Halloween Story (cat lovers, do not read)

Wonderful stuff, though. Creepy as hell!

Happy Halloween folks!

On 2006-10-29 18:54, kikekeki wrote:
...you're killin' me with these installments!

That's the idea!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

[ Edited by: Jungle Trader 2006-10-31 15:05 ]

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 7

One of the greatest things about the city of St. Catharines, and believe me there ain’t many, is the Avondale Dairy Bar.

It was constructed in 1955 as a place to sell ice cream. They could have built a nice little stand somewhere close to a main road and got all the customers they needed. Instead they basically went out into the middle of nowhere, right smack in the middle of a cow pasture, and cut a barn in half. They got rid of one half, and then painted the rest a bright ‘50s cyan color. Then they put up enormous pink and orange signs all over the inside, cripes these look cool, advertising the different types of fresh ice cream available every day. Peach, Tiger Tail, Blueberry, Chocolate, whatever. And oh yeah, they’ll make you any kind of sundae you can think of. You sit out there, eating the stuff in a farm field with the cows that produced the cream. It was an instant success, a landmark, and lead to the chain of Avondale Convenience stores that are everywhere in Ontario now. They had the good sense to not change a thing at the Dairy Bar, though, it has never been updated or altered. (I tried to find a shot of it somewhere on the net, but struck out.)

The place looks like a Happy Days set, only better, cause it tastes good.

The Avondale Dairy Bar is at 461 Stewart Road, St.Catharines, Ontario Canada.

It’s about 3 miles from the Haunted Farmhouse, which is east of it and on the north side of the road.

Years later, after Mark and Wendy and Sara had moved and the Haunted part of the Farmhouse had been kind of figured out, we were sitting around in their apartment on a Saturday with nothing much on the agenda. My friend Colin was in town, and we decided to take him to the Dairy Bar, which never fails to delight. Besides, we wanted some Tiger Tail; black licorice and orange sherbet mixed with vanilla ice cream, mmmmmm.

It was a bright, cool, beautiful spring day. We rode out into the country, chatting about work and school, and Colin’s mom. His mom never seemed to let him do anything, and it’s an unending source of amusement to us about her newest schemes to say no to anything that might be interesting or fun to him in any conceivable way. She was a genius at it, she could sense a party from days before it had been planned and would have some strange thing for Colin to do at exactly that hour the party was scheduled for. She was also the worst cook on This Blue Planet, she would make Kraft Macaroni Dinner for … dinner, six days a week, and undercook the stuff every time. Eating there was torture. I thought she was kidding the first time I had dinner there. She wasn’t, she was dead serious. Colin just about went into a coma the first time he had dinner at our place, with roast chicken and three-berry pie for dinner. “What’s the special occasion?” he kept asking, mentally refusing to believe that other people ate like that every day.

Anyway, we hit the Dairy Bar and had these huge double-scoop cones. We were hungry; they were big but we had them licked.

After, all sugared up, we came up with the idea of driving by the farmhouse, just to look at it to celebrate old times. It was a fun place to us, we didn’t even talk about the ghost. It took a while to find the right road, then we knew we were getting close because there is an avenue of birch trees lining the road to the right.

We looked to the left. There was nothing there. We drove right by. We reached a farmhouse on the right side of the road, and realized something was wrong. We had gone too far. My brother turned the car around, and we headed back slowly. There was the barn that was on the property, but…

He stopped the car. There was no farmhouse. The pear tree was still there, but nothing was behind it. We looked and looked, then Colin noticed the boards. Burned black boards sticking up out of the ground. We all got out of the car, and walked onto the grass.

The whole place had burned to the ground. Colin thought it was really interesting, but we started getting that same feeling all over again, Wendy looking at us with big eyes and not saying anything. We went a bit closer. The siding had all been pulled away, but around the edges the framing was still there.

We all stood looking down as Colin walked around it, trying to figure out what had started the fire.

“Look.” Wendy said, pointing down.
“What?” Mark said. He thought she had seen something, maybe a piece of furniture or a doorknob, anything we’d remember.
“The only thing left,” she said, “is the cellar.”

She was right. The cellar was made of big untrimmed stones. It was totally untouched, the rest of the house had burned to ashes and collapsed into the cellar. Most of the timbers had been cleared away since, leaving a perfect swimming pool-sized pit.

“Colin, c’mon! Lets get OUT of here!”

We got in the car, and looked at each other again. Mark started the car, and we drove back the way we had come. When we approached the next farmhouse, Mark slowed down.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said. He stopped the car in front of the house.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to ask them about the house,” like this was obvious.
Wendy looked at him like he was crazy. “Why? Who cares? Lets get going!”
“Oh, come on, lets ask them if they know about the fire.” I put in. ‘It’s a good idea.”
“You want to know about the fire?” Wendy looked doubtfully at this farmhouse. It was a pretty depressing place, small, beat up but not abandoned. Somebody was probably inside, a car was in the driveway. ”Go ahead. I’m not going.”
“Alright, fine.” Mark got out of the car. I wanted to go, but we were in the back seat in a two-door car and Wendy didn’t look obliging. Mark rang the bell, and we could see the inside door open a bit, a person standing there, talking to him. It didn’t take long, Mark gestured to the old farmhouse site, then he came back to the car.
“Nice old buzzard,” he said.
“What did she say?” Wendy asked.
“ I thought you didn’t want to know.” he was trying to grin.
“FINE! Don’t tell me.”
“You wanna know?
“NO.”
“Sure?”

“Um,” Colin piped up, leaning forward, “we’d like to know what happened.”

“Okay. Well, nobody was hurt. You know why?”
“No.”
“Because nobody was living there when it happened. It was vacant.”
“Oh jeez. Ooooh jeeeeezzz…..” Wendy whispered.
“And you know when it happened?”
“No.”
“Right after we left.”
“Alright, that’s ENOUGH!” Wendy yelled now.

And that’s about all we know.

If you’d like to visit the place, go ahead. I gave you the only directions we know. The place is still there, at least the cellar is.

It’s waiting for you.

Happy Halloween!

Bravo, Cammo. Bravo.

Cammo--
You spin a great yarn! I remained on the edge of my seat for days watching for your next post. Tip o' the hat to ya...

Likewise.

Cammo, THANK YOU for the stories. Hope you had a Happy Halloween too! :D

On 2006-10-31 18:43, Tiki-Kate wrote:
Bravo, Cammo. Bravo.

GROG was so scared reading the stories that GROG's ass puckered-up so tight it gave GROG " Cammo Toe."

On 2006-11-01 18:44, GROG wrote:
GROG was so scared reading the stories that GROG's ass puckered-up so tight it gave GROG " Cammo Toe."

Hey GROG-- you can get an ointment for that at the drug store ya know. I think it costs tree-fitty...

I ain't touchin GROG's comment with a ten foot bamboo pole.

BUMP! Happy Halloween everyone!

I have two Halloween stories, both true.

One is about huge hairy monsters that were accidentally bred by a neighbor of mine.

The other is about the Bog People of old Europe.

Which one ya wanna hear about?

Yay, I'm so glad you have more stories to tell!! Both please! :D

But if I have to choose, I'd say the Bog people sound intriguing. I'll defer to your decision and whomever else wants to weigh in on this. :)

On 2007-10-22 13:12, Cammo wrote:
I have two Halloween stories, both true.

One is about huge hairy monsters that were accidentally bred by a neighbor of mine.

The other is about the Bog People of old Europe.

Which one ya wanna hear about?

Monsters it is.

Monsters
Part 1

My brother worked for years on small Canadian newspapers, sometimes as a stringer, a photographer, later as editor. It’s easy editing small town papers. At first he thought it was hard, he worked every waking hour of the day searching for stories, attending town meetings, talking to people in bars, interviewing the Mayor, you name it. For a long time he came up with nothing. Because nothing ever happens in a small town. And anything that DOES happen people want hushed up. You could get killed printing real news in a small town.

Then he learned to simply make everything up. That way, everybody’s happy. Nobody wants to read real news, it turns out. Real news is none of anybody’s business. They just want to be thrilled and entertained. And when he started making up all the stories, he had a ball. He had more fun than he’d ever had in his life. It was interesting and exciting. The police department didn’t care, because they never read the paper.

So it was sort of a shock for him to finally ditch the small town news game and finally get a decent honest job. Canada’s highest circulation farm journal was fishing around for a young writer, and they were paying good wages for once. But their one hard and fast rule was; no making up stuff. He actually had to go and dig for stories. He had to get his nose back for smelling out the real stuff. It was fun of a different sort now. Some of his work from this period was rather interesting; a big four-parter about peanut farmers developing the perfect peanut (three peanuts per shell was their goal), tobacco harvesting and it’s similarity to marijuana (nearly identical crops to raise), snake farms, organic cheese producers, if it had an atom of interest my brother Mark was there to cover it. He was well known to farmers across the nation.

And he was always trying to root a story out of Prince Edward County. That’s where my parents live, and if he could extract a lead story out of the County it meant a nice week long vacation of writing, eating my mom’s blueberry pie and swimming in their pool.

So when my parents mentioned the new wild pig farm on the phone he perked up right away.
“What Wild Pig Farm!?” he asked.
“The one our neighbors the Duceys are starting. He’s just retired and read an article in the Toronto Sun about how European Wild Hogs are the new thing.”

The Duceys had been sold on turning almost 40 acres of prime corn growing and adjacent forest land into a large pig enclosure. They had bought a whole swarm of these unique Wild Hog babies, fairly common in Europe but almost unknown here in North America. His plan was to raise them to full size for almost nothing, then charge folks hundreds of dollars to be able to hunt and kill them with high powered futuristic bows, exactly like Rocket Robin Hood. Then he’d charge the hunters another fee to smoke the meat, which was delicious.

If you’ve never had Smoked Wild Pig, you’re missing out. It’s maybe the most delicious meat on Earth. It’s twice as flavorful as regular ham, but lean. And soft as butter if it’s smoked right. The caviar of smoked meat, it sells for enormous prices.

Jim Ducey planned to make tons of money, kill animals for fun, and eat like European Royalty.

“I’m coming this weekend,” my brother said. “I gotta meet this guy.”

Monsters
Part 2

My parents had known Jim Ducey for years, he worked at my dad’s plant and his nickname was Crazy Horse. He owned a good chunk of land down below my parents, right beside East Lake, not right on the lake but on a stream that ran behind the fields there. His hobby was bow hunting, so he had pretty much swept his fields of rabbits, woodchucks and the occasional unlucky migrating Canadian Goose. The article about starting your own Wild Boar Hunting Farm was everything he could have wished for, made real easy to pay for in a lump credit card sum.

The only thing the nice man from the boar farm in Toronto had specified, when Jim picked up his 12 little piggies, was to build a ten foot chain link fence around the whole property.

“They like to range wide,” he advised Jim. Jim nodded his head, like he understood what the man meant.

Then Jim had taken the little ones home. They were very small, lying in the back of his truck inside a thick cardboard box, on a soft bed of straw. He drove slow so as to not wake them.

A few months later my brother came for the big weekend. He wanted to see the wild pigs right away, so we all jumped in the car Saturday morning to visit Jim. He and his wife were busy feeding them at the side of the house. They were really cute, and my brother’s face sort of fell when he saw them. I don’t know what he had expected, but I guess he realized it would be a long time before he could get the bow hunting shots he’d need to sell the story with. These pigs were tiny!

Jim told us all about his plans, though.

“Hunting by the hour, say, one hundred bucks. Lessons on bow hunting, another hundred. We can put visitors up here at the farm, maybe later we’ll build some small cottages. Three hundred a night, hunting and meals included. Fully cooked, smoked wild ham leg goes for one-sixty and up. I can sell it to restaurants, wholesale throughout the States.”

He was obsessed, he knew all the numbers.

“But I’m not going to just smoke the legs,” he said, staring at these cute little pigs, just about drooling, “I’ll smoke everything. Rib meat. Shoulder. And fishermen can pay me to smoke their catch, you can pull some pretty nice ones out of East Lake.” He unrolled a blueprint of a really nice looking brick building with no windows and big wide eaves. “This is it. The best smokehouse you can build. Alder fire, temperature moderated automatically. They use these in Sweden.”

I looked over at the little pigs. How anybody would have the heart to kill these sweet little pink moppets in cold blood was way beyond me. But I ate bacon all the time, who was I to judge? The pigs seemed to do nothing but eat, sleep, and scratch at the dirt. What kind of sport would it be to kill them with an arrow?

“How long before they grow up?” I asked. Jim looked at me, and his whole face went blank for a second. He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

Then he remembered something. “They mature in a year or so.” But it was a grudging answer, and he changed the subject quickly after. Had my brother caught that?

We all looked at the little hogs, milling around, bumping into each other in the chicken wire enclosure Jim had built for them. It looked more like a children’s petting zoo than a hunting preserve. I could see my brother getting desperate to beat up some sort of story, but all we ended up doing was looking at Jim’s collection of bow hunting gear, having a quick coffee, and saying goodbye and good luck to him.

We laughed about Jim’s big plans all weekend. He became the butt of most of our jokes, I even drew some cartoons on the phone pad of Jim trying to smoke a pig that was eight inches long. Then Monday came and we forgot all about it.

Until we began to hear strange sounds coming from the Ducey’s land late at night, about a year later. It usually happened after midnight, screams and cries, sounds that seemed to come from the very pit of hell itself.

Cammo you're killing me, more story please
Mahalo,
Al

Monsters
Part 3

“We should call that Crazy Horse,” my dad said. We had all slept fitfully the night before, the sounds had been getting worse lately and they were definitely coming from the Ducey’s farm. They couldn’t be the wild pigs, though, these sounds were horrible, evil, full of pain and anger. We hadn’t heard of any pigs being hunted, hadn’t heard much from Jim since we had seen him last. The sounds weren’t of death, either; they were terrifying and demonic. Completely unlike anything I’d ever heard.

“Hi Jim,” my dad said, jovially, into the phone. “We heard some, you know, strange sounds last night. You and the wife going at it?” he joked. Then he was silent, he turned his head a bit to listen closer. We looked at each other. He kept listening, apparently to Jim talking. It went on for quite a while.
“Oh, but…” he said. Then nothing for a long time.
“Really? Yeah, but…” he said again. Then, “Fine, we’d love to.” Then he hung up.

“What’s going on? We’d love to do what?” my mom asked.

“Go over there and see for ourselves. He’s pretty proud about it.”

“Proud about WHAT?” I asked.

My dad wouldn’t say a thing, other than we were going over to the Ducey’s at dusk. He was particular about that, though. It had to be dusk, no sun in the sky at all. It sounded kind of ominous to me.

When we got there we were all pretty curious, especially my dad. He had walked up their driveway cautiously, and we all were nervously looking over our shoulders when we finally came around the side of the Ducey’s home, and saw what had happened to their backyard.

The chicken wire enclosure had been ripped apart. It was lying in pieces up against their barn. In its place was an enormous ten foot tall chain link fence stretching off into the woods in both directions. There was some kind of low box on the other side, and the ground was all trampled. Beyond the fence I could see dim black shapes everywhere on the ground. Were they moving? We heard the house door slam behind us, and Jim strolled up, all smiles and handshakes.

“Glad you could come over,” he said, “isn’t it great?”, gesturing to the fence.

“Yeah, boy, that’re really something. Really something!” my dad exclaimed. My mom and I just nodded our heads.

“It cost a lot but it’s sure worth it!” Jim moved over to the fence, pulling us along with his eyes. “Look at ‘em! They’re coming along just great! You’d never have thought they’d grow so fast, huh? But they eat like PIGS! Ha ha ha haaaahaaa!”

Jim was laughing his head off now, we all smiled and looked into the fenced clearing.

HOLY CRAP! The huge black shapes on the ground were the WILD PIGS! They were ten times bigger now! My mom moved back in revulsion, and even my dad stopped walking when he saw them. They were big, muscular, and moving around now they had noticed us. The light was going fast, so it was hard to see details, but they must have stood a yard tall, with long tough legs and thick bodies. We could smell them, though, the dirt, wet, sweat and excrement of months of slothful living.

Right then, the red barn night-light went on behind us. The whole scene was suddenly illuminated in deep reds, just like a photo developing lab. Every one of the pigs was standing up, tense, looking at us now. Their eyes were bright red points in the darkness. You could see them much better, all black spiky hair, tall ears that flared out and came to sharp points above their heads. Some had small tusk teeth that were projecting out from their bottom jaw. Damn, they were the ugliest, smelliest things I’d ever seen.

Jim just kept talking. “They’re growing at twice the speed the book said they’d grow at, you know, I think they get way more forage here in a Canadian forest than in Europe. Maybe it’s a new breed! Think of it, nobody’s ever grown a full sized Wild Boar on this land, they can eat and exercise all they want all day, there’s no limit to the size they can grow, they just keep getting bigger, look at ‘em it’s all meat, too, no fat on ‘em, that’s Grade AA meat right there, yessir…”

I looked at the feeding setup Jim had built, it should have been built right into the fence, but he had a sort of slide system where you dumped the slop in one end and it filled the trough that was five of six feet away. Jim noticed my interest, and explained “it just didn’t work with a hole in the fence. They’re really smart little buggers, smarter than dogs they say, and when they’d hear me bringing their lunch out they’d try to come right through the fence. They’d bite the edges all around, look!”

Oh my God, the edges of the fence around the patched-up hole were all tangled and sheared off. He had used lots of thick wire to tie it back up, then had added some razor wire around the edges for good measure.

“Ah, we’ve been hearing lots of sounds at night… um, are they fighting or something?” I asked, finally.

Jim smiled. “They’re rutting. That big one in the back is quite the man about town!” and he winked at my dad. I had no idea what they were talking about. But ‘the big one in the back’ was huge, he was apart from the rest of them and hadn’t taken his eyes off us once. He didn’t blink, he just glared at us with a dull vicious hate.

He hated us. He hated the fence.

My mom nodded her head, smiled sickly at my dad, grabbed his arm, and started backing up. He got the message, and we all turned back to the house.

That’s when he charged. The big one dashed at us full on, right at the fence that was a bare yard behind us.

WHAM! The whole thing buckled, pushing out a few feet, shaking the uprights, an enormous noise in the red darkness.

We all jumped. I just about crapped my pants. There’s a wave of nausea that hits you a few seconds after physical fear pushes all those chemicals into your brain, then a split second later you sweat it out, then the blood drains out of your head and you almost faint. That’s what happened to all of us. We jerked around, and that bastard pig had his mouth wide open, locked onto the fence, and was pulling it, his neck muscles ripping back and forth. We all froze, then he let go, glaring at us. I knew he could smell the cold fear on our bodies, and I thought –

he had waited until we turned away. And he was doing it to see if we were afraid after the rush. We were, so he knew now that we could be killed.

Now my dad is just great at going along with everybody and anything, he’s learned a long time ago not to argue with neighbors. But right then, he looked at us and we knew he thought Jim was a nutter. We all put up a good front, chatted with Jim and got the heck out of there but fast.

“Well, that was really something,” my dad said in the car.

My mom was just staring straight ahead. “That … guy … is … crazy,” she said slowly.

“You know, Mark would love to do a story on this. We gotta call him up.” I put in.

And my mom is nobody’s fool. She wasn’t going back there for all the tea in Taiwan, but she considered for a moment and said:

“That’s the best story Mark’s magazine’s ever going to get. I’ll call him when we get back.”

Mark was really up on the whole thing. He asked lots of questions, especially about pictures (we hadn’t taken any) and when he could visit. He said he’s come as soon as possible, but it was months before he could get a full week to cover the Wild Hogs of Hell Gulch.

The problem was, by then they had disappeared.

Monsters
Part 4

“What do you mean they’ve disappeared?” my brother asked Jim over the phone.

He had explained to Jim about the magazine article, the potential for lots of national publicity, how he was related to Jim’s neighbors, how they had already met more than a year ago, and Jim said basically – you can’t come over here.

Mark was standing there with a loaded Nikon, tapping his foot up and down, asking questions. He had the whole week off, there was no WAY he could go back now with no story to show for it.

“So they’re there, but I can’t photograph them? Can I try?” he pleaded. A long pause. Then Mark hung up.

“He says I can go over as long as it’s not dark,” he told us.

“Why not dark?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe we can get better shots during the day.”

“Why doesn’t he want you over there?” I asked.

“Don’t know. He sounds like he’s scared, like he’s hiding something. He says he opened up the hog enclosure to the woods, and they’re all out there somewhere, but he can’t find them I guess.”

“So they’re in his woods?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Let’s go see. Wanna come?”

I nodded my head yes, but my mom shook hers back and forth at exactly the same time.

“I wouldn’t go there if it was the last pig farm on earth,” she said, then - “but you boys go get the story.”

It took a while to get ready, though. First we had to get Mark unpacked and the spare futon moved downstairs, then we all got caught up and ate some three-fruit pie, then we played a round of Password, and finally I drove us over while Mark went through his reported checklist; notepad, camera, extra black and white film all the same ASA, one roll of color.

We arrived at about 5:00. It was still light, but the sun was going. “Best time of the day for pictures,” Mark grinned, “no shadows.”

We knocked on Jim Ducey’s door. No answer. We rang the bell. No answer. We stood there waiting and finally I remembered to just go around the side of the house like we had done the first time. He was probably out there. So we walked around to the left, turned the corner, and

Oh My God. The whole area was demolished. There were strips of broken wood everywhere, the feed troughs had been ripped apart, chain link fence bits and pieces were everywhere. The fence itself was completely changed, it was higher now with supporting poles angled back at 45 degrees, sunk into the ground. The fence was pushed out everywhere, like the fence behind home plate on a ball diamond. At the bottom ran a line of badly pored concrete. Trees had been cut down inside the enclosure. It was a horrible, scary mess, like a battleground from World War One.

“WHAT are you DOING out HERE!” a voice yelled behind us. We both jerked around. It was Jim yelling from the side door of his house.

“We rang the front door, but…” my brother started to say.

“GET IN HERE! QUICK!” he screamed.

“Uh, we were wondering if , ah…”

“NOW! HURRY!”

We ran to the door, squeezed inside and Jim slammed and locked it behind us.

“You were supposed to come when it was LIGHT!” he yelled. He was nervous, sweating and shaky. Totally different than the last time I had seen him. It was frightening.

“It is light out. It’s just that we…”

“It’s almost dark!” Jim said, glaring at my brother and I like we were dangerously insane.

“Well, sorry. I just got in today.”

Jim tried to calm down. “That’s alright. It just means we can’t see them today. Maybe some other time.”

“What? Why not? Are they sleeping?” I asked.

“No. The problem is, they’re waking up now.”

That threw us.

“If they’re waking up, that’s perfect! It’s time, I brought a flash and we can take some shots, that’s all I want.”

“You don’t understand,” Jim said, “they’re … really, ah, EVIL.”

That isn’t a word you hear all the time, you know. ‘Evil’ isn’t an everyday word. People don’t use it a lot. It’s a church word, or a horror movie word, but it isn’t a kitchen table sitting around talking about pigs kind of word.

“Sit down.” Jim said, waving to the kitchen table. “A lot has happened. You guys want a beer?”

So we sat there sipping Export Ale from the bottle and Jim filled us in.

“They got bigger real fast.” He told us, quietly. “Real big. Never seen anything grow so fast. They’re about two, three hundred pounds now. The big males, there’s one that’s real bad, you remember,”

“Yeah, that one that charged us?”

“Him. He’s gigantic now. Maybe five hundred pounds. I think he ate one of the other males.”

“No! He’s a cannibal pig?”

“I don’t know. We found the bones. He’s bad. Evil through and through.”

“Can you shoot them?” Mark blurted out.

“You don’t understand. They’re nocturnal. And during the day they sleep in caves. There’s no real caves around here of course,” he added, “so they build them. They dig out homes for themselves, under the leaves for camouflage. It’s impossible to find them during the day. At night they’re hungry and dangerous, looking for small animals, eating everything in sight. You seen the area around the stream?” he asked me.

I shook my head slightly.

“No, you wouldn’t have. Well, it’s bare down to the soil. They meet there for the water, and’ve eaten every plant below six feet. Not a weed left.”

“Jeez. Is that a new fence?” I was trying to be helpful.

“The fence. Oh, God.” He held his head for a moment, his hands shaking. Wrong question. “They just about got through, see? The old fence was no good. They dig.” He made little digging motions with his hands. “That’s all they do, is dig. They tried to dig under the fence.”

“But I stopped them.” He held his head up now, proud. “They thought they could dig their way out, but I had Hanson build a new fence that ran down under the soil, see?” Jim stared at us hard to make us understand. “It doesn’t stop at the soil, it goes down, down, four feet. And I poured concrete all along it. You can’t dig under it. It’s a sixteen foot fence, but four are under the ground. Twelve feet high. But that wasn’t enough. Cause they started jumping.”

“What?” This whole thing was creeping us out. But pigs jumping was crazy talk. A pig can’t jump.

Jim saw we didn’t believe him. “These can jump. They’re good at it. They’d run at the fence, and crouch down at the last second, and throw their whole body at it. They’d launch. Their hooves would get up to eight, nine feet, just below the top. The big one got closest to the top. I had to build a double-thick fence there by the feed troughs before we built the whole enclosure, and that was the first time those fence contractors had ever done that. Two fences, strapped back to back together with iron rungs. They thought I was crazy too, until they saw them jump. That’s when they suggested the stay poles. And we electrified it.”

Mark was looking over his shoulder at the window, nervously. I was thinking of the eyes on that big one. Red, glowing in the night.

“So kill ‘em. Kill every one and sell the meat,” my brother said.

At first Jim Ducey considered what he said, then he just shook his head and frowned.

“Look, Mister Fancy City Reporter, I don’t know if you’ve been listening for the last half hour, but what I’ve been talking about is that you CAN’T kill them! They hide during the day, they’re dangerous at night, they’re big enough to gore you, they can smell you from….” he stared at us like we didn’t understand.

“I’ve tried, see? When they were in the smaller enclosure, before I opened up the gate to the woods, I tried using an arrow on a sow. It bounced off. You have to get a clean head shot, and that’s what I did when she was sleeping, and it bounced. Pig skulls are thick. I could have got one right in her eye, but they actually got careful after that, and didn’t sleep near the fence.”

“Like I said, shoot ‘em.”

“Tried it, you can use a high powered long range rifle with a night scope, but again you might not get a clean shot. They move all the time, they’re never still except when they lie down and you can’t tell the ass from the elbow with a night scope at long range. If you try real hard for weeks you might get one. One.”

“Uh, poison them.”

“Nope. Illegal to sell poisoned meat in North America. And that means I lose my total investment, and that means even if they die they’ve won.”

“Jeez. Ah, trap them?”

“They have better noses than dogs. They can smell the human on a trap. And you’d have to dig that thing deep, cause they jump, remember. Leg traps won’t work either, the smell again, and even if one gets caught the others will eat his leg off.”

“Yer kidding.”

“Nope. A hunter told me that. I hired him to come out and advise me, he looked around and asked a lot of questions. Big game hunter, been way up north hunting moose a lot. He didn’t know what to do either. Said he wouldn’t go inside the gate for anything, though, and to stay locked in a truck if I do. Haven’t been in there since.”

“There’s got to be a way to get rid of them. I mean, it can’t be that impossible.”

“You got any ideas? I’m listening.” Jim sat back, crossing his arms.

“Uh…” my brother stammered, “um, if we stay in the truck, can we go see them?

Jim considered. Mark must have really wanted some shots, because he actually tried to convince Jim - “Maybe seeing them will give us ideas. Maybe we can think of something you haven’t.”

“I don’t think so,” Jim said, “it’s too much of a risk.” He looked at us, me in last year of high school and Mark wearing ripped hippie jeans and a beat up corduroy shirt. “If we get in trouble it’s my fault.”

“Fifty bucks?” Mark says.

“Okay.”

So we got in the truck, the light gone now and sounds coming from the woods. We took one shotgun, Jim’s Remington 870, a brutal pump action weapon.

We should have brought grenades.

Great stories Cammo! I've really enjoyed reading them. Did you ever finish this one up somewhere?

It's still going...it's not done yet. I too love Cammo's stories! Thanks Cammo!

Doh! I looked at his "joined" date and not the "posted on" date and thought this last bit of story was from last!
I wait with bated breath.

Every single part of this story is true, and there's even a mini-contest coming up 2 nite.

Hold on, it's going to the presses soon!

Monsters
Part 5

It took us quite a while to work out just how to open the gate and close and lock it, while almost never leaving the truck.

Jim had one of those jacked up 4WD farm trucks, way before they were a Southern California fashion statement. His was beat up, rusty, dirty inside and the shift knob looked pretty hard to move around. But the engine was geared way down and roared to life, a very reassuring sound, when he cranked the key and pushed the pedal.

The plan was for Mark to swing the gate open from the outside, Jim would drive through, stop just inside, and Mark would swing the gate closed, lock it, and jump on the flatbed. Then he could just walk up and crawl in through the cab’s window. Simple. If Jim saw any hogs he’d drive straight at ‘em. Goodnight Mr. Hog.

It worked. We didn’t see a single hog the whole time Mark was dealing with the gate, and he crawled in through the window just fine. Then he mounted the gun up behind us. Jim made sure the shotgun wasn’t loaded, but he had plenty of shells in the glove box. We were going to drive slowly and stop somewhere on the fire road, shut off the engine and wait for a half hour or so, then drive on again and park until we saw one. Mark could snap all the pictures he wanted, but nobody went outside. The gun was a last ditch defense. Of course if a pig was just lying there beside the road, Jim would shoot it, but we didn’t want to get our hopes up, y’know?

The problem was that Jim didn’t want to turn the headlights on. It would maybe scare the hogs away. So instead we used a flashlight shining out through the front window, which is a pretty poor way of navigating a dirt road at night. He’d shine the light, go twenty feet, stop, shine it again, go twenty. We made progress, it wasn’t that bad, then Jim just shut off the engine and we just waited with the windows open a bit.

That’s when we realized it wasn’t going to work.

“Hey, how are we going to see them if it’s DARK?” my brother asked.

We looked at each other. Believe it or don’t, none of us had actually thought of this. I guess we figured there’d be some light from stars or the moon or something. But nope, it was dark as the grave out there; the overhead trees blocked out any starlight.

“We’ll sit here for ten minutes and then turn on the flashlight. Keep quiet,” Jim told us, “and get your camera ready.”

“It IS ready.”

“Good.”

We waited. It was just like fishing. It was impossible to keep quiet, though, we just couldn’t shut up.

“I was thinking,” I said real quietly, “you know that guy on Animal Kingdom? That Marlin Perkins guy? How would he capture one? He’s always going after water buffalo, rhino, big stuff like angry giraffes, you know, how would he do it?”

“Marlin Perkins is a dork.” Mark whispered.

I thought about that. “So what? I don’t want to marry the guy, so he’s a dork, he’s got a closet full of wildebeest heads, that guy knows how to get it done!”

“Cages.” Jim said, “And tranquilizer guns. They cost a lot of money, and a real vet has to load the doses for you. I can’t use it, it’s a drug. The cages are a good idea, but again, they’ll smell the human on them, and what do you use for bait? They’ll eat anything, bait’s no good. Why would they go into a cage? There’s no …. reason.”

We thought that over. Then Mark said, “That Marlin Perkins never did anything. He’d always get that other guy to do it, that big muscular guy.”

“Yeah,” it was all coming back… “that guy with the rolled up sleeves. What was his name?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think Marlin ever even said what his whole name was. Maybe it was Buck. Marlin took all the credit and Buck was always out wrestling snakes and getting chased by crocs.”

“Hee he heee,” I started snickering, “yeah, that guy earned his paycheck. He had the hardest job on TV. Buck had to run down cheetahs, swing around in the trees being chased by Tasmanian sloths…”

“And then they’d cut back to Marlin Perkins in the truck, sipping tea, …”

“He’d be saying, look at ‘What’s ’is Name, up there, getting his ass kicked by that Mongolian Desert Bear! He he heeee heeeee!”

We were choked up with laughter. Jim got fed up with us, I guess he didn’t know what we were talking about, so he finally got the flashlight, rolled the window down a bit more, and shone it out.

They were all around us.

Standing there, way back, in a circle all around us. It was dead silent.

“Oooooh man.”

“You better get a shot now, cause we’re getting out of here.” Jim told my brother.

Mark looked at the scene in front of us. They were in a loose line about 50 yards away, mixed into the bushes and loose debris. You could see their ears, their ears made them look like Hounds of Satan, but they were still sort of hidden.

“I can’t,” Mark said, “they’re too far away.”

Jim looked at him like he had crapped his pants. “What d’ya mean? You got a telephoto lens on that thing or what?”

“Yeah, but I have to use a flash, and they’re too far for it. They have to be, you know, within like twenty feet or so.”

“Screw this.” Jim said. He started the truck, and

ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. The hogs went crazy when the truck started, squealing and screaming, and dashing around. Some came closer, then held their ground. Jim went ahead and turned on the headlights, but they seemed to just CLOSE THEIR EYES! Then everything came alive, all around us, the pigs hitting bushes, and Jim backed up slowly. He kept his head, but Mark and I just about died of fright. There was more commotion than danger, we saw, though, and the hogs were getting left behind.

Then the rear tire hit something and we stopped. Jim whipped it into first gear, went forward a bit, and angled back to the right. We stopped again. He shifted, and we didn’t go anywhere. He tried rocking it back and forth, shifting for momentum, but we were stuck.

“We’re stuck.” Jim said. He shut off the headlights. “Gotta get some traction.” He looked at us, then at the door, and unlocked it.

“You’re going outside?”

“Yeah, unless you got better ideas.”

“How about we wait until morning, then yell for help?” I said.

Mark and Jim ignored me.

“All I gotta do is put something under the tire. Or see what’s wrong.”

“You could crawl out the back window.”

“Nah,” he opened the door, “I’ll be right back.”

And Jim opened the door. He took the flashlight, swayed it around a bit, then headed back. We looked around, making sure no hogs came near. They were pretty far back.

Then we saw one looking at us. It was big, really big, about four, maybe five feet high and a good eight feet long. It looked like a small horse, but all husky muscle. It was staring at us. The other hogs were still moving around, but this one was quiet.

“Look,” I said, “the big one.” But Mark had seen it too. He rolled down the window on the driver’s side, quietly, watching the hog.

“Jim.” He said, real quiet. “Jiiiim. Get in here.” But Jim didn’t say anything. We didn’t know where he was. We watched the big one, and he watched us. Then that pig moved a bit closer.

“JIM!” my brother yelled, “Get the FUCK BACK IN HERE NOW!”

Jim came running, he jumped in and slammed the door and the big one came running right at us. That hog must have broke the Bonneville Flats Pig Landspeed Record, cause he was right there in front of us in like 1.342 seconds and

WHAM! he hit the front fender and WHAM! he hit it again but Jim turned the headlights on and backed it to the left, cranking the wheel, and we actually moved this time and we backed up with the pig jumping up, his hooves right on our hood, all muddy and scrambling, lights on now we drove forward, Jim taking us through the bushes in a tight circle, hitting the fire road again, and popping it into second to bomb back up there

but that pig kept up with us, squealing, not taking his eyes off us for a second, and we reached the gate, and

we stopped. The hog was right beside us, screeching and screaming, but we couldn’t get out to open the gate. That slowed Jim down for a second, then he yelled,

“Get the shells!” and he didn’t wait for us, but he dived into the glove box and grabbed the little fresh pack of tubes, and

THUD the whole truck rocked back and forth, I thought it was a flat tire, but there was a clawing sound right behind our heads and that Big One had jumped into the back! He was in the flatbed, right behind us, his huge hairy smelly feet reaching in through the window, hitting the gun behind us, HOLY SHIT, it fell on us, man that thing was heavy, and Jim tried to grab it and my brother and I tried to climb onto the floor, but Jim realized what was happening and shoved the window closed, then tried to load the shotgun. I grabbed the flashlight, and shone it in the pig’s face, but it didn’t work,

“The camera!” somebody yelled, and Mark grabbed the camera and FLASHFLASHFLASH that thing cranked 35 mm. film faster than a paparazzi at a celebrity nudist colony. The pig squealed, illuminated in strobes back there, I couldn’t tell what was going on, then Jim jumped out of the truck and a second later BLAM BLAM. Then cursing, and the sound of the gate swinging open.

He jumped back in the truck, slammed it into the gate to open it, backed up right to the house, jumped out again and locked the gate. Then he looked around carefully, and walked back to us, breathing hard. We were still frozen to the seat. He looked at us is disgust.

“I’ll take my fifty bucks now,” he said.

*So here’s the question; how would YOU kill the hogs?

Hurry it up, post some answers quick, I’m not giving out any clues. I’ll tell you the answer, and the winner (if there is one) gets something cool.

The answer will be - what they actually did, not just a good way to kill ‘em, but what actually happened.

Good luck!*

Dang Cam, Good writing bro. I hadn't seen this post before....hummm, let's see, it sounds like the big hog was shot and killed in the back of the truck...Did the pig dude leave the untouched dead pig there in the back of the truck as bait to draw the others in? Shoot the cannibal bastards when they got close?

Bet GMAN would know...

My guess, shot the pig in the eye..

You folks have a few more hours to get the guesses in.

So far, incorrect!

Kate had a cool guess she PMed me, to blow them up. That would work, but would destroy all that prime expensive meat. Good try. And baiting them with dead meat won't work either; they'll eat almost anything, dead carcasses aren't that attractive. But you're on the right track, Babs, you've been reading carefully!

Hurry, think!

No guesses????

Here goes -

Monsters
Part 6

Jim Ducey never got a clear shot at that pig. It had jumped before he was even near it, the shots we found out were just to scare it away even farther.

So it was back to square one.

The next day mark got on the phone. I think he was really ticked off about the Mr. Fancy Big City Reporter comment, and our miserable, somewhat cowardly performance of the night before.

I wasn’t ashamed at all, just glad that I was still alive and eating bacon in the morning. After that night, I’d never take vegetarians and their babble about ‘poor defenseless animals’ seriously again. Animals are cold, brutal, quick killers. All of them. Cows will stomp you to death if they’re in a bad mood. Cats are all carnivores. So are dogs. Adult seals will try to eat you in the water, no kidding. Stay away from those seals.

So Mark used his name and position on the magazine to call all the pig farmers he could find, he called the office and got a list, he called organizations like 4H and he stayed on that phone all day.

At first they thought he was crazy, or just funny. Then he learned to use their own terms to describe what was going on. Instead of ‘wild hogs’, he’s say ‘rogue male pigs’, or ‘lone males’ that ‘escaped the pen’, whatever it took to get a straight answer. He asked lots of questions, and mostly told people that a single pig had got loose, it was dangerous, and what could they do to kill or capture it? Farmers said one thing or another, some made sense, a lot of it was just rambling.

And the more he listened, the more he realized there was some funny stuff going on in the world of pig farming. There were a lot of rules being bent and broken, nobody really watches what a pig farmer does so they get away with strange things. A lot of them didn’t want to say anything about their operations.

He had to go all the way up to the top, and he finally got it straight from the head of the Canadian Council of Pig Farmers himself. This guy talked my brother’s ear off. He knew all about every aspect if the business, he knew what to do about wild pigs roaming around.

“It’s easy, but it’s not 100% legal,” he said. “We don’t usually recommend the practice. Don’t quote me on this. I’ll just deny it if you do. And I’m not saying you should even try it, it’s just that there are some people that do it all the time and it seems to work for them. Good way of controlling the pigs, some say. It even softens the meat, some say. Not me, but some say so. Never done it myself, you see.”

“Yeah, what is it?” my brother asked.

“Get them drunk.”

“What?”

“Let their feed ferment. How do you think they came up with corn liquor in the first place? It came from the South, the same place that grows the best pigs. Pig slop is mostly corn. Southern moonshiners would just let the slop ferment, and boil off the alcohol for themselves. They were doing it anyway to keep the pigs docile.”

“You’re kidding. I never would have though of that.”

“Yeah, alcohol isn’t considered an illegal drug, so technically you can use it on pigs, but it’s… we, that is, frown officially on the practice. For you, though, with this one rogue, you could try getting him stinking drunk,” and he described a few ways of doing just that.

Mark thanked him and hung up, smiling. Then, finally, he made the call to Jim.

Jim didn’t want to hear from Mark, but he listened. Then he seemed to listen some more. When Mark eventually got off the line with him, they had a plan.

So I’ll condense what happened over the next few days and tell you what went down.

Jim started by just feeding them all again. He’d put slop buckets out in the morning to get them used to eating near the old enclosure, and at that time of the day. It worked; first one, then the rest began dining at the Ducey’s each day for breakfast. Even Mr. Big showed up, pushing everybody else away. Jim could have shot one right then, but the rest never would have come back again to the spot. So he waited.

Mark even got to take pictures now, they were up close, in good light, and we could finally see exactly how big they had grown. They were huge, really big. Big as a couch. Five feet to the top of the ears, all muscle, moving quickly all the time, like no pigs you’ve ever seen. And they had been breeding; little piglets were everywhere, staying close to the sows. It was disgusting.

Mark got his pictures, lots with Jim smiling in front of his fence too, took them back to the magazine and fabricated a completely untrue story about the Perfect Wild Hog farm where everything was rosy and the happy pigs all behaved like model citizens at all times. It was a hit story, lots of letters poured in and Jim actually became a hero celebrity in the underground world of Canadian Hog Handlers.

Back at the farm, Jim had been trying to ferment the mash and it wasn’t working. He read up on moonshining, asked a lot of questions himself, but the stuff just wouldn’t turn. It smelled bad, too.

He had learned a lot about alcohol, though, because The County was at one time, during Prohibition, the Number One producer of moonshine in North America. It was run across Lake Ontario to drop points in New York State back then, billions of dollars were made. So local farmers knew a thing or two about fermentation.

And Jim decided to start from scratch with a new brew, this time made from apples. Apples turn to hard cider real quick, but Jim had learned to add pure alcohol as well, to trigger the process. He started feeding the hogs apples too, to prepare them, and they ate the stuff with relish.

So far so good.

Jim mashed enormous amounts of apples in a big cistern behind the house, using an outboard boat motor. Then he went searching for the cheapest alcohol he could find, and dumped it all in, along with yeast, sugar, and some kitchen trash. Then he built a small fire against one wall of the cistern, put boards across it and waited.

Here’s the final recipe, if you’d like to make some:

Mix in a cement cistern -
1200 lbs. apples, mashed
20 gallons grain alcohol
60 lbs. white sugar
1 small jar of yeast
10 gallons corn mash, for taste
Stove grease, egg shells, for taste
Keep warm, 1 week.

Jim let it sit, then finally shoveled the stuff into the feed buckets.

The moment of truth had arrived.

It was served at the normal time. The hogs came and dove right into it. They LOVED the brew. Jim said that they were born alcoholics. They finished it all up, the largest fattest hogs getting the most, perfect for his plan. Mr. Big drank quite a lot, as Jim expected him to. Good.

Then the alcohol hit their system and they all went NUTS. They screeched, lay down and rolled back and forth, stumbled around, and generally had a Whoop-de-doo, Shee-bang Wild Hog Par-tay. They threw up, rolled around in it some more, screamed again, jumped, swaggered about, butted heads with each other, stepped on the young ones, just plain made pigs of themselves.

And plop – plop – plop they fell down, one by one, and just laid there. It was the time of day when they went to sleep anyway, see.

Jim got his rifle, moved back a bit so he wouldn’t wake them, and in the clear morning light drilled that Big One right between the eyes. The others didn’t even notice. Then he just unlocked the gate and dragged him out with the truck. He shot some others to pay expenses, too, but Mr. Big was his trophy hog.

Every time he needed some new meat, it was easy. He’s just have a pig party. Afterwards, he could take his pick. He did it all from a lawn chair. The hogs never noticed that one or two had disappeared in the morning after the occasional binges, they were busy dealing with the hangovers.

And that’s how it’s done in The County.

Great story Cammo! You rock!

Thanks, you Space Hippie you!

Here's a short one, I wrote it Halloween night, between the trick-or-treaters, like 2 or three chapters long....

People of the Bog
Part 1

They’ve been found for years, all over Central Europe. There are still many out there, waiting to be dug up. They are black, mysterious, ancient, and look alive - but they are dead. They are the Bog People.

The first to be uncovered in recent times was the Kibbelgaarn body found in the Netherlands in 1791. More than a thousand have been found since then.

At first, traditional historians loved the Bog People. Their clothing and jewelry were enormously interesting, and many articles were written about how well preserved the bodies were, better than most Egyptian mummies. So well preserved that you could see the color of their hair, how it had been combed, even what kind of hair oil they used – it came off in your hand, still fragrant.

No one really thought much about these bodies, found in bogs from England to Germany, perfectly preserved in deep black peat. They had no way of knowing how old they were, and once out of the peat the bodies began to decay anyway. The professors of the 19th century assumed they were burials of someone who had sinned and been condemned; why else would they be left in a bog, away from the town graveyards?

Why indeed?

And nobody seems to have asked the simplest of questions; why did these ‘criminals’ wear jewelry?

Or – why are they found virtually everywhere in Northern Europe?

And there was something uncomfortable about these people. Something just wasn’t right, it was creepy finding the bodies, often in areas that had a strange, haunted feeling to them. The corpses didn’t make sense, either; sometimes just portions of bodies were found, as if they had been dismembered after death, a traditional way of killing a vampire in Olde Europe. There was something disturbing, even horrifying in a primitive, ugly way, about the Bog People.

There were ancient stories still circulating in 19th century England of revenants, or the hungry dead. These recently buried corpses would rise from the grave, and spread pestilence among their neighbors. Sometimes they would walk the blackest of moonless nights, announcing who would be next to die. Sometimes they would eat flesh, animals, or suck blood. Then they would return to their graves and sleep. Revenants could be stopped only by burning their corpse, beheading, or pulling the heart from the body. Incredibly, historians didn’t see a connection to the vampire legends of Eastern Europe, legends which are identical in almost every detail to tales of revenants. They think that vampire stories were introduced to England in the late 18th century, not before.

They certainly didn’t think the legends were true.

It’s also strange how little we know about Europe, especially the British Isles, in pre-Christian times. No Druid practices have survived, few stories have come down to us, no knowledge of their forms of government or trade, nothing that is absolutely factual. We don’t know anything about Stonehenge. Very little about European ‘Iron Age’ culture. Why?

There’s something really mysterious about it. The people are all still there. How can an entire culture vanish?

Older, crotchety historians explained this by stating that civilization simply didn’t begin until recently. There were no pervasive traditions or collective governments, or long distance travel until fairly recently they say. For many years people believed this, received doctorates from Oxford by writing these opinions. It seemed reasonable and fun to think of yourself as the perfect end product of tens of thousands of years of social evolution.

The problem is, almost everything we’ve dug up in the last 50 years has proven exactly the opposite. It’s gotten to the point now that some young historians are writing papers based on their ransacking museums for their oldest artifacts, ignoring everything that’s been assumed about them, and using up-to-date radiocarbon dating and trans-culture analysis to come up with entirely different answers to the same ‘old’ questions. The new historians say that we don’t know anything about Europe 2000 years ago because we’re stupid, not because there wasn’t anything interesting going on then. In fact, they say, there’s no reason to think that a reasonably modern, unified, intelligent and highly religious culture existed for tens of thousands of years in Europe, going back to pre-ice age times. Or way back, even farther than that.

And Bog People are at the very center of the furious debate. They prove that all of Northern Europe shared identical methods of torture and burial.

Because the new historians have found that almost all the Bog People were tortured to death.

Didn't look at the entries here. So are cat lovers still not advised to check this thread out?

That's an interesting question!

People of the Bog
Part 2

Tortured quite horribly. The Bog People had marks of almost incredible violence all over their bodies. They were fresh marks, too, ones that had been inflicted right before death, huge wounds, knife marks, broken bones, signs of hanging, bludgeoning, often many marks at once, as if the killers had tried to come up with more ingenious, crueler, more painful ways of torture in succession. Some had been decapitated afterwards.

“Tollund Man”, from Denmark, was found with the finely woven rope used to hang him still tied to his neck. Some Bog People had their entrails drawn out through cuts in their stomach. Was this done while they were still alive? Others have been found with deep ax wounds on their heads, first smashing into the front of their faces, then almost splitting the skull down the center. Or with their throats cut, their legs and ribs broken first.

A female Bog Body has been found with a deep wound to her knee joint, as if an iron spike had been shoved under her knee cap, and with rope burns still visible on her neck. She is 2500 years old.

It was a quietly kept secret for many years. The findings across Denmark, Germany, and up into Sweden were all the same, but few liked to talk about it. It seemed impossible that there was a many-thousands-year old tradition, all over Europe, that was so bloody and vicious. So the findings were ignored. Not hushed-up; just recorded and pushed away to the back shelf. Many of the early Bog Bodies rotted away once they were removed from their age-old peat baths, leaving just the bones, and bones tell us very little indeed.

Until the last 25 years, little scientific research had been done on the bodies. Then, in 2003, a Bog Body was dug up in Ireland who is now known as “Old Crogham Man”.

He was remarkably preserved, and historians decided to go over the whole corpse with the most recent scientific tools, including the services of a forensic pathologist.

Here is what they found, and remember that these points turned out to be true of most of the other bodies found as well. It was a pattern that was repeated over and over, throughout Northern Europe.

Old Crogham Man was a rich young man in his 20’s, extremely tall and seemingly a well-fed aristocrat.

He didn’t know he was going to die, but was aware of the attack at the last second.

He was tortured first; by almost slicing his nipples off with a knife, then by stabbing him in the chest. As he was screaming in pain, he was suddenly decapitated, probably with a sword.

Then his body was cut in half with the same sword. The tools used for torture, such as axes, knives, swords, blunt rods, all seem to be made of iron.

Then his body, minus the head and legs, was pinned down, chest up in the bog water with twists of willow wood wound around stakes of other wood driven into the swamp. (These stakes wouldn’t decay.)

He was probably visible just below the water, where they knew the bog would preserve the body almost indefinitely. We now know that this is due to an almost complete lack of oxygen in bog water, but the people of the time probably had superstitions explaining it.

He was probably given no last rites or rituals to see his soul off to heaven.

So – there are a few things that become very clear all at once about the bog bodies.

These people were not criminals.

There’s a strong similarity to vampire legends, with the willow and the stakes through the body and the decapitations.

And it sure seemed like they didn’t want the person’s soul traveling anywhere. They wanted it right there, in the bog, just under the water, screaming in resentful anger for eternity. Because the strangest part of all was that after torturing and killing the person – and this was done up close, where you could see the life draining right out of them, and then doing the job right by slicing the body into pieces – after all this, they tied the body down underwater.

Where exactly did they think it was going?

People of the Bog
Part 3

The thing that really makes historians shake their heads is how common this practice seems to have been. Some of the oldest Bog Bodies have been dated to 3500 BC, the most recent right up to 400 AD. Almost 4000 years of Bog Slayings, maybe older ones that just haven’t been found yet.

There are simply no surviving traditions to explain why it was done. Nothing. There’s a lot of argument about it, as expected when people know nothing about something. Lots of explanations, based on no facts at all:

The Bog Bodies were suicides.

The Bog Bodies just fell in the bog, hit their heads accidentally and never got up.

Bog Bodies were bad people who shouldn't be buried with everyone else. They were tied down to stop them taking vengence on the village.

The Bog Bodies were condemned prisoners, sacrificed to ensure the wheat crop. The wheat crop is big with historians. They like saying it. ‘Wheat crop’ can double the interest in an otherwise dreary theory.

The Bog Bodies were homosexuals.

Etc.

The only thing definite you can say about the Bog Bodies is that the more you study them, the less they make sense. Nothing adds up to a reasonable conclusion. Were they all killed as sacrifices to a Goddess of Spring? Nope, they were killed at different times of the year. Were they thieves? Nope, pillars of the community. Captured warriers? Nope, spoiled gentry. Willing victims? Nope, they fought the attackers.

And folk legends just don’t mention them. You’d think they would. No stories of bog laws and bog punishment. No tales of bog executions, of bog torture or bog sacrifice selections. It seems to be an empty book, opened to a blank page in a dark room.

Except, there are so many European legends of horrors from the world of the dead. The more we know about Bog People, the more interesting and inter-related these tales seem.

Wraiths are of Scottish – Old Norse origin; meaning a water spirit bent on vengeance. The original term may mean ‘Guardian’. They appear as ghostly figures with sharp clawed hands just before you die, either causing your death or foretelling it.

Banshees are ancient Irish myths about women rising from burial mounds to foretell the death of an important person, or to bring announcements from the land of the dead.

Fairies, or people from the “Land of the Fae”, are such old beliefs their origins are lost. They are over and over again associated with the dead, though. They don’t like iron, and won’t go near it. Rowan staffs, wands, or brooms also can be used to keep them away.

Morgens are Welsh spirits that drown men. In the King Arthur tales, the “Lady of the Lake” who gives Arthur his sword is called Morgen. She lives just under the surface of the lake, and is known as a Water Fae.

Vampires and Revenants. Originally, vampires were not seen as smooth talking Counts, but as bloated, dark, dead things that crept about villages at night. There’s a strange old custom of burying a scythe next to a corpse that will cut it if it begins to bloat and move around. Cutting the head off a corpse was seen as a way of hurrying the soul to leave the body. A vampire’s body or clothing could also be held down to the earth with stakes or spikes, to prevent them rising. This is where the stake-in-the-heart myth comes from. To this day, gypsies drive steel or iron needles into a corpse’s heart, and place steel in the mouth and over its eyes to prevent it becoming a vampire. Hawthorn was also used to tie its legs down. Vampires can be drowned – sinking a vampire body into water is a sure way of stopping it from roaming around.

Isn’t this creepy?

Poltergeist stories date back to at least the first century. They are literally “noisy ghosts” from the German poltern (noise) and geist (spirit). They are spirits of the dead who annoy the living by throwing rocks, sand, dirt, and shaking homes, furniture, etc. They can be very violent, and many cases are recorded up to the present day. Poltergeists often attack women under the age of 25, and can be extremely dangerous. Ghost Hunters have found that poltergeists can often be tracked back the death of a young man, a suicide or accidental death; a young man taken before his time. His restless, violent spirit seems to live on, angry and violently sexual.

Geist; an Old Germanic word meaning ‘spirit’, or more accurately ‘lifeforce’. All of Northern Europe had prehistoric traditions of inviting honored dead ancestors to feasts, to discuss the future with them. The words “ghost” and “guest”, then, are said to have descended from Geist.

Bereginya are mentioned in the oldest written sources as the most ancient supernatural beings worshipped in Russia. “Vampires and Bereginya” as translated from Greek sources, pre-12th century, were the centers of their pagan religions. The word Bereginya is related to the old Russian for ‘riverbank’. The idea that vampires and unholy spirits were worshipped is interesting; Russian folktales may reflect the oldest traditions of Europe, unchanging over the years due to the size of Russia, the remoteness of their villages, and the impossibility of travel during winter months. Bereginya were later called Rusalkas, or their stories seem to have overlapped eventually.

Russian Rusalkas are female ghosts that dwell in a lake. They are restless souls of young women who drown in a lake and forever haunt it. They are especially evil and vicious at night. Some very old stories say that Rusalkas are women who have died suddenly and before their time, sometimes because they have been jilted by lovers, are pregnant, committed suicide, killed their babies, or died without last rites. This is almost an exact modern explanation of Bog deaths.

Vodianoi are almost the same Russian beings, but male. They are as well associated with water and deep pools, often found beside a mill, and are reputed to drown swimmers there. They are as well seen as ‘unclean souls’, suicides, non-baptized, sometimes wandering drunks.

Legends of Rusalkas and Vodianoi are interesting, because descriptions of how they ‘die before their time’ don’t touch on how they were dropped into a lake or a bog, afterward.

Unless they were put there by the villagers who had condemned them.

Because the more you read about Vampires, Selkies, Morgens, and beings from the Land of the Fae, the more you ask –

What if these were all real?

Not monsters walking about at night, but real descriptions of actual practices?

Ok Cammo...more please.

Been workin' boss!

People of the Bog
Part 4

Are we wrong about all European horror tales?

Are they not childish cautionary fables about dealing with terrifying monsters that roam the land, turning into bats and foretelling death and drinking blood, but are in fact anecdotal folk stories about real activities? Do they not describe how to avoid prowling monsters, but rather how to avoid making them?

Again, WHY? Why would people do such things? Why fool around with dangerous, terrifying black magic practices? Again and again for thousands of years, in almost exactly the same way, all across Europe?

Because creating the Bog Bodies was a methodical, careful, almost mechanical act. It seemed more like a job than a religious ritual. They were trying to make something, trying to get something very specific accomplished, and did so seemingly from a detailed, practical instruction book.

Almost all Bog Bodies were killed with iron and a noose and then drowning the remains.

Iron has very old traditions and legends surrounding it. Because it is cold, it is seen as not having a soul. Because it can remember its shape, and is extremely hard it has both a mind and a sense of determination. It’s most important uses are in making weapons and tools. This idea that it has a mind but no soul, can think for itself but has no feelings, goes to the heart of its use as a method of killing. Souls cannot travel through iron. It comes from the earth below, from the land of the dead already. To stab someone with iron does not stain your soul with guilt, because their soul hasn’t touched yours through the knife. Swords are ancient weapons not just because they work nicely (spears and axes work just as well) but because they are made entirely of cold iron, and are thus a buffer from the act of bloody murder.

Hanging as well. To hang someone for a crime is an incredibly ancient form of execution, because it does not require one person to kill another with their bare hands. You tie a slip knot around a person’s neck, put them on a horse, and everybody yells YEEEHAW! The horse dashes away, the man is dead in a second. There is no executioner. No one’s hands are stained.

Drowning, too, is a bloodless, hands-off way of executing someone. It may be the oldest form of getting rid of evil people; you tie a rock to their leg, and goodbye. Later, they float to the surface all bloated, so drowning became more sophisticated, with ways of disposing of the bloated body; drowning someone then burying them immediately.

Again, why? The oldest legends don’t say much. They tell us that sinners were tossed into lakes and pools, but why? As a punishment? It seemed to punish the living more than the dead, they were the ones who had to watch out for these restless ghosts all over the place, stalking the villages at night, or coming out of the water beside you. And why water? Why are lakes and pools so important to almost all supernatural beings of old Europe? It makes less and less sense, just like the Bog Bodies themselves. To make things even more difficult, there seems to have been a conspiracy of silence regarding these legends, a feeling of shame and dread that covers the tales. A feeling of horror.

And why bogs? What was so important about a bog? Was it an interesting place? It was well outside the villages, it wouldn’t seem to be so important – no fish live in a bog. It’s gassy and smelly. Was it the town dump? Who cares about bogs?

But there are clues, there are always clues.

Because “Wraith” a very long time ago meant “Guardian”.

The final chapter in People of the Bog is coming next, but for those faithful readers who have been following the whole story, does anybody have any guesses as to how it comes out?

In other words, Why Were They Killing Them?

Nobody will ever know for sure, but I think I've got a pretty good set of theories.

I'll post the final chapter after some guesses pop up....

yawn*

Cammo not see GROG writing anything scary. Cammo not scared of word 'yawn'. Me think GROG should write more, not yawn. More brawn, less yawn. Maybe 'yawn' is caveman word for 'me scared'.

GROG should go back to drawing board and make sure when something behind something else, you can't see the little lines of the things that are behind the thing in front. That is secret to good drawing.

Ugh, my entire being is recovering from the crawl. But since I love Cammo's story, I'll take a stab. They were ritualistically sacrificed to the gods....

They were totured and thrown into a bog because they started a short story, wrote two pages with some interesting info to get people to read, and then two more pages of fluff, and then they stopped the story to ask anybody who might still be around who hasn't gotten so bored with the last two pages of filler that they just gave up on reading the story to hazard a guess as to what the final answer might be to the mystery.

[ Edited by: GROG 2007-11-13 00:30 ]

GROG no read good.

Me explain.

Part 1 - Intro to the Bog Body mystery; why its a mystery, lack of direct folklore and obvious connections to horror tales.

Part 2 - Details of tortures used.

Part 3 - Ridiculous classic historical explanations & in-depth European horror stories to compare. (This is my favorite part.)

Part 4 - Legends of execution rites and final clue before all is answered.

All of the above are keys to the answer. It's a mystery with a solution, that's the point!

Sorry if this is dragging out but it's all a true story and reality is rarely tidy. The more I investigated the more I found that was bizarre and had to be mentioned.

If GROG no got idea, just say 'me no got idea'.

Maybe they were killed by giant black hairy pigs from your neighbors farm.

Ritualistic sacrifices.

[ Edited by: GROG 2007-11-13 09:28 ]

Truce!

While I'm putting the final touches on Part 5, check these out. They make me laff.

Some animators may like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otPkk1sUFkI

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYHWUdHZOg

If you like the spooky second one, there's plenty more under the search "Tales From the Pub" on YouTubey.

Maybe the bog brothers are still pissed of about being hacked up and have now been reincarnated into the big black hairy pigs that live on your neighbors farm....maybe they have been reincarnated into pissed off international business class stewardesses that work for Northwest Airlines? Maybe those big hairy pigs are the ones that have taken on another life as Northwest stewardesses? I think they spit in food, and pee on the bathroom floor too...nasty bitches.

Personally, I thing because the bog water supported no life what so ever, this freaked the people over there out, and they had to sacrifice to keep the lifeless underworld from creeping further towards their habitation?

Hell, maybe they just liked to kill shit...I don't know? On with the story Sparkles!

Are you ever going finish this "short" story?

GROG, it's coming.

Yes, the long awaited ending to the Bog story is almost ready. It took a while because the more I found out, the more it led to other connections, like a nuclear reaction.

It's very close.

Please give us the ending, Cammo. It's not like it's been keeping me up at night or anything. Okay. Well, maybe it has. Rid my head of all these crazy thoughts and hypotheses.