I Think that I Shall Never See a Ghost as Scary as a Tree
Sam Venable
Department of Irony
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.
I once frequented a place like that. It was a cypress swamp in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, where I worked on a book in the 1970s. 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 hunting guide who lived nearby. Watkins told me the story he’d often heard as a child.
During one violent episode, the bully attacked his poor wife for the last time. I can still hear Watkins’ Cajun voice as he described what happened: “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 throat, rapid of heartbeat and quick of step. The occasional cottonmouth was less worrisome.
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!” he exclaimed. “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: Even though I know this is nothing but leaves and branches, stay away from this field on Halloween. A man can’t be too careful.)
Sam Venable is an author, comedic entertainer, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. His latest book is “The Joke’s on YOU! (All I Did Was Clean Out My Files).” He may be reached at sam.venable@outlook.com.