Well here it is, October already. Which means fall colors falling from trees, cold crisp mornings, occassional frost on the windsheild to be scraped off, and Halloween - and Halloween means ghost stories. What follows is a rewrite of my own personal experience I first posted in alt.folklore.ghost-stories back in 1996.

The Digging In The Creekbed

Now, if any house should be haunted, it should be mine. Built in 1872, it was used as a tuberculosis patient camp for several years. Colorado's infamous cannibal, Alferd Packer, was a frequent guest (apparently, none of the other guests got eaten). Just behind the house is a shelter cave that was used by Indians off and on for centuries. It even looks like it should be haunted. It has a creepy, spooky cellar that looks like it came straight out of a horror movie.

So by now you're probably wondering well? Is it? Truth is, I don't know for sure. But outside the house sure seemed to be, one summer back in the late 70's. This was the summer of the omninous [insert spooky music score] Digging in the Creekbed

Now you'd do well to wonder what could be so ominous about someone digging in a creekbed, for pete's sake? Well, my friends, what made it ominous is thus: Starting in mid-June, and continuing into October, every night at almost exactly 11:00 PM the digging would start, and continue until about 3:00 AM. Shine a light down there, yell out to whoever was doing the digging, and the digging continued. But step outside, and it stopped instantly.

Now I can tell you, after all the digging I did in that creekbed that there's no mistaking the sound of a shovel being shoved into wet sand, and then the sand being thrown off the shovel. The rythmic slunk...shlink! cannot be mistaken for anything else by anyone familiar with hearing it.

But what made this digging most mysterious of all, was that time and again we'd scour the creekbed for any signs of where the digging was occuring, only to find nothing. Every inch of the creekbed was completely undisturbed. True, trying to scour every inch of that jungle was a challenge, but we were frustratedly curious enough to do it.

And then it just stopped, never to be heard again. I guess Mr Spooky finally found what he was looking for, or just gave up. But my younger brother and my memories haven't been able to give this up. We may dig up the creekbed somday yet...