Me and my friends, Wayne and Rodney, liked to hike and explore forests. One day we found a forgotten graveyard with tombstones withered away and buried flat in the ground. You could hardly read what was written on them. Some dated back to the early 1800s.
I saw one that was really spooky, like something out of a horror movie. It read “Evil Lives Here.” What the hell was that about?” I thought to myself.
“Hey, you guys have to see this!” I said to Wayne and Rodney motioning them over to the eerie tombstone.
“Wow!” Wayne said. “Hey Rodney, we gotta come here tonight and investigate this. It might be the one where the ghost is so pissed off by what is put on its tombstone that it might appear and ask us to change it. I’m serious. It could happen.”
“Works for me,” Rodney said, “And our cameraman should be there too.”
Reluctantly I agreed. I had a bad feeling about that one. I mean, who has something like that put on his tombstone unless someone who didn’t like him erased his original words and put that on it, like an enemy who couldn’t let the hate go even when the guy was dead and gone.
Wayne and Rodney were ghost hunter wannabes without any high-tech equipment. They’d just go somewhere with flashlights and call on the ghosts. Their otherworldly efforts hadn’t discovered any ghosts but they liked the scary excitement of it and the possibility of one day making contact with a ghost. I wasn’t excited about trying to contact ghosts, and I didn’t like the idea of seeing or hearing one. To me, it was as dangerous as messing with Ouija Boards. But to be a good sport and help them, I came along as the cameraman always filming a safe distance away from any possible dangers. I wore a St Michael medal and a crucifix around my neck for protection and said a few silent prayers along the way.
I agreed to come and film them trying to contact the spirit of that evil tombstone from a safe distance with my protection medal and cross around my neck and my protection prayers recited.
That night the moon was full giving a foreboding feel to our ghost hunt. I knew that was just a horror movie fear-arousing technique imprinted in my mind from watching many horror movies where full moons aroused the terrors of werewolves or were portents of doomed adventures. But it might have been real that night as things turned out.
Wayne and Rodney were in top form when we got to the graveyard. They lit flickering candles around that tombstone and for the first time got a little high-tech with recorders instead of just flashlights.
They sat around the grave cross-legged and expectant staring at the tombstone saying, “Can you hear us? Who wrote that on your tombstone? If you’re here, show yourself. We want to help you. Can you hear us? Show yourself.”
The tombstone shook and blew off the ground circling in the air and landing under the creepy trees that surrounded the graveyard. Then the ground crumbled and opened up with a rumbling sound. A dozen skeletal hands reached out of the grave and grabbed Wayne and Rodney who began to scream. I dropped the camera and ran to rescue them, but a horned Lucifer rose out of the grave and gave me the evilest look I’d ever seen or even imagined. I sensed I was a dead man bound for hell if I took one more step forward. I stood shocked and frozen unable to advance or escape, like in those nightmares when you cannot run away from the monsters.
I could only watch in horror as my friends got dragged to hell and the air grew hotter and hotter all around us. I smelled the scent of burning flesh billowing out of that gateway to hell grave. I heard the wailing screams of tormented souls in that ever-blazing inferno. I heard Wayne and Rodney screaming. I knew they’d become tortured souls dragged to the underworld. At the same moment, I got the feeling they were trapped forever in the fires of hell.
The ground closed over the grave. The tombstone spun back down on top of it leaving the grave looking like nothing had disturbed it. Freed from the Luciferian spell, I ran from that horrific place as fast as I could until I felt far enough away to be safe from the unhallowed ground where Evil lived.
I called the police that night. They investigated the graveyard and the Evil Lives Here Tombstone but saw no signs of foul play or any indications that the graveyard had been a crime scene. I was a person of interest to the police and indicted by the media. I had to move to another town to escape the hard-eyed stares and the clouds of suspicion that hung over me in that town where no one believed my nightmarish story. Everyone was certain I had killed my friends and disposed of their bodies somewhere near that graveyard and made up that crazy alibi as a cover from my heinous homicide.
Now I live a quiet life where nobody knows me far from that night and the glaring eyes of all those people in my hometown thinking I was a maniac murderer. But I still see that night as clearly as it happened. I dream about it in nightmares. I feel it in tormented daytime thoughts.
I attend Mass every day at a small Catholic church called St Mary’s where I pray to Almighty God, Mother Mary, and the sacred saints to help my ensnared friends escape the torments of hell. But I never get any signs or feelings that they have been freed and I’m still haunted by ghastly nightmares and horrifying thoughts. Maybe when you get too close to where Evil lives there’s no way out of there.
Bob Boyd