A South Barrington Haunting

this was about the first ghost hunt I've went on when I was 20 years of age. So I had to write about this one. It is called A South Barrington Haunting. This is about Cuba Road. Archer Ave of northern Cook County.

It was nine years ago on October 28, 1996, when I first took part in the ghost hunt to start all ghost hunts for me. Some friends of mine called on the phone looking for something to do on a Saturday evening being it was the weekend before Halloween. Some buddies were suggesting that they would take me to Cuba Road because I just got done writing my first horror story at the time. They felt I needed something to write about later on when I got older. Here I am almost twenty-nine years of age thinking about that first ghost hunt – a little nervous about the idea of going on this hunt but I knew it was something I wanted to do since I was eighteen years of age.
    I remember the first reaction I got when I mentioned I wanted to go to the place. Exactly the day I mentioned it as well, it was while in church a week before Halloween. I remember it well because the woman I told about Cuba Road, she was trying to pray over me because she didn’t want me thinking about White’s Cemetery. She was trying to get me to think about the pure or the lovely instead of that place, but it was too late. If she was to hear about me going to Bachelor’s Grove in 2000, I am sure she would have a heart attack. Namely because the way she thought about ghosts were that they didn’t exist, but I knew that there was something there as far as the supernatural goes. It would be the same scenario when I lived in Iowa when I read all those books about haunted places, then pulled up White’s Cemetery in an encyclopedia about the haunted United States. Both Cuba Road and Maryknoll College were represented in there, but I am going ahead of myself here. I would have to go back some to when I was eighteen and just discovering faith. Even in that discovery, my wanting to go on a ghost hunt or two was something that played into the imagination.
   Just something about the Barrington area that drawn me to it, more so than usual. I was drawn to the unknown like it was a magnet. Just something about it I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It just got darker in the details about it, more so when it was closer to the day when I was actually going on the ghost-hunt. It took some long time friends I grew up with to convince me this is the one that I should go on, at first they were driving around Lombard, Illinois, looking around for a few park district haunted houses first. Then he asked, “Is this place any good or should we just save our money?”
   Some of them replied saying it was all right; then we thought about the idea of going to Barrington, Illinois. It took us about forty-five minutes to cruise up to the place we had on the sites on, the holy grail of haunted places in the collar counties next to Maryknoll College. I was twenty when I finally went to White’s Cemetery. We were all nervous at that point, while Rob was telling the story about how he was trying to scare a few girls out of their wits when he and a friend dragged them up there last Halloween. He would say that he would mention to them about hearing a scream before the railroad tracks but no one was around. Another friend and I were laughing up a storm and making grim jokes about the place, trying to see if we can both scare the crap out of Rob. (I am withholding their last names on this narrative because I respect their privacy.) The other friend who was with us was named Jeorge along with a friend of mine from middle school, and that was basically the group who was going on this ghost hunt.
    Most of us involved were quite young; Jason was the youngest in the bunch. We stopped in front of a gate; this was the kind of gate that resembled something out of Tales from the Crypt. It was old in the way I describe it, but the other two stayed behind while Jason and I went ahead and jumped the first fence. I was the first one over the fence then he followed. He then walked ahead of me while I was prodding around the empty can of oil, which been filled with water – possibly from the rains that touched down over the last weekend. I was trying to imagine if there was a severed head in the can. Jay yelled back, “Nick – quit f*****g around. You’re scaring the s**t out of me.”
   I was looking around as well to see if I felt anything then when we came back around is when I felt something grab me by my ankle as I tried jumping down. When I went to jump down I felt something grabbed and shoved me from where I was trying to jump – ending up being entangled between the tree and the fence. I couldn’t say what I felt or describe it – but I didn’t see anything unusual. Even if I didn’t see anything unusual there, but I knew something was there. Just felt it in my bones about the haunting in the detail, namely of the stories that were around the cemetery itself. That was the next place that we went to, and in order to describe the cemetery in detail the place had a bit of character – a Gothic charm if you will. Living in a bible belt, one doesn’t just talk about the subject of ghosts in the open but I knew there was something there. But when we walked into the old cemetery, there were head stones that were dated back to the early 1800s.
    “Wow, these graves been here for quite some time. Keep your eyes open for a black car because that will appear without warning,” Rob would say. I had this feeling something was there and didn’t want to hang around too long. I had started to get a bit spooked much as how a horse would be when someone stops behind it really fast. Would be if a cat was going under a row of rocking chairs – that kind of nervousness one cannot describe or really say unless they were standing right there. It was if someone was watching and there was no one around. I felt my heart pounding in my throat but I hid it well. I was trying to look back at some of the notes I originally wrote about Cuba Road for this, but even now after four ghost hunts under my belt; that first one is always the one that was the scariest. It is always the first one that will always seem to stay with one the longest.
   Each detail that becomes part of the memory it becomes almost something from a scene out of the Blair Witch Project. Except for one thing; we didn’t have any cameras with us on this one, no equipment. I wish I had a tape recorder then to record some of my account because it would make much of the documentation of this a lot easier. Though it would be years since I first gone to the place, but it was that one that was the strongest to my memory as I went to Bachelor’s Grove years later.
   As I wandered around Bachelor’s Grove, I thought some about Cuba Road as well as while I sit down to write this one. Rob was right that I would end up having something to write about when I got older. I even thought some about the words that woman told me about this place, often burned into my mind and in my dreams. But it would always be the place known as Cuba Road that I will remember the most, though some of the friends I went with won’t talk about the place that often. I will talk about the place if someone asked me about it, if anyone was to ask if I’ve seen anything unusual about the place – I will have to give the answer of no, but felt anything that will be a different story right there. The stories I knew about the place started as hearsay, but when I found that haunted directory it seemed to have some truth behind it.
  My observation of Cuba Road those years ago, and I will draw the conclusion that it is haunted. Even in the nearly nine years distance I have between that place, and writing of it, I will always remember that place twenty years from now. The reason I remember it is that I was caught up between the fence and tree trying to jump down, the forces around me caused me to lose my footing. I remember the alarmed look Jason had on his face, more what they call the holy s**t response.
   In the detail written of the place I remember of the cemetery was that it was quite old, and sometimes, old cemeteries will have a ghost story behind them. Piece by piece sometimes the ghost stories written about them will have different versions, and the case is true with Cuba Road as well as the one in Winona, Minnesota. Just something I knew about when I went to Cuba Road it was going to be the beginning of things to come. When I look back on going there I wish there was something I could do as far as photos, I guess that will be another ghost hunt in the future – the details of the first hunt are always the most vivid. It plays in the back of my mind like some movie, especially when I lost my footing – some would just say I was a bit clumsy though I think there is more to it than that. I felt that something didn’t want me there, and as Joline Lieck wrote in her book some ghosts like the company and others don’t.
   This was one of those ghosts that do not like the company of the living. The town of Barrington itself is a landscape of the supernatural pending on what community you ask though --- namely because of a massive church called Willowcreek. It like Wheaton, is one of the big communities where faith drives it --- though it has more in common with Glen Ellyn, Illinois, having a ghost story everyone seems to go hunting around near when Halloween gets closer. I kind of knew the reason and understood why the woman from my old church was laying hands on me about the curiosity I had about the ghost story at eighteen.
   Each ghost story has its originating nature, and this place is no different in that nature. I just knew something was there about Cuba Road, even when I was sitting in the diner afterward drinking my coffee the mental notes were being taken about the area. So it would bring about the observations I pen about Cuba Road. Each detail creates another piece of its puzzle, and more so now I can see where the writers of that directory got the information. Looking at the pages of that directory I can say to myself, “I was there; I know what they were talking about. It was possibly a ghost that pushed my foot off the fence. I still got the rip in the flannel I was wearing as the proof.”
   Even from the pieces I was able to remember about the place, the details are vague but detailed enough to make an account of my own about Cuba Road. In some towns the only explanation of the unexplained would be or are only of that of God and Angels, there is always something more. Sometimes that something more is the ghost story they are trying to hide. That interest in ghost stories would be the reason they are often chased around, and one of the reasons I find myself going on a ghost hunt. Knowing something is scarier than anything imagined.
  This story was one of those of stories. In such details, one can find the documentation to verify them and sometimes they are only hearsay. I will let the person; who is reading this draw their own conclusion. This story was one of many stories that reside in the Midwest as far as the ghost story goes, Illinois, much like New Orleans will have a ghost story or two to tell.

Reviews

[PersephoneInBlue]

So was the place haunted or not??????? The only thing that seems to happen in this story is that the narrator loses his balance and falls off the fence. He admits himself that maybe he's just clumsy. Or maaaaaybe a ghost pushed him. Um, not scary. Not even a little bit. Not even to a 13-year-old (me).

Also there is not much description of the cemetery and the night, which could have made for an eerie atmosphere even if nothing overtly scary happened. The characters are also not well described which makes you less worried about what might happen to them.

Is this based on something that really happened to you? A lot of beginning writers make a mistake called under-fictionalizing, which means basing stories on real life without adding any of the things that make stories more interesting than life. You could keep everything else realistic, but throw in a ghost or some other freaky event or injury to make the "Haunting" part of the title less like a false advertisement. It would even be a little, tiny bit scarier if the ghost tried to pull him back INTO the cemetery, instead of pushing him OUT where he was going anyway.

One. Uno. This is the first piece of constructive criticism that you will delete. At ninety-nine you suffer a fatal brain aneurysm. Good day.