There is a particularly unsettling epitaph on a grave in my hometown’s city cemetery.  It has been a gathering place for years.  Here is one of those stories.

 

Johnny and I climbed high into the boughs of the large old cedar tree, bracing ourselves in order to be tucked away, hidden from anyone below. It is cool, and the moss is drifting softly back and forth in the breeze. It is mostly dark; but also a little hazy in the moonlit night, a perfect scene for the coming event.

 

 

 

 

My former husband Johnny has with him a large restaurant-sized metal can in which he removed one of the ends. To the other end he poked a hole through its middle and threaded a rope through, tying a knot so that the rope remained attached. Then he ran the other end of the rope through the can and out the can’s opened end.

To the rope he applied rosin, something that rodeo bull riders use to maintain a firmer grip on the bull rope. Johnny tried this eight-second sport as a younger man and had some rosin on hand. It is made from the resin of pine trees, something we have in abundance here in North Florida where this event took place.

I have been coming here with my family since I was a young girl. My paternal grandparents’ graves are nearby.

I cannot remember the first time I visited this particular grave with its etched grey metal monument and epitaph. It sits in our city cemetery on the north side of our small rural town called Monticello. In the moonlight all around us are the graves of families long since departed, but whose surnames are very familiar to me. Many are kin, but not all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next to this graveyard that we call the “new” cemetery, sits the old one, with its above-the-ground graves dating back to frontier Florida before Florida was admitted to the union as a state. Over there, which Johnny and I can see from our seats in the tree, are the older graves dated before the Civil War, that war which my family members never referred to except by other names, such as The War, the War Between the States, or the War of Northern Aggression.

 

 

 

 

This town became like so many other towns around it, a place where wounded soldiers from both sides were brought after the Battle of Olustee, which was fought over a hundred miles west of here and over a hundred and fifty years ago. Many died, and they are buried in the “old” cemetery. If there is a haunted place, then this is it.

But we are in the “new” cemetery, where graves of our town’s people, buried after the Civil War, are located. Below us is the grave of a man by the last name of Sloan. He was buried in 1880, and his epitaph is the reason we are here tonight.

 

 

 

 

I’m beginning to get a little chilled, until finally, two cars pull into Roseland, the name of this “new” cemetery. They drive one following the other on a grassy road between the family plots–their lights shining across the graves creating ghostly shadows, until the cars reach about 20 feet from Mr. Sloan’s grave. Out come a dozen people, both young and old. The young include about ten teenagers and pre-teens, mostly giggling, huddling together as they walk toward us.

 

 

 

 

It is obvious that the two adults have been drinking a little, maybe a good buzz. My Dad and his red-headed cousin Patsy, who is visiting from North Georgia, are straggling along behind the mass of teens. The group makes their way to Mr. Sloan’s grave; and the kids move around, allowing enough room between themselves so the car lights cam shine on the epitaph.

Dad says to no one in particular, “read it”; but none of them wants to get too close until my sister Linda’s friend Tina steps forward and begins to read. Johnny and I can clearly hear her voice as she utters the words slowly.

 

Remember reader, as you pass by.
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you must be.
Prepare for death and come with me.

 

 

 

There is a pregnant pause as the teens contemplate the compelling verse. And then Johnny pulls on the rosin-coated rope.

The homemade device makes a God-awful, unearthly sound that echoes and reverberates throughout the moonlighted cemeteries. It is a lonesome, growling, yet howling sound; and below the crowd of teens shriek, turn, and stampede towards the waiting cars in a cacophony of noise that could surely wake the dead.

The kids run into and over Patsy, who was standing behind them, knocking her down. Several join her on the ground, tripping over her.

And then some of them begin to hesitate and try to stop the group, because surely the noise must be explainable; that is until Johnny pulls the rope again.  The kids erupt a second time and run back toward the cars.

Tina the epitaph reader, the one who turns out to be Tina the brave, turns around and comes back cautiously. This time she notices that there is someone up in the tree over the old grave.

She points up toward us, because Johnny and I are about to fall out laughing. Down below, Dad is laughing so hard, that he is doubled over. Tentatively, the kids begin coming back, a few here, a few there.

Patsy is back on her feet, confused and disoriented. Later, we learn that she didn’t know what was about to happen—only dad, myself and Johnny knew. Dad never let his younger cousin in on the joke. There are footprints on the back of her white blouse.

Today Daddy is no longer with us; and one of my nieces, who was a there that night, has too since passed away. I visit this cemetery often, where both mom and dad are now buried and where someday I, too, shall be.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, I wonder if by now Dad and Mr. Sloan have met on the other side.  Surely, they have, since they have so much in common.  Both seemed to get so much pleasure out of scaring people.

I will never forget that Fall night in Roseland Cemetery! It wasn’t Halloween, but I don’t have a better story to tell for this time of year than the events of that night over 25 years ago.

 

 

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