#27 in a Series...Fear of the Unknown

I know it’s past Halloween, but I gotta open with a ghost story that I find particularly chilling.  I first read the story in Haunted Ohio III, by Chris Woodyard (1994), and a Google search also yielded details about this tale, which tend to vary.  But the impetus of the story is this:

 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”  Mary Stockum was either burned or stoned as a witch after five of her nine children sickened and died, one after the other.  A sixth child died after the mother’s burial. 

Village elders dug up her grave, beheaded Mary’s corpse, and reburied her body, then buried head on the other side of the cemetery fence. 

“She’ll not stir til Judgement Day.”  Famous last words...

Mary's ghost is said to walk a Coshocton County, Ohio graveyard, searching for her lost head.

Hunters swear they have seen her ghost and heard her screams.  Amateur ghost hunters report car trouble when they park at the cemetery.  One couple who parked by the cemetery hoping for a glimpse of the ghost saw something stirring down the lane from the car.  The husband went to investigate, and when he returned, his wife was pale and jibbering.

“The ghost came to the car!” she gasped, “and beckoned to me to follow her!”

The woman had asked, “What in the name of the Lord do you want?” And the ghost told her what it wanted—something so terrible that the woman was never to repeat the message.

I own several books of “true” ghost stories and I enjoy scaring myself silly with them.  Mary Stockum’s is NOT the scariest story I’ve ever read—yet it’s the one that keeps me up at night.  And I know why.

Fear of the unknown.

What did the ghost say to that poor woman?  What was so awful that she can’t ever repeat it?  If I let my imagination go to work, I’ll be sleeping with the lights on for a week.

Fear of the unknown is powerful.  Sometimes it’s irrational.  But you gotta own it before you can move past it.

Kelly caught up reading my blog posts over the weekend.  It feels weird to have her read me, but her reaction has been very positive, considering some of the muck we’ve been slogging through.  We talked about her guest blogging here after the holidays, to give another perspective.  I guess that means I’ll be the target for a change…

Kelly encouraged me to dig a little deeper and get to the heart of what’s still bothering me so I can move on, even if it hurts her...or me.

She admitted she’s irrationally, unexplainably angry that Mike, Daphni and I are going to Europe for Christmas.  We’ve spent as many holidays and birthdays as possible with Kelly and Sawyer over the past couple years.  Now we’re jetting off to Paris and leaving her.  That’s...unknown.  We'll be missing her birthday and Christmas.

I fear the unknown, too.  I wasn’t sure how I would feel if I said what I really thought.  But I will own the fury, this one time, so it won’t be unknown any more.  Then it won’t be necessary for anyone to dig me up and behead me someday because the poison ate away at me until my very insides turned black.  So, rational or not, fair or not, I’ll say what’s been simmering in my soul.

Dammit, Kelly.   You left me long before I asked you to go.  You left me for a dog.  You left my daughter for a dog.  And you left your son with me and chose a dog. 

That dog has kept you from being here for me or anyone else.  The kids and I figured out how to function as a family.  And you were supposed to help me.  

It broke my heart.  I took a big leap of faith to move us all in together, and was willing to do almost anything to make it work—except add a dog to my household.  When I told you I couldn’t, you ran right out and adopted Wedge that very second, because you’d found the perfect way to get rid of me.

I’ve never come in second to an effing dog.  I never will again. 

You left me in the lurch, and Sawyer thinks I left him.  I don’t know how to bridge the gap with him.  This week he’s decided not to talk to me and doesn’t answer my texts at all.  Why?  Who knows?  Something unknown simmers against me in Sawyer’s heart.  And I blame the dog.

So there it is.

Now, everyone, listen up. It’s time to move on.  No more backspin.  No more wallowing.  The unknown?  Psssh.  If I own my feelings, and then the unknown is just…unk.  Just junk.  Yeah.  That works.

My family and I will be heading to Paris and Rome in a week, and I’ll blog as a foreign correspondent while we’re there.   So bonne nuit, mes amis.  Arrivederci!