He wanted short creepy stories.

If I wanted to be confined to a limited number of words, I would just use twitter.

When I was a teen, way back in the 70’s, we spent a lot of time in a cemetery near my house. It was like our neighborhood park. We used to get drunk and sing Alice Cooper and Beatles songs. Eventually I will tell you all these stories one way or another, but for now, in the spirit…ha… of post-Halloween hauntiness, I will share a few of the weird tales associated with this place.

There was a big stone crypt where the members of the Elk Lodge interred their deceased brethren. On top of the crypt there was a big, life-sized bronze statue of a male elk with huge antlers. Legend had it that the elk would come to life at night and kill unwary trespassers. Sometimes there would be bloody bits of meat and cloth on the antlers…. ooooeeeeeeeeoooooo…..

Okay, I admit it, we used to climb up there and put the meat and cloth on the antlers just to freak people out. But strange things did happen in this realm of the dead.

They say they plant the dead 6 feet under, but they used to dig the graves about 11 or 12 feet deep so they could put gravel for drainage and a little pallet for the coffin to rest on. The cemetery workers were always careful to cover empty graves with planks and canvas, but I guess one night someone thought it would be funny to remove the cover because they knew a lot of people would be walking home from this big party by way of the cemetery shortcut.

A group of us were doing just that, and all of a sudden we heard a blood-curdling scream and saw one of our friends go running by, still shrieking at the top of his lungs. We didn’t put the whole story together untill after we caught him, but here is what happened. My friend Brian, who lives below the cemetery, left the party a while before the bigger group of us did. Staggering drunkenly through the dark cemetery grounds, he fell into the grave that some person had uncovered. He tried to climb out, but couldn’t, so he eventually gave up and went to sleep.

A while later, here come the rest of us. And my other friend also ended up falling into the same grave without us even noticing in the dark. He tried to climb out and had no more luck than Brian did. That is until he heard a voice from the corner of the grave say, “You can’t get out… I already tried.”

When we came back later, loaded with false bravery and flashlights, we found Brian still sitting in the lonely grave. But here is the funny part. There were no marks or scratches or anything on the walls of the grave. We think to this day that our other friend was so terrified that he jumped out without touching the sides at all. I leave it up to you to decide if you believe it or not.

Still not creepy enough for you? Here is a story that I swear is true.

One night, I was drunk in the cemetery with a group of friends as usual on a Friday night. There was this cave we used to hang out in, and to get to it from where we were, you had to go down this narrow trail, clinging to the side of a steep ravine over a small, rocky stream. My friends started off while I heeded the call of nature, and then I started down the trail. I had only taken one step, and my foot landed on an acorn which rolled out from under me and sent me teetering head first towards the rocks 25 or 30 feet below. Someone grabbed my shirt from behind and kept me from falling. I turned around and there was a familiar silhouette in the moonlight, my friend Randy. I thanked him and went down the trail, catching up with the gang. I got to them and stopped dead in my tracks, feeling my flesh crawl and my hair actually ripple at the base of my skull. I looked back and there was no one there. That is because Randy had moved to L.A. six months before.

I told everybody about it. They all thought I must have snagged my shirt on a tree branch or something. It was just one of those things that you forget about by the next morning or go crazy.

Eight months later Randy came to visit. He was now head roadie for a band called the Busboys. We were all having a few beers in the cave, and I remembered the night in question. So I brought it up, just as a good story to tell. As I told it Randy grew pale.

And all he said at the end of my story, in a very quiet voice, was, “Eight months ago, I had that same dream.”