I shall never see a ghost as scary as a tree | Sam Venable
HALLOWEEN TALES
Graveyards and creepy houses don’t faze me.
Trees, however, can be another matter.
Perhaps this is due to guilt from years of chain-sawing trees asunder. Or maybe it’s just my nutty noggin. Could be both.
But when I’m deep in the boonies on a dark, chilly autumn night, it doesn’t take much imagination to see haints staring back. Especially when owls are hooting and wands of Spanish moss sway in the wind.
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I once frequented a place like that, a cypress swamp in Cameron Parish, La. At dusk, it turned into a scene worthy of Hollywood.
This wetland had lots of spooky cred. According to local legend, Jean Lafitte and his fellow pirates once roamed there. What’s more, it supposedly was haunted by the ghost of a woman who had killed her drunken, abusive husband.
She was the great-aunt of Watkins Miller, a leather-skinned Cajun who lived nearby. Watkins told me the story he’d heard as a child.
During one violent episode, the bully attacked his poor wife for the last time: “Bam! Bam! She hit him right in de chest wid both barrels of a shotgun.
“She was afraid her husban’s people would come get her. She ran into de swamp and hid in a cypress stump. A buzzard flew ovah, real low. She t’ought it was her husban’s ghost. She ran deeper into de swamp and was nevah heard from again.”
That, gulp, was the same cypress swamp where I hunted deer many an afternoon.
Trust your Uncle Barney Fife: When exiting at dark-thirty, it was easy to be dry of the throat, rapid of heartbeat, and quick of step. The occasional cottonmouth was less worrisome.
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Don Orr, a long-ago friend from West Tennessee, once shared a woodland ghost story of his own. Driving through the Obion River bottoms late one night, he rounded a curve and nearly ran into a ditch.
“Across the road was a huge monster with bony arms raised over its head! Its eyes glowed and smoke was comin’ out of its mouth!”
When his pulse finally slowed, Don got out and cautiously approached.
“Somebody had been burning off that piece of ground,” he said. “The ‘monster’ was a hollow tree that was on fire inside. The ‘arms’ were upper limbs, and its ‘mouth’ and ‘glowing eyes’ were old limb and woodpecker holes. It liked’to scared me to death.”
It’s not even necessary to have deep woods for vegetative fright.
Overlooking a field near my house is a sure-nuff “monster.” It formed when vines overtook a utility pole and the wires attached to it. I watched it take shape all summer.
Note to self: Stay away from this field on Halloween. A man can’t be too careful.
Sam Venable’s column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Sam Venable: I shall never see a ghost as scary as a tree
