....This being Halloween and all, I decided to see if there were any local legends concerning the "spiritual" around my town of Cassatt. Unfortunately, I had to go to Camden to find anything worth writing about ! I found an interesting legend concerning a woman called Agnes Of Glascow. Here's the skinny: According to tradition, she followed her lover in the British Army during the Revolutionary War. She searched through the wilderness to Camden, South Carolina. She died before finding him and was buried here under cover of darkness by King Haigler and his men. (King Haigler was an American Wateree Indian who befriended Europeans in South Carolina). According to local legend her ghost can be seen as she continues to walk to streets and roads in and near Camden, SC, still looking for her lover.

Cool, huh ? Well, I had to admit that the info. piqued my curiosity. So, having nothing better to do, I decided to visit the grave site.

As you might have been able to tell from the Agnes legend, Camden has been around for quite a long time, at least in terms of civilized American history. Archeologists have dug and poked around, and pretty much have an idea of how old Camden was laid out, stockade fences, battle parapets, and all. The British thought the place was pretty important at one time, hanging around to kick the mess out of the militia TWO times before they figured out that our forebears were going to make them leave no matter how many of said forebears died ( a rather unfortunate cultural trait we Southerners have ) in the process during the Revolutionary War.

During the war of Northern Aggression ( ahem ), Camden served as a supply base for the Confederates. The Yankees, being the spiteful types ( a rather unfortunate cultural trait those northerners have ) finally got around to burning a few buildings, robbing the local population, and more or less making sure that there wasn't any decent food to eat there ( something the Yankees had been doing to the South for years, anyways ) at around 1865 or so.

Anyways, across the street from Olde Camden is the Quaker Cemetery. The cemetery is only slightly younger than Olde Camden. Old, gnarled, dark barked trees shade the older, acid rain washed grey and black streaked headstones. The scripts describing who lays there is dulled and softened, the images etched into stone running like watery ink across a grey page, some blending in so that those images could have easily passed as a part of the stone, or a flaw in the stone, and certainly not anything made by the stone carver. Luckily, Agnes of Glascow's final resting place had a easy to read, this-is-a-historical-person marker over the grave. I did't know what I was expecting to find there, really. As I'd lived between two graveyards in Columbia before we moved to Cassatt, I'd learned that if you've seen one grave, you've seen them all. Ms. Agnes' resting place was no different. I sat on the brick border laid respectably at a distance around the grave and tried to will Ms. Agnes' spirit out. "AGNESSSS.....AGGGNESSSSS...." I tried. Well, the desired responses weren't forthcoming. I tried a different tact. " The British are coming ! The British are coming !" Still nothing. Dadgumit, I hadn't seen a ghost in over 5 years. I was determined to see hers.

The Quaker cemetery during the day is a scary enough place, so you can imagine that I was having some serious second thoughts about going into the place at 10:30 that evening. The word " terrifying " and the phrases " Don't go in there, you idiot ! " and " You COULD be home watching WWF instead of hanging around a GRAVEYARD ! " kept springing to mind. I stood beside the locked car barricade and peered into the darkness, trying to detect any movement or feeble sound, ready to either run, faint, or both, depending on the situation. I hung onto that moment of indecision and pole car barricade white knuckled and dry mouthed. Finally, with a supreme effort of will, I forced myself over the barricade.

My first steps were unsure. I'm positive that some part of my brain was arguing with another part of my brain, who was saying to my legs " Whoa, whoa, whoa ! What are you doing ? ", and who probably reasoned with the rational part of my brain that here, in the middle of the graveyard, was NOT the place to not be able to run or faint. After that, I glided along the small paths as quiet as the ghost I was looking for. Some thing flapped ( flapped ! like the snap of a flag limp and then suddenly caught by an ebbing then surging breeze ! ) enormously past my head on the way over to the grave. "It's probably just an owl. " I reasoned with myself. I kept moving quickly until I got to Agnes' marker, looked around cautiously, and then deposited my rear end on the same spot on the brick wall I had sat on that afternoon.

The wind kicked up a bit. I watched a few leaves tumble end over end, skitter and tick across the asphalt driveway, and then press up against the metal fence surrounding a family plot. The moon was in the 1/2 phase, so there was just enough light for the whiter headstones to glow, and for the grey headstones to be a darker grey. I cleared my throat. I tried willing up Agnes again. " Agnesss....AGGNNESSS..." I chanted in my mind. Off in the distance I heard a gate screech open and a few seconds later, a dog began to bark. "Aaagggnessss....AAGGNESSSS O GLASSCOW..." Overhead, something flapped ( flapped like a big sheet snapping in the wind on the clothesline ! ). "AGGNESSS....AGGNESSS....ARISE !" Suddenly, I felt foolish, absurd. If Agnes had heard me, she was no doubt laughing at this silliness. I could imagine that, in the spirit world over at the Quaker cemetery, all the ghosts were whooping it up and a-giggle at my cheesy attempts at bringing forth the spirits. I'd spent the last 40 minutes scaring myself loopy over something that, at that moment, I knew wasn't going to happen. I relaxed, looked over at Agnes' grave, and softly laughed. " You really had me going, ol'gal." I addressed the grave.

The walk back to the truck was a quick one. I was, after all, in a graveyard that shut the gates at a late afternoon hour. By all rights, I was probably trespassing. Besides, the place STILL gave me the heebie-jeebies. From the front gate I watched a Camden police officer whizz past, his blue lights flashing after the speeder that decided to pull over just 20 yards from the cemetery driveway and where I had backed the truck in." Oh, great." I grumbled aloud. I stood for the next 20 minutes hopping from foot to foot because I was getting cold and praying that that the police officer would, just this once if there is a God, miss seeing my truck parked at the cemetery gate. I could see the trucks dark silhouette, the cab beckoning me like a Siren luring a sailor to the rocks. I could see the dew collecting along the edge of the cargo bay and the windows misting over. I could see my breath, too.

Well, the officer, concluding his business with the errant, speeding citizen, pulled away without seeing the truck. I watched his tail lights drift away and get smaller as I quick stepped over to the truck, unlocked it, and slipped inside the cab. I felt pretty sure that the cop wouldn't be back any time soon, so I cranked up the vehicle, hit the windshield wipers, and flicked on the defroster. I watched the mist retreat from the edges where the wipers missed, and looked at the back windshield from the rearview mirror. Every hair on my body suddenly rose. In horrid fascination I watched something being written in the mist on the back windshield by what looked like a deliberate, bloodless-white finger. I forced myself to turn around, breaking the paralysis." Agnes " it read. I slowly turned back around, looking through the front windshield. I looked back again to double check. "Yup." I thought to myself as I read the name "Agnes" again as it began to bleed in tickles of running dew down the back windshield. I slipped the truck into gear and tore out of the cemetery driveway.

I looked back only once, seeing that the defroster had finally done its job and dried the mist and erased the name. I pulled into the Local Hotspot ( a well-lit, always busy convenience store just on the outskirts of Camden ) on the way home to look for anything suspicious. Just some barefoot prints in a womans size 6, left in the dew on the floor of the cargo bay. On the one hand, I wanted to get home quickly. On the other hand, I dreaded explaining to my wife that I had brought ANOTHER ghost home. "Sheeesh, honey," I could hear her grouse. " Where we going to put them all ?"