by Marijoyce Porcelli

Created on: November 16, 2008

My first vivid memory of an encounter with what must have been a ghost, or perhaps it was what others would call a spirit, was years ago when I was still living at home. Home at that time being a then-remote mountain community known as Hells Holler, where I was dating a boy whose pride and joy was his yellow car with its black hardtop.

One evening, around dusk, he decided to drive to an isolated dirt road in Hells Holler that was said to be very haunted. When we stopped I asked him why he had driven there and he said casually, "Oh, just to park and talk."

I knew, though, he was trying to scare me because we had argued earlier. However, I was young and either really brave or really dumb then (I haven't figured out which, probably a combination of both) and didn't scare easily. Not even when something started to softly pound on top of the car and then progressively got harder and harder until you could actually see the car's roof going up and down.

I looked out the windows, there was no one around. This all happened in a matter of minutes. I was fascinated, at that time anyway.

"Let's get out and see what it is!" I exclaimed. (Yeah, now that I think about it just plain dumb is starting to look like the winner here.)

My "hero" turned a "whiter shade of pale," screamed like a little girl, put the car in gear and squealed out of there. I looked out the back window only to see dust swirling. There was absolutely nothing there, nothing visible anyway.

I still don't get really scared when I think of that incident because for some reason I had the strong feeling that something was "playing" with us. Don't ask me why. And that it, whatever "it" was, was vastly amused by our reaction.

Still, even years later, I sometimes ask myself what was that? Was the road really haunted by a ghost who didn't like our intrusion there? Or was it a playful ghost glad for the company? Could it have been a spirit that somehow knew that my then-boyfriend was trying to scare me and tried to oblige? Or perhaps it was a protective essence looking out for me since I was never really scared, I still don't quiet understand why, when the guy I was with was obviously beyond frightened?

Questions, questions with no answers. I guess the best thing here is just to accept it happened and let it go, and be grateful that for whatever odd reason I wasn't simply scared out of my wits. Who knows why, but then again why ask why?

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