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.
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