night and feeling a cat jump up on the bed beside him and settle down - warm against his leg. 

He eventually embraced the idea of having a ghost cat and even had a blanket out for it in his office, under the desk. The blanket would be perfectly folded and then when you looked at it later it would be a bit ruffled up like a cat had slept on it. Sometimes when I'm in his house, I'll see out of the corner of my eye a cat hurrying out of the way or doing zoomies down the hall. 

His girlfriend has also run into another specter in his house. Apparently, there was a little girl who was sometimes crying in the corner of one of the rooms of the house. She eventually bought a little doll for this child and since then the doll and the child have gone. Although sometimes at night, it sounds like someone is giggling and racing down the hall. 

 

[Margret]

One of the first things that I always teach a new cat is that they are not allowed to sleep on my tummy.  My lap, yes.  My belly, no.  So I was rather surprised one night in 1989 when I woke up feeling breathless because of a cat lying on my belly.  I was even more surprised when I went to push her off and there was no cat there!  In fact, that was enough to totally awaken me.  I was definitely awake, there was definitely no cat there, and I could still feel the pressure of a cat lying on my belly (though, oddly enough, I actually was breathing normally).

That's when I realized that what I was feeling was not pressure, it was numbness.  This was shortly after my gall bladder had been removed, and, while laparascopic surgery was just becoming popular in the late '80s, my surgeon hadn't yet had time to get comfortable with it.  I had a six inch scar across my belly that was just beginning to heal, and the nerves hadn't had time to re-attach themselves yet.

I did manage to give my doctor a bit of an unintentional scare when I told her about it, though.  Doctors react with alarm, I discovered, when you tell them that you woke up in the middle of the night feeling as if you couldn't breathe.

I don't want to skew the drawing by posting it separately, but I do have another spooky story.

My Aunt Sylvia was a realtor in Georgia.  There was one house that she had a listing for where strange things kept happening.  She'd be in the house and the doorbell would ring, but when she went to answer the door no one was ever there.  However, there was also a cat hanging around who would always ask to be let in whenever she opened the door.

Then one day she caught him at it -- there was a ledge next to the door, and the cat was jumping up on the ledge and ringing the bell.

Hey!  It's the way humans get someone to open the door -- why not cats?

Aunt Sylvia asked the neighbors about him and it turned out that this was the house the cat lived in.  When his humans moved away they left him behind. 

Yes, Aunt Sylvia found him a furever home.

Margret

 

[Alicia88]

We knew people who were camping at Gettysburg that weekend and visited with them. Way back in the back of the campground, there's a monument. There are supposed to be orbs back in there. The guys posed by the monument and I took a couple pictures. When we came back to the campsite and looked through the pictures, there was an orb hanging right between Rick and my brother. I can't find those pictures and I've been looking all over my computer. If I find them, I'll post them. It wasn't an orange/red orb, so evidently the spirit wasn't real angry.

Gettysburg has a lot of interesting ghost stories!

Interestingly, we went to a haunted cemetery in Connecticut on a ghost walk one time when we visited my GF. Took a ton of pictures. No orbs at all. 

When I was a kid, my cousin was watching a show with ghost stories and there was one that stuck with me for some reason.  A little boy ran away from an orphanage or something and knocked on a door where a couple of older ladies lived.  They let him in and the matron came looking for him (I guess he was being abused; which wasn't at all uncommon with old time orphanages) so the ladies put him on an outside window ledge while the matron searched the house.  When she was gone, they went to let him back in, but he wasn't there.  There was no sign that he had fallen either - the snow below the window was completely undisturbed.  But a blue face would keep appearing at the window and "Help Me" would be written in the window fog from the outside.  And for some reason, even though my grandma's didn't bear the resemblance to the room on the show and the windows were nothing alike, I was terrified to go to the bathroom at my grandma's after dark because I kept imagining that if I looked at the window, I would see a blue face.  For years, I would use the bathroom as fast as I could and run out and wash my hands in the kitchen sink after dark, even though not once did I actually see anything.

 
My father moved into a house that had been foreclosed on. The house was in terrible shape, so he had to work to get it back to a livable state. One noticable problem was that the floor was soaked in cat urine. As he was cleaning up the house, my sister and I went and helped him on a few occasions. There were some strange problems right off the bat since things would disappear from where you set them and reappear later in different spots. Things were also getting knocked over randomly. We were in his living room one time and there was a glass of water that got knocked off the table right in front of us. Once he had gotten everything fixed up, we went to visit the house again to see how it had turned out. When we came into the house, I looked down the hall and there was a beautiful fluffy flame point cat sitting in the hall looking at me. When we made eye contact, it took off down the hall and slipped into one of the bedrooms that had a lot of his furnishings in there. I asked my father when he had gotten a cat, since he's allergic. He told me he didn't have a cat.

He later told me a story about being asleep at night and feeling a cat jump up on the bed beside him and settle down - warm against his leg. 

He eventually embraced the idea of having a ghost cat and even had a blanket out for it in his office, under the desk. The blanket would be perfectly folded and then when you looked at it later it would be a bit ruffled up like a cat had slept on it. Sometimes when I'm in his house, I'll see out of the corner of my eye a cat hurrying out of the way or doing zoomies down the hall. 

His girlfriend has also run into another specter in his house. Apparently, there was a little girl who was sometimes crying in the corner of one of the rooms of the house. She eventually bought a little doll for this child and since then the doll and the child have gone. Although sometimes at night, it sounds like someone is giggling and racing down the hall. 

 
One of the first things that I always teach a new cat is that they are not allowed to sleep on my tummy.  My lap, yes.  My belly, no.  So I was rather surprised one night in 1989 when I woke up feeling breathless because of a cat lying on my belly.  I was even more surprised when I went to push her off and there was no cat there!  In fact, that was enough to totally awaken me.  I was definitely awake, there was definitely no cat there, and I could still feel the pressure of a cat lying on my belly (though, oddly enough, I actually was breathing normally).

That's when I realized that what I was feeling was not pressure, it was numbness.  This was shortly after my gall bladder had been removed, and, while laparascopic surgery was just becoming popular in the late '80s, my surgeon hadn't yet had time to get comfortable with it.  I had a six inch scar across my belly that was just beginning to heal, and the nerves hadn't had time to re-attach themselves yet.

I did manage to give my doctor a bit of an unintentional scare when I told her about it, though.  Doctors react with alarm, I discovered, when you tell them that you woke up in the middle of the night feeling as if you couldn't breathe.

I don't want to skew the drawing by posting it separately, but I do have another spooky story.

My Aunt Sylvia was a realtor in Georgia.  There was one house that she had a listing for where strange things kept happening.  She'd be in the house and the doorbell would ring, but when she went to answer the door no one was ever there.  However, there was also a cat hanging around who would always ask to be let in whenever she opened the door.

Then one day she caught him at it -- there was a ledge next to the door, and the cat was jumping up on the ledge and ringing the bell.

Hey!  It's the way humans get someone to open the door -- why not cats?

Aunt Sylvia asked the neighbors about him and it turned out that this was the house the cat lived in.  When his humans moved away they left him behind. 

Yes, Aunt Sylvia found him a furever home.

Margret

I don't understand how people can leave pets behind.  Some people are just horrible and cruel.

When I was a kid, we had a lot of cats.  We had plenty of land and my mom was terrified of snakes and rodents so she let us adopt every cat we came across and let them have kittens and had no problem feeding and caring for them as long as they kept the riffraff (snakes and rodents) out.  We had one cat named Pocahontas.  She was a house cat while she had kittens but for some reason, after the kittens were grown, she decided she didn't want to use the litter box so mom put her out.  Well, we would randomly hear knocking on the door, but there was never anyone there.  Every time we opened the door to check, Pocahontas would run inside.  Finally, we figured she must be doing the knocking so my sister and I slipped out the back door and hid in some bushes in front of the house watching.  Pretty soon, Pocahontas trotted on up to the porch and started banging her tail against the door.

 

[DreamerRose]

@Winchester  - I see three more orbs in that picture. Do you think it could be a reflection of the moon, refracted by the camera lens?

 

[Winchester]

 
@Winchester  - I see three more orbs in that picture. Do you think it could be a reflection of the moon, refracted by the camera lens?

Nope. No moon that night! We're thinking dust specks. 

 

[warriorcatz101]

It's time for some scary stories... 

Do you have a good ghost story to share with us? Any experiences that you've had in the realm of the paranormal that will give us a chill? Bonus points for stories involving your cat or cats!

Let's sit together by the virtual fireplace and share some of the stranger tales - involving tails or not - that we've experienced. 

As a bonus, we'll be giving away a cute halloween-themed cat toy by Cat Claws! 

spider-toy.jpg

• Anne
• Oct 5, 2016

Everyone is welcome to join but please note that the prize can only be sent to a US address. All you have to do is participate in this thread - we'll run a mysteriously random draw on Friday, October the 21st, to declare the prize winner!

No hard and fast rules here, but we're not looking for anything too fancy or literary, just your own experiences. Please keep it reasonable in terms of length. Also, remember, this is for FUN so user your own judgement and keep things lighthearted and not too morbid, please. 

Ready...  set... Boo!

spooky-story-contest.jpg

• Anne
• Oct 5, 2016

This happened a month ago.I was playing on my tablet(I'm on my phone)And my hook up doorbell was in my room.no one was there but me.And my doorbell rang.(It sounds like a fire alarm!)And I literally jumped out of my own skin and accidentally threw my tablet.5 minutes later it rang again.This time I wasn't as alarmed.The 3rd time I threw it over the the railing.But it is not broken and it doesn't ring anymore(besides when my almost 2 year old sister plays with it.)So,HELP ME MY ROOM IS HAUNTED!AHHHHHHHHHHHH!Bye(;

 

[Caspers Human]

How about a real ghost story?

"The Man With Two Graves"

This happened in the city where I live.  You can find documentation and genuine artifacts at the Erie County Historical Society.

The year was 1796, only 20 years after the Revolutionary War.

General "Mad" Anthony Wayne was the commander of the American army at the time.

While visiting the garrison at Erie, PA, he was stricken by a mysterious case of gout.  There were no doctors available, locally, so one was summoned from the Army Hospital in Pittsburgh.  By the time Dr. John Wallace made the 120-mile journey from Pittsburgh by horse and buggy, General Wayne had died.

The General's death posed a sticky problem for the United States Government.

General Wayne had struck several treaties with the American Indians who inhabited the area.  As many may know, it is customary for Native Indians to form treaties between individual men, not between governments.  If they had gotten wind of Wayne's death before a new ambassador could be appointed, all treaties would be null and void.  There was a real possibility that peace between the U.S. and the Indians could be broken!

Dr. Wallace and the Americans did the only sensible thing that they could do.  They quickly and quietly buried the General Wayne's body at Fort Presque Isle then they found a new ambassador to reestablish treaties with the Indians to keep the peace.  Wayne's body laid in its grave, beneath the flagpole for thirteen years.

Thirteen years after his burial, Isaac Wayne, the General's son, came to Erie in order to retrieve his father's body to be returned to the family plot in Radnor, PA, near Philadelphia.  Isaac Wayne was met by Dr. Wallace, the same doctor who had attended the General's death and burial.  Dr. Wallace exhumed the body and, when he opened the simple, wooden coffin, he discovered that the body was almost intact!  Only the left foot had decayed!

Imagine the circumstance.  The year was 1809.  There was no such thing as automobiles or paved roads.  Isaac Wayne was going to have to transport his father's remains a distance of almost 400 miles, back to the family homestead near Philadelphia, by horse and buggy.  This would not be an easy journey!

Again, Dr. Wallace did the only sensible thing he could do.

He dismembered General Wayne's body, put the pieces in a large, iron cauldron and boiled them until the flesh could be removed from the bones!

If you've ever made chicken soup from scratch, I shouldn't have to go into details.  Should I?

Dr. Wallace reinterred the flesh and the medical instruments used to perform the "operation" in the original grave then presented the son, Isaac, with a box full of bones.  Isaac Wayne was, understandably, distraught!  However, there wasn't much else that could have been done.

It would have been a solemn journey under normal circumstances but, even in 1809, this was macabre!

General Wayne's bones were, indeed, buried in the family plot at Saint David's Church in Radnor, PA on July 4, 1809 with full military honors.

General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, Commander of of the American Army and hero of the American Revolution has the infamous distinction of being "The Man With Two Graves!"

Legend has it that, during the long journey from Erie to Philadelphia, some of the bones fell out of the horse cart and were lost for eternity.  Some of them might have been stolen by fortune hunters.  Maybe Isaac Wayne, tormented by the thoughts of what had happened to his father's remains, lost some of the bones.  Nobody knows for sure.  After 207 years, it's unlikely that we'll ever find out.

You can still view the original iron cauldron that boiled the General's bones away!

It is often displayed at the Erie Historical Museum, located at 6th & Chestnut streets, in Erie, PA.

A replica of the Block House where the General died stands at the original site of Fort Presque Isle which is now on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Soldier's and Sailor's home, located on 3rd & Ash.  You can visit the site and see the chair in which General Wayne was reported to have died in.

It is said that, ever year, the ghost of General "Mad" Anthony Wayne rises from his grave and travels the dark roads between Philadelphia and Erie, in search of his lost bones, and smiting those who get in his way!

If you ever travel along PA Route 322, between Philly and Erie, alone at night, WATCH OUT!

You might find yourself face to face with the ghost of General "Mad" Anthony Wayne!