Salvage

To research reports of Southern ghosts I went online and discovered the websites for Shadowlands (shadowlands.net) and HauntedNC (hauntednc.com). Shadowlands has listings of reported ghost sites sorted by state and country. Hauntednc is a local nonprofit research group that investigates past and present reports of hauntings, poltergeists and paranormal activity. I met members of Hauntednc’s staff while touring the Halloween event at the Mordecai House in Raleigh. In spite of follow up, I have not been able to interview anyone with the organization. I also contacted the Rhine Center, but the director declined to be interviewed because the Rhine Center focuses more on ESP and telekinesis. That kind of thing. A friend has an aunt in Southport, NC whose old house features a ghost. Ultimately, the aunt decided not to be interviewed about her spectral guest out of sensitivity to the woman’s family who still reside in the Southport area. The Southport ghost is as real and as worthy of respect and courtesy to my friend’s aunt as my friend is herself. The barricade of politeness on the spook’s behalf struck me as quintessentially Southern. Dr. MacKethan asserted one evening in the Southern Writers class, “If you’re Southern, you can believe anything.” That being true, I was open to possibility of spirits.
So, informed and inspired by listings and directions available on the Shadowlands website, Andy and I set off on a cool, sunny Sunday to find what we could find at the haunted auto salvage yard, the Aversboro Civil War battlefield, Old Bluff Church, and the haunted Subway Restaurant in Fayetteville. It was October 15th, 2006. In preparation we stopped by the Bojangles on Western Boulevard in Raleigh to pick up two half gallons of sweet tea. Ghost hunting is thirsty work and you can never have enough caffeine. We drove into Garner and onto 401 South. We stopped at Staples to pick up spiral notebooks because you must take notes on these things and not trust to memory.
Soon we found ourselves driving past fields where the cotton bolls were no higher than my knee. We cruised by homes with satellite dishes---the old kind, big as wading pools, single-wide mobile homes with redwood decks and my favorite sign: Cocks for Sale, Pullet. There were fields of corn, dried brown and crisp, peach orchards, and roadside crosses, where I assume people died in car accidents on this two lane road. Andy pointed out a sign that said,
“Please drive
Slow death
In family”
“That’s what we all want, isn’t it?” Andy asked me. “A slow death. Very slow.” Andy was driving. I could get lost in a locked room.
We drove over Terrible Creek, past Angier, not far from Ennis Road. We found ourselves by the Coats Cemetery. Under the Loblolly pines people were watching a $3,000 brushed chrome casket descend into a grave. Men in suits and two women in church clothes stood nearby as a backhoe pushed red dirt over the coffin. Easels with floral arrangements were placed out of the way on their skinny legs. A Rose & Graham funeral home canopy covered the site. I pondered what kind of people stuck around to see their kin tucked in for the dirt nap. I don’t think I could do it. I took some pictures (from a respectful distance) to ponder later and we hit the road again. Just past the Primitive Free Will Baptist Church we turned right and found the Dorman Auto Salvage and Repair shop on Erwin Chapel Road between Dunn and Coats. According to the Shadowlands website, around 12:30 pm every night you can hear the voices of children singing “ring around the rosey,” a gruesome enough song if you consider its antecedents. The website doesn’t say who the children are or if they are kids who died in automobile accidents. We were there about 12:30 or so in the morning, not at midnight. Andy and I do not ramble about the countryside in the middle of the night. We are too old for that. I figured if the auto salvage yard was actually haunted we would get a vibe, a sense, a creepy feeling about it in the daytime. The wrecked autos were behind a house where, I guess the Dormans live. No one came to the door when I knocked but a visitor had left a Big Lots bag of snap beans on the porch. Also on the porch was a water bottle, a shop apron and a ball cap. Someone had taken a break from work but they were not inside the house. They were not out in the acre or two of dead cars, vans, and trucks either. On the other side of the road, a cotton field stretched as far as I could see. A gravel road led beside the fence that enclosed wrecked and rusting metal. I ambled down the path, noting brown and orange butterflies, wood nymphs. I could hear crows off to the north. Queen Anne’s lace and pokeweed grew in the grassy strip in front of the wood and wire fence. Andy stayed in the car studying the road atlas. I walked a little further and saw small birds I couldn’t name dart in and out of the occasional pine tree. It seemed to me that birds and animals avoid areas that are haunted. Maybe the critters fled at night when the ghost-children sang. Or maybe the ghost-children were, unlike many reported spooks, benevolent and welcoming. I stopped and studied the empty vehicles. Nova. Vega. Pinto. Oy. I was being haunted by the husks of bad car purchases past. Pacer. Whew. Yugo. No way. Someone else could be dogged by those two turkeys. I saw nothing but faded paint and cracked glass. But the haunting was supposed to be auditory. I closed my eyes and listened. A grasshopper buzzed in the weeds. I heard the faint sound of a marching band and a crowd cheering. A ghostly tailgate party. I stood a long time. A wisp of slide trombone. A tiny tremor of drumming. Indistinct voices, but not just the voices of children. That’s what I heard. I had not heard it when I was back at the house so I knew I was not hearing the Dorman’s radio or television. I did not get a chill or feel I was being watched. On the contrary. I wanted to go into the auto graveyard to explore and play. I was enticed by the wreckage and wanted to learn the mystery of each crumpled fender and shattered windshield. I wanted to touch the cars and say a prayer for who ever had been in them when they were squashed like Dixie cups.
I thought probably what I heard was a football game playing loudly from some neighbor’s house. Some neighbor a quarter of a mile away or more. But maybe not. I scouted around the other side of the house found a couple of folding chairs outside the workshop where maybe the Dormans sit of an afternoon and shell peanuts or snap beans and keep each other company. I joined Andy back at the car. He looked up.
“Any ghosts?”
I shrugged. “I dunno,” I told him.