Scary Stories, Rituals, and Urban Legends

The smiling woman

I grew up in a small desert town, it was hot, dry, and not a whole lot to do for a kid. Explore a whole bunch of nothing out in the heat, or stay in doors with the AC and play video games were about the two main choices, many of the teens once entering high school probably also did a lot of damage to their livers considering it had become tradition to substitute the boredom of not having much around with excessive partying.

My grandpa was a kind old man who made the best of our dreary little town. He'd often skip the local bar to head up to the Native reservation and drink at their bar. I've heard stories in my adult life of Native's on their reservations not being too kind to outsiders, but here it was different. I presume it may have had a lot to do with the fact we knew to respect them, if people from our town went up to one of the watering holes on the reservation we knew to be nice and if got a bit crowded we needed to be the first to leave. If any of the adults, like my grandpa, decided to go have a few beers up there they knew to not be rude, don't start any fights, and just enjoy the company.

But anyway, he always brought back odd tales and folklore to tell me on nights I'd spend a night over at his house when I was younger. See from a young age I had a fascination with the creepy and bizarre, don't get me wrong it ended up giving me more nightmares than I can count but it was worth it at the end of the day. One night when I was about 10 years old I was staying the night with him, we did the usual tradition. He drove me about 20 miles to another rag of a town that was lucky enough to have a McDonald's, got me my usual and himself something to eat, we enjoyed our meal, then headed back to his place.

By the time we got back it was night, which meant it was time for him to tell me some piece of creepy Native folklore, or some odd first hand account he was told by a Native during his weekly visit to the bar. To the best of my memory the story went like this:

When the White man first started settling around these parts the Native's protested, much to no avail, and they soon had almost no land to call their own. After going through every avenue they had to try and stop all of this a local shaman laid a curse on them. That one day a child of the White man would bleed onto the sacrificial stone sealing their fate. An ancient spirit would be summoned to chase the White man of their land. It would be a shapeshifter that would steal away all their children, any new child brought onto the land or born on it would be stolen until only the Native's remained. ...

I know, I know. Not very scary to an adult, or hell even a teen. But at 10 years old it gave me goosebumps anyway. I proceeded to ask him an onslaught of questions, all of which he didn't really have an answer for. I mean he only knew what he was told after all.

Fast forward a couple months and it was summer time! No more school for almost three months, just video games and the odd trip to a watering hole to get some swimming in. The day it all started just happened to be one of those days. My mom and my friend's mom (who happened to be friends with my mom, again small town) decided to take us up for a trip to swim. Happy as could be I got ready, swimming trunks on, goggles ready, sun screen forced onto me, and we were ready to go.

After several hours of swimming I decided I wanted to go exploring considering the fact the watering hole allowed for fairly dense brush and trees to grow for someways, maybe several football fields or so, and that was rare for where we lived. I ran off without a second thought besides yelling to my mom, "I'll be back!" to which my mom responded "Only 30 minutes! And be careful!" Giving no response to that as I looked behind me to see our parents talking and my friend enjoying the water, I disappeared into the brush.

I was having a grand ole' time pretending I was "The Crocodile Hunter" off to catch me a croc our two. Yes this was before he died, I always loved Steve Erwin. I ended up slipping on a muddy patch of dirt and cutting my hand rock. I inspected it closely, there was a bit of blood but not too bad. Giving myself the thumbs up that I was too hurt I continued on my journey. I came into a clearing where there was a fairly big rock and a little less vegetation than everywhere else, it didn't seem too odd to me as I figured the fauna were simply starting to thin out as I got further away. I climbed up onto the rock, one hand after another, until I stood on top.