Mama said:
Back in the 1920s when I was just a girl, Uncle Pink would sometimes walk to the neighbor's house to help the family or check on them. To get there he'd have to walk about a mile through the woods near his house which was not far from Boiling Springs, North Carolina and not far from Mooresboro, North Carolina. Way out in the country. Uncle Pink always tried his best to go and come in daylight, but many times it would be after dark before he could leave to come back home.
There was a well-marked path that he followed. He said every time he'd start back home around dusk dark, a little white dog would appear and walk with him. The dog would never let him touch it, but it stayed by his side all the way through the wood. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it would just disappear! Poof! Gone!
There were stranger things happening in those woods the darker it would get. Uncle Pink said there would be what looked like fireballs rolling across the path or hovering in the forest in front of him and to the sides of him, but nothing ever caught fire. He figured they were just will-o'-the-wisps, so he learned to ignore them.
Then one night he heard voices and he snuck off the path to see who it was. The little white dog did not leave the path. It just stood there and waited making not a sound.
Uncle Pink said as he drew closer to the voices, he saw a group of men with hoods on their heads around a fire. He said he couldn't see exactly what they were doing, but the hair stood up on the back of his neck and he gave in to the need to run that night. He ran back to the path as quick and quiet as he could and got home lickety split.
The men never followed. They never stopped what they were doing. They never acted like they heard him at all.
The next day he started asking around about that group of men in the wood. The stories he heard turned his stomach. Everybody said those men did meet in those woods, but not for 50 years or so. They told him tales of murder and cremations in those woods. Beheadings. People seeing a headless man walking through those woods like a chicken with its head cut off. Bad bad things. Too bad to say out loud, and there was a killing of a gentle little white dog that belonged to one of the murder victims.
This made Uncle Pink shudder and cold chills run up his spine.
Uncle Pink decided he'd only visit the neighbors first thing in the morning after that, so he'd always get home no later than mid-day.
Now they say, even today, if you happen on those woods as the sun hangs low and dusk falls across the land, a sweet and faithful little white dog will appear and stay by your side 'til you're safe through the trees, and people round about still swear the fireballs can be seen now and then of a night, eerily passing through those woods making their unearthly light.
I'll not be going there myself to find out if Uncle Pink's story is true, but if you ever go, you let me know.
That's the story as my Mama told it to me. Is it true? You decide.
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