I am a salesman for a farm supply company. I sell everything from barbed wire to veterinary supplies. I travel all over the midwest and consider myself an excellent driver but a really weird thing happened to me one Halloween Night.
I was visiting farms around the Town of Palmyra, Iowa; Palmyra has no motel. So I was staying in a nearby town. It was getting dark as I left my last stop, a picturesque farm owned by the McDonald’s.
There was a full moon but it was cloudy; making the night as black as the tires on my car one minute and so filled with light the next minute that you could practically read a book. The wind was whipping out of the northwest. The full moon, the fast moving clouds and the wind combined to create a most eerie Night.
The McDonalds Farm was on a gravel road and I have to admit that I got turned around. I had been to so many different farms that day that I didn’t know for sure what direction I was going in. I turned on the dome light in my car to consult my map, quickly located my position on the map and was confident I was going in the right direction. Just as I switched off the dome light someone or something appeared; standing right in the path of my car. I slammed on the brakes and swerved, gravel shot out from under my spinning tires in every direction, my car spun like a top.
When my car came to rest I was scared but unharmed. I was aware that my car was firmly planted in a ditch but had an even greater concern; the person or the thing that had stepped in front of my car. I didn’t think I had hit it or him or her, whatever it was, but had to be sure. I ran back down the road looking, I checked the ditches on both sides of the road finding nothing.
I hurried back to my car to get a flashlight then checked the ditches again. Was it my imagination? No, there was definitely something in the road, but it was obviously long gone now. Again I went back to my car; I sat down in the ditch to get control of my emotions and to assess the situation. My car appeared to be undamaged but was stuck in the ditch; no way was I driving it out, there was not a house in site and the McDonald Farm was a good 3 miles back in the direction I had just came from.
My only viable option was to walk back to the McDonald Farm. Then I heard voices, very faint, carried to me on the wind. It was hard to tell how far off they were or what they were saying but I decided to take a chance. I followed the voices.
I climbed up the ditch which was fairly long and steep , my wingtips were not made for climbing steep hills, the ground was wet; so as you might imagine I slipped a couple of times soiling a nice pair of slacks and my sports coat. At the top of the hill I encountered a barbed wire fence; the type of wire I sold all the time.
As much time as I’ve spent around farms I never even thought of the fence being electrified but it was. I grabbed the top wire planning to hurdle the fence which wasn’t very high and immediately felt my hair stand on end. As I jerked my hand away from the fence I fell backward; tumbling head over heels all the way back down to my car, slamming my head so hard into the fender that the impact nearly knocked me unconscious. I rubbed the back of my head; already a bump was forming on my skull. I shook it off and started back up the hill with determination. When I arrived at the fence I lay on the ground and slid under further soiling my clothes but at that point I didn’t care. I didn’t even care that I had snagged the pocket of my coat ripping the material all the way around to the back.
When I stood up the clouds had once again covered the moon; I could not see a thing but could still hear the voices, I allowed the voices to guide me. Because I could not see I moved slowly but the voices were growing stronger; every once in awhile I stopped to see if I could make out what they were saying but I was not yet close enough.
It was after one of my stops that I took a step and found no firm ground under my foot. Once again I was rolling head over heels down what I thought was a steep ravine. The ground was rough and rocky and I felt every jarring bounce until I came to rest in a small creek; actually only half my body was in the creek, my upper half, my legs which I would soon get wet while crossing the creek were on dry land.
I stood up and once again accessed my situation. I was now wet and cold, the spill down the ravine had added several more tears to my clothes and a few scrapes to my body, in fact one whole side of my face was skinned up; but what could I do? I had to keep moving, keep following the voices.
As I crossed the creek I became aware of an awful smell then suddenly I was surrounded by little glowing orbs in the night. Instantly I knew they were eyes, but the eyes of what? Some silent beast of prey? I wanted out of that creek bad, panic rushed over me, my heart raced, I lost a shoe in the mud but I kept moving. As the clouds moved away from the moon I saw that the glowing eyes belonged to cows. If I would have added the terrible smell to the eyes I might have figured that out and been able to save my shoe but I realized my shoe was lost and kept moving toward the voices; scraped up, my hair a mess, covered with mud and cow dung and wet from head to toe.
As the voices grew more and more audible I could see lights surrounding what looked like a group of teenagers. I listened and watched so intently that I nearly ran into another wire fence. I didn’t take any chances with it; I just got down on my belly and crawled under this time without incident but as I went to stand up on the other side of the fence the moon came out and lit up the ski just long enough for me to realize that I was standing in a graveyard; there were tombstones all over the place. Then the clouds covered the moon and all I could see were the teenagers amid the light.
The teenagers were chanting and I began to suspect that I had walked up on some kind of Satanic Ritual. I approached them slowly; careful not to trip over headstones and trying to be as quite as possible. When I came as close as I dared I stopped and got down on one knee ready to duck behind a gravestone if the moon should come out again.
“We are here. We are here. For the Spirit of Charley Arthur For the Spirit of Charley Arthur.”
I didn’t know who Charley Arthur was but it was obvious that the kids were doing a seance;attempting to call the Spirit of someone who had died. The teenagers sat in a circle holding hands, they had their eyes closed and each had a lantern or a flash light next to them.
I breathed a sigh of relief; these kids were not Satin Worshipers they were just fooling around, doing what a lot of kids do on Halloween. Me and my friends performed seances all the time. Of course they never worked but we always managed to scare ourselves to near death.
I was about to call out to them when I saw Charley Arthur standing just beyond the circle. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It worked, it really worked! He was old with a dirty grey beard and mean haunting eyes; he wore a red baseball cap and overalls.
I don’t know what came over me but I lost control. I stood up and walked toward the group of teenagers pointing. “There he is, there’s Charley Arthur.” I stumbled over a Headstone nearly falling again but I caught my balance and moved forward slowly.
The chanting stopped abruptly and for a second there was complete and utter silence. Then chaos ensued as all the kids at once screamed and picked up their flashlight or lanterns and tried to run. They didn’t know which direction to run and several of them ran into each other knocking each other onto the ground. Before I could get to them they all managed to flee. I heard panicked voices, cars start and tires squeal.
Through it all Charley Arthur stood his ground. A look of surprise and maybe a little fear plastered to his face. What I hadn’t noticed at first was the fact that Charley held a shotgun; an old double barrel and it was pointed right at me. “I don’t know who you are or where you came from but you better stop right there and start talking like you have some sense.”
I realized then that the Old Man wasn’t the Spirit of Charley Arthur. He was in fact a Farmer that I visited with earlier in the day. The man’s name was Mr. Dell; his Farm was next door to the cemetery which he took care of as a favor to the county and on account of the fact that most of his family was buried there. I hadn’t been able to sell him anything earlier but knew I needed to do some fast talking now.
I quickly explained all that had happened to me. Mr. Dell lowered the shotgun and laughed so hard that I started to become a little angry. “My Lord you are a site”, he breathed through his laughter. “Why, those kids will talk about this for years. My, did you see em run?” “I don’t blame em though if you could just see yourself.” Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha.
I realized that he was probably right, I must have looked like I came straight from the Grave and I did scare the stuffing’s out of those kids. Farmer Dell got me to laughing and then neither of us could stop. He motioned for me to follow him to his truck then gave me a lift back to my motel. He was still laughing when he pulled away and I was to.