One summer night back in 1969, my friend Danny and I decided to take a ride to an old abandoned cemetery on the end of Staten Island. As always, even at a young age, the paranormal intrigued me.
At the very end of Hylan Boulevard, this abandoned cemetery was located down a long dirt road, filled with huge pot holes. On this road was also a very old abandoned church. I am sure in its day, it was quite beautiful, all brick, and stained glass windows. The windows were all broken, the property deserted. This magnificent structure that once was a house of worship stood dark and empty. It was now part of a secret past.
As we drove down the pot hole ridden road, we swerved from left to right to avoid the deep holes and to avoid damage to the Little Red Fiat!
Danny was a stickler for this car; it was washed and waxed a few times a week. There was never a spot of dirt that could be seen. He cared for this car like a baby, for as long as I knew him and that was many years.
The dirt road into the cemetery was about one hundred feet long. We decided to back in, in case we had to exit quickly. We knew very little about the history of this cemetery other than the weird stories we heard through the years. It was believed that the souls of these unknown people would roam the cemetery at night, searching for the people that buried them on top of the dirt. Was it a Potters Field, with no markers to reveal the names of the departed souls buried there?
It was so strange to see graves, shaped like mounds and wooden crosses on top of them. It looked like the bodies were just placed under the dirt a few feet.
The graves looked like a scene from a horror movie. Danny put a tape in the 8 track player, we listened while we sat and talked about the many ghost stories we had heard. The tape fit the mood, it was Black Sabbath, a song about the dark side, and the music was appropriate for setting the stage.
The sun set and a full moon shone brightly, illuminating the dirt mounds that held the so many unnamed souls. Suddenly we realized what an eerie place this really was. As we sat listening to the music, all we did was look around. Nothing could be seen except the light of a very full moon.
I asked myself why we were there and realized just how scared I really was. I was going to ask Danny if we could leave, when suddenly there was a loud thump on my side of the car. Within seconds we were headed out of the cemetery full speed, hitting every pot hole in our path. At this point, The Little Red Fiat no longer mattered. All we cared about was getting as far away from this place as possible.
We drove down Hylan Blvd till we got to my home on Todt Hill, never saying a word to each other. It was almost a 25 minute drive. We were silent and frightened.
We arrived at my house, jumped out of the car to check what had hit it. I lit a cigarette and took my first full breath since we left the cemetery. I walked to the back of the car and noticed something I did not want to see at that time. The right rear panel appeared to have a hand print that slid down to the bottom of the car, almost as if a person was trying to grab the car and could not hold on. It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen. Danny was speechless!
We both realized the stories we heard started to sound believable. We spoke about our experience day after day, to all our friends. Was this the spirit of a departed soul that was not at rest? Was it a spirit trying to teach us a lesson that we should not have been there?
The answer will always remain a mystery but one thing I do know, I will never forget the night in the abandoned cemetery and the hand print on Little Red Fiat!
~Donna~