When Horses Run...

Day 2 - ▼
I happen to live in the most haunted county in South Carolina, USA. There is a favorite famous legend of the Gray Man who appears in Pawleys Island just before a hurricane hits to warn people to get off the island. Do a little research about the area where you live. Is there a haunted house, stories of a spooky building where weird things happen, or other supernatural legend in your area? Find out about one, and write a short story, poem, or creative non-fiction article about it. Whatever you decide, make the legend come alive!




At the end of my dead-end street, there’s a walking trail in an old train bed. Daytime, it is a busy place, with dog walkers, bicyclists, mothers with kids.

Don’t walk the trail in dead of night. I won’t. Ever again.

Two horsemen gallop out of town. You can hear their thundering hooves getting closer and closer, feel the wind as they rush by and hear the sounds fade away. Prudence says step to the side: one does. Perhaps, it is the clang of shoe on stray rock or the swirls of dust as they pass, maybe the sight of leaves awhirl on a windless night, or the creak of saddle leather. Never actually seen them, no fresh hoofmarks show up in flashlight lit dirt, but there is no mistaking the sounds of two galloping steeds.

One story tells of the bank robbers who shot the clerk back in 1858, Bullet holes still tell the tale in the store downtown and the historical accounting of the deed tells of those, locked in the bank vault who suffocated before they were found. The robbers escaped on horseback down the train tracks outrunning both the sheriff and the 12:04 out of Ann Arbor. Some say they were headed out Gregory way to divide up their take. But only one rider thundered through Gregory that afternoon and no one knows what happened to the other. Neither was ever seen again.

They shrug and say that maybe he went to Hell. Hell, Michigan, that is. Yes, there’s a town named Hell (four miles away from Pinckney) and strange things have happened there as well. When Hell freezes over, you know it is cold! Spine-chilling cold. There are tales of hearing coins clanking in the chapel there and of a lone rider on moonlit nights. Folks receive postcards with burned edges mailed from the post office in Hell and they still feel warm to the touch when they arrive days later.

Did the other rider have a hell of a time that night? Who knows? But out on the riding trail that one evening when we heard the horses galloping towards us, and our dog barked and then whined behind me, when the moon was full and we thought it was all a joke, we heard the horses, felt the breeze as they rushed by and we believed. Still do.



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