Tonight’s post comes to us from friend and fellow blogger Matt Cashdollar. Matt normally writes about mysterious and frightening things such as technology and automation. In the future when the machines rise up and kill us all, he’ll either be the leader of the resistance or the very reason it happened in the first place. Check out Matt’s blog here.
When I was a kid, my friends and I would go camping in the woods near my
house. This was when I lived near the Appalachian mountains, in rural
Pennsylvania. Nearby was “the strip mine” which was an old open pit coal
mine that had been flooded with water and turned into a series of small
ponds and a general garbage dumping area for the county. We decided to go
camping just off the dirt road next to the strip mine. Our road didn’t
have a name – it was just called Rural Delivery #1. We were all poor,
redneck kids.
Among my friends were the brothers Greg and John, who were to supply the
tent for our camping trip. They lived in a tiny run-down trailer with
holes in the floor, and they didn’t own a clothes washer so they always
smelled bad. I didn’t really mind them though — they were good people
otherwise. They brought along the tent. The problem was that the tent
they brought was an ice fishing tent!
In case you are not familiar with an ice fishing tent, I will describe it
to you. It was made out some sort of silvery material (to hold in the
heat) and there was no floor. When you use an ice fishing tent on a
frozen lake, it makes sense, because you cut a hole in the ice (the floor)
and drop a fishing line through. However, the tent was definitely not
designed for forest camping in the summertime. So basically you get to
sleep on the dirt. It was really small, and there was not enough room to
hold all of us, but we figured we could squeeze in. So, the neighbor boys
and I went off camping with the unusual tent.
We roasted hot dogs over a campfire and played tag in the dark for a
while. We talked for a few hours and eventually everyone fell asleep
without even bothering to go in the tent. I guess it was just warm enough
that we didn’t feel the need for it. Maybe it was just that nobody wanted
to be stuck in a crappy ice fishing tent with the stinky neighbor boys all
night.
At some time later in the night I woke up and saw that the fire had burnt
down to just a few smoldering embers. My friends were asleep. I was
really cold for some reason, so I stumbled around looking for some fallen
branches to throw on the fire. We were at the top of the hill next to one
of the ponds of the strip mine.
For some reason, I was drawn to the pond. I walked down the hill to stand
next to the pond, admiring the reflection of the moon in the water’s
surface. I stood there for what must have been at least five minutes.
Just as I was about to leave, the water began to ripple. The water was
stagnant and there was no wind, so I was quite surprised by this. However
I figured it was a frog jumping into the water.
About this time, a ghostly form appeared over the water. It was the
figure of a young woman dressed in what I would call “pioneer” clothes.
You know, the sort that they wore in the 1700’s or whatever. I was frozen
with fear. I just stood there staring at her as she approached me,
walking on water just as Jesus supposedly did. She was moving really fast
though, like twice the speed of normal person running. She was headed
straight for me.
I actually felt her body slam into mine. It felt something like a wave of
ice water being splashed on me, except I felt it all through the core of
my body. After she “entered” me, she disappeared. I looked around but
didn’t see her anymore. I started shivering like crazy. I don’t know if
this was because of the woman running into me or just from fear.
I ran back to the fire and started piling on some big branches that my
friends had cleared away from the campsite. The flames leapt back to
life, throwing sparks up into the night sky. All the commotion woke my
friends, who asked me what I was doing.
I just told them I was really cold. They were mad at me because I had
made the fire so big it was getting close to burning their sleeping bags.
I didn’t tell them what had happened to me at the pond because I thought
they’d make fun of me.
I don’t know what happened to the woman — maybe she is still inside of
me. Sometimes, on quiet nights like tonight, I think I hear her whispers
inside my head.
