www.youtube/talesfromthesouth/Pat Gillum
First, let
me give you a little background. Many years ago, when Henderson State University
was still Henderson College, There was a small cemetery nearby. It was very
old, I really don’t know how long it had been there. As Henderson expanded, the
small cemetery was in the way. It was near where the girls softball field now
is. Henderson needed that land, so it was decided that the land would be taken,
public domain and all that, and the graveyard moved. Almost nobody was still
around to make an issue of that. Except for one older woman, whose whole family
was in that cemetery.
She protested to anyone who would listen,
but in the end, the land was taken. She apparently had no money to hire a
lawyer. The graves were moved out to a larger older cemetery, four miles out
west of Arkadelphia. It has been told that she sat in her beat up old truck,
right beside that cemetery, as her family was dug up and moved, never speaking
to anybody, and glaring at anyone who came close.
Nobody saw much of her for a long time.
Then one day, it was noticed that she was hauling lumber in her old truck,
stacking it right beside that cemetery fence out in the country, out where her
loved ones now rested. After a large
stack was finished, she could often be seen, hauling it, plank by plank, into
the woods on the west side of the cemetery. Everybody who knew her said she was
a very self sufficient woman, and were not surprised when a small shack
appeared, just outside that fence. She
built a little rail around on top, and could normally be seen, up on top of her
shack, in her rocking chair. Stories were going around that she had just gone
off the deep end when her whole family was dug up and moved. She seemed to
dedicate her life to watching over her loved ones, every day. I suppose she was
guarding them, making sure they were not disturbed again. She didn’t own that
land, but it occupied just a very small part of a very large wooded tract of
land there, everyone felt sorry for that poor woman, and the owners just left
her alone.
Time went by. Unfortunately, she was not
always left undisturbed. Stories circulated about the crazy old woman out by
the cemetery. When one drove down that dirt road on the far side, she could
often be spotlighted in the headlights as one made the turn, just sitting on
top that shack, just rocking.
Seems a group of young men eventually
decided to have a little fun with her. They started out by hollering at her,
taunting her, until eventually she would disappear into her shack. Unfortunately, Other young people got
in on the fun, walking out into the cemetery, hollering at her that they were
going to dig up her family again. Lots of people had heard her story by now.
When they did this, she usually would start screaming, and would still be
screaming when they tired of the game and left. The few people remaining in
Arkadelphia who knew her said she had developed a very unnaturally strong
hatred for anyone around college age, starting when her family was dug up to
allow HSU’s expansion. Nobody seemed to know if any of the young people
harassing her were students or not, but to her it didn’t matter. She just
grouped all young people together, and hated them all.
One Halloween, a group of particularly
mean mean young guys decided to go scare her. They parked their car a good ways back,
walked very quietly up to the shack, then on signal they started pounding on
the walls and hollering at her. She was dozing off up on top, in her chair, and
when the ruckus started, she got up quickly, screaming, ran for the roof access
hole, apparently fell against that
railing, broke through a section of it, fell, and her neck was broken. She was buried right beside her family.
But this is not the end of our story.
Continued in four days. thanks for your time, and your attention.
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