Chapter 16 (Part 1)

About a year and a half ago, my best friend of 15+ years and I took a trip out to my family farm, at night, after getting out of our second shift job. It was a nice, clear, crisp early fall night in Michigan. We were sitting there, just chit chatting away and watching the night sky, when he asked a very peculiar question. He said, "This place has always had a strange feel to it, almost like you are being watched. Did something happen here? Something bad, I mean." I just laughed a little, and I replied that I only knew the stories that my father told me. I told him about how when my great grandpa purchased the farm in the early 30s, that it was a big family project to keep it up and running. Relatives would come and help with the chores, and in exchange, be able to hunt the land for food. My great grandpa had a cousin that came over one day, helped out, and asked if he could go out later that night to do some coon hunting. He of course, got permission, and set out shortly after sundown. The next morning, my great grandpa noticed that his vehicle was still out in driveway, even though he should have left hours before. It was still dark out, but my great grandpa knew the are of the land he would be hunting, and set off in that direction. He walked back towards the back pasture field, and as he came around a bend, he hollered my cousin's name. He heard a strange, yet familiar voice answer him back. He said that the voice chilled him to the bone, that something wasn't quite right about it. So he called out again, and this time, the voice was for sure not his cousins, but almost like a growl imitating his voice. He said he high tailed it out of there, never looking back. When the sun came up, he took a big group of relatives and farm hands to look for him. They found his gun, loaded, but not fired, his hat, which was covered in a brown liquid spattering, and that was all. My great grandpa looked for any signs of him for over 60+ years. The only time he ever held out hope of finding him, my dad said, was when the swamp in the pasture fields by where he was supposed to be hunting dried up.