The Tale of the Cemetery Willow

Mother Nature can bring back the dead.

That’s what my older sister, Alana, used to tell me. She used to always scare me with her creepy stories about ghosts, death, and the monsters lurking in the dark. But her spooky stories no longer affected me once I hit my teenage years.

I never realized how much Alana believed them.

A flash of bright white lightning illuminates the cemetery.

That’s how this story starts. Alana’s told me this one countless times before.

Among the numerous tombstones strewn throughout the graveyard stands a willow tree. It watches over the remains of the dead, ever weeping in their wake. But the willow tree is only what we see on the surface. What happens underground is far more fascinating, or so Alana says.

The roots of the weeping willow tree grow ever-expanding throughout the cemetery, Connecting to each grave site.

Do you know that the corpse’s fingernails will continue to grow even postmortem? A disturbing fact, if not a little interesting.

The tree roots grow through the grave, and the corpse’s fingernails grow, entwining with the plant. And two become one.

But more than two, the tree continues to grow, ever entwining with every corpse in every grave site, until the whole cemetery is interconnected as one by the ever-watchful weeping willow.

But in this spooky tale, Alana always told, it was a stormy night. The rain poured down in buckets, and the cemetery became like a swamp. The thunder rolled. Nature’s growl, as Alana called it. And then the lightning strikes.

The lightning would first strike the swampy mud, the electricity traveling along the flooded ground. Then finally, lightning would strike the tree. The electricity would travel down through the roots, energized by the soft wet mud. The lightning’s electricity finally zaps each corpse connected to the willow’s roots. The dead bodies awaken, re-animated like Frankenstein’s Monster. They rise from their disrupted eternal slumber to walk the earth again, now as zombies.

That was the story my sister told me. We’ve always lived half a block away from our local cemetery. As a child, I was constantly afraid of the bodies beneath. Every stormy night of thunder and lightning, I lay awake, unable to sleep, listening for the chaos of the undead.

My sister once gave me a fulgurite, a glassy rock created by mud and clay combined in the heat of a lightning strike. Alana told me that the fulgurite still held an electric charge which would dissuade the undead. She said they would sense the electricity and think it was one of them, so as long as I kept it close, I would be safe.

So I kept that glassy rock close to me as a child during every thunderstorm. It was like my security blanket.

But as I entered my teenage years, I began to find Alana’s tales ludicrous. I still have the glassy fulgurite somewhere; I have since buried it deep in my closet. The magical feeling of protection it once gave is now long gone. So what use do I have for a glassy rock? I can’t think of any for it.



This, of course, was just one of Alana’s many eerie tales to torment me in my younger years, though she did “nice” things, like giving me the fulgurite, to protect me from the horrors of her stories. Still, she never ceased to creep me out. Her account of the cemetery willow always scared me the most, probably because we lived in an area that frequented thunder and lightning storms, and the cemetery down the road had a weeping willow of its own. Though now that I think about it, I realize that that’s how she must’ve gotten the idea for the tale.



But now I’ve grown out of being scared by Alana’s stories. I no longer fall for her creepy fables. I’m a logical adult, I can determine when a story is too ridiculous to be true, yet recent events have forced me to question this. I must sound crazy, I know. But I swear to you, everything I’m about to tell you happened exactly as I’ve written.



Alana was dating this guy, Derrick was his name. He was emo, dressed in dark clothes, listened to rebellious punk music, believed people were generally bad and refused to conform to norms.

Alana was infatuated with him; he was everything she wanted.

But one night, after he had attended a concert in which he had thrown back a number of beers. He shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. The road was slick from the rain, and he was driving well over the speed limit. He couldn’t take the curve, flew off the road, and crashed into a large tree. They say he died instantly.

Alana was crushed. That feels like an understatement. She felt like she’d lost a part of herself.

Derrick’s parents bought a grave site for him at the cemetery down the road. He was buried about a month ago now, and Alana hasn’t been the same sense.

She stopped telling her insane stories. In fact, she barely talks about anything these days. She mostly just sits alone, lost in her own mind.

But the weatherman had been predicting a big storm, thunder, and lightning, which seemed to illuminate Alana a little. 

Yesterday she confided in me that she had a plan and she needed my help. I thought her plan was crazy, but I guess I hoped it would bring her closure. I thought it could be therapeutic for her. So I went along with it.

This happened just last night.



The sun was down, and the moon was high in the sky. We went to the cemetery. The rain poured down; it was the heaviest downfall of the season so far. I wore my raincoat and boots, but Alana did not wear hers. She said she wanted to be one with nature, to soak it all in.

We found Derrick’s grave with relative ease. Each of us carried a shovel.

Alana scooped out clump after clump of mud. I knew it was a crime, disturbing a grave, but I thought this could be helpful for Alana, that she just needed to see he wasn’t coming back. And I knew this would go faster if we both dug rather than leaving her to do all the work. So I stuck my spade in the ground and followed suit.

The thunder rolled overhead, like nature warning us. Lightning struck down at the far end of the cemetery. We dug quickly. Every few seconds, thunder would roll, then lightning would strike.

Our shovels thumped into the top of Derrick’s casket. Alana excitedly threw it open. He was slowly decomposing. His fingernails had grown, though not yet to grotesque length. A tree root had shoved its way in, the tip of the root sticking into the coffin. Derrick’s fingernails were just long enough to touch said root.

I climbed out of the grave, it was difficult with soft wet mud, but I managed.

I saw the lightning was nearing. I called to Alana that we needed to go. I offered her my hand out of the grave, but she paid me no heed.

Then I looked up and saw it.

The lightning struck the weeping willow. The bright white light surged down the tree's bark, illuminating it in an intense, fiery glow.

I know Alana’s story is preposterous, that lightning couldn’t bring back the dead, but at that moment, fear took over.

I turned and fled. I ran all way back home. I’m not proud of leaving my sister behind, but I can’t change the past.

I got home and locked myself in my room. I dug out that old fulgurite, and it made me feel safe again. I waited for Alana for a few hours, but she never came home. I finally dozed off at some point.

I awoke to find the storm had subsided, the rain still came down lightly, but it was nothing compared to last night.

Alana is still not home. I need to go look for her and check the cemetery, but I fear what I’ll find.

I checked the local news. Last night, an employee at a nearby gas station reported being attacked; they were bit by a gross muddy shambling man.

A homeless man who slept in our local park at night was found torn apart by something. Police don’t yet know by what.

But these are just coincidences, right?



I’ve pictured what I might find at the cemetery. Alana’s lifeless body was struck by lightning or drowned in the muddy rainwater. Is it weird that I would almost prefer finding the living dead over her dead body?

I may be haunted by memories of her scary stories, but the last thing I want is for her to die.



So I’ll go and check the cemetery, hoping for the best, whatever that is in this case. But just heed this crazy warning. If you’re out and about and you stumble across a grotesque muddy person shuffling along, seemingly chasing after you, avoid it at all costs. You never know. It might just be a zombie.