Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

My son plays with the little girls next door a lot. Their trampoline is in our yard so everyone can play on it, and they all have fun. Sometimes I go out and join them for a while. And, routinely, they ask if I can tell them some ghost stories.

One thing that I always try to do is to keep my ghost stories reality-based. If I’m telling a ghost story, it’s not just an average campfire story. Mine are actual incidents and folklore I’ve collected over the years. And one of my go-to stories is about the Deserter’s Cave, from the Henry Shoemaker book “Tales of the Bald Eagle Mountains,” which is my favorite.

The story happened during the Civil War. It’s easy to pinpoint this one, time-wise, because it began was a man who didn’t want to fight the war. His name was Mike. He received a letter ordering him to report to Williamsport to join the Union Army, but he decided to jump off the train halfway there instead.

So he hid out in the mountains in Wayne Township, near McElhattan. He spent several days out there, hiding out from anyone who might discover him. Obviously, doing that sort of thing will eventually make you seek shelter, and you can’t exactly just check into a hotel in this situation.

One day, he discovered two rocks that were blocking a tunnel, and pried them apart, propping one up. When he got inside, it led to a huge cavern. Mike decided that this was going to be his new home, and he settled down in the cavern to spend the night.

That didn’t go as well as he’d hoped.

He slept until night, but he woke up to find himself surrounded by the ghosts of several Native American warriors.

The one in the lead was seven feet tall. They were described as silver-grey in color, and sort of glowing (like fox-fire, said Shoemaker) sort of like a Force-ghost from Star Wars. (This is a reference that would be completely lost on a bunch of children, so I never bother.)

They weren’t, to put it mildly, excessively happy with him. The cave was a burial location for many of the beast and bravest warriors that the Susquehannock tribe had ever seen, and Mike was not qualified. They’d fought wars and done courageous things, and he was hiding out to avoid serving his country. (This is about the point when most of the kids have ceased paying attention to the story, and gone back to bouncing on the trampoline like insane people, which gets me off the hook and means I can save this same story for next time.)

They chased him from the cave. Shoemaker, who always had a very dramatic way of phrasing things, said that their exact words were, ”Get out of this place, you are a vile coward! This cavern never sheltered one of your kind before! Begone, wretched craven!”

With that, Mike began to think he’d have been better off going to war. He fell from the stone shelf he’d been lying on, cutting open his forehead, and ran. Shoemaker wrote,””Stumbling to his feet, he lunged toward the opening as best he could. He plunged out into the darkness, and as he did so he heard the tall gate-rock which he had dislodged fall back into position.”

He made his way back down the mountain, and waited by a tree until he was able to climb on a passing train. When the conductor came around, Mike didn’t have a ticket, but he assured the conductor that the government would pay his way. He said,”Say, brother, don’t do it, I reckon you’ll get reward enough by carrying a damned deserter in Billsport.”

It’s a neat little local ghost story, and the kids probably know it by heart at this point. With Halloween coming around….Well, they’re way more concerned with the candy, but you never know. They may remember Henry Shoemaker, too.