Growing up in Appalachia, I explored many abandoned places across the countryside. The scariest of them all was a homestead deep in the forest.
There was something at the bottom of the well.
Just a child then, I was spending the night over at a friend’s house in the rural Appalachian foothills of Northeast Alabama. He told me about an abandoned homestead deep in the woods behind his parents’ land. Like many children growing up in the countryside of the American South, my friend and I roamed the pastures and forests of our hometown freely. Property lines meant little to us.
He promised me the long walk would be worth it, and I agreed to accompany him the next day. We started our trek midmorning. My memory now decades old, it seemed like we were walking forever, partly because he lost his way a few times. We finally emerged into a compact clearing, the site of our destination. To this day, it’s one of the spookiest places I have ever been.
The small house, partially covered by moss and teetering on the edge of collapse, must have been close to a century old. We gingerly made our way inside, careful not to put our feet down too heavily. We had explored similarly precarious structures before, and a floor collapse can quickly ruin an otherwise good day.
Despite the abundant sunshine, the interior of the house was eerily dim. The little available light revealed an unsettling scene: The rooms were still almost completely furnished. Besides a heavy coat of dust and a copious amount of spider webs, furniture was just as the house’s mysterious occupants had left it. Who were they? What happened to make them leave all this behind? These questions flashed through my mind as we surveyed each room.
Squinting against the sun, we eventually stepped back outside. I spotted the foundation of what was once likely a barn on the outer edge of the clearing. It didn’t seem worth investigating; the blackened plane where it stood suggested it had burned long ago. Walking around the house from the front door, I looked over the yard. There was a young tree growing around back, the only one in the brief opening of the forest.
Underneath its shade was the well.
We walked over and peered into its depth. A long distance below, water reflected the tree-filtered sky and the tiny outlines of our faces. Was this well ever capped? Another question that made me wonder if something dreadful had happened here.
My friend went to walk around again, but I lingered for a moment. I still can’t fully explain what I saw next except to say that perhaps it was a child’s overly stimulated imagination – I spied a figure moving across the bottom of the well. Supernaturally, it never rippled the water, and it appeared from then disappeared into the rock wall.
I lurched away immediately, stumbling backward toward the house. I called for my friend, telling him it was time to leave. I ran to the edge of the clearing, and he confusedly followed along. I told him what I saw, and we double-timed it in the direction of his house.
We made a pact to never return to the clearing. Some things are better left unexplained.
This short story was an excerpt from my feature article “Haunted South: Beyond the Grave,” which is a collection of my favorite ghost stories from the American South.
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