Abominable snowman. Yeti. Loch ness monster. ... and all you other strange creatures out there ... I bow in submission. I throw in the towel, wave the white flag ... surrender.
You win. I cannot compete against you.
Never was that driven so far home – farther than an abducting alien – than as of late.
My 9-year-old daughter found at the local bookstore the offering entitled: Scary States America.
Worse, she was so engaged in all this whole unexplained phenomena thing after reading it, my wife and mother-in-law – good women that they are – turned her onto: Weird Georgia, this one featuring the oddest things reported in our great state. (No, it’s not as thick as you would imagine.) Now, my life is one close encounter after another and my ability to debunk all of this hogwash has had about as much chance of succeeding as those guys still to this day trying to catch bigfoot.
Me: “Darling. Back when I was in the Air Force (most of you have read this story from me before – sorry for rehashing it) and stationed at RAF Chicksands, I used to stay in this old priory.”
Her: “What’s a priory?”
“It’s some sort of religious place.”
“What kind of religion?”
“I don’t know it had something to do with nuns and monks I think?”
“What’s a monk?”
“Look, it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is it was supposed to be haunted.”
“Haunted?”
“Haunted.”
“Yeah. Some lady fell in love with one of the monks and they were supposed to stay away from each other. So, they killed the man (I inadvertently used the word ‘gibbeted’, which of course I then had to explain). Then they put up a brick wall with the woman trapped inside it and made her starve to death. “She supposedly walked the halls as a ghost on the anniversary of her death We (a co-worker and me) stayed there several times (while escorting media types as part of our job back then) but I never saw hide nor hair of her.” “What does ‘hide nor hair’ mean?”
“Never mind.”
“I was also stationed at RAF Bentwaters two years before that where a UFO was also supposed to have landed (there was even a book written about it ... which by the way I later found and bought one day on the bargain rack of a bookstore stateside) but I never saw one. And we looked (co-workers, again) ... more than once.”
“These things just aren’t real.”
“But ...”
Ah yes, the “but” of doubt.
“But, look. The cover (of Scary States America) says they’re ‘true’ stories.” “Honey. C’mon. Are you telling me you really believe this little girl (in Nebraska I think ... which would explain a lot) has a portal under her bed where she can see what has happened to people that died?”
“But.”
“Are you telling me you actually believe a house can actually bleed?” (This one from Georgia by the way and about a house, which had walls that poured out blood ... the author saying he almost drowned in it when visiting to see for himself, before being rescued by the owner.)
“But. This (Weird Georgia this time. And, oh by the way, it’s written by Jim Miles, a family friend ... my mother-in-law has an signed copy) says they’re ‘factual accounts’ – ‘not folklore’.”
“Lord give me strength. Honey there are no New Jersey Devils (some flying creatures). There are no lizard men, no shadow people (not counting the FBI), no skunk ape in Florida (unless ... How long has Jeb Bush been out of the governor’s office?). The ghost teen who got killed in an automobile accident but still hitches a ride ... He doesn’t exist. Ghost trains. Giant water serpents. Long-vanished Native Americans who wail in the predawn on the Ocmulgee Mounds in Macon. They’re not real (although, I’d sure like to check that out). None of them are. The people who wrote these were just trying to make money.”
Silence. Ah victory, I think ... but then ...
Mom – with the mother-in-law heard adding encouragement in the background: “Shelbi. Why don’t you call your Uncle Tim (Adams, who lives in Forsyth) and get him to tell you about that sasquatch (some black, hairy ape with red eyes) he saw while hunting (in North Georgia)?”
I stand corrected. Ghosts. Flying saucers. Things that go bump in the night. They’re just a figment of your imagination.
The two-headed monster on the other hand ...
