Storytime Tapestry E-zine

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Halloween Contest

November 3, 2007

Today’s Announcement

Happy Birthday Cliff Dewitt dewittnancy@sbcglobal.net from your friends at Storytime Tapestry

The new writers and poets for Storytime Tapestry keep coming in and I love it.  I sincerely hope that you do too!  Today we welcome Susan Richard, writer #444 and newest poet for Storytime Tapestry.  Please email her and welcome her to the fold.

Halloween contest   

Some points to clarify.  There will be two contests running simultaneously.  We will have a Halloween Contest for the best writer for Halloween stories and one for the best poet for Halloween poems.

Contest closes for submissions on November 5.  That means I will not accept anymore submissions after that, but I will continue to run the stories as long as they were sent in to me before that date until they there are no more stories or poems left in the queue.

There will be the main e-zine and the special treat issue will be replaced with a place for an additional contest entry.  This additional entry is by no means to be treated as if it is the publisher’s choice.  I am simply replacing the special treat feature with this one to be able to get more entries out at a time. You, the voter will decide who is the best writer, and who is the best poet.

Each day I will run stories and poems, and I will have a running list of what has been published to date at the bottom of the main e-zine.  These, I repeat, are published to date.  Do not write to me and tell me that your story or poem does not appear in this list.  It won’t until I have actually published it.  However if you are not sure if I received your entry at all you can always email me to enquiry about that.

The link to the archives will be posted with the published entries.  Your job is to read the submissions and if you have missed any or you would like to reread any, by all means go back to the archives, they will all be there according to the day they were published.

Voting takes place after the last entry is published; details to follow.

Halloween Stories

~**~**~

The Weeping Ghost

Earla Hollon

My grandfather was a layman Pentecostal preacher, he told my mother this story when she was little but swore to her that it was the truth.  When my grandfather was a young boy, his little sister died.  Soon after her death, her ghost started appearing around the house sobbing pitifully, never saying anything but scaring my great grandmother and my grandfather and his other siblings severely.  One day as my grandfather was about to open the gate in their front yard the little ghost sister appeared before my grandfather, standing on the outside of the gate, not saying anything, just sobbing.  As my grandfather was both scared and startled he kicked at the ghost, of course, he felt nothing; but the little girl ghost vanished and was never seen again.

Earla Hollon
ehollon@fulbright.com

~**~**~

Rattling Chains

Earla Hollon

When my great grandmother was a young woman, she lived in the country in Arkansas, isolated, with no neighbors close by.  My great grandmother's first husband was not a very nice man and would often leave her and her very young children home alone for days on end, with very little food,
and since this was before the telephone was invented, she would have no way to contact anyone.  Once during one of her husband's prolonged absences, my great grandmother started hearing the sound of chains clinking and a low moaning noise in the attic of her small cabin.  This scared my great grandmother dearly, and she heard the noises often at night and occasionally during the day.  When her husband returned home she told him of her fear that the attic was haunted by "Haints" (my great grandmother always called ghosts Haints).  Her husband laughed at her and told her she was stupid and imagining things, he did not even bother to investigate the attic and for a couple of days, while her husband was home, my great grandmother did not hear any noises coming from the attic and so she believed that she was indeed imagining the sounds of clinking chains and moaning.  After a couple of days being at home, my great grandmother's husband grew bored and decided to go back to town, it was early dusk when he stepped out of the cabin to get his horse from the barn.  He had only taken a few steps towards the barn, when a large bobcat with a trap attached to one of its poor front paws, with a length of chain trailing behind it,  sprang from the open attic
window landing directly in front of him, scaring him badly in the process  The bobcat ran away in the dusk.  My great grandmother's husband did delay his trip back to town long enough to block the opening in the attic and that was the last time that my great grandmother heard Haints in the attic.

Earla Hollon
ehollon@fulbright.com

~**~**~

Can You Hear The Baby Cry?

Earla Hollon

When I was about 5 years old, my Aunt and Uncle were expecting their first baby.  My Uncle was in the Army at the time and my Aunt was living at home with her parents; but decided to come and stay with my parents for a couple of days for a change of pace.  She had not been long at our
house when she started hearing a baby cry.  As my parents lived in the country and we had no close neighbors there was no chance that she was hearing a baby from a neighbor's house.  My mother said she heard the baby crying also, but I didn't hear the baby crying, nor did my sister
or father and after my Aunt left to go back to her parents' house, my mother no longer heard a baby crying.  However, several years later, when I was 16, I became pregnant and was still living at home with my parents when I started hearing a baby cry when I was in my bedroom, my
mother heard the baby crying also, but again no one else ever heard the baby crying, except for my mother and I.  The entire time I was pregnant we heard a baby crying frequently in my bedroom, but none of our neighbors had a baby.  There were no babies were living close to us, and
after my son was born, neither my mother nor I ever heard any baby crying other than my son.

Earla Hollon
ehollon@fulbright.com

~**~**~

Who Was That Woman?

Earla Hollon

When I was about 15 or 16, my oldest sister was out on a date, it was around 11:00 p.m. at night and my younger brother and my Dad were in their bedrooms sleeping.  My Mother and I were watching TV when I noticed that my Mother was staring down the hallway that lead to the
bedrooms.  In front of my brother's bedroom, I saw an apparition of a slender, rather tall woman with long dark wavy hair, I only saw her for a few seconds and then she just was gone.  My mother looked at me and could tell that I was scared and she asked me "What did you see"?  When
I described what I had seen, she replied that she had seen the same thing and she was very scared thinking that something bad had happened to my sister, as my sister had long dark wavy hair, although she was not slender and not that tall; however, my mother went into her bedroom and
woke up my Dad; telling him what we had seen; but, of course, there was nothing he could do.  My sister arrived home shortly after this incident and when my mother questioned her my sister said that nothing had happened to her and that everything was fine. 

I don't remember exactly how much time passed after that incident, but it was only a few days later when my Dad's brother called to tell us that his wife had committed suicide.  My Aunt was a very lovely woman; but suffered from a mental illness and periodically had to be institutionalized and had previously tried to commit suicide.  One of the last times that my mother and Aunt saw each other my Aunt told my mother that if my mother died before she did; that she would dance on my
mother's grave with bells on her feet.  My mother replied that she wouldn't like that; she would want my Aunt to be sad.  My Aunt insisted that she would be happy for my mother when she died.  My Aunt was a tall, slender woman with long wavy, dark brown hair.      

Earla Hollon

ehollon@fulbright.com

~**~**~

The Doctor’s Wife

Lynn Stevenson

   When my mother was pregnant with my baby sister, she would spin off some tale tales. The one of these that sticks out the most in my mind is the story of the rich doctor's wife who died in childbirth back in the 1890's or right around the turn of the century.

      My mother never could remember the family's name or the specific location this was supposed to have happened, but she was adamant that my great-grandmother swore it was true and that was good enough for her, since Grandma Molly was an Irish sainted woman who never lied or gossiped about such trivial things. 

      The young doctor came from a wealthy Bostonian family and moved down here after his residency at the Harvard Medical School. A month after he moved down here his future wife followed him and they established his practice in or near Laurinburg, NC. Within six months they married and she was pregnant with their child. As her due date approached there was no reason to anticipate anything going wrong or to even think of the worst case scenario. Her husband was trained as a general practitioner, not as an obstetrician, so when the days passed he became increasingly apprehensive about delivering their child. Obviously he was the only doctor for miles around and the responsibility ultimately fell on him.  

      The labor began and soon passed into days. After the third day in labor she developed either sepsis or some other blood borne infection and died, the full term baby still inside. The grieving husband never thought to attempt a c-section and took their bodies to the nearby funeral home to be embalmed. Three days later there was an elaborate town funeral with an open casket displaying the wife covered in the family diamonds, emeralds, and pearls. In attendance in the crowd were two vagrants who came up with the idea of robbing her grave after nightfall.

      Later that night after the town had been lulled into the strains of impending sleep, the two men went into the cemetery with two shovels and began to dig into the freshly covered grave. They were able to get the woman's coffin out of the ground and opened it. One of the men pried her corpse out of the coffin and attempted to remove the pearl necklace from around her neck while the other man tried to wrestle her 3 carat diamond engagement ring and two other diamond and emerald encrusted rings from her fingers. Suddenly she sat up and demanded to know who they were and what was going on.

      The men got up and ran off into the darkness screaming that they had seen the Devil himself and were going to find the nearest church to ask God to forgive them for disturbing her ghost and her grave. They left her open grave site and casket exposed to the damp night air, never looking back. The abandoned jewelry lay discarded outside of the cemetery gates, and were found by the caretaker the next morning.

      At about 1:30 that night there was a heavy pounding knock on the doctor's front door. Thinking that one of his patients needed him, he ran down the stairs wearing nothing but his nightshirt. Imagine his surprise when he opened the door and there stood his deceased wife still pregnant with their child, her hair and clothes all muddy and disheveled, demanding to know what had happened to her.

      According to my mother, the woman delivered the baby that morning and lived to have three other children, all of whom outlived her. She outlived her husband by 15 years and died of old age in her late 70's. She was active in her church and local politics for many years. Her jewelry was recovered from the caretaker and the men who attempted to rob her were never found, or they never admitted their innocence or guilt out loud. Otherwise people would have believed them crazy as loons.  

Lynn Stevenson

Pugmom37@aol.com

Halloween Poetry Corner

~**~**~

 A TRICK-OR-TREAT TRADITION

Susan Richard

They parade down every street in town,
Ghosts, Goblins & Witches too...
Knocking on every door they can,
To beg for treats from you.
"Trick-Or-Treat" you will hear them sing,
As they ring your bell or knock...
Then with smiling eyes they will "Thank you,"
And then head for the next block.
When their bags get "Oh, so heavy,"
They will head back home to investigate...
This huge stash of sugary goodies,
That has kept them up so late.
While Mom or Dad inspects each treat,
Knowing that you can NEVER be "Too Safe"...
All the costumed little RugRats,
Find it mighty hard to wait.
OK, OK... ONE piece before bed...
Don't forget to brush your teeth,
Don't you worry now, sweet Angels...
You have enough to last for weeks and weeks!

Susan Richard

Susan Richard

HWSangels2Kids@aol.com

~**~**~

Readers Feedback

Published Stories and Poems to date; only works that have been published already will appear here.

If you would like to review some the entries before voting please go to this link:  http://archives.zinester.com/98907

Story Contest

Name:                          Title:                                                                Date:

Tanja Cilia                    Present Tension – The Novel                            Oct 30

Violet Apted                 Whatever Happened to Grandma?                    Oct 30

Bill Walker                   The Devil’s Night                                              Oct 30

Hart Dowd                   I’m Alive, I’m Alive                                          Oct 30

John Pagan                   Fury In The Garden                                          Oct 31

Janice Marler                Pandora’s Box                                                 Oct 31

David Wainland            Bullet Hole View                                              Oct 31

Hart Dowd                   Evangeline Your Neighbourhood for

                                    Halloween                                                        Nov 1

B.J. Cassady                The Other                                                         Nov 1

Corina Carrasco           Pumpkin Head                                                  Nov 1

Vance Agee                 Demon                                                             Nov 1

Arthur Levine               Staring Into the Face of Death on Halloween Nov 2

Mary Ann Reed            Halloween was a Serious Matter                       Nov 2

Mary Ann Reed            The Basement Steps                                         Nov 2

Cheryl Williams            The Night the Devil Came to Visit: A True

                                    Story                                                                Nov 2

Earla Hollon                 The Weeping Ghost                                          Nov 3

Earla Hollon                 Rattling Chains                                      Nov 3

Earla Hollon                 Can You Hear The Baby Cry?              Nov 3

Earla Hollon                 Who Was That Woman?                                  Nov 3

Lynne Stevenson          The Doctor’s Wife                                            Nov 3

Poetry Contest

Name:                          Title:                                                                 Date:

Cynthia Groopman       October Happenings                                         Oct 30

Conrad S. Cardinal       Three Witches                                                  Oct 31

Larry Siemens              The Halloween Bonehead                                 Nov 1

Larry Siemens              On the Highway to Halloween               Nov 1

Sharon Bryant              The Little Ghost                                                Nov 2

Susan Richard              A Trick-Or-Treat Tradition                               Nov 3