53- HAUNTINGS and CAMPFIRE TALES...ONCE TOLD AT NIGHT ONLY!

Coming to an old abandoned house near you...if you dare! ...the portrait's eyes that followed the owner everywhere she went in her old plantation home on the north bank of the James River...the wallpaper upstairs in one bedroom that came alive after the grandfather clock would strike 12 midnight...and more galore.....

1) An elderly couple who lived way out in the country in the Valley once invited me to their very old farmhouse for supper
because they knew I was interested in ghost stories. The entire evening their little dog
quietly sat to the side in the new kitchen. "Let me show you something, Ron," he said
after dinner. He scooped up his fave little buddy, walked into the living room of the old
section of his home and set the dog down. The little pooch immediately scrambled back
into the safety of the new area and kitchen. "He seems to be terrified of being in
that area, looks around in fright and trembles. An old local history book reads about
how a daughter, fed up with being kept a spinster, murdered her parents in
the living room!"

2) As a teen, three of us chums liked to trout fish in the rugged North River Gorge in Augusta County (the Valley) during the summer. We camped out. I decided, one morning early, to head way up the Gorge to the far end. Good choice...found a long stretch of unfished stream and a beaver dam that turned into my swimming pool in the hot afternoon. My googles had been packed, and exploring the stream bottom and up to the dam was a new adventure. As the sun began to lower a bit, I realized that a long walk back to the tent in a meadow it would be, so, headed back, having to cross the same stream three times in the process. The first crossing was uneventful, and the moutain trail still had some light. As I approached the 2nd crossing, a strange feeling brought up some shivers, as I turned around to where I had just passed. Something was low and slinking...and a long tail swishing back and forth. The wide shallow stream crossing was rushed a bit. As I sloshed along the remaining stretch of trail, in my sandals, I turned and noticed, in the approaching darkness, the same large feline figure rose up and began to move into the last crossing of shallow water. I wheeled around in mid-stream and abruptly fell into the chilly stream and instantly floated downstream, holding on to my stringer of trout, the limit, my knapsack and trusty rod and reel. As I floated, my legs touched a large boulder and caused me to stop long enough to rise up, soaking but intact.
No, I didn't tell my chums about the stalking critter along the trail and stream, back at the tent...don't think they would have believed me.

3) This guy was only six and stood waiting for the school bus in the dark early morning hour when a commotion developed and grew in size not far away at an old barn behind the large brick house down the lane from the school bus stop. Men ran from different directions to that old barn. This little boy, with other children, made their way down the lane behind the tall men, and tried to ease through to see what was happening. As I nudged deeper, everyone became strangely quiet, and I could then hear the twisting of a rope back and forth. Finally, inside the barn, my eyes adjusted enough to see....
For this little child, no one knew for years that the scene inside the barn had haunted him for years from what the adult and adults had done.

4) The eyes...those eyes painted in an 18th C. portrait seem to always follow someone in the room...could be that a person's soul knows much more than the stare.