Happenings at a Strange Church Part I

From: Issac (iccs@usit.net)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Lewisburg, Tennessee
Source: Form Submission

[This is one of many occurrences I have personally witnessed at a particular rural church. I assure you it is true.]

My hometown is very small and rural. It is not a very interesting place to grow up. My friends and I were always trying to come up with interesting diversions to preserve our collective sanity.

We all had some degree of interest or curiosity in the paranormal, and, living in the South, ghost stories are fairly common. So, we decided that if there was any truth to these tales, we wanted to experience it firsthand.

We began our own little paranormal investigation group, limited to our group of friends, and set out to investigate every tale we heard. When those were exhausted, we sought out new 'leads', asking older relatives and acquaintances who were native to the area if they had heard any 'spook stories'. These, too, were soon investigated, and we were still bored. My younger sister found a map in our own house, which was very old, that showed the entire county, as well as a few neighboring ones, and gave the location of churches, firehouses, and cemeteries. This was a jackpot, and we immediately began systematically visiting every church and every cemetery, marking them off of the map as we progressed, searching for any sign of ghostly habitation.

We saw the Glowing Tombstone, a local attraction that the police tried to keep kids away from. It did indeed glow with an eerie green phosphorescence, but only when struck by moonlight. Many of the stories turned out to be based on natural phenomena or optical illusions, to our great disappointment. Most of our 'leads' were total wash-outs, with nothing interesting at all to see or hear. A few engendered feelings of anxiety in the group, or produced impressions of other presences.

Overall, most of the summer was spent on fool's errands.

Then I heard about the church.

The summer was over, and I was back in college, when an acquaintance of mine told me about a small adventure he had had at a haunted church. He was a police dispatcher in the local constabulary, a large, powerful man. He said he was with a young lady with whom he desired to score, and he decided to take her to an old church that was supposed to be haunted in order to get her in the mood, as it were. She felt anxious even being near the place, and he had no intention of leaving his truck himself.

I should mention that in my area, at least, there is a standard story that everyone tells about any church that looks creepy. They say that the pastor/deacon/etc was found dead there one morning, his head having been cut off, presumably during the night. The church is now haunted, possibly by the murdered man. Invariably, there is an element about a Bible, most often a large one on a pedestal right inside the door. Supposedly, one cannot pick it up. Or perhaps one can pick it up, but not approach the podium with it, as it becomes increasingly heavy. Or it bleeds. Or it's always at the same page. Whatever. And they always tell you that the church is never locked, and you can go in at any time, though it is never the case.

And my police friend proceeded to tell me the same story about this particular church. Needless to say, I was not particularly impressed, having heard the same story about many other churches, most of which turned out to be totally innocuous.

But, in my pursuit of the strange and interesting, I persuaded him to take me there, anyway. Another guy I knew decided to come along, and he brought his girlfriend. We all piled into my Grand Am and took off for Lewisburg.

Lewisburg is a small town, too. You can pass through it without noticing it very much. We took a series of back roads to get to the church. The roads started out bad and continued to get progressively worse until my only thought was, Please don't let my car break down here. The trees on either side of the road were very thick, and covered the sky almost completely above the road, creating an eerie, claustrophobic feeling.

Suddenly, we went around a curve, and the church was before us. There was a small gravel area on the right side of the road, in front of the church. Wrought iron gates opened onto a small path that lead to the church, perhaps eighty feet from the gravel area. The church itself didn't look particularly old, maybe forty years or so, and it was the size of a large barn. A graveyard surrounded the church on both sides, and continued behind the church, like a horseshoe, with the church in the middle.

I decided that the little gravel area (room enough for two cars, parallel to the road) was too conspicuous, and spotted a small pulloff across the road from the church. The area was wooded, and it looked like I could pull the car out of sight. I parked the car and began to get out. The policeman, whose name was David, immediately protested. He thought it was a really bad idea to get out. I responded that I had driven a long way, and there was no way I was not going to investigate. The other guy, Art, and his girl, Crystal, spoke up and said no way were they leaving the car. I said that was fine, as I had the only flashlight, and they could sit in the car, in the dark.

They soon followed.

I went across the road, through the wrought iron gates, onto the path, and thusly to the porch of the church. I twisted the doorknob with no expectation that it would turn, but it did. It really was unlocked. My party began to protest. Surely I didn't intend to enter. I did. After a moment, they followed.

The interior of the church was a major disappointment. There was no pedestal, no Bible...it was fairly standard as far as churches go. My party felt very uneasy and each said at least once that the place felt wrong somehow, bad. I felt nothing. [Over a period of years, I have noticed that some people seem to be more 'in tune' with spirits or psychic vibrations or whatever they are, while some seem oblivious to them, as a blind man to light. I am blind to them.] I poked around a little, but found nothing interesting. It looked to me like it was regularly used for services. We exited the church.

My party expressed great relief, and indicated that we could leave at any moment. I felt like I had wasted my evening, not to mention a tank of gas. I insisted upon looking at the graveyard before we left. Grudgingly, they agreed.

The graveyard was very old. A very few of the stones were from the past twenty years or so, with most being early 1900's. Some of the stones were too old and worn to read at all, basically just irregular granite nubs. A few of the graves were weird, with tiny wrought iron fences around the grave and stone, to a height of about three feet.

Finally, it seemed that I had exhausted all of the possibilities the place had to offer, so I agreed to leave. Everyone but me was very glad to go, and expressed great unease at being there. We walked back to the pulloff and got in the car. When I turned my headlights on, I saw that the pulloff was adjacent to another small graveyard that we had not previously noticed, walking in the darkness toward the church. I insisted we look at it before leaving.

This area had much stranger graves than the other, larger, one surrounding the church. Some of the graves were nothing more than piles of stones, and one was encircled by a small barbed-wire fence. My party was huddled together in fear and begged that we leave. They said that they felt 'evil presences'. I was prepared to agree, once again, to leave, when I spotted a small path that led into the forest. I told them we could leave after checking out the path. They all said, no, no way were they going down that path. I said that was fine with me, they could wait on me there, and set off down the path.

The path led to a clearing 150' or so in diameter [I'm a poor judge of distance] in the woods. The trees made an abrupt wall all around it. It seemed odd, and pretty creepy. I was walking into the clearing, with my flashlight pointed straight ahead, scanning the area for anything interesting. I could hear that David, Art, and Crystal were following, perhaps 75' behind me.

Suddenly, both my eyes and my flashlight found a huge beast before me. It was the size of a very large man, on all fours. Its body was covered with silver or gray hair. It seemed to be gnawing at or smelling of something on the ground. The instant my light hit it, it raised its head and looked directly at me. I remember the impression of a snout, and pointed ears towards the top of the head. Its eyes, however, were human. By that I mean that they did not reflect the beam of my flashlight like a dog or cat, or any night animal, for that matter. They looked like the eyes of a man.

This beast was about twenty feet in front of me. There was a gravestone in front of it, and slightly to the left. Another was behind and to the right of it.

It looked at me for maybe a second. I was completely frozen. No thought entered my mind, no emotion. I was blank. Then the creature stood up. It looked about eight or nine feet tall, and very, very big. Not fat, but lithe, muscular. It turned towards the forest before us, and ran into the trees. It moved so fast, I have no words to adequately describe it. It was very nimble, especially for a creature so big.

My mind began to thaw out. I had seen, or thought I saw, the beast for around three seconds. It is hard to say, as the entire encounter was in that molasses-slow perception usually reserved for automobile accidents, and it seemed like several minutes. My first reaction was that I had imagined, hallucinated, or otherwise conjured the image. I realized that I had heard, and could still hear, the beast making its way through the forest. I could hear the leaves crackling and twigs snapping as something large made its way rapidly away from my position.

David came running up beside me. I wondered if he had seen it for an instant. Then I heard what he was yelling at me as he ran up. "Did you see that fucking thing? Did you see it? Jesus, it was huge!" I asked him to describe what he saw. He described the creature perfectly.

I looked out into the forest, shining my light around pointlessly. For some reason my instinct was to pursue the creature. David physically dragged me back to the path, not bothering to try to dissuade me verbally.

Art and Crystal were back at the edge of the path. Crystal was sobbing uncontrollably, and Art was on the verge of tears, panic evident in his voice. They both denied they had seen anything.

We got into the car, and as I started it up, I felt fear for the first time in the evening. We tore off and aimed home.

David asked Art and Crystal how they could have missed seeing the beast. Art burst into tears and screamed, "How the hell could I NOT see it?" David proceeded to grill them for details, their terrified descriptions matching David's, and my own memory, perfectly.

Later, at my apartment, I related the story to my roommate. He thoughtfully puffed his cigarette for a moment, then asked me, "What would you have done if the creature had run TOWARD you?" My blood felt like ice then. For some reason, it had not occurred to me how easily the powerful beast could have ripped me to shreds. Its speed was such that its prey would have little time for action before meeting its demise.

A few days later, I saw a friend of mine on campus. We had lunch, and I told him my story. I did not tell him where I was, or the name of the church. He said he knew of a place that sounded similar, which was haunted. He said it was in Lewisburg, and proceeded to name the church. I was astounded. He said that people in that area knew about the church, and the graveyard. He said he had done a report for school about the church, for some sort of folklore class. His research had led him to discover that the graveyard was very, very old, and that some Native Americans were buried there. The graveyard was there before the church, or the road. Both were built on top of it. My mind raced and I immediately realized that the small graveyard was pretty obviously a part of the larger, horseshoe-shaped one. I asked him if they had moved the graves, or just the stones. He said that he had been unable to determine, but that there was no record of their having been moved. He said that he had been there several times himself, and that it was, in his opinion, definitely haunted.

Another friend was more interested in the creature itself, and said that he had seen one himself, and that they were known to live in an area that he described, which included the area in which the church was located. He described old logging roads that cut into a large section of virgin forest nearby. He said that teenagers used to park on the logging roads to make out, and that one of his friends had had a terrifying experience there. This guy was with his girlfriend, in a pickup truck, having sex. The truck suddenly began to bounce up and down, the back end striking the ground. They stopped what they were doing and looked around in alarm. In the truck bed was a large brown beast that sounded much like the creature I had seen. It was jumping up and down in the bed, its arms dangling like a gorilla. They both began screaming in terror, incapable of action. The beast seemed to grow bored of the game in a minute or two, and leaped out of the truck bed. It darted across the road and into the forest, at amazing speed. The pair left the area posthaste.

I have personally visited this church on seven or so occasions, and I have never failed to experience supernatural occurrences of some kind. I would like to hear from anyone who has seen or heard of any similar creatures.

I recognize that this story does not fit the traditional category of 'haunting', but many of the other things I have seen and heard there do. This story has become overlong, and I will end it, but if anyone seems interested, I will post follow-up articles detailing my further experiences at the church.

I have deliberately omitted the name or exact location of the church, as the police are already upset that I and my friends visit it. We have spoken with them several times. They realize that we mean no harm, and are not damaging any property in any way. The land is public property, and they have acknowledged that they have no actual right to prevent us from going there. But they would also like to forget about this whole situation, of which they are aware. I guess they would rather keep it quiet.

My e-mail address is iccs@usit.net . Please send me your comments, opinions, or questions.