As the days and then weeks passed, I began to tell myself that I really had just gotten spooked down by the creek that day. I never mentioned it to anybody else because I thought they'd laugh or think I was weird. I was never a girly girl or given to acts of silliness and I tried to convince myself that the man in the woods and the other people in the field didn't really happen. I was too logical and serious to admit it could be something else.
Not only didn't I mention it to anybody else, I also just tried to shove it away and move forward. Even so, I kept seeing bits and pieces of the campground that I was trying so hard to forget. I didn't see them as I slept which would have been easier to dismiss as dreams and imagination. I saw them while I was wide awake as I went about my daily life. I would get just a glimpse of a face or cabin or some daily chore being done. It would be very brief and erratic so that I was never able to grasp it to hold on to it and examine it in detail. It would come and be gone again in just a second or two. I didn't even have time to react and I know that no one else even realized something had just happened. I have come to compare it to the subliminal messages hidden in movies. Just a flash sometimes to make you want more popcorn but not enough to disturb the movie. The only difference was that I now KNEW that flash was there and I could see it very clearly.
Even while the strangers in the field were passing in and out of my life, the days of the real world kept going forward. I had a wedding to plan, a full time job plus daily life. Things were busy and I began to ignore the vision as much as possible. I still helped with cutting firewood but I never stayed down in the woods by myself. I still enjoyed walking through the woods but only if I was with others. I thought that there was comfort and safety in numbers.
The only problem was that no matter how much I wanted it to, the vision never stopped. I couldn't ignore it away. I couldn't just avoid the woods to stop the vision because it didn't just happen when I was in the woods. I could be somewhere else entirely and see the glimpses of the campground and its people as if I was right there in the midst of it. I began to think about the meaning of the whole thing and to wonder who the people were and what they were doing in the pasture.
The next few months passed. We made it through the wedding and like all young couples we began to plan our future. We would build a house, a log cabin in the woods one day. It was to be on the very spot where I had seen the campground. We would have a family some time in the future. In the meantime, we had to have someplace to work and live and we decided to get a place in the city while we saved to build a house.
One day while visiting my husband Tom's parents, we were looking at old photo albums. They had stacks of them and we had them open as his dad told us the names of the people in some of the old yellowed pages. I saw his great great grandmother who was small and stern. She was dressed in furs and black leather shoes but was standing down in the woods. They say she alone saved the farm from the tax sale during the Great Depression when there was no income. There were also pictures of cousins, neighbors, great grandparents and grandparents. They were pictures of simple farm folks in plain clothes posed on porches and in the yard. There was a picture of Hambone the young black boy who helped on the farm. He didn't have much of family of his own and he spent all his days with my husband's great grandfather. He ate with the family and rode to town with the men. He was in the pictures as though he was one of the family. He was always smiling, especially as he rode on the back of the tractor with his arm around the dog but he's frozen there in the photos as a child because he died very young in an accident at his aunt's house. Tom's dad always gets nostalgic when he talks about Hambone because he was just a small boy when Hambone was on the farm.
There was one particular picture that threw me all the way back to those woods months before. I was told that the man in the picture was Tom's great great grandfather. He would have been married to the stern little woman in the woods. He died not long after the picture was taken. It was the first time I had ever laid eyes on the picture but I knew him immediately. He was the man in the woods. As sure as I am telling this story, I promise you that there was no doubt in my mind that it was this same man who came to me in those woods and looked out at me now from the photo. I was shocked beyond belief.
Please understand that I am not taken to flights of fancy. I do not believe in ghosts then or now. Here I was face to face with something that shook my very belief system. Something I had been trying to avoid was now something I couldn't deny. The man was real and if he was real then the people in the campground were probably real. The questions that kept coming as I stared at the photo was why me? Why now? Who are these people and what do they want from me?
Not only didn't I mention it to anybody else, I also just tried to shove it away and move forward. Even so, I kept seeing bits and pieces of the campground that I was trying so hard to forget. I didn't see them as I slept which would have been easier to dismiss as dreams and imagination. I saw them while I was wide awake as I went about my daily life. I would get just a glimpse of a face or cabin or some daily chore being done. It would be very brief and erratic so that I was never able to grasp it to hold on to it and examine it in detail. It would come and be gone again in just a second or two. I didn't even have time to react and I know that no one else even realized something had just happened. I have come to compare it to the subliminal messages hidden in movies. Just a flash sometimes to make you want more popcorn but not enough to disturb the movie. The only difference was that I now KNEW that flash was there and I could see it very clearly.
Even while the strangers in the field were passing in and out of my life, the days of the real world kept going forward. I had a wedding to plan, a full time job plus daily life. Things were busy and I began to ignore the vision as much as possible. I still helped with cutting firewood but I never stayed down in the woods by myself. I still enjoyed walking through the woods but only if I was with others. I thought that there was comfort and safety in numbers.
The only problem was that no matter how much I wanted it to, the vision never stopped. I couldn't ignore it away. I couldn't just avoid the woods to stop the vision because it didn't just happen when I was in the woods. I could be somewhere else entirely and see the glimpses of the campground and its people as if I was right there in the midst of it. I began to think about the meaning of the whole thing and to wonder who the people were and what they were doing in the pasture.
The next few months passed. We made it through the wedding and like all young couples we began to plan our future. We would build a house, a log cabin in the woods one day. It was to be on the very spot where I had seen the campground. We would have a family some time in the future. In the meantime, we had to have someplace to work and live and we decided to get a place in the city while we saved to build a house.
One day while visiting my husband Tom's parents, we were looking at old photo albums. They had stacks of them and we had them open as his dad told us the names of the people in some of the old yellowed pages. I saw his great great grandmother who was small and stern. She was dressed in furs and black leather shoes but was standing down in the woods. They say she alone saved the farm from the tax sale during the Great Depression when there was no income. There were also pictures of cousins, neighbors, great grandparents and grandparents. They were pictures of simple farm folks in plain clothes posed on porches and in the yard. There was a picture of Hambone the young black boy who helped on the farm. He didn't have much of family of his own and he spent all his days with my husband's great grandfather. He ate with the family and rode to town with the men. He was in the pictures as though he was one of the family. He was always smiling, especially as he rode on the back of the tractor with his arm around the dog but he's frozen there in the photos as a child because he died very young in an accident at his aunt's house. Tom's dad always gets nostalgic when he talks about Hambone because he was just a small boy when Hambone was on the farm.
There was one particular picture that threw me all the way back to those woods months before. I was told that the man in the picture was Tom's great great grandfather. He would have been married to the stern little woman in the woods. He died not long after the picture was taken. It was the first time I had ever laid eyes on the picture but I knew him immediately. He was the man in the woods. As sure as I am telling this story, I promise you that there was no doubt in my mind that it was this same man who came to me in those woods and looked out at me now from the photo. I was shocked beyond belief.
Please understand that I am not taken to flights of fancy. I do not believe in ghosts then or now. Here I was face to face with something that shook my very belief system. Something I had been trying to avoid was now something I couldn't deny. The man was real and if he was real then the people in the campground were probably real. The questions that kept coming as I stared at the photo was why me? Why now? Who are these people and what do they want from me?