The hunter's friend

It was another deer season in New Jersey and I headed up to Walpack as usual. The year was 1975. Upon entering the Layton General Store I was greeted by the waitress, Patty, whose pleasant demeanor and warm smile was especially welcome on this frigid morning. After a quick breakfast and cup of joe, it was off to the field in search of some venison. I posted around 6 a.m. and as usual must have dozed off! I awoke and saw a deer approaching. I could not believe my eyes, 12 points! I took aim and fired. The buck ran about 50 feet and dropped. I went to dress out the deer and found I had left my knife in my truck. I set out to drag the deer about a mile to where I was parked. Fifteen minutes into this task I was sweating despite the biting cold. Out of nowhere, and I mean nowhere, an older man appeared.” A real beauty kid,” he exclaimed. “Thanks, but I left my knife in the truck and have to cart it out whole!” He laughed. “Here kid, use my knife.” I started the unpleasant task; as I turned around to thank him for his help, he was gone! I called out, No reply. The knife was an expensive one with stag grips and etched in the blade was the name Karl. After an hour the buck and I were on our way to the general store for check in. Patty was not only the waitress but the state of New Jersey assigned her to assist in recording data. As the deer was being weighed I turned around and Patty exclaimed, ”Where did you get that knife in your belt?” “Some guy lent it to me,” I replied. Tears swelled in her eyes. “What’s wrong, Patty?” She told me her dad lost it in the woods years ago. She had worked for a lot of hours to be able to afford that custom knife. Her dad passed away of a massive heart attack while hunting five years prior. I gave Patty the knife. With the opening of trout season I found myself at the Layton store once more. Patty’s smile greeted me as usual.” Check out this picture,” she shouted. To my astonishment it was the man who lent me the knife. “My dad, Karl,” Patty touted. I was speechless for once in my life. As I drove away I wondered was that really Patty’s dad? You be the judge! Bill Bassett Radio wierdness About 20 years ago, my roommate and I decided to explore the area, so we took a drive down Cascade Rd. As we rounded a bend in the road, we saw a very old, dilapidated, spooky-looking house. We both got the chills — my friend said the hair on her neck was standing on ends — so I immediately turned the car around and ended our tour for the day. About two years later we decided to return, to see if the house was still there. I had the radio on in the car, but the volume was turned down. As we rounded that same curve, we noticed an empty lot where the old house had stood. We turned to each other and said at the same time, “It’s not there anymore.” Just then I decided to turn up the volume on the radio, and the DJ was talking. He said, “You’re right, it’s not there anymore.” The DJ went on to talk about something totally unrelated, but the timing of his words could not have been spookier! Once again, the tour came to an end, and I didn’t make it all the way down Cascade Rd. until many years later.” Peggy Gavan The haunted third-grade stall They say the third stall in the third grade bathroom was haunted. The words “Bloody Mary” were once written on there. HMy friend once said, “I saw words written on the stall in blood. It said “I will kill you — Bloody Mary.” The spooky story goes like this: If you flush the toilet three times, Bloody Mary will come out. I went in the third grade bathroom, in the third stall. Then I waited for my friend. We said “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary is not true.” Then suddenly the lights flickered! We ran out of there as fast as we could!.” Sara Ciuffreda A spooky welcome to the family When my sister married, she moved into her husband’s family home. It was the house he and his brothers grew up in. One morning, after her husband had gone to work, my sister was still in bed. Dozing lightly, she felt as though someone was in the room with her. She opened her eyes and saw a man standing at the foot of her bed. He seemed to be smiling at her. Too terrified to scream or run, she closed her eyes and pulled the blankets over her head. When she got the courage to peek out from behind the blankets, the room was empty. When her husband came home from work, she told him what had happened. He asked her to describe the man, and when she did, he said he wanted to show her something. He brought out a family album and showed her a picture of his younger brother, who had passed away several years previously. It was the man she had seen in the room! Her husband felt his brother had come to welcome her into the family. Thankfully, after the initial welcome, she never had another visit from her deceased brother-in-law.” Peggy Lucas The watcher Have you ever felt like you’re being watched or it sounds like someone’s going through things? Well I have and it’s pretty creepy. One day when I was home alone doing my homework, it sounded like someone was going through things in the basement. When I went downstairs, no one was there. The next day, the same thing happened again, only this time, it felt like I was being watched. I’m not the only person in my family that this has happened to — my brother and my dad have heard things too. When we were building our house, we would see a person leaning against a tree, but when we looked back, no one was there. Also, if you look by the back door in our house, you could see a footprint, but even after the floors were finished, it was still there. Kayleigh Kornheisl No more ironing I grew up in Queens, in a house that only my family has ever lived in. My grandmother died in our home and about ten years later, my father also died inside the house. After he died there were a number of odd occurrences — walking into rooms and smelling roses or the unique scent of my father. On my birthday one year, my mother heard someone walking around in the living room but there was no one there. One year, on my mother’s birthday when I was 16 and home alone, I was in our basement doing laundry and ironing for the family. At the top of the basement stairs was door to the kitchen. The floor in the kitchen and attached dining room was inlaid with individual ceramic tiles which made a distinctive sound when one of the chairs was pulled across it. So, there I am, alone with my thoughts in the basement when I hear one of the chairs in the dining room being dragged across the floor. I froze. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, “Who’s there?” With no response, I told myself it was just my imagination. I went back to ironing and it happened again. This time I went upstairs where I found all the chairs in place and all the doors in the house locked and no one home. Unnerved now, but still not terribly afraid, I went back in the basement to finish my chores when I heard the sound again, unmistakable and loud. I walked toward the stairs and the broom that we normally kept stashed behind the door that led to the basement, came flying down the stairs. That was the end of my ironing days. Kate Schweizer The old woman in the chair About 13 years ago, my realtor, Donna, suggested I look at a house that was available in Powder Horn Green, a section of Sparta she knew I liked, as the house was vacant, and the owners were living in New Hampshire at the time. Since I knew the house was vacant, I decided to approach the house the next time I happened to be driving by, and peek in. As soon as I touched the kitchen window pane, I said to myself “Something’s not right,” only I didn’t know what. It felt like someone was home, but the lockbox was right on the front door. I dismissed the feeling, and next went to the window on the other side of the front door, which was where the living room was. Sitting in a wing-backed chair was an elderly woman waving hello to me! She had white hair, a floral housedress on, and was in her 80s. The only problem was, I could see the wing-back chair right through her! Amazingly, I could see both her and through her at the same time. I wasn’t afraid of her, but I didn’t know how to explain what I had just witnessed. Two weeks later, I bumped into my realtor again. I told her I looked at the house she recommended. She said, “Oh no! I took a client to see that house and something was inside! It scared us both so much that we ran out without even looking upstairs!” I said, “I know, I saw her.” Lia Di Miceli