Ain't No Haint Gonna Run Me Home

I love dark nights when you can see billions of stars.  Things look different at night.  Ordinary objects take life and your imagination begins to run while.  I remember jogging one night on an old dirt road.  It was beautiful until I felt the presence of something behind me.  All of a sudden, I began to imagine this hideous green demon with one red eye breathing down my neck.  Thinking about him floating behind me, I picked up my pace a step or two and thought about what my daddy told me one time about darkness in a graveyard.  He said, “Don’t be afraid of the dark.  Ain’t nuthin’gonna hurt you.  People there are dead.”

Granny Hopper said the best thing to do when haints, goblins, and the devils imps are around is shew them away in the name of Jesus.  That is what I did.  I said, “In the name of Jesus I command you to leave demon.”  I must say jogging does get your heart rate up, especially if you jog with a haint.

I have heard of strange things that happen in the night.  One thing is lights that appear and move through the sky.  Where I grew up there were such occurrences until people had security lights.  I never saw these lights up home, but I did see some in Oklahoma.

The Chilton Baptist Builders were working in Baxter Springs, Kansas.  Some of the folks wanted to know if we wanted to see the lights that were just over the state line and since the T.V. program That’s Incredible had been there a few weeks prior to our coming.  It is one of those unexplainable phenomenons with lights bouncing in the sky.

I must say the light reacted much like the ones I heard about in Alabama.  My cousin Floyd said a light came in the house one night while he was asleep.  Grandpaw Chapman followed one down in the woods.

That night the light jumped into the road and headed toward us.  Kansas folks said the light would do all sorts of oddities.  Some there said the light got into their car.  Others said it would come toward them disappear and reappear.  I guess the light was scared of Alabama folks because it never got real close but I did see it and kept some newspaper articles about it as souvenirs from the trip.

I have never seen any unexplainable spooks at night other than those lights, but my Uncle Ellis did.  One afternoon while returning home from school, he saw a haint.  Uncle Ellis was not quite right.  No one has ever been able to explain what was wrong with him other than his mind never developed.  He was a giant six feet, four inch, two hundred fifty pound kid.  He loved to play his Roy Rogers guitar and he loved my mom.  Momma had to get Ellis off dad one time when Uncle Ellis thought dad was hurting mom.  Dad said Uncle Ellis had unbelievable strength.  Uncle Ellis died young. He died before my first birthday.

It seems that Uncle Ellis and Uncle Clifton, who was younger, were walking home from school after the bus dropped them off.  My great-uncle Kelly decided to scare his two nephews.  His scheme was to hide in the ditch and scare them as the autumn sun was setting and shadows were growing long.  It was ideal for haints.  To make it more realistic Uncle Kelly had a sheet over him.

As my two uncles walked by him, great-uncle Kelly jumped from the ditch and yelled Booooo!  Uncle Clifton lit out like a “scalded dawg.”  Daddy said they measured Uncle Clifton’s footprints and they were unbelievably far apart.  All out of breath, Uncle Clifton told the family that a haint had Ellis.  Everyone snickered knowing that it was Kelly in a sheet.  Uncle Clifton was terrified as any little boy would be.  Several family members sitting on the front porch consented to see if the haint got Ellis.

As they got about half way there, they spotted Ellis.  He was walking at a normal pace enjoying the fall colors and the growing darkness as trees blocked the setting sun.  They asked Ellis about the haint.  Ellis said the haint was in the ditch.  They asked what happened.  Ellis said, “Hummm, I pick’d up a rock and hit tha haint in tha head.”

“Where’s the haint,” they asked. 

Ellis said, “Up thar en tha detch.” When the family arrived to the haunted ditch, they found Kelly, the Out Cold Ghost.  Great-uncle Kelly learned that Uncle Ellis wasn’t afraid of haints.

And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.  But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid (Matthew 14:26-27 KJV).