memories of a house once upon a time

People forget I have lived elsewhere. What is more astounding are some of my memories of people and places? Take, for instance, an old country house that people say is so wonderful. I remember it in a parallel reality. The story there was more shadowy. Less wonderful.

The country house was right behind Club Missouri in Williston, North Dakota. That Club has or had or will have no less than fifteen ghost stories. Why? Some twenty or twenty-two people had died there over the past thirty years. Bars in the country are mysterious.

But this is a story about the country house behind the Club. It was a large country house. Used to be a farmhouse prior to the city or town growing consuming it.

There are many stories I remember about it. I suppose the one that it involved me with makes sense to start with.

I was a dishwasher at the Club. I went outside after the dishwasher heat had made the kitchen area unbearable.

This was a big night for the Club. People were coming out to have their Halloween fun. Dressed up as demons, nurses, etc.

I had just wiped the sweat off my forehead when I heard the howling.

Trying to figure out what was going on, I looked. Down the hill in the farmhouse I could see two dogs. One was lying on the ground, the other one howling.

Trying to figure out what to do. A flash occurred, and both dogs were on the ground. No longer howling. Wondering what I had just seen, I watched. A huge hog with red eyes I could see came out of the underbrush and ate the first dog that was on the ground.

Now this did not sit well with me. So I ran down the hill. Foolish. But I am me. The hog or pig turned on me. The other dog made it to its feet and ran away. Now running down hill sometimes I can not stop. I ran right into the hog. And poof. Poof it was gone.

That kind of freaked me out.

I went back to work. After washing plates. I asked about the hog. The cook laughed and said I was an idiot to stop the ghost pig. He then went on to tell this story.

The house had been owned by a bachelor that hated certain types of people. Who or why? Remember this was in the early 1970s. Hatred of people was acceptable. The bachelor hated migrant workers. Specifically, the tale went that he would hire them. Work them hard and on pay day take them to a valley just south of the river. Where he would shoot them in the head and bury them.

I scoffed at the story. However, later on another person told the similar story. So I went to the library to see if anything was amiss. Sure enough in the 1920s. The story had it that one of the first serial killers in the area had murdered five migrant workers.

Reading more into the story, I found out that instead of burying the bodies like the tale told me. He had actually fed the bodies to his pet hog.

That weirded me out a bit. The newspaper described the trail in detail of how the man would feed the people to his pet hog. The paper went on in full detail. That paper said a verdict was expected on Friday in the trial. When I went to look up on microfiche, the Friday paper of the 1920s it was not there.

The next microfiche newspaper I could find read something dealing with a county fair. And how a hog had broken loose in the fairgrounds. It had terrorized everyone there and then disappeared into smoke.

Seemed like I owed the cook an apology. So, I gave my two weeks’ notice at the Club. Having found a job at the Salt mines.

A few months went by and a couple of work friends and I went to the Club because they had a live band that night. The band was playing “Riders in the Sky”. Just then, the couples on the dance floor were interrupted by two dogs running like something was chasing them. It was amusing, but to me I was a bit taken back. I was pretty sure one of those dogs was the one I had seen a few months prior.

No. There was no ghost hog present. When the dogs left, the music got started again. In walked five migrant workers walked in. How could I tell? Their clothing and style.

They sat down and did not order anything that I could see.

Now this is that matter-of-fact tone of a ghost story. Remember that paper I had read? Well, it had shown a photo of the man on the trail. For the world of me. He walked right into the bar, too. And I think I fainted. He walked to the table with the migrants and sat down.

Let just say I left at that.

Several years went by. Let’s be honest, I am not into ghost stories. People would invite me there and laugh at my facial expression of saying no thank you.

Then one Halloween night I went there with a lady friend. We danced. We drank. And about the same time I had left in the first story, I could swear I heard a dog howling in the night. Sent shivers through my body, I suppose.

The shadows in that Club were interesting. No, I did not see the hog or dogs again. I did hear about what happened, however, to the kids that dared each other to go into that old country house one Halloween.

The story has it. Of the five that went in. Two were now locked away in the mental institution and two were no longer the top dogs of their school, having dropped out and started to live like bums. And the fifth one?

Their story has it. That the hog with red eyes dragged her off into the brush and her body was never found.