The Deep South is full of ghosts, and if you haven't seen or heard one while living here, you ain't payin attention.
Today for no reason I flashed back to about 1973 when I was 19 and an idiot. I had a date with Stuart who was Dick's cousin who was my best friend from elementary school's boyfriend (now husband). Dorothy, my bff, had set the whole date thingy up, and we went out to Ramer where Dick and Stuart's families had farms. The guys fixed us drinks: orange juice and vodka, and drink we did!
As the evening wore on we climbed a fire tower. Seemed like an excellent idea at the time. Except I have severe acrophobia. The higher we climbed the more uneasy I felt. Plus did I mention we were drinkin? The wind blew, the tower swayed, my stomach lurched. Uh oh. Luckily for everyone else, I didn't hurl my dinner up, but then I was faced with a quandary: how the hell do I get off this tower? Anyone with acrophobia knows that we can climb up with just a tad of uncomfortableness since we aren't looking down. But climbing down you're, uh, looking down, and that ain't a comforting picture. I can't recall how I made it off the tower, but obviously I did, but I was left woozy. Okay the booze also left me woozy, but the fear of heights just kicked my ass worse!
As we were walking back to the house from the tower, we walked through an old rural cemetery. Stuart said he didn't feel well and was going back to the house while we explored. Dick felt it was time then to tell me the legend of a guy who had died violently and still haunted the cemetery when out of the dark loomed a white-figured apparition. I screamed my fool head off, heart beating uncontrollably and realized everybody else was snickerin. Damnit - fooled by Stuart as the ghost and Dorothy and Dick's abetting.
That was two instances in one night of abject terror for me - first the tower, then the ghost. Since everything happens in 3s to me, I thought, "What the hell's next?"
I didn't have long to wait. Dick fixed us yet more drinky winkies, and we went out the back door of his home to walk around the pond in the back. We were laughing at how gullible I was and just havin a hoot of a good time when all of the sudden a creature from the black lagoon rose slowly out of the darkness. HOLY SHIT WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS??? I screamed, fell backwards, and the creature also screamed but flew forwards, straight into the inky black water. Dorothy told me that the "creature" was a peacock - a prized peacock no less - and that they think I killed it.
Now to be fair, it almost killed me. Just sayin. But I was horrified, truly. Both that it rose out of the darkness like Satan himself and that I may have contributed to its untimely demise.
The next morning Stuart called me and said that indeed, the peacock had died and did I want to go out with him Friday? Oh shit. Mortified, I couldn't even think about going out with him again so soon and couldn't bear the thought of facing him if/when Friday's conversation turned back to the peacock. I said I'd think about it, never heard from him again, and he ended up marrying a former classmate of mine (good choice on his part - I didn't really like her much in school, but I knew that she would never, ever kill a peacock, and she wasn't an idiot).
Now that I've confessed to this heinous deed 40 some odd years after the fact, will the ghosts and the peacock please leave me alone? We'll see :D. Oh, by the way, it took me years before I could drink orange juice again without gagging, and I've never had another oj/vodka since that night. I'm not a total idiot.
