halloween

Halloween on the Virginia Creeper Trail

For my Grandson Sebastian

On Halloween night, when other children are preparing for a fun evening of dressing up and going door to door collecting treats, there is a different scene playing out in Damascus, Virginia. Each year on Halloween in Damascus, shops close early, residents secure windows and doors, and parents gather their children inside close to them.

Nobody can say for sure when the phenomenon started or when it might end, or how long the residents will live in fear of Halloween night. Every year for as long as people can remember, the same horror plays out within the small community.

When darkness finally comes to Damascus’s streets on Halloween night, there is no one left outside. Nobody dares go out after dark, and what lights remain on are turned low with curtains pulled tight.

At the stroke of midnight, the bell from the town’s clocktower rings out 12 times, and as the last chime reverberates in the night air, the town’s residents hold their collective breath, listening to see if this year might be different. One second…five seconds…ten seconds pass before the shriek of the Ghost Train whistle at the summit of White Top Mountain pierces the silence.

To the huddled children, the noise sounds like a hundred witches crying in unison. The whistle is followed by a thunderous motion that trembles the earth as the Ghost Train starts its journey down the Creeper Trail at breakneck speed. According to old-timers who have seen it pass, the train has only one passenger car, rumored to hold an unpleasant cargo.

The train barrels through narrow passages and across dozens of bridges spanning the Whitetop Laurel River’s rocks and rapids. Tree branches sway widely, creeper vines and leaves scatter before it as the gray apparition moves along the path, indifferent to the fact that there are no longer rails.

Deer and small animals sensing its approach try to escape in every direction, and unfortunate tourists caught on the trail after dark tell tails of a misty gray engine with CREEPER emblazoned across its boiler. As far as anyone knows, Damascus’s old abandoned train station is the Creeper engines only stop.

The thundering gets louder and louder as the train approaches the town, and families huddled together to make sure they have accounted for all of their children.

Timmy Felder is the one exception. Timmy, a ten-year-old boy who happens to live across from the old Damascas train station on Railroad Ave, is locked inside his second-story bedroom and is lying beneath a window on the bedroom floor. Timmy is determined to find out why the ghostly engine stops each year at the abandoned Damascas station. The hardwood of Timmy’s floor is starting to vibrate from the approaching engine. Sound is tricky in the mountains, and Timmy can’t be sure when it will arrive.

A sudden gust of wind buffeted Timmy’s house, and the thunderous noise has stopped, and a long hiss that sounds like escaping steam comes from outside his window. Timmy cautiously raising his eyes even with the window sill can hardly believe what he is witnessing.

As the door slides open on the passenger car, a slimy green blob slithered down the steps and onto the rotted platform and quickly disappearing beneath the station. Next, a skeleton with a limp strolled out of the car and headed toward the town’s graveyard. The next creepy passenger, a misty ghost, floated across the street and through the walls of Mrs. Martins Bed & Breakfast. A purple and brown four-legged spotted creature came next, and it headed for the bridge spanning the river.

One after one, the creeps from the Creeper Railroad disembarked and took up residence somewhere within the town, and then as suddenly as the engine had appeared, it dissolved into the night air, and the people of Damascus had once again survived Halloween near the Creeper Trail.

A Halloween Celebration

Jerald Stubbs was a superstitious ten-year-old who used routine to battle perceived evil. It was not the Devil kind of evil the preacher at his church railed against on Sunday mornings; this was more about keeping his distance from ghosts and spirits, who he believed inhabited his small world. Even though he had these fears, he still enjoyed Halloween and was glad it had finally arrived. Kids who are dressing up as ghosts and ghouls, to collect free candy he understood. It was the times he found himself alone in unfamiliar places or fading light, where he became fearful of the things he could not see but believed to be there.

It was 5:15 PM when Jerald stepped off the school bus onto the dirt road that led to his house. It was nearly a mile walk from the main highway to his home. Most days he did not mind the walk, However, as the season changed and days got shorter, the evening shadows grew a bit larger each day. Today the sky was a cacophony of color with the sun hidden behind layers of clouds. There was a crispness in the air that felt like frost was likely by morning. Several farmhouses dotted the landscape along the way, and one abandoned farm where Jerald made sure he walked on the far side of the road while at the same time quickening his pace.

Jerald had never seen anything unusual; there was just a strangeness about the location that gave him an uneasy feeling. The place was on the right side of the road, a little beyond the rise. There was a small grove of old oak trees standing on land unusually sunken in contrast with its surroundings. The fields on both sides of the road were open and mostly flat or having a gentle slope. This place with its twisted oak branches looked closed in and always in the shadows, even in full sunlight.

Within the grove and old, dilapidated one story farmhouse stood, its entrance had long since been obscured by overgrowth, making the house seem more like an island with no noticeable access. That was fine with Jerald; he never could imagine a time where he would want to get closer to the home anyway. There was no glass in the front windows facing the road, and he often thought that someone might be standing in the shadows watching him pass.

Jerald was looking forward to getting home, his dad traditionally drove his old pickup into town, and along the way gathered Jerald’s friends. The boys joined with the children in town to Trick & Treat in areas where houses were closer together, unlike in the country. Thinking about the festivities, Jerald barely noticed he was approaching the rise in the road. Daylight had been rapidly fading since leaving the main road, and the sun was about to drop below the curvature of the earth.

Instinctively, Jerald moved from the center of the dirt road to the left in preparation for passing the old farmhouse. At the crest of the rise, a sudden wind stirred within the fields, causing the old twisted oak branches in the grove to sway against a darkening slate sky. The motion to Jerald looked like creepy arms reaching out from the shadows. Looking between the trees, he could barely see the old house.  Another rush of wind reanimating the branches revealed a slight flicker of light from within the house that stopped Jerald cold in his tracks. Starring into the grove, he saw it again; the light had a yellow-orange quality, not unlike a Jack O Lantern, and flickered like a candle.

Jerald, inexplicitly and against all logic and reason crossed the dirt road and leaned against an old fence post. From this vantage point, he could see the flickering light through one of the black window openings. Some mysterious force he did not understand was pulling him toward the house against his better judgment.

Jerald began picking his way through the underbrush toward the house, the grove being at least a hundred feet or so from the dirt road. At the point where the underbrush ended, and  the trees began, he hesitated for a minute before inching into the shadows of the trees. Everything was different here,  the air had an earthy smell, and the closed-in look he had observed from the road was exponentially worse and felt claustrophobic. Jerald could scarcely believe he was among the trees he had purposely avoided for years and within a stone throw of the mysterious house that had fueled his imagination with fear.

One side of the front porch had sunk into the ground, and the other side, still attached to the house caused the structure to look more like a ramp. Jerald started up from the low end and making his way to one of the front windows; he looked inside. The flickering light did not have one source and intermittently lit small places within the room for a brief second before showing up in another part of the room illuminating in the same way. It almost looked like small bursts of light. At first Jerald thought it might be lightning bugs, but it was the wrong time of year.

Jerald could now hear somebody softly humming, the sound coming from where an old wood-burning cookstove stood against a far wall. There was a smell of wood smoke in the room and something else – something sweet and spicy like pumpkin pie. A short shadow moving quickly along a wall to his right was accompanied by the sound of a little girl giggling. Jerald had seen enough, and his instinct for flight was on red alert. He was not looking forward to going back through the trees to escape, but staying in place was not an option.

Stepping off the porch, he tried to guess the approximate path he had taken on the way in, and at best could only manage a fast walk through the darkness. Nearly to the outer edge of the trees, he saw a small enclosure with a single gravestone marker within.  He would not have seen it except for the same soft bursts of light down low near the stone. As he hurried past toward the open landscape, he paused long enough to read the inscription on the stone. MaryJo Hawkins March 1903 – Dec 1913.

Jerald did not understand or talk about that night and what he had witnessed, but as he grew up, got married and had a family of his own, he realized the significance of his experience and the probable story behind that lonely abandoned farmhouse from his childhood.