Scary Stories by LaVonis Miracle
For those of us, thinking in younger years that our cousins looked forward to our family visits, may get a chuckle out of LaVonis' story! Ah, hot summer nights - lightning bugs dotting the humid skies' horizon - and the scary stories shared in our youth. Can you relate?
When I was a kid growing up in the seventy's, I could always count on one thing being definite. Every summer my cousins would haul themselves in from Illinois and stay with my dad's parents. There was a whole cluster of them! They would start coming in the first of June and as one group was leaving the driveway another family was pulling in.
They had the manners of a pack of monkeys but we weren't allowed to say anything because first of all our southern hospitality wouldn't allow it and second of all it was my grandmother's only sister's children and grandchildren.
The monkeys would finally leave sometime during the last of July. My grandmother always sang this little song as the last ones pulled out of the driveway. “Thank God and Greyhound they're gone.”
Since I had to be nice while they were here I always loved to do sneaky things to my cousins. One requirement for being in my family was surviving the ghost stories or “Haint Tales” as we called them. We had some dandies. My grandparents on my mother's side had the best ones. My grandfather's haint tales could raise every chill bump on your body until they each stood up and developed their own personalities. Every once in a while some of those stories still come into my mind late at night and I get the shivers and sink way down into the covers. It usually makes for a sleepless night.
I would volunteer to stay all night at my grandparent's house on the first night when the cousins were there. We usually slept on the bed couch in the living room or in one of the two spare attic bedrooms. I would wait for it to get quiet then I would begin whispering to them about some type of occurrence that had happened years ago and how this was just about the same time of year that it had happened. My cousins would fall for this every time.
I was always good at telling scary stories. I handled the facial _expressions and voice tone with perfect timing. I would have them believing that they were going to be murdered in their sleep or stolen from their beds during the night. I always made sure I changed my story from year to year so that they would not catch on. I of course would go into a blissful sleep. They would not sleep a peaceful night the whole time they were there. My mother once got a phone call from my grandmother on the morning after the second night of one of the visits from the cousins. Apparently they had all spent a ghastly restless night. It seemed that the children had been frightened of some maniac that they knew was going to kill them in their sleep. It had gotten so worked up in there minds that the terror had become too much for them and they had apparently scared each other to death and their screams and ranting had woke up the entire household. My grandmother had to go to work the next morning and she knew perfectly well what I had done. Her message to Mom was basically to tell her to “tone it down a bit”. That was the best granny knew she would get out of me anyway. It was a known fact that I rarely ever minded completely and it was better to come to a compromise than have me thinking of something even sneakier to do.
If for some reason I couldn't come up with an original story or if I needed one in a hurry I would always resort to the old reliable one. Just a few miles up the road was a dark curve well known in the county for its headless woman. Apparently she had been murdered there and it was said that she carried her head around in a suitcase. If you were lucky enough to pass her she would appear in your car soon thereafter. I of course believed the story since there had been reported “sightings”. You had to pass that curve on the way to Aunt Jose's house. I'll never forget the night that mom, granny, my sister Jeannie, and me went to visit Aunt Jose. During the visit the headless woman topic came up. As curiosity would have it, Mom decided to go looking for her on the way home that evening. She drove up and down the road forever slowing down and speeding up and looking at every suspicious shadow. I sat for most of the search in granny's lap with my eyes closed. We didn't find her that night, thank goodness. Naturally my version of this story to my cousins didn't end like that. I would tell them about how we saw her in her bloody white dress and suitcase which bulged on both sides from her chopped off head. Just as she was getting ready to get into the backseat mom had speeded up and we left her behind standing in the middle of the road.
It did however backfire on me once. The “good cousins” from my grandfather's side of the family came in one summer. They came with their own stock of scary stories. We spent the night in the spare attic room. By midnight we had dreamed up all sorts of ghost and ghouls for ourselves. We had been making so much racket that granny had decided to come upstairs and hush us up. She was pretty sleepy and as she moved up the stairs her flat feet made thumping-rubbing sounds on the steps. It was getting closer and closer. The night light was casting eerie shadows on the wall. Granny's shadow came before she did. The curved wall distorted her head and shoulder shadow. I looked over at my cousin Ellen. Oh no! She's gonna blow! That was all I had time to think. Suddenly the top of granny's head appeared over the railing. This force seemed to bubble and percolate within Ellen's body. The rest of us were holding on to each other as we sat at the head of the bed. Then in a volcanic like burst Ellen screamed. It was no ordinary scream but that of some wild frightened jungle creature caught in some horrific trap. The piercing scream went on and on it seemed for minutes. Granny almost fell backwards down the stairway. It brought the entire crew up the stairs. Papaw, my aunt, and the older cousin all joined us in the tiny upstairs room. We all sat in the dim glow of the night light going over all of the occurrences. Papaw tried to convince us that there were no real ghost and ghouls lurking upstairs. We were not fully convinced. The four of us were divvied out and we slept with a grown up the rest of what was left of the night.
I learned from that experience that I had to choose my audiences carefully from then on. I had to be careful when the cousins came and make sure they didn't have their own scary story agenda.
I guess I can give those cousins credit for one thing. I honed my storytelling skill on all of them. Studying there reactions and thinking of my audience before I told my tales made me the storyteller and writer I am today. With each passing year I saw those cousins less and less until finally I was all grown up and we didn't see any of them anymore. Visits were replaced with phone calls, which were replaced with an occasional Christmas card and now there isn't any contact at all. I still however remember some of those stories and those summer nights that kept us on the edge of terror, suspense and a longing to hear more.
About This Story's Author:
LaVonis Miracle is an elementary school teacher. She enjoys sharing her family stories about growing up in the Mountains of Appalachia. You can contact her at dmiracle@barbourville.com
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