The LumberjackJun 14 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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This is my entry in the Great Ghost Write-Off, where we are sharing personal ghost stories around the Epinions Campfire. Check out the write-off, tell us about your ghostly experiences and join in! The Lumberjack My Parents own a cabin in the Catskill Mountains in New York. This is the place where Rip Van Winkle fell asleep, where gnomes go bowling in the forest, and where the Devil plays according to legends. Their house is located in the shadow of the Devil’s Path mountain range, a stone’s throw from the Hell Hole and Devil’s Kitchen and just down the road from Devil’s Tombstone (not to mention Rip Van Winkle slept only a few miles away) always gave me the willies when I was small, from as early as I could remember. The cabin was like almost any other house, except that it’s the remains of an nineteenth century logging camp, complete with associated buildings an the remnants of a saw mill down by the pond. There was always something about it, something not quite right that would send chills down my spine, except that it was only half the house that made me feel this way. It was as if someone cut the house in half – and of course, the half that my bedroom was on, was the side that made my skin crawl. For years I spent every weekend in that bedroom, the covers pulled tight around me, a nightlight in every single socket, just to keep the suffocating darkness of that side of the house away from me. I swear, when it was dark I could sense something was there, something that I didn’t know what it was. This wasn’t the idle fantasy of a child either, others who stayed felt it too and there was always talk of the spirits who maybe never left that logging camp. I was an impressionable kid, but I was never particularly afraid of ghosts and the supernatural. I read obsessively about them (I made my parents get me the whole Time Life series on the unknown) and I almost felt at home with what I perceived to just be another experience. For someone who grew up with science and logic as a mantra, I still had a healthy respect for what I didn’t know, but thought (and left logic behind) to believe in. I felt a certain connection to it all – a connection that do this day, I still believe in. There were differences in those experiences though – at times I was comfortable with what I was thinking and feeling and at other times, especially on that side of the cabin and the woods beyond, every hair on my body would stand on end and I would want to run away screaming. It was as if some force was there, suffocating everything in bleak and utter darkness. Even walking down the path through the front yard and fields to the pond below, I rarely ever looked into those woods along the long forgotten logging roads that the forest was slowly taking back over. One day my Father and I were having a brushfire on the far side of the pond and as it was winding down, he asked me to go up to the house and get a bucket out of the barn so we could get water out of the pond to put the fire out. I thought nothing of it and started walking up the path, across the small stone bridge over the ditch where the path went directly towards those woods. I diverted my eyes to the path, I didn’t want to look over there. The path turned and started running up the edge of the field and so I continued walking up it. I could see the house up ahead, maybe about 300 yards from me but something was tugging at every fiber in my body to stop and look to the left, towards the woods, down the old logging path. To this day, I can remember the overwhelming foreboding feeling, the knowledge that something or someone was there and was waiting for me. So I stopped and turned and there he was. About 50 feet into the woods stood what appeared to be a lumberjack from the 1800s. Heavy workboots were on his feet, well worn pants and a red flannel shirt covered the rest of him – he was holding an ax in one hand and resting it over the other shoulder. He was looking off into the woods but as I stopped, he slowly turned his head and that’s when I saw his face, except that it wasn’t a face, it was nothing, just an inky blackness between the shirt collar and the hat on his head. All I could see were two dusty red splotches where his eyes should have been and as I stared he turned his whole body towards me and while I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was smirking at me, knowing that I was seeing him and that I could feel and sense him there. At this point I turned around and ran back down to the pond in tears. My Father asked what was wrong and I said that I had seen a ghost. My Father wasn’t exactly the most indirect kind of man and he told me to go back and get the bucket he asked for. So once again, I headed up the path. This time my senses were on overdrive and when I reached the same spot once again, I knew that the lumberjack would be there. I turned and saw him walking down the old road towards me, the ax still over his shoulder – looking as if he was coming to get me. Not wanting to see what would happen if he were to reach me, I once again high-tailed it back to the brushfire and the safety of my Father. This time he was a little more understanding, I think he realized from the pale shade of my face and the tears streaming down my face, that it wasn’t just because I didn’t want to go and get the bucket, that something was truly scaring me. He suggested I walk out to the street from the pond (there is a driveway to the pond from the street and also a driveway to the house from the street), so I walked out to the street and started walking up to the house. Even though I was now several hundred feet from where I had stopped along the path in the field, the entire time I was walking up the road, I knew something was watching me from the woods and when I got to the point where I could see across the field and into the old logging road, I couldn’t make out a body anymore but in the inky blackness were the two dusty red spots staring right into me. Instead of turning around this time though, I kept walking (or actually running) up the street until I got the house and the barn. I grabbed the bucket, held it against the side of my face so I couldn’t see the woods and ran back down the street to the pond, much to the satisfaction of my Father, who by now had probably been waiting at least a half an hour to get the bucket to put the fire out. I was about 12 years old at the time and for years afterwards, I could only walk down the path when someone else was with me and I couldn’t spend time down at the far end of the pond, on the edge of the woods at all. I knew he was out there and I knew, every time I was there, he was watching me. It wasn’t until I started living at the cabin when I Forest Ranger that I realized that some fears had to be faced. I had spent my college years learning even more about the supernatural and ghosts. I had also spent plenty of time dealing with the ghosts and spirits of my college with friends (that’s a whole another story!), using the Ouija Board and just generally exploring many different things. I was prepared to do something to at least give me some peace and quiet in the house, since for the first week I was there, every single light was on in the house all night because I still knew I was being watched. I cleared my mind and I walked down the path. I turned at the old logging road and walked straight the spot, where almost 10 years earlier I had seen the lumberjack. I didn’t see him, but every part of my body was screaming that he was there. Waves of cold passed through me, so much so that I was involuntarily shivering and I knew he was there. I stood my ground though, on the spot I had seen him – closed my eyes and pictured him and used what little wicca I had learned to banish a spirit. It wasn’t so much a scream that I heard but the sound of something pulling back while moaning. When I opened my eyes, everything was the same, except that the line, that line between the darkness and the light had moved it was further into the forest, further away from me. I realized I had faced up to him and pushed back those feelings – and when I got back to the house, that side wasn’t quite so scary. It took a bit of blessing and cleansing of the house to banish all of those feelings, but I ended up living there for two full summers without a hint of the previous feelings I had felt before. I knew that it was still there and I could sense it when I looked out the windows or strode down the path, but it was further away and I knew it was staying away. To this day, that line still exists – you can enter the forest on the sunniest, brightest and warmest day of the summer and yet, it’s still dark and foreboding. Whatever he was is still there, it’s just that he’s a bit further away. I don’t know who he is, perhaps a fallen lumberjack or maybe one of the mythical mountain spirits, but what I do know is that there is good and there is evil and whatever he is, it is a manifestation of that darkness and evil. It takes the strength of light and good to keep him at bay, but he can never be destroyed. I would just like you to know that I had goose bumps the entire time I was writing this and it’s quite hot and humid in the house at the moment  |
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