Ghosts across Kentucky

5. Animal Ghosts

Chap-rer {) Anilnal GhOSlS 1. "Pig VIoman of The VVoods" My brother told me this story, which he claimed was a favorite of his scout troop. It's a story about a pig woman of the woods. Many years ago there was this young lady who lived out in these woods with her parents, who raised hogs that were caught in traps in the woods. We're not talking about the fat, tame pigs that people nowadays raise. We're talking about big wild razorback pigs that were caught in the woods. There aren't any pigs like these left in the woods, or very few at least, but in those days it was said that you couldn't go but a few feet in any direction without bumping into one. The father of this young lady that this story is about was about six foot, five inches tall, and weighed 300 pounds, all muscle. He would go out and catch these razorbacks in these traps and then carry them back with his bare hands for five or ten miles to his cabin. One day, he went out to the pen to quiet the hogs down, and they went totally wild and tore him to pieces. Killed him right there on the spot. While he was still screaming, his wife ran out ofthe cabin with a shotgun, but she couldn't shoot without hitting her husband. So she grabbed the ax from the woodpile and jumped into the pig pen and started hacking at these hogs that were killing her husband. Soon, she was overpowered and torn apart, too. Now, the daughter, young and pretty as she was, was also a very brilliant lady. So she stayed in the cabin. But it wasn't long until the hogs went totally wild and tore down the fence and came crashing into the cabin. The 74 Ghosts across Kentucky daughter hid in the clothes closet, but the hogs found her. But instead of killing her, they cut her up pretty bad with their teeth, and took turns rooting her body around the room. They left her in a bloody heap in the floor. About nine months later, she had her own baby girl. Well, it wasn't really a baby girl. It was half razorback and totally vicious. But the young mother, being insane from the attack, raised the pig girl into a pig-like woman, who was named Pig Woman. Soon thereafter, the young mother died. But Pig Woman lived on in the woods, busily occupied with tearing apart travelers after dark, long after her mother died. Some people say that you can still hear her snorting out there in the woods. You can believe me or not, but I've heard Pig Woman out there. Just to be safe, I always sleep with a knife nearby and next to a tree that I can climb into easy. From what I've been told, Pig Woman can't climb, and I never eat bacon or ham or sausage in these woods. My family and I lived in a little house next to the railroad track here in Harlan County. There was a creek between our house and the railroad track. Anyway, late at night, you could go outside in the backyard and look over toward the railroad track and see what looked like a big white dog. It had the reddest eyes you've ever seen, and they would glow real scary-like in the dark. These eyes would follow you anywhere you went in the yard, but this dog could never come across the track. So what these eyes looked like were big, glowing, red coals of fire. Late one night, my husband and I were walking down the road from our house, and this dog-like thing was following us from a distance. It never got very close, but its eyes would never leave you. Once you got to a certain spot in the road, this dog would just disappear. But you could go on down the road, turn around, come back, and the dog would reappear at the same spot where it had disappeared earlier. It happened like that every single time you were out at night. One of the strangest things about all of this is that the dog never made a sound. It never barked or whined. It truly never made a single sound as it walked, not even the crunching ofleaves. And it never left...