The forbidden farmer

Story told by Eric Wells

When I was six or seven years old, we moved into a neighborhood and there was a small wheat field in the back. At 22 Mile Road there used to be a small passenger plane airport. At that airport, there was a plane crash. The rumor was that people could not find the bodies from the plane crash that crashed in an old farmland. Urban legends started growing about how a farmer stole the bodies and hung them.

Fast forward a few years: I had this one friend I grew up with; his name was Brian. He lived down the street from me. We hung out outside of school and he always said, “Hey, no matter what. I’ll make sure you’re not alone on your birthday; we’ll hang out.” So fast forward to my 13th birthday. Brian called me and said, “Hey Eric, I’m coming by, but I have these two guys with me. Is it okay if they come for your birthday party?” I said that it’s okay, as long as they were cool. He said they were, so it was going to be fine. Their names were Mike and Greg.

It was just us four sitting on the floor playing Monopoly, which is what everybody did at 13 year old birthday parties. Brian tells Greg about this barn behind my house. After hearing about it they all wanted to go. “No, no, we’re not going,” I say. But after an hour of them egging me on, I said, “Fine, we’ll go and take a look at it.”

We walk outside and there’s a bit of condensation on the ground. It was all dark because we’re just going by the moonlight. We finally see the barn on this hill. I said, “Look, y’all see it, you’ve seen it, now we’re going home. Done. We’re going home.” But Greg says, “No, no, no, we’re going in.” “No we’re not,” I said. We argued back and forth for 30 minutes. Then all of a sudden I looked over and Greg was booking it towards the barn. “That’s it, Greg’s dead!” I screamed, “Let’s go home.” But, Greg’s friends are saying that we have to go get him. Really though, we don’t have to go get him. We don’t have to do anything. We’re going home.

In the distance, we see Greg walk into the barn. I think to myself, he’s dead, we’re going home. I’m done with this. I turn around and start walking away. “Eric, we have to do this,” Brian said. “No, I’ve seen enough horror movies. I know what happens to a bunch of teenagers who go into an abandoned haunted barn. We won’t come back! We’re going home. You’re calling Greg’s parents, telling them that you guys killed him and let’s go.” Eventually they convinced me to go. We turn around and start walking through my wheat field. It feels like it’s pulling at our feet with every step we take.

As we’re walking, I have Brian in front of me and Mike behind me. This is because my thought is, if someone jumps out in front of me, I can push Brian into him and run away. If someone jumps out from behind me I can push Mike into him and run away. If they come at me from the side, I can bring them both in, like a human shield. I’m a good friend.

So when we get close to the barn, we see that the door is swinging, making a loud thud sound every time it slams closed. When we finally get to the barn, the front doors are not swinging anymore. They are completely closed shut. Mike tried to open the door, but he couldn’t. It took all three of us to pull this gigantic door open. How did Greg open it up by himself? We didn’t understand how he did it.

When we walk into the barn, we start screaming, “Greg! Greg!” We get no response in return. So as we’re just standing there, we hear soft thuds coming from inside the barn. We’re thinking it’s Greg messing with us so we scream for him to knock it off. But the thuds won’t stop.

It’s so dark that we think we are starting to see things. I’m imagining all these bloody weapons and bodies hanging. But we snap out of it and find a ladder leading up to a hayloft. We made the decision to go up because we think Greg had to have gone up there. We’re Scooby Doo walking up the ladder, like on top of each other’s shoulders and hunched over. When we get to the top, I’m the last one off the ladder. We hear this thudding sound even louder. We all are looking around trying to find Greg, but when I look to the opposite wall, I see a pitchfork hanging by itself. It’s swinging against the wall making the thud sound.

When I look back at the guys, next to me is this farmer with a rotten hat and long, stringy, dark hair. I ran and jumped off the top rail and ran through the air like I was a cartoon character. I’m running back home screaming, “They’re dead! They’re dead!” When I get to my house, I slam all my doors shut. I’m sitting there thinking, they’re dead. But I stand up and look out the window to see Brian and Mike running towards my house. They were screaming, “Did you see it?” I said, “Did I see it? I told you guys, Greg is dead, you guys killed him. It’s all your fault. You’re calling his parents.” But as we’re yelling, we hear this thudding sound at my door. I look over at Mike who is grabbing a butcher knife and Brian who is grabbing a baseball bat. I asked what they were doing. They said that they were defending themselves. “No,” I said, “He’s gonna take the weapons and kill you. Don’t answer the door. We should go to the room.” But no, they go to the front door and open it. We see Greg just standing there. We started screaming at him, “Where did you go?” He said he went to the barn and ran around the back to meet us on the road. He never went in.

The haunted church

Story told by Brayden Schrieber

I used to sneak into my church on Saturday nights with my friend. He would play piano and I would sing and we would just have fun with music in the auditorium. The auditorium is a big room that echoes and is connected to separate rooms that have people’s offices and work spaces. We were the only two people there and it was around eight at night. My friend didn’t believe in ghosts, but after that night he started to. As he was playing piano and I was about to sing, loud knocking or banging was coming from the office door. As we were walking up to it the noise continued and when we walked into the room it stopped. This spooked us, but we went back to doing our thing. Around a half hour later there was a loud creaking door shutting and then a door slamming. This scared us so bad we left immediately after that.