There was (and possibly still is), a place in Central Florida called Alpine, where the unrest spirits of deceased slaves gather.
Alpine had no street lights. I guess because we only had a dirt road. We had no indoor plumbing but we did have an outhouse that was 40-50 feet behind our 3-room shack. The faucet was outside the back door
We slept three to a bed and we had two. The beds were made up of wooden orange crates and a used mattress on each one. The camp consisted of 25 houses, an overseer’s office and we were 5 miles from the nearest town. Our shack was a 3 room, old, old place with cracks. You could see outside and there was a big hole over my head where I slept, the attic.
My sister’s father, Ed, moved us from New Orleans to this place and a fouth child was born. This place housed migrants from the Carolina’s, Alabama, Georgia, Mississipp and a couple of families from Louisiana. The living conditions were horrible but Ed was just as horrible. He worked my mother and me like slaves in the groves, picking fruit, and taking the monies for his pleasure.
We were smack dab in the middle of a wooded area and many, many citrus trees.
I often saw flickering lights moving back and forth in the woods at night right behind the outhouse.
The bed I slept in with two of my siblings was hard so sleep was forced. This night I was restless and it was eerily cold. It was summertime. The lights were out and all were asleep except me. I sat up in bed looking for any sign of light in the darkness but there was none. What happened next was very frightening. I saw a figure at the foot of the bed and could only make out the clothing. It had no head. She was a black woman (the color of her hands) and she wore a long sleeved, blue and white gingham dress with a white apron. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing what was near the bed. She remained for a while, rose up, passed over me and went into the attic. I was freezing cold but got up and ran to the next room where my mother slept.
I explained what happened and for three nights, she went to bed with the lights on. Later that week, bedtime again, I saw the face and head of the woman floating around the room. She made sure I saw her before disappearing.
She did not scare me but I was stunned, cold and couldn’t move for a minute. I got up, went to the next room, told my mother what I saw and described the facial features, the complexion, the hair that was parted down the middle and pulled back to make a chignon. She had beautiful hair and a dark complexion but no smile.
After that episode, I began seeing the faces of the dead on walls and on a television that was not in working order. It was broken. It was an old black & white set but I spoke to people who were in color. Colors sets did not exist back then. While speaking to a man on the set, my mother yelled to me, “Don’t answer him”. I’ve often wondered if she heard him, too.
On my 18th birthday, I was told that the camp called Alpine was formerly a slave camp.