The Cross (Halloween Story)

The Cross by Lamckay

This is NOT a true story, however, I have been to the MHI grave yard and the descriptions of it are real. I have always believed in the possibility of the supernatural. I love reading ghost stories and watching horror films to receive prickly little goose bumps up and down my spine. I love it. I love the feeling of terror and not knowing what is going to happen next. It's just me.

It's probably why I convinced my friends to visit the MHI (Mental Health Institute) grave yard one Halloween night. I have been to the grave yard a couple of times before, alone and with friends. It is truly a weird sight to behold. To get there, you have to drive about a mile up a gravel road, park your car in a small ditch, hop over a fence, walk about five minutes through a corn field until you are greeted by a large white cross. The grave yard. You don't see any graves at first, only rusted metal markers. I don't know if they are graves or not, but it's pretty creepy. Farther back are the graves. Graves of the insane and mentally ill.

So, it was Halloween night, the last Halloween of the century, and I drug my friends out to the MHI grave yard. Equipped with flash lights and heavy jackets, it is always cold in Iowa on Halloween, we trudged through the corn field in into the grave yard. Grave yard of the mentally ill. My friends clung to each other as we entered the clearing. The tall white cross loomed out in front of us. "If some thing happens, our best bet is to go under that cross," I teased my friends. We laughed together and spit up to explore. The MHI grave yard has three main grave areas. Each area has about 20 graves. I made my way to the farthest area. The graves there were the oldest. Some were broken, some were sunken far into the ground, all were covered with green moss. I carefully avoided tripping on the sunken graves and tried to make out the lettering in the starless night. I couldn't. But I knew from experience none of the graves here had names, only numbers and dates of death. No one has been buried here for more then 100 years.

I felt the yellowing graves and tried to imagine why the people underneath me were placed in a mental health institute, when I felt a cold breath on my back. I stood still. I heard my friends laughing towards the corn field. Minutes passed and I dismissed the breath as a cold piece of wind. I went back to my thoughts.

There it was again. An icy breath on the back of my neck. This time it wasn't just cold, it also smelt like decay. A rotten stench filled my nose. I didn't stop to think about what had happened this time. I took of running to the cross. Underneath the cross, I stopped for breath. Finally regaining confidence, I looked up for my friends. I saw one. "Bill," I said gratefully, "I'm so glad your here." I walked towards Bill and the smell of decaying flesh hit me again. I tried to take Bill's hand but my arm flew though his hand. It wasn't Bill. The object smiled at me, his teeth black like tar, his hair ruffled in the wind. He was transparent. I saw through him. He asked me, "Is this cross going to protect you?"

I never found out. I ran away from that smelly man, though the corn field, and into my car where I waited for my friends with the radio turned all the way up. When they came back, I told them what happened. They think I'm full of crap.