“A man drives along old High Point Road (now Main Street) near an underpass in Jamestown one night. It’s foggy, a little rainy. His headlights illuminate a shadowy figure in the distance. He can barely make it out. As he gets closer, he fixes his stare, sure his eyes are betraying him. It’s a ghostly woman with long hair cascading down her white dress.”

“She lifts her arm, motioning for him to stop.  The man stops the car. She is a damsel in distress after all. He lets her in the car and offers to take her home. She is solemn; shrouded in a mist.”

“The woman gives him the address to her house in High Point, and they drive off. Nervous, the man tries to make small talk; she answers in whispers, adding to the mystery.  For most of the ride, they are quiet.”

“Finally, the man pulls up to the house at the address she gave him and prepares to let her out.  But when he turns toward her, she is gone. Vanished.”

Well, we are driving along, it’s dark, and it’s raining lightly, and we are approaching the overpass where Lydia was supposed to appear (the road no longer runs through there).  Uncle Bill is getting to the last few details of the story in a very spooky voice.  I said, “That doesn’t really happen!!!”  Uncle Allen chimes in….”Oh yes it does!  I’ve picked her up myself!”  I’m sitting between these two with my heart about to pound out of my chest as they tell me she appears just “round the bend” from where we are.  Suddenly, Uncle Bill says “Oh my gosh!  Look!  I think that’s her up there on the right hand side of the road!”  I lean forward in the front seat with my nose almost pressed against the windshield, when suddenly Uncle Allen yells, “There she is!!!”  As I whip around towards him when he screams, Uncle Bill (who had his hand resting on the back of the bench seat) grabbed my shoulder and yelled “Gotcha!”

I screamed like a banshee!  They nearly had one more young girl die near the underpass that night.  Through the shrieks and screams, Sissie and Aunt Louise are dying laughing in the back seat.  In the meantime, I’m thinking I may have to change my underwear when I get home.

Probably the worst prank they pulled was in my senior year when I was living with Sissie and Uncle Bill.  We were on our way to take Uncle Allen and Aunt Louise home one afternoon after going out for dinner.  They lived in Allen Jay, NC and there was a church about a mile or so up the road with an old cemetery.  Now this particular day, it was storming like crazy with a typical frog-choking rain.  The two uncles start their routine.  This time they begin telling me about a young lady who is buried in that cemetery.  They told me she wanted to be in country music…wanted to play the fiddle.  She wanted to play and be famous so badly that she sold her soul to the devil if he would make her a good fiddle player.

Of course, I did my usual, “that’s not so!”  As one would finish one part of the story, the other would chime in with some juicy tidbit.  Supposedly, the young woman died an early death and when she was buried the image of a fiddle eventually appeared on her headstone.  Her family was very upset because they felt the devil was putting the image on her stone to remind her family that he had her soul.  They would take a hammer and chisel and break the fiddle image off, but it would magically reappear.

Now you have to remember, it is storming big time.  “Laurel and Hardy” tell me they will take me to the church and I can see the headstone for myself.  They said you can see where it has been chiseled off previously, but it will still be there.  I HAVE TO SEE THIS!

Uncle Bill pulls the car into the cemetery.  Uncle Allen tells me exactly which headstone it is.  Of course we didn’t have an umbrella, but I didn’t care.  I wanted to see this.  So I get out of the car and walk the designated number of rows over and then count the headstones to find her grave in the row.  I inspect the tombstone closely.  NO FIDDLE!!!  I knew it!!!  The headstone looks beaten up, but no fiddle.  I run back to the car sopping wet.

When I tell them there was no fiddle on the tombstone, they pretend awe and say “The family must have just chipped it off again.”  As I sit there dripping Uncle Allen tells me, if the fiddle is not there, there’s another way you can tell it’s her grave.  I asked how.

Uncle Bill had two nicknames for me (one was Rosebud, the other was Skeet).  He said, “Skeet, with it storming, this is the only time this trick will work, but here’s what you have to do.  Go back to the grave, turn around three times and then stomp your foot three times, and ask ‘What are you going down there?'”

Uncle Allen chimes in, “Then if you bend over real close to the ground you can hear her say ‘nothing’.”  I was sure they were just trying to watch me drown like a rat while the four of them sat nice and dry in the car laughing their butts off.  I kept saying, “Nope!  I don’t believe you, and I’m not going out there again in this rain.”  Uncle Bill said, “Rosebud, I’ll make a bet with you.  If Allen is lying I will wash dinner dishes for the next six weeks.  If he is right, YOU wash the dishes for the next six weeks.”

I hated washing dishes and I was sure they were pulling my leg, so I agreed to the bet.  I stepped out of the car into the pouring rain and went back to the young lady’s grave.  I turned around three times, stomped on the ground three times and then leaned way over and said “What are you doing down there?”  Of course there wasn’t a peep from the grave.  I’m thinking to myself that I’ve just been soaked and they got me, but at least I won’t have to do dishes for six weeks.

I got back into the car (good thing there were vinyl seats because now I am absolutely drenched).  I looked at the uncles and said, “She didn’t say anything!  I win!!”

Uncle Allen smiled sheepishly and said, “No, Uncle Bill wins.  I TOLD you she wouldn’t say anything.  I just worded it a little different and said “She’ll say nothing…meaning, she won’t say anything.  That’s NOTHING”.  The tricksters got me again, only this time with semantics!

We never passed that cemetery again without everyone breaking into side-splitting laughter, but it was okay.  Those four gave me the best memories of my school years.  …WET memories…but good none the less.