Here is another ghost story that the kids reminded me of last night. First I have to give a little background. My husband and I have a very large group of friends and every year over Columbus Day weekend (yeap coming up
) we take a big camping trip to the
Shawnee National Forest in Southern IL. My husband and his buddies have been going down each year since they were in high school and as they got married so then the wives and kids going along for this annual camping trip. We rough camp but its a total blast. One of our friends always pulls a flat bed trailer down with most of our gear; our tents, coolers, cooking supplies, etc. but the cool part about him doing this is that once it was unloaded a local farmer would give up hay from his barn and it would them become a hay ride for the kids.
Each year it became more and more fun because the kids grew and they would go off and explore, hike, bb guns with beer cans, camp fires, and GHOST Stories
.
This particular year, the oldest kids were in high school and at the young end kindergarten but I have to say they all still piled into the trailer for our night adventures. We always stay in the same camp ground and we see a lot of the same faces each year but this year we met a new camper and his name was Randy. He was a local and had his boys with him and he was sure the site towering over the kids he was a great big bear of a man. No shirt, great big belly, missing most of his teeth, overalls with only one suspender fastened and boy did he have the kids mesmerized with his ghost stories of the forest!
On the first night of our camping trip is when Randy the Redneck (I know not PC people but that's his name
) gathered the kids around the campfire to begin to spin his web of tales. I have to say that I have never seen so many kids of all different ages, mouths hanging, eye as big as saucers, just scared out of their minds
. When he was finished with all of the local folklore the kids were begging to go and check it out!
When it gets dark in the forest you cannot see the hand in front of your face but off we went to the cemetery across the road to find Mary!
Over the years we had explored this cemetery many times but NEVER in the dark but with much pleading off we went. The legend of Mary was that she had died young while crossing the country to get to CA for the gold rush. If you walked in a circle 3 times around her headstone and chanted "Mary please come out to play" and then knocked 3 times on her headstone she would rise out of her grave and if you smelled your hand it would smell like roses. We piled about 40 kids into the trailer to go find Mary!
This was going to be GOOD!!!!!