True Ghost Stories :) ~Pantherlover~

First of all, no, It is not by me, I just was surfing through sites and found some interesting stuff :) I hope ya like it. ;p (it's a long one)



The Lantern Man~

More than 30 years ago in the backwoods reaches of Southern Arkansas a vital part of the industry was the locomotive, primarily because most of the jobs were fulfilled back then, as they still are today, by lumber mills. On this one particular train which ended up in the spotlight of my encounter, lumber was transported just outside of town from the mill to who knows where. Now I forget the actual name that they assigned to this guy, but there was a man who would ride on the back of the very last car, and since there were no such things as flashlights, it was his job to use a lantern to signal the conductor of the train. Like Morse Code, he would use various signals to alert the conductor of the train. For example, if he flashed his light twice that meant there was trouble and to stop the train immediately.

For ease of telling this tale, we'll call the man who manned this semiphorical light, Lantern Man. And so, there he was, armed with his lantern at the end of the train. He was employed by the mill and he did this for several years when one night as he was working the graveyard shift, there was a problem with some of the train cars and their connectors. As always, he was riding down the track on the end car and as soon as he noticed the problem he signaled to the conductor. When the train finally came to a clanging stop, the Lantern Man jumped from his post to check out the couplings between two of the cars. Back then, as is still the case today, the rail cars were connected by a hook-and-lock device that when slammed together, intertwined to latch onto the other car. The Lantern Man walked down to the two cars, and when he checked them out, he discovered that two of the cars had become unhooked.

Now to do his job correctly (and to make things even a little more difficult for the Lantern Man), he had to climb up on one of the hook-and lock devices to be able to spot the problem, and as sometimes happens, trains shift a bit after stopping -- this night was no exception. From what people could determine after it was all over and they found him, when Lantern Man was just about to signal the conductor to start backing up so as to slam the hook-and-lock devices together, the train shifted and he fell with his head landing smack-dab between this huge device -- and when he fell, his light flew out of his hand and rolled out from between the two cars -- making it visible to the conductor far ahead in the front of the train with his hand poised on the throttles. Seeing the light from so far away, the conductor thought it was Lantern Man signaling him to back-up to slam the locking device in place, which he did according to the master plan. However, he had no idea that after it was all over, when his hand moved forward on the lever, the movement of the train would decapitate the Lantern Man. When he found out, the conductor was devastated.

The Lantern Man was not only his coworker for many years, he had also been his best friend. To this day it is a well-known fact that the Lantern Man can be seen swinging his lantern down by the tracks if one were to walk down to the rails after the sun has left the evening sky and there is only the feel of the chill and the darkness, which is where my personal story comes into play. You see, I dated the conductor's granddaughter not long ago and, although I had heard this story before, it had more of an impact when I heard the actual story straight from her grandfather's mouth. And now that you know the origin behind the story . . . Several years ago, the story of the Lantern Man had aired on the popular TV series, Unsolved Mysteries, and I was anxious to check it out. Now, after moving to Gurdon to begin my 1999 Fall semester at Henderson State University, I was living just a short 15 mile commute from rural Gurdon, Arkansas down the well-traveled Interstate to the place where it all happened. I wish I could say that I had never been so anxious to visit the tracks on that night because as it turned out, it was a horrifying trip.

It happened one night during what is called "Dead Week" at HSU (Dead week simply means that students aren't game to professors for any type of testing because students are preparing for midterms). Some friends of mine and I decided to walk the track and just find out for ourselves if the legend was true or not. My girl friend did not want to go because she had been down the tracks before and claimed that the legend was indeed 100 percent true. I had my own doubts. So on the night they called Dead Week, a group of my friends (three besides myself) began our trek down those tracks. This is about a two-mile trip one way, so we were deep in the woods by the time we spotted the man with the light. Upon seeing the man with his lantern swinging back and forth around the level of his waist we were immediately filled with self-doubt as to whether or not our trip and skepticism amounted to any kind of real common sense. A few months earlier, I had received an injury to my back which caused me to have surgery, so I was slow in walking, but I got there -- and of course everyone else in our group were faster runners than me. I suppose the tone of the entire excursion changed the moment the man with the lantern started coming toward us. There was one flashlight in our group, and of course I didn't have it. Upon the man's approach, the others began their journey at a kind of hurried walk back toward civilization.

I however was left behind because I wasn't as fast or agile. I saw the others fade off into the distance with the only lights we had, and so all I had to guide my way was the glow of the moonlight and the sound of my hearth thrumming in my ears. One of the hardest things I have ever done was turn my back on that man walking with his lantern. As I walked the man got closer and closer but kept disappearing some of the time. On this particular night I never heard him speak anything, even though I had heard that popular belief had proved the contrary. As I walked, the man was walking behind me. I could hear his feet grinding down in the gravel and began to walk as fast as my physical condition would let me. Suddenly, the man and his lantern and all traces of him disappeared and all I was left with was the noise that his feet continued to make in the gravel behind me. About a mile down the track, his steps grew closer and closer as I was growing increasingly fatigued. I began to think that one of my friends was trying to scare me.

In fact, I was almost sure that was the noise I was hearing. As I came upon a place where the gravel turned to shale, I heard a noise right beside me in the bushes not ten feet off the side of the track. At the point I was sure it had to be a prankster in our group, I heard a yell from about a mile down the tracks for me to hurry up -- and I was hearing all three of my party member's far away voices . . . . It was then I realized that the quickening footsteps that had been following (or tracking) me were not any of those belonging to my friends, it was the ghost of the Lantern Man. I was completely terrified. I began to make my way further down the tracks when the man walked up behind me and tapped me on my shoulder. I could not see him, but I could feel, and I could hear him. Now if you want to be terrified, let an invisible person tap you on the shoulder in the middle of the pitch cold darkness, and nearly desolate wilderness. I was then, and still am, somewhat of an athlete. I played football for five years and I wasn't a little guy by any means. I am 6'4" and 300 pounds of a whole lot of muscle. In southern parlance, I am big enough to go bear hunting with a switch. Being raised in the woods to hunt, sometimes at night, I was no "Fraidy Cat." But after the events I seen that night I am now somewhat more choosey about the folks I take with me to that place. I have been back on numerous occasions and every time I have seen what is referred to in the state of Arkansas as, "The Gurdon Light." Finally I made it back to the truck, which thank God was mine and I still had the keys too. My host of friends were waiting for me there and said they had been waiting for me for at least and hour. Whether you believe it or not, these are very credible friends and they wouldn't lie to me. The hardest thing I have ever done was turn my back on a ghost. That terrified me. Now I am a firm believer in ghosts. This is not "Folklore," or an "Urban Legend," the events that I spoke were all true, and I am witness to that and so are a lot of people from southwest reaches of Arkansas.

Ghost~

I was a wee lad when this happened to me, and was around 13 years old at the time. I was doing the usual sleep over with one of my bestest buddies like all good seventh graders do. Well, I was staying over my friends house for a weekend and we all went to his grandmother's place out in the country. Now the Grandmothers place was this huge old Civil-war Plantation that was nestled out in the country, and as beautiful and majestic as it was, I was always scared of the place for some reason....and soon I was about to find out why! I t was one late Saturday night and the only people left in the entire house were Glenn's Grandmother, Glenn, and of course myself. Glenn and I did are usual routine of late night shows, popcorn and what have you. Our room looked like it had never been altered since the 18th century. It was a huge room with period furniture and a Gigantic Brass bed that we both were about to sleep in. After our binge of popcorn and soda's and late night movies we went upstairs to settle in for the night.

Well as all 7th graders usually do, we were goofing and wrestling around in the bed for a bit . . . silly kid stuff . . . but we eventually turned out the table lamp and settled in for some sleep . . . It was about 30 minutes later when I heard the door knob starting to turn, and the door opened. It was completely pitch-black both in that room and in the hall (Glenn's Grandmother, being the ever tight penny-pincher she was, no light was ever left on without a purpose). So, the door shut and then footsteps were heard coming towards us at the foot of the bed. Just about when I was wondering if Glenn was awake to hear all this I heard him say, "Grandma? Is that you?" There was no answer. "Grandma is that you?" he said once again. And again, no response. Then the footsteps walked from the foot of the bed, around to my side where I lay. Needless to say, this was petrifying me, so I instinctively reached out and turned on the lamp . . . and I felt this pressure on my middle as I tried to reach the switch. Finally, I hit the light switch, and there was no one there. Needless to say, I was up and outta that room in one second flat. We ran outside the Plantation house very, very scared. I didn't want to go back in there ever again. We ended up in one of the hay barns and the next morning at breakfast we mentioned this to Glenn's Grandmother. She just had this serious look on her face and said, "So, ya seen him too then?" Glenn and I just turned white as a sheet. She added, "He comes into my room and likes to steal my glasses and hide them from me". This totally through me for a loop. I never ever had the notion to go back to that place to this day! So, yes I do believe and I know there are spirits here with us. Absolutely . . .

Hotel Ghost~

Before I moved to Las Vegas, I used to visit a lot. My family and I enjoyed staying at the various hotels. About 3 years ago, we stayed at one of the original older Hotel Casinos on the Strip in Las Vegas. At the time this hotel- casino was experiencing difficulties with the Union. Our room was 179. When we got to the door, I put in the key-card. The little green light went on, and I tried to open the door. It was impossible to open! It took me and my dad to open it! At the time, we thought it was some kind of vacuum or the hinges on the door needed to be fixed. Of couse, five minutes later we forgot all about it. A few minutes after I put my clothes in the drawers, I searched around the room (to check for any dropped casino chips from past guests). To my dismay, I found nothing. After that I looked for the bible in the room. There was none! Now that was odd. They are always in hotel rooms. Someone must have taken it. Later that day, we all went out to "The Strip." My mom got tired around 11 O'clock, so she went back to the room.

Me and my dad stayed out 'til one o'clock in the morning. When we got back, I was really tired. I slept on the couch and my parents slept on the bed (we had a suite). The next morning, my dad was almost crying. He said he had seen a ghost! I thought he was joking because he had always said there were no such things. He said he saw it around 4:45 in the morning. According to him, he felt something at the foot of the bed. He turned over, sat up and opened his eyes. Standing before him was a woman dressed in a white dress. He said it looked like something from the '40's or '50's. The lady had her arms folded across her chest. He could see all the wrinkles in her dress. She just stood there and didn't make a sound. But he did not see a face or hands, just "whiteness." When he saw her he yelled at my mom to wake-up. My mom didn't wake up right away. He shook her a few times to wake up. When she did, my dad looked at the woman at the foot of the bed. Then, she just dissipated from the outside, in. They didn't wake me until 8:00 a.m. They said they didn't want to keep me awake. I really didn't know what to think. So, being the smart-ass that I am, I lit a match and said, "Ghost, you are no longer welcome here. Get out of our room!" But then I said, "Oh, never-mind, you can just stay over in that corner if you don't bother us." My parents were apprehensive about staying another night. I convinced them that we should stay another night because I thought it would be "cool," and so they agreed.

That night, I fell asleep around 12:30. At about 4:00 in the morning I felt something in the room. I was afraid to look. I put my head in my blankets for about 15 minutes, I was breathing pretty hard. I decided to stick my head out of the blankets and when I did, I was scared out of my pajamas. There, in the corner that I had told the ghost to go, was the the ghost -- white dress and all. Immediately, I put my head under the covers. Tears were coming down my face. I hoped to God that the ghost didn't come over to me. I stayed awake and didn't move until I heard my parents were awake. When I had told them what had happened, the decided that we would never return to this hotel EVER again! We packed up all of our stuff and headed out, and when we got to the door, the maid was there. My dad asked her, "What was that we saw in the room?" The maid's eyes got big and she asked us if we had seen "the ghost." When we all answered "Yes" in unison, she said that she would not clean the room, handed off the towels to us and ran off crying. When we checked out, we didn't ask anyone about the ghost because we didn't want to "cause a scene." When we got home, I told ALL my friends about it. They all said "cool." I didn't think it was cool at all.

At work, my dad asked if anybody knew any ghost-stories about the place we had stayed. One of his coworker's girlfriends had been a cocktail waitress there and said that in the 50's a country-western singer had stayed there. He was cheating on his wife with his mistress. His wife visited him while he was in bed with the mistress and shot her (the mistress). That's all of the story I heard. The mistress of the man may or may-not be the ghost in room 179, but all I know is that there IS a ghost in that room, and I'll never go there EVER again.

Haunted Ring~

This story takes place back in 1971 when I was ten years old. My cousin and his family had just moved into an older home in my hometown of Newnan. The house was on the corner of Jaskson and Elm Streets. There were eight rooms in all, plus a full basement. The living room was the largest room in the house, and the prettiest. There was a large picture window that faced Jackson Street in the living room, and one that faced a neighbor's house plus a set of french doors that led from the living room into the kitchen. Now the basement was full of old junk such as broken typewriters, junk fans, broken chairs -- and lots, lots more. Anyway, a week or so after moving in, my cousin, who was thirteen at the time, was down in the basement rummaging through all the junk when he came across a rusted old toolbox which was locked with one of those tiny little padlocks (you know the type). Looking around for something with which to break the lock, he finally went outside, coming back in a few minutes later with a large rock. After busting the lock, Sam (not his real name) opened up the toolbox. In it was a large assortment of greasy tools which he pulled out and studied one by one. Toward the bottom, something else, not a tool, caught his eye. He reached in and pulled it out. It was a ring of some sort and, though it was greasy, it looked mighty expensive. Forgetting about the tools, he took the ring up stairs and cleaned it up with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and hot water. When he'd finished, the ring had a shine like new money. Of course, being just thirteen, he didn't know if it was real or not, but it sure looked real to him. He gave the ring to his mother, excitedly telling her he'd found it in the old toolbox downstairs. He told her how it'd been all greasy and how he'd cleaned it up for her. Naturally, she wondered why anyone in their right mind would put such a beautiful, expensive ring in a greasy toolbox. "You found it in a toolbox, you say?" asked his mother. "Yes ma'am," he answered. Not knowing what else to do at the moment, my aunt thanked him and put the ring on, then went about her house work. Sam went back downstairs.

That evening when my uncle got home from work, my aunt showed him the ring, by now knowing that it was indeed very expensive. If I haven't mentioned it yet, the ring was made of yellow gold with diamonds, a large ruby at the center. It was quite beautiful. My aunt asked my uncle what should they do, for the ring had obviously been in the toolbox for quite a long time and someone surely was wondering what'd happened to it. My uncle told her to just keep it, for if anyone was still searching for the ring, they'd eventually remember where it was and come to claim it. Until then, he told her, "Don't worry about it, just wear it and, if no one ever claims it, chalk it up to good fortune." That settled, my aunt went about her chores, admiring the ring from time to time throughout the day and hoping no one ever claimed it. That night, when she and my uncle got ready for bed, she took off her wedding rings and the ruby ring, as she did every night before going to bed due to swelling in her hands, and layed them on the headboard. As was customary, my aunt got up the next morning, an hour and a half before everyone else did, and went about fixing breakfast, giving no thought, as yet, to her rings, for it usually took a couple of hours in the mornings for the swelling in her hands to go down. Once they'd finished breakfast, my aunt got my uncle off to work, then went about getting dressed. Sam, as usual, had gone back to bed after breakfast.

Once she was dressed, she reached and took her wedding rings from the headboard and put them on. About to turn away, she remembered the ruby ring and went to reach for it, but it wasn't there. She shook the bed covers to see if it'd somehow fallen off the headboard and onto the bed. Not finding it, she looked all over the floor around the bed, and behind the headboard. No sign of it. Deciding that my uncle must've taken it with him intending to have it appraised, because he 'HAD' mentioned doing just that, she thought no more about it and went about her housework. Sam got up an hour or so later and went into the kitchen where my aunt was sitting at the table, taking a break from her chores. Noticing she didn't have the ring on, he asked her where it was. She told him she believed my uncle had taken it with him in order to have it appraised and find out how valuable it was. Sam accepted the explanation without question.

Some time later, after watching some TV, Sam went down to the basement intent on fixing the broken chairs that were down there. Finding a bucket of nails in the corner of the basement, he picked them up then went over and picked up the hammer from where it lay beside the toolbox. Noticing that the other tools he'd taken out of it yesterday, were back inside, and knowing that he hadn't been the one to put them there, he peered inside at them. "That was strange," he thought, for he didn't remember his mom or his dad going down into the basement since he'd taken the tools out. Putting the strangeness of the situation out of his mind, he was about to get up and begin his work on the broken chairs when he caught a glimpse of something that shouldn't have been there. He took a couple of the tools out in order to get a better look. Sure enough, it was the ring he'd found in there yeterday and given his mother. He reached in and picked it up, noting that it would have to be cleaned again. He went upstairs and showed it to his mother. "I thought you said Dad took the ring with him this morning," he said with a puzzled look. My aunt, a little startled, said "I thought he had when I couldn't find it this morning. I'm glad you found it. Where was it?" Sam, angered and hurt, said hotly, "As if you didn't know! If you hadn't wanted it, all you had to do was say so!" "What do you mean, if I hadn't wanted it? Of course I want it!" said my aunt. "Then why did you put it back in the toolbox?" Sam asked. "In the toolbox? I didn't. Is that where you found it?" "Yes," answered Sam forgetting about the tools which had also been put back by someone as yet unknown. "It must've been Dad, then." he said. "It must've been," said my aunt, "Although I don't see any reason why he would've. I'll ask him when he gets home." When my uncle got home that evening, my aunt asked him if he'd taken the ring and put it back downstairs in the toolbox for some reason. He hadn't touched the ring. Upon questioning Sam again later on that evening, my aunt was satisfied that he told her the truth. How had it gotten back down there in the toolbox, she wondered. Finding no logical explanation, she forgot about it and, as she had the night before, after getting ready for bed, she took the ruby ring and her wedding ring off and layed them on the headboard. And as before,

the next morning the ruby ring was gone. Once again she searched the bedroom even though she knew she wouldn't find it. When my cousin got up, she told him that the ring was gone again and together, the two of them fearfully went downstairs to check the toolbox, subconciously knowing that was where it would be. There it lay in the bottom of the toolbox, partially hidden by the tools that lay on top of it. She told my cousin that although she very much appreciated him cleaning the ring up and giving it to her, she thought it best that they leave it where it was, for someone, or some-thing, obviously did not want it removed from the toolbox. My cousin didn't argue, for he too, had sensed that something wasn't quite right. Without touching the toolbox, my aunt and my cousin went back upstairs then left the house, coming back a short time later with another small padlock. They went down to the basement, put the hammer and the couple of other tools laying there, back inside, then closed the toolbox and locked it. She told my cousin not to ever mess with it again. He agreed, and they went back upstairs.

The Crying baby~

former associate and friend told me this once. Her parents once lived In Leemaster, a little hollow in Buchanan County. While they lived there they could often hear a baby crying outside. When they went out on the porch it would stop, but as soon as they went back in it would start again. This went on for along time, until one day a bunch of young boys where digging in the dirt, playing with their trucks and such, when they happened upon an old buried jar. After further inspection by the children, and my friends father, they found it contained the remains of a baby submerged in alcohol to keep it in good condition. Turns out a young girl had once lived in the area and had a miscarriage. Instead of having a proper funeral she had put it in the alcohol and buried it. After the discovery by the children the crying stopped, the baby found peace and was quiet again.

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