May 26 2009
Walking On My Bones
I don’t remember much about my biological Dad. Most of what I do remember is Daddy suffering from the brain cancer that took his life when I was just three years old. Family members tell me he loved to pull jokes on people. Laughter was an important part of life to Daddy; his own and others. Some of his tricks and jokes took some planning like the joke he pulled with the help of my Grandfather.
One night, Daddy and Papa took a long pipe and went into the cemetery in Franklin, Georgia just before the midnight shift change at the local mill. They laid the pipe down on the ground so it would run along the edge of a grave. This way one end would be behind a large headstone near the drive that cut through the cemetery. Daddy and Papa hid with the other end of the pipe behind another large headstone. It wasn’t long until they had their first victims.
Two men were walking up the drive toward the mill. When they got close to the end of the pipe my Daddy moaned into the pipe. The men stopped and looked at each other. Next Daddy said in a dragging voice full of suffering “Oh, your walking on my bones”. The men both screamed and ran like the devil was after them. Daddy and Papa scared the wits out of five more people over the next twenty minutes until one brave soul almost walked on the pipe. They decided to call it a night, hid the pipe in the woods, and took the back way out of the cemetery.
As they were walking along the road they met a man who asked if they were going into the cemetery. When they told him they were heading home he replied “Good, cause they is a haint in the graveyard and he got bones scattered from here to kingdom come. He be in pain too”
There was talk for weeks about the talking ghost, until my Daddy’s next trick that is.
