About this time several years ago, Hubby and I took Stepdaughter, Niece, and Nephew out to the farm where I was in charge of several horses. The weather was cool and the sun was bright, and we spent the afternoon wandering the fields and picking flowers. We brushed the horses until they shone in the autumn light. We even mucked out the stalls and refilled the hay bins.

It was a wonderful way to spend time with the kids, and by the time we left, we had three worn out young people in the back seat. The sun was disappearing over the horizon, and the moon was a silver disc rising in the eastern sky. It was October, there was a full moon, and we had a carload of impressionable kids, so it was only natural that we started telling ghost stories.

I told the one about a big old gothic mansion somewhere around here. It’s abandoned and falling down, but when you look in the window it appears that a sumptuous banquet is laid out on the dining room table. If you go inside though, you’ll find the food is all rotten, and there’s an awful smell. You’ll notice these things right before you trip and fall neck-first into the noose hanging at the bottom of the staircase. Seems the man of the house nutted up and murdered his whole family at dinner, and then hanged himself right in that very same noose!

We all laughed deliciously, safe and secure and un-noosed in our little car. The kids had perked up, and begged for more scary stories. Hubby went one better than a silly old story. He turned the car around and when we came to a dirt road, Hubby asked the kids if they wanted to hear a real ghost story, and see where it happened.

Well, it was unanimous, so down the dirt road we went, into the dark. The kids were rapt as Hubby shared the tale of a lady who’d lived right on that very dirt road with her husband and their dog back at the turn of the 20th century. The lady was a well-known psychic, and had helped the sheriff solve crimes on several occasions. One night though, when the sheriff and his men knocked on her door, it was to deliver grim news, and to offer help instead of ask for it. Her husband had gone missing, and was feared dead.

The poor lady lost control of her faculties, and every dish in the kitchen started spinning in mid-air! She screamed and ranted, and ran out of the house followed by her faithful dog, bound and determined to find her man. They flew through the woods, screaming and crying and baying, both of them calling for her husband.

At just that point in Hubby’s story, the headlights of our car illuminated a narrow wooden bridge ahead of us. It was nothing more than a couple of planks over a largish creek. As we passed over it, Hubby explained that the psychic lady had slipped and fallen into the water under the bridge, dragging the poor dog with her, and they’d both drowned.

The kids were enthralled. We crept along the dirt lane, seeing an old home now and again, but mostly just seeing woods and darkness and that big full moon. Hubby whispered that the lady haunts the very woods we were traveling through, where she and her husband lived and were happy together. She’s still looking for him, and sometimes people see her running through the dark forest. They might see the dog, or they might not, but the crazed woman rips through there with some regularity.

Hubby hadn’t gotten the end of the story out of his mouth good when we saw…something. A large grayish shape flew across the road just beyond the hood of the car and crashed into the trees on the other side of the road.

I think our hearts stopped beating for a second, and then three voices rose in perfect harmony, screaming like banshees from the back seat. Once our ears stopped bleeding, Hubby and I started laughing. We couldn’t have planned it better. The big shape had been a deer leaping across the road. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day. But when we were easing our way back across that old bridge, I swear that I heard a hound dog baying from the bank below, and I may have heard a woman’s plaintive call in the night, frantic with grief and longing as she searched the woods one more time for her lost man.