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Evans City Cemetery
Harrisburg County, PA
September 10, 2182

Small towns love their ghost stories. Urban legends, or local folklore as some call them, exist in every little tight-knit community across the entire country and they do more to spice up a regions character than any dusty old historical record ever could. Most begin with some small basis in fact then grow more spectacular with every retelling. Like that of the "Knocking Road", a particularly popular tale spread throughout Southeastern Michigan in the late twentieth century. As legend had it, a child on his way home from school was struck by a car. The driver, unaware that he'd hit anything, continued driving with the child pinned underneath the vehicle. While being dragged along the pavement, the boy banged furiously against the chassis, screaming to get the driver's attention, but the music blaring from the car stereo overpowered everything else. After three miles the pounding faded away, as did the screams.

From that day forward a mysterious knocking would emanate from the underside of your vehicle while traveling along that cursed three-mile stretch. To this day many locals refuse to drive it out of respect for the wayward spirit. Or there was the case of Laughlin Forest. Located in the Black Hills region of rural Maryland, it was supposedly haunted by the ghost of a woman found brutally raped and murdered amongst the pine trees. The spirit sought revenge against the men living around the forest; luring them into the trees where she could dispose of them at her leisure. And she would not stop until she found the one responsible. Many residents claim to have seen her stalking through the foliage on an endless search for victims. Ernest Johnson, who lived along the northern edge of the forest, enthralled anyone who would listen with tales of his Halloween night encounter with the ghost. It was late, long after the last trick-or-treater had retired, when he received a frantic phone call from a friend who claimed to be lost in the woods. Please help, the friend pleaded, she's after me. Without hesitation, Ernest grabbed a shotgun, his faithful hound Spud, and raced across the backyard towards the forest.

He reached the tree line before realizing that the dog had not followed. Spud remained on the back porch with his teeth bared in a wicked snarl. At that moment Ernest claimed that a chill ran down his spine that would "freeze a bonfire on the fuckin' equator". As the story went, he slowly backed away until he reached the porch, being careful not to take his eyes off the forest. Once safely inside he called over to his friend's place and was not surprised to hear him answer after a few rings. Ernest shivered as the friend claimed that he and his wife had been watching TV for the last hour and, no, he did not make any phone calls. Ernest hung up the phone without saying goodbye, walked back out to the porch, and sat down next to the dog who still stared out towards the trees. And Ernest swore, until the day he died, that he heard a faint sound barely audible against the swirling night wind: it was the sound of a woman's laughter.

One such tale add some flavor to the history of Evans City Cemetery, founded to honor the memories of local foreign war veterans, which had seen its last resident added over a hundred years before. Rumor had it that if you hung around the crypt of one Jacob Newton, deceased 1954, and were very quiet, you could hear the dead man calling out to you from the grave. Not much was known about Newton. Some say he was a devil worshipper. Others claimed he was a reclusive millionaire who was buried alive by thieves after they stole his fortune. The question of who he was never fully explained but that did nothing to quell the legend's popularity. Quite the contrary, Newton's mysterious life and death just added to the lure of the ghost story. It was a juicy piece of folklore that breathed new life into an old stake of land that had long since seen its better days.

Tommy was not interested in the historical significance of the tale; these things did not mean much to your average third grader. Boys his age had been coming here for decades to prove their mettle against the shrieking spirit. To prove it to guys like Mark Hill, he had been a prick as long as anyone could remember and yesterday had delighted the entire math class by telling them he had fucked Tommy's sister. Tommy didn't really know what "fucked" meant but he did know that everyone had a good laugh at his expense. By facing the ghost of Evans City, Tommy hoped he could save face with his classmates. He had considered bringing some of them along but decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to have any witnesses around in case he panicked and pissed his pants.

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