WARNING-⚠- animal carcass, murder, scary stuff
I used to live on a 36-acre farm about 45 minutes away from where I live now. I have many fond memories of this house. We had a barn, Quonset hut, and a few other small buildings, however the barn is the focus of this story. To explain the context of this story however, we need to go back about 90 or so years. The "founder" of our street, Fred Cox, didn't originally own his land. The story goes that he wanted to have a house near Lick Creek, which runs through all the land accredited to the street. But the land was occupied by a small village of Cherokee Indians, which are a huge part of our area's history. The Cherokee wouldn't give up the land though, because the creek and forests supplied an abundance of food, and if they moved, they might not be able to feed their little town. Cox wasn't going to give up the land though, so he set up camp on the other side of the creek, hidden in the greenery. Mind you, this man has a large family and some friends accompanying him, so he easily had 20 - 25 people on his side. In the quiet of the night, he and around 10 young men burned and ransacked their village, slaughtering all but a few women and babies, who were forced to leave. On that land is where my house was. Years later, his elderly son Richard Cox lived just up the gravel road from us. Anyways, we used to keep cattle for a friend who didn't have enough land on his farm, and we got a cut of the money that was earned from his meat business. We kept a variety of animals on our farm, but the cows will be the main focus.
One of the cows went missing one day when we counted them in the morning, so me and my little sister took it upon ourselves to find it. A few hours later, we found the cow's skeleton. It was only gone since that morning, so there was no way it would be bones already. On closer inspection, though, there were slivers of meat with teeth marks left on the bones, much like how a dog would leave a meaty bone from the pet store. It was eaten. I mean, we had coyotes in the area, but they couldn't get through our fence, and they couldn't have caught, eaten, and escaped without us hearing. Coyotes are damn loud. On our walk back, I felt uneasy. Like the trees were looking at me. Like they wanted to eat me, too. I didn't sleep well that night. The next day the skull of the cow was gone and placed on a tree. None of us had done it, and our nearest neighbors were crackheads who never came onto our property. Not like they could, the whole place was gated in. That night I went to go check the traps in the barn, as we were trying to catch a possum who had eaten a few of our chickens. Nothing. When I looked up, however, standing in front of me were two ghost figures; a young Cherokee boy and a woman who appeared to be his mother. They looked like real people, and I thought they were at first. The little boy pointed at me like I had done something wrong, and then the mother turned into the tree with the skull on it, but with eyes and legs, and ate the son. I ran so fast I put holes in the bottom of my little pink crocs. I had nightmares for years. So glad we moved.
I never liked that barn.