Haunted Holidays Read online

  The young man continued to ride toward the house.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot!” yelled the father, but the young man kept coming.

  A shot rang out. The horse whinnied and reared in the air. The young girl screamed, and the young man fell dead to the ground. In the morning, members of the boy’s family came to claim their own and execute revenge.

  It was said that the young girl died of a broken heart soon afterward. And people swore that year after year, they could hear a horse and rider coming through the woods at midnight on Valentine’s Day. A ghostly figure of a young girl would appear in the window, waiting for her beloved.

  The Smith Woods are gone today. The trees were cut down and replaced by subdivisions. The beautiful spot by the waterfall was changed forever and the woods were never the same.

  We wonder if the people living in those subdivisions ever hear a ghostly rider in the night on Valentine’s Day, or if they see a ghostly young lady looking into woods that are no longer there. If they do, then they must know that love never dies.

  Lily Rose Is Still Screaming

  Aunt Lily Simpson passed this story down through Roberta’s family because she liked the name Lily Rose. Other than sharing the name, however, Aunt Lily didn’t want to be like the girl in the story.

  Ladies in Kentucky were often named after flowers. The names Lily, Rose, Daisy, Pansy, and Violet, for example, were common. Sometimes two names were combined, like Lily Rose.

  The Lily Rose that Roberta’s Aunt Lily remembered was a young woman in the Appalachian area near the Tennessee state line. She was the only girl in a large family, and her chores took up most of her waking hours.

  She had to cook breakfast for her brothers and parents, wash dishes, sweep the floors, make the beds, slop the hogs, feed the chickens, wash the family’s clothes on Monday (the traditional laundry day), iron, cook the noon meal, and do other jobs that seemed to pop up endlessly during the day.

  Of course, Lily Rose was not the only one in the family who worked. Her mother tended the garden, and her father and brothers did the other work on the farm. She understood that it took everybody to make a living for the family, but she longed for a better life, with her own home and someone to love her.

  Because the family lived far away from town, it seemed unlikely that Lily Rose would ever meet anyone to fulfill her dreams; but then it happened.

  A new minister arrived that fall to serve at the little country church where Lily Rose lived. He was handsome, kind, and, best of all, he was a widower! His wife had died three years before of scarlet fever, and they had never had children. He and Lily Rose hit it off from the start.

  The young preacher came to call every Sunday after church services and had dinner with the family, but the relationship didn’t proceed as fast as Lily Rose would have liked. One day she blurted out her concerns.

  “I thought you cared for me,” she said.

  “I do,” he told her. “But the truth is, I don’t know if I dare marry you or not.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “Why shouldn’t we get married if we care about each other?”

  “I haven’t told you much about my late wife,” he said. “I know it is wrong to speak ill of the dead, but she was a very jealous woman. When she died, she swore that no other woman would ever have me. I didn’t think much about her threat at the time.

  “A year after my wife died, I started courting a young lady who was a member of my church. Things began to turn serious, and then one day the lady suddenly refused to see me without an explanation. Of course I persisted until she told me why she didn’t want to see me anymore.

  “Every night she would have a vivid dream of my dead wife. The face in the dream was horrible, and every night, it would get closer and closer. She told me that she knew if it came again, it would kill her! So she never saw me again.

  “I thought it was nonsense, but when I came here and met you, I began to feel my dead wife’s presence in the parsonage. I know she isn’t really there, but she comes vividly to my mind. I know it sounds crazy, but I am afraid!”

  Lily Rose thought about the drudgery that filled her life, and she thought of the wonderful new life she could have as the reverend’s wife. She studied a picture of the dead woman and thought that the woman didn’t look too menacing. Lily Rose made up her mind that no ghost was going to keep her from her dream.

  The preacher and Lily Rose married on Valentine’s Day that year. The wedding was everything Lily Rose had ever dreamed of—at least, up to that point.

  As soon as Lily Rose moved into the parsonage with her new husband, her dreams began to change. Every night, the dead woman appeared in a dream, and Lily Rose would wake up screaming.

  “Her face is hideous!” Lily Rose told her husband. “She is filled with hate, and I can feel her directing it toward me!”

  “Maybe you are having the dreams because of what I told you,” her husband said. “Maybe that is influencing you to have the nightmares.”

  Whatever the cause, the dreams kept coming. Lily Rose began to dread bedtime. Now she hardly slept at all for fear she would see that horrible face.

  Then came the night that the ghostly figure stood at the foot of the bed. Lily Rose sat up, screaming.

  “She was here in this room!” she cried when her husband tried to comfort her. “It wasn’t a dream. She is not in the dream anymore. She is here with us!”

  “Honey, that’s impossible,” he said. “Let’s pray about it. You will feel better in the morning.”

  Together they prayed, but in the morning Lily Rose did not feel better. A sense of foreboding filled her whole being. Something bad was going to happen.

  That morning, the reverend had to make a house call on one of the parishioners who was ill.

  “I’ll be home around noon,” he told Lily Rose. “Why don’t you try to take a nap while I’m gone?”

  Lily Rose fought the idea of sleep. She wanted to stay awake, but she had slept little the night before. She had a splitting headache from lack of sleep, so she decided to take an aspirin and lie down to see if it would ease off.

  She only intended to rest, but she was soon fast asleep.

  The preacher, worried about his wife, hurried to make his call and return home. As he neared the parsonage, he heard Lily Rose screaming. The screams seemed to be torn from her throat. He had never heard such terror.

  He ran to the house and flung open the door. Lily Rose was writhing on the bed, struggling with something he could not see. Her efforts seemed to be getting weaker and weaker.

  He ran to the bed and raised her up in his arms. She put her hands to her neck, and one last scream died in her throat.

  “What’s wrong, Lily Rose?” he asked. “Tell me!”

  “She came,” Lily Rose said in a whisper. “She took my breath . . .”

  And with those words, Lily Rose was gone.

  There was no official cause of death. People disregarded what the reverend said and decided among themselves that Lily Rose must have choked on something.

  The preacher asked to be transferred to another church, and the transfer was granted. The memories were too painful for him to stay on after Lily Rose died.

  A new married minister came with his family and settled in the parsonage that spring. All went well through the spring, summer, and fall. Christmas came, and the community worshiped together in the little country church. The young people in the congregation presented a pageant about the birth of Jesus, and the choir sang all the traditional Christmas carols. People felt at peace again and put Lily Rose out of their thoughts.

  When they celebrated the New Year, all were certain that it would be a good year. The new minister liked to have as many activities as possible to bring his congregation together, so he planned a Celebration of Love for Valentine’s Day.

  His plan was to have an old-time meeting and dinner in the church instead of on the grounds outside, since it was cold. Those attending were to bring a fancy pack
ed-box supper to share after the service. Everyone thought it was a wonderful idea, and they gathered at the church next to the parsonage for the noon celebration.

  The sermon was beautiful. The minister spoke of love, and everyone quietly listened.

  Suddenly the mood was shattered by ear-piercing screams coming from the parsonage.

  The screams grew louder and louder and more frantic. Those in the church thought someone must have wandered into the parsonage and was being attacked by something.

  The pastor and several of the men ran next door to the parsonage to help whoever was in such distress, but they found no one there. The screams continued for several minutes, then grew weaker and stopped.

  By then, the rest of the congregation had come into the churchyard. They stood shivering, not from the cold, but from their memories of Lily Rose and how she died.

  For as long as Aunt Lily knew, the screams were heard at noon on every Valentine’s Day. Roberta’s Aunt Lily has been dead a long, long time; but when we think of her, we think of this story and wonder if Lily Rose is still screaming.

  St. Patrick’s Day

  St. Patrick’s Day (in Ireland, the Feast of St. Patrick) is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated each year on March 17, the day St. Patrick died. It is celebrated by the Irish people and people of Irish descent.

  The holiday is observed by attending church services, enjoying parades, sporting shamrocks, wearing green, and drinking Irish beer and Irish whiskey. Those who do not drink alcohol might eat Irish potatoes, Irish stew, and Irish soda bread.

  Information about St. Patrick comes from the Declaration, a letter said to have been written by St. Patrick himself.

  Patrick was born in Roman Britain around the fifth century AD, into a wealthy family. It is said that when he was sixteen he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and held as a slave. He worked as a shepherd for six years, and then he found God, who sent him to the coast, where a ship took him on. He became a priest and returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity.

  He is Ireland’s most famous saint.

  The Irish are known for their legends and tales. Here are some of our favorites.

  Menacing March

  Lonnie recalls a story he heard from his aunt, Mary Brown.

  The month of March was memorable to me as a child for its blustery winds and menacing clouds. It was a time when we kept a close eye on the sky for tornadoes, too. We could see the storms coming in daylight and take proper precautions, but nighttime was another matter. Since we had no weather forecasts, storms sometimes surprised us in the middle of the night.

  One good thing about stormy nights when the clouds came up just before bedtime was the storytelling as we sat inside by the fire, the howling wind, booming thunder, and eerie lightning streaks providing colorful special effects. The rain would tap mercilessly on tin roofs and send shivers up our spines.

  We were especially lucky if a special storyteller came to visit on such nights to draw our thoughts away from what was going on outside.

  Aunt Mary Brown was one of those special storytellers. She carried on the Kentucky tradition of storytelling like few other people could. She was visiting us one night when thunder began to rumble in the west, announcing the coming of dark clouds filled with rain.

  We finished supper early. Dad and I took care of the livestock before the storm hit, and we all gathered safely together and asked Aunt Mary to tell us a story.

  She said she knew this story to be true because she knew the family involved.

  “It happened on a night like this,” she said, “only it was one of those storms that sneak up in the night.”

  Then she told us this story:

  The Osborn family lived in a big two-story house that was directly in the path of the storm. After going to the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the family members were all sleeping and didn’t hear the storm at first.

  They had no storm cellar, so they never got up during a storm unless they had left the windows open and the rain was blowing in.

  Jack Osborn, age ten, was in his room on the second floor when the thunder woke him. He remembered that he had left the window open because he loved fresh air. He got out of bed and hurried across the floor. He didn’t want the rain blowing in and getting things wet.

  He looked out the window and saw that the clouds were moving swiftly toward the house. It was a good thing the storm woke him. He reached up to pull the window down quickly, but, as usual, it was stuck.

  Jack leaned forward a little and gave the window a strong yank. It didn’t budge, but the yank on the window caused him to lose his balance. He grabbed for something to hold on to, but his hands came up empty.

  He felt himself falling toward the ground below.

  His scream cut through the night, and then, after a thud as he landed, he was deathly still and quiet.

  “What was that?” Jack’s mother whispered to his father, as she sat up in bed. “It sounded like someone screamed!”

  “Must have been the wind shrieking,” her husband answered. “It probably blew a limb out of the apple tree.”

  “You check the windows downstairs,” she said. “I’ll go up and check on Jack.”

  They both got out of bed and went to do as Mrs. Osborn had directed. Mr. Osborn went from window to window on the first floor, but they were all closed.

  As Mrs. Osborn reached Jack’s room, she saw no sign of Jack. She saw the open window, though, and realized what had happened. Oh, no! It couldn’t be true! But she knew it was, because she was seeing it with her own eyes.

  “Outside! Quick!” she screamed to her husband. “Jack fell out the window!”

  They both ran outside, and there on the ground, with his head twisted and his neck definitely broken, lay Jack.

  The Osborns stared in disbelief. They stood, stunned, for a moment while the storm raged around them. Then they went inside to call for help.

  Two years passed, and the Osborns swore that on stormy nights they would hear Jack’s footsteps crossing his old room to close the open window. They never had to worry about rain blowing in during a storm, because Jack’s ghost always closed the windows.

  “Do you really believe that, Aunt Mary?” I asked her.

  “I know now that it’s true,” she said to me, “but I didn’t believe it at first. I thought that Jack’s parents were so grief-stricken that they imagined it. However, the next year, I had been to the St. Patrick’s Day parade with the Osborns and decided to spend the night at their house, because it was getting too late for me to go home alone.

  “I was sleeping in Jack’s old room that night when thunder woke me unexpectedly. Mrs. Osborn had left the window open to air out my room, so I knew I needed to close it.

  “I sat up in bed and swung my feet to the floor. The air turned cold; and before I could get up, I heard footsteps start at the side of my bed. They crossed the room to the window and stopped. As the rain began to fall, I saw with my own eyes that window close by itself!

  “I don’t mind telling you that it gave me the chills. I lay back and pulled the covers up around me. I don’t think I moved a muscle for the rest of the night. And I never spent another night in that house again.”

  The Journal

  Roberta has always kept a journal, and she is fascinated anytime she comes across an old journal at an estate sale, Goodwill store, thrift store, or yard sale. It is an honor, she feels, when “chance” gives her an opportunity to share the thoughts of another, especially one from long ago.

  She tells the following story, which she heard from her Aunt Lily.

  On one of their holiday visits, my Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Lily Simpson were sharing stories. Aunt Lily had an intriguing story about a journal she found when she was a young girl.

  “We moved to a big house near the Kentucky–Tennessee border when my father was able to get work at a saw mill,” she said. “We were surprised that it was in good condition and that the rent was cheap. Best of all, I c
ould have my very own room!

  “For two weeks, everything was ideal. We unpacked and settled in by Halloween. We didn’t know our neighbors well enough to plan a get-together, but we had homemade treats—pumpkin pies, apples, cookies, and fudge—that my mother made. We all went to bed happy. That was the night the ghost made itself known.

  “I remember waking up about 2:00 a.m. to the sound of voices. I thought at first that it was Mom and Dad, but I soon realized that these were the voices of two people I didn’t recognize. The woman seemed to be pleading, but the man’s voice was angry.

  “‘Please don’t!’ the female voice said.

  “The male’s voice was muffled, but it sounded like he said, ‘You’re in my way!’

  “This was followed by a scuffling sound, then a scream, and the sound of a body rolling down the stairs. There was a thud at the bottom of the stairs and then silence all through the house like nothing had ever happened.

  “I got out of bed and opened my door. Mom and Dad had come out of their room, too. It couldn’t have been a dream. We all had heard the same thing, but nobody was there. Dad searched the house to make sure no one was hiding, but all was clear. Puzzled, we went back to bed.

  “Nothing else happened that night or any night that week. We were beginning to think we had imagined the whole thing, but the wee hours of Sunday morning brought our ghostly visitors again.

  “The pleading female voice, the angry male voice, the scuffle, the scream, the body falling down the stairs, and the final thud—all came in the same order as the first time. Again Dad searched the house but found nothing.

  “After that, the disturbing event was replayed week after week. It became such a part of our routine that we ignored it. We no longer got out of bed to look around.

  “Thanksgiving came and went with the same ghostly performances. Christmas brought a big change, though. The scene was no longer played out for us, but a different kind of haunting took place.