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October Story
by
Christopher J Zaccari

I had put the word out, as I always do in Autumn for Scary stories and legends of Jacksonville Maryland, the town where I had grown up. Every year I tend to get the same three or four stories that the town isn't so proud of, but have come to accept over the years. “The Forest Phantom” for example where four people were shot with a small caliber handgun, killing one and paralyzing families in the Jacksonville community in the early 80s. The one place you didn’t wanna be in the mid 80s was sitting in your car on the dark road after the sun went down. A decade earlier, the body of a young woman was found dumped in a refrigerator on the edge of a marsh in what is now the most prized development in the Jacksonville town limits. Some say, you get an odd feeling walking down Overshot court at night, it’s like a sadness following you as you quicken your pace walking down the road. Probably the most common one I get is the standoff, on Blenheim Rd that ended with a man dead and a street traumatized for over six hours.

However this year someone had reached out on my Facebook messenger, asking to meet in person. Now I normally don’t just meet up with strangers, mostly because I tend to go out with a bunch of RED flags, and the odds of this being one of their new boyfriends or husbands is quite high. I either bring out the best in people or the worst, and it’s really hard to tell in the moment till you're being stabbed with a plastic fork. I read over the DM, and for some reason I could tell the person writing to me was older, and the form of communication wasn’t her first choice, so I wrote her back that evening and set a time to meet the next day over coffee, in a public place. During our conversation, she made it very clear, she wanted no one to know her family’s name or where she had grown up. That she would be for the most part anonymous, and if people figured it out on their own that was fine, but I was not to divulge her identity. I, of course, agreed to these terms, and was very happy to meet her and hear her story. I don’t mind saying, I had trouble sleeping that night even though not a moment of the story had been hinted at.

The next morning, I woke up later than I had hoped and rushed off to Bagelmister in town to get two large coffees and fill my pocket with sugar and creamer, because like a idiot, I completely forgot to ask what she takes in her coffee, and rushed off to the senior center to meet up. As I pulled up in my Jeep, covered in skeletons and mermaids for Halloween, I drew the normal crowd of children, pointing and laughing and parents, pulling out their cell phones to take pictures. Though there was an older woman sitting on a bench by herself overlooking the soccer fields, her back turned towards me. I calmly walked up behind her, carrying the coffee and asked if she was supposed to be meeting someone to tell a story? She nodded her head yes with a pretty smile, and I sat next to her and gave her her coffee. Grateful she took the coffee and settled into her seat. She had asked if my grandparents were the ones that owned the toy store that was in Jacksonville, to which I said immediately yes that was my first job, she nodded her head with a smile. In my observations, she was in her late 70s, frail with a good sense of style. You could still see a glint of childhood in her eyes, and she seemed to be very happy with her life. She told me she had lived in this town, her entire life, watched many people go and many new ones replace them, but there’s one story she needed to tell. A story that not many people talked about anymore not because they’ve forgotten it but because most people that knew it are dead. she felt if she didn’t tell it now, no one would ever tell, because secrets in this town tend to die with the people that know them. That a long time ago, three men were killed for no reason, that bigotry and fear drove people to do things they never would do. If this was her last chance to tell the story, a stranger would be as good as any to hear it and possibly learn from it so it would never happen again.

The story started in the 1930’s and back then there was very little out here to call a town, a feed store for the farmers was in the center of what is now Jacksonville, A train hub where the post office is now, and a handful of houses. If you needed to pray on a Sunday, you had three choices, Chestnut Grove, just down sweet Air road that was for the Presbyterians. Fairview was on Jarrettsville Pike for the Methodist, and if you were Catholic well…… you prayed at home, or went to Saint John’s eight miles away. You would need a horse, or a car and you could go a whole day without seeing one of them. I’t was a simple place back then mister Zaccari, farmers and farm hands. The factory had shut down in Phoenix, and the town of Warren was underwater, their was a mill there too you see. So most people here had little to no money. WWI was still on the minds of the people around, mostly because the men in town were all veterans. No one came back the same as when they left. My mom would tell stories of bouncing in my great grandfather‘s lap. He would suddenly stop, and grab her, hold her real close to his chest and cry uncontrollably.

It’s amazing to think what they went through, and sad to see them all come home doing the prosperity of the 20s, just to get one meal a day by the 30s if they were lucky. It wasn’t much opportunity for entertainment back, then, but in the fall in the spring a Traveling ministry would come to town. Folks from all over would come to see these people in their tents. And every year they came, they would set up right next to the feed store. They really didn’t have much choice. Most of it was woods or filled with crops. So a town with the population of 30 on a good day would swell to almost 200 on the weekends when they would do their ministry. There would be dancing, and a potluck where everybody would bring food to share with their neighbors. There would be music, mostly religious, but music nonetheless that people could sing to. But on one certain year, there was no dancing, there was no food. On this occasion, there was a Baptist preacher telling the people to change their ways. To not trust the colored folk, or the Jew., fire and brimstone. Can you imagine what that must’ve been like? There was a five year-old with her mother at this ministry revival. The mother had told the little girl how much fun this would be every year that she had gone, it was something to remember. But this year was new, and for a five-year-old to stay up past 6 o’clock was asking a lot. But as her mother stayed grinding her teeth, and listening with her neighbors. This little girl decided she had had enough and she went to go find a cozy place to lay down to take a nap till church was over and she could go home.

We had to take a minute here for a slight coughing fit, a sip of black coffee and a Virginia Slim. I had almost forgotten the sugar and creamer, so I reached into my pocket and clumsily drop the sugar in the creamer all over my lap. I asked her if she wanted any, and she told me no, that she liked it black like her men, with the slightest smile on her face. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one that had seen airplane. We both giggled and laughed as she smoked your cigarette. I did, however, find it odd that she very rarely looked me in the eye. She seemed to be more focused on her surroundings, looking over the field and the tall trees in the distance. I got the feeling that she was used to being alone, and being around people was more of a going out event, as opposed to sitting at home all alone. I started to ask myself how did she get here and as I looked around the parking lot I did see an old Buick, the size of a yacht sitting in the parking lot. I assume this was her car, because no one in their right mind would buy that and try to park it in any parking spot nowadays. As I was thinking this to myself, I managed to spill coffee all over the front of my jacket, proving that I was just a child stuffed in a man’s body, she laughed and so did I.

Where was I, oh I remember, the ministry had ended for the evening, and some would say the air was filled with hatred, and ignorance. Around this time, the mother started to panic about her missing child. Well, a crowd of 200 people got around very fast. people started to call her name and when there was no response, and all the little girls in the crowd had been checked, the mood had completely changed. People started to get frantic, suggesting she must’ve been taken. Well, that was all that the men needed to hear. They formed a party and rode out on horseback and piled into old Ford trucks. They had gone off in so many different directions, but there were only two roads in and two roads out. Later that night gunshots were heard on Papermill Road. And as the story goes a group of men who had probably rode in on the train, a lot of people did back then. It was an easy way for them to get around and find work, and if they couldn’t find work, they would hop right back on the train and travel a little further down the line. So this group of people had gotten in their mind that the strangers must've taken a little girl and they needed to be questioned.

The only problem with this is, no one was under the illusion that they were going to drive him all the way to the sheriff station. On that night, three innocent men were hung in the tallest tree around what was the Nike base. You see that area used to be a forest and a 3 acre field. Made it real easy not to be seen from the road but close enough to hear when the train went through. Men back then weren’t really hiding, they just had a feeling a shame that went with them wherever they went. they’d see towns with a bunch of houses and people way better off because they have a home. Most of these people that were traveling by train didn’t have a home, or they had lost their family. Or in some cases, very rare if you ask me, but some men would feel so much shame they would turn themselves into the thing they were running from. They were surrounded by violence. They’d become violent men. If they were around alcohol, they would become alcoholics. It was a shame really, sometimes my great grandparents would let them sleep in the barn for the night, so they would have some shelter from the rain and the snow. I remember outside on our fence post they had carved a smiley face and a X, I never knew what it met but it would make me smile.

Well anyway, these man we’re beaten to a inch of their lives, for no reason, you see. The little girl woke up from to barn and was shocked when see looked out of the doors to see only a handful of people there. She had walked over to one of the volunteers and asked if she knew her mother, and the bell went off that this was the missing girl. So they got the rest of the people to drive with them to the little girls home. By the time she had gotten home, the men a mile away we’re already dead. Strong up by the neck, the men would later say it looked like they were dancing. The next morning the news had gotten around that the little girl was found, and safe at home. When this news got to the group of men that had murdered three innocent people the sheriff was called.

The men were cut from their ropes and laid flat under the Sycamore tree. Some fled, not wanting to be implicated with a murder, others stayed because they felt they had done nothing wrong, and some stayed because they knew it was the right thing to do. I don’t know exactly what was said in that field at the feet of three corpses, but I know it was written up in the report as an industrial accident. I don’t know how they were able to swing that, but no one questioned it. That ministry never came back to town, they slipped away during the night, missing out on the last two shows. The next year we had a great time with a new preacher and everything was uplifting. Though the crowd was way smaller, and everyone was more calm than usual. I guess the memories of the year before overshadow most of the fun. I don’t know exactly what happened to the bodies, I do know there’s lots of woods around here to choose from. And the occasional farming accident usually disappeared somewhere in those woods. It was a different time, and a different town. This town that we sit at now It’s built on the foundation of that town right or wrong. This is part of that foundation, and it shouldn’t be forgotten and overlooked.

WOW that’s one hell of a story, And way more than I could have asked for, thank you so much. She smiled and shook her head, as she lit up another for another Virginia Slim. She stood up, a little shaky on her feet and thanked me for my time. As she started to walk to her car, she turned slightly and said,” Mr. Zaccari if I’m around next year, I’ll tell you another story, you seem to be the only one in this town interested in hearing it.” I told her that I would be more than happy to hear any stories that she had to tell and that I had one question for her. Was the little girl in the story, your mother? She smiled, looked around her surroundings again and turned away. I guess I’ll never know for sure, put it in the back of my mind. I feel like this was a family confession. She did what I could only assume to be a 40 point turn in that giant Buick and pulled out of the senior center. And now all I can wonder is Will I ever see her again? I truly hope so

I heard a disturbing story today about the town of Jacksonville, Maryland. Apparently, during the early 1900s when Warren Mill was in its golden years, a traveling ministry would come through and set up in the fields near Jacksonville. For the people that lived out here,It was like a carnival or some odd attraction. A chance to get right with the Lord and hear new music. Well, according to an older woman, I met today at the senior center. Her mother would tell her a story, that would chill me to the Bone. 
The traveling ministry would preach hate, would stir up peoples fears, and condemn anyone that didn’t believe in the same God that they did. During one of these nights, a child had disappeared, and the towns people were thrown into such a frenzy, listening to this preacher, they all went out in search of the man that could’ve kidnapped this child. At some point during the night, they found an encampment of poor individuals that would sell their skills as day labor. Three people were strung up at the edge of town where the Nike base used to be from the tallest tree, as the towns people watched.
Oddly enough, the little girl was found the next day sleeping in a barn, completely unharmed. When I asked what happened she said she had gotten sleepy and wandered off to the barn so that when it was over, she could go home with her mother. Apparently the local sheriff covered this up, and it was reported as an industrial accident, even the nicest towns have the darkest secrets.  true, or not, it’s still the twisted legend of the place where I grow up. Where I live today with my little girl. I wonder what other strange stories and legends surround this area. 

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