Maaaaybe

Maaaaybe

By Kristi Sturgeon

For a period of my life, I was obsessed with ghost shows. It’s not because I was scared of such things. Any show about hauntings and the search for spirits intrigued me, so I watched them all. I was fascinated by the technology and how those machines were used to hear things we could not hear and see things we could not see. So when my cousins, who were paranormal investigators, came to visit from Kentucky and offered to take me on a ghost hunt Thanksgiving night, I jumped at the chance.

 Tim and his son, Mike, had been investigating the paranormal for several years. They were part of a larger group of paranormal seekers in their part of Kentucky. Tim even led ghost tours of his town, which had plenty of Civil War history. 

Since we were at my parent’s home for Thanksgiving, we wanted to pick a nearby target. A little over a mile away on Pecan Grove Road is a cemetery that predates Oklahoma's statehood. Most of the headstones are older native sandstone, eroded over time into nubs making some of the bodies buried there anonymous. Surrounded by a four-foot-high chain-length fence, the lot is tiny and often unkempt. Sometimes the property looks so overgrown that it is only identifiable by the small sign in front of it, declaring that it is “Pecan Grove Cemetary”. Occasionally, people in the community or a Boy Scout troop will take it upon themselves to mow and clean the lot. But the place is often derelict, adding to its creepiness even in the daytime.

An old, plain, white house used to sit next to the graveyard, but it burnt to the ground several years ago. Though rumors to the contrary still exist, no one died in the fire. Sadly, the home and all its contents vanished in the flames. Only the cracked stones of the foundation and the tales of the fire remain. The subsequent investigation by the local fire department turned up no clues as to how the fire started. Perhaps this has something to do with the mythos of an adjacent area.

Mere feet away, down a slight hill, and southeast of the cemetery is a small stream. My Uncle Joe claims it to be a “devil’s bathtub” or place of evil. Attempting to add credence to this folklore, others of his generation have made similar assertions. In reality, no one knows the events that led to this monicker. However, the mere suggestion of encountering something demonic gave us all the reason we needed to avoid that area. 

The night of our investigation, the overcast skies held the stars captive, keeping their friendly light from our eyes. Brown leaves danced and whirled in the crisp autumn breeze. A light on an electric pole next to the cemetery illuminated the south side but cast a gloom on the north side. Long, spooky shadows caused by bordering trees resembled long, crooked fingers, poised to snatch up intruders like us. The place was a little eerie.

The group included Tim, Mike, Tim’s wife Judy, my cousin Kris and her husband Andre. With recorders and other equipment in hand, we surrounded the fence in teams of two. Being a professional, Mike, who was my partner for this hunt, naturally headed to the darkest, creepiest part of the lot. This, however, I didn’t mind as my curiosity was stronger than my fear. To say I was excited was an understatement.

As we turned on the recorder, Mike asked. “Is anyone here with us?” We waited silently for a response as we listened attentively. In the distance, an owl added, “Who.” 

After a minute or two, I asked, “Does anyone want to talk with us?” Neither of us heard or felt anything but the wind blowing the trees. Despite numerous attempts to make contact with the beyond. I was skeptical that we would catch any evidence of a haunting.

After about twenty minutes, we rejoined the rest of the group. As with us, no one had heard, seen, or experienced anything. But as we talked, we noticed that the electric pole was producing a loud, constant hum. For some reason, this enticed Tim to take out his electromagnetic field (EMF) detector.

“Hey Mike,” Tim said, “the EMF detector is going crazy by this electric pole.”

Mike peeked over his dad’s shoulder at the small black box with rainbow-colored lights at the top and nodded in agreement. The red light, which was farthest to the right (indicating a spike in EMF), was lit. Taking the detector, he moved closer to the pole. “Wow! That’s nuts! Someone should notify the electric company about this. It could be dangerous!”

On the plus side, EMF is known to be high whenever spirits are present. Knowing this, Tim took out his recorder to continue the investigation. “Would anyone like to speak with us?” he asked. After several minutes of listening to the crackling of the blowing leaves and the hum of electricity, we adjourned to my parent’s house to eat more pie.

It was several weeks before I got an email from my cousin Tim. Although our ghost hunt had been around an hour, with three recorders going, I knew that Tim and Mike would have a lot of things to comb through. Most of the ghost-hunting shows that I watched made it clear that finding evidence takes a lot of patience and time, and even then, those kernels of proof are rare. There’s a lot of silence and not much evidence. I expected Tim to say that we didn’t get anything, so when I saw the attached sound files, I was quite surprised.

On the recording, Tim says, “Would anyone here like to speak with us?”

The first voice was childlike and unintelligible. Whatever was said was spoken in haste.

The second voice left me with goosebumps. 

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” High but masculine, the disturbing, musical laugh was arpeggiated and discordant, as if it was a line from an aria from some hellish opera. Its next word was drawn out slowly and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Maaaaybe.”