June Jenkins Road

Part One

I went out to get cigarettes this morning. I have been trying to quit for months, but just needed one for some reason. Bad habit, I suppose, but then there are worse things to allow than an occasional cigarette. I have been jumpy all morning, more of those weird dreams again last night. Sometimes I think to myself, just what is real or what really is a dream, or if my mind is playing a trick on me? Could this be something real that appears to me during sleep? I don’t know, but I hope not. Because if it is real, I don’t know what to make of it. This morning on my way to a store, any store close by to get cigarettes, I decided to go the route by June Jenkins Road. Usually, I won’t drive by there alone, even in the daylight. However, the last few times that I have went that way nothing has happened. I could have went to the William’s store, but it is to far away. So, I went to Jenkins Shop and Go. On the way to the store, not much eventful happened, until I got close to it, and noticed a firetruck in a driveway of a house. This house was very close to the store.

In the Jenkins Shop and Go, I bought my cigarettes, and was not even minding the terrible prices for once. I also bought a soda, and a coconut cake. Comfort foods, as sweet sugary foods seem to calm my nerves at times like these when I am anxious. I then left the store, not making small talk as I usually do. I drove back the same way that I came to the store. When approaching the house that the firetruck was in front of , I saw EMTs putting an older man into an ambulance. He was strapped down, and had a full oxygen mask on his face. I thought to myself that he must be in really serious shape. Usually, paramedics only put just a tube of oxygen on someone.

I passed by this scene, looking on forward, toward that side of the road that was on the right side. I looked up at the big tree that is still standing there. The house on the property that this tree borders was torn down,and was vacant for years. The neighborhood children all claimed that the old house was haunted. Staring up at that tree, I was thinking to myself, “What a tale that old tree could tell?”

I turned onto June Jenkins Road still feeling the majesty of that old oak tree within me, and was thinking about what my niece, and I talked about yesterday as we passed this same scenery. She and I talked about legends, and our experiences in this area, and the tales that people here have told us. As, Grace and I went by “the spot” that is about 600 ft on the right after turning onto June Jenkins Rd . Grace turned and looked at me, and we both said at the same time “I didn’t feel anything this time”. We both laughed and giggled loudly, and I looked into Grace’s chocolate brown eyes, and saw her relief. Grace said, Aunt Linda you should write a book about all of this. I said, “These things have quieted down now, and we should just leave this alone. No use in stirring up these things by thinking about them.”

We both noticed the road was robust with greenery growing, the grass rich was so vibrant. Grace still thinking of what I told her, said in a whispering laugh, “Yes we should just forget about all of this for awhile, all is quiet and beautiful again.” I said “Yes beautiful, and green, and lovely on this April evening, but wait until May. It seems the things stir up starting on May 15th through June 15th as a rule.” Grace echoed, Yes, I know but for now it is a good day.

So, maybe I spoke too soon yesterday, and my dream was the beginning of this starting up again, or it could have been old memories of what has happened before. I just don’t know.

Part Two

As, I was standing on my front porch to feel the spring breeze, listening to my wind chimes sing me a song, and watching the dirt form a whirlwind in eddies in a spot where the grass won’t grow. I started thinking about my dreams, and the dreams that my niece, and relatives have had in the past. Precog dreams I call them. Grace and Patty my sister have had more accurate dreams than I have. Still some of mine are quite on target.

Grace’s most accurate dream was so detailed, that I have told her that she should be studied for Extra Sensory Perception. Her first ESP dream was about her then boyfriend. Grace was thirteen, and had a little crush on a boy named Joey. Grace wasn’t allowed to really date yet. Although, She and Joey went to the movies with his parents a lot. It wasn’t really dating just hanging out, and they hung around together as much as possible, and at every opportunity that they could.

Grace dreamed one night that Joey was in an accident. She dreamed that a white van came out of nowhere, and hit him on the road in front of her house. At the time, Grace and my sister Patty lived about three miles from me on Pinegrove Rd. Joey was wounded so badly in the dream that Grace thought that Joey might die. Grace had called me on the phone, and told me about her dream. She was almost hysterical as she was telling me about this dream. She said that she was on the back of Joey’s bicycle, and everything was fine. They both were having fun enjoying riding on the bike. Then, suddenly out of no where a white van hit him. She said then that she saw Joey lying on the ground, and Joey was screaming ” Tell Grace that I love her ,and it is my fault that I got hurt”. I asked Grace, knowing of our families history of precognition,” Did you get hurt? Grace replied “No”, I asked her several times, “Were you with him when he got hit?” Grace then said several times, ” I saw him get hit” I said “But were you with him ?” Grace said, ” I don’t know?” “Does Joey have a bike?” I asked, Grace said “No”, so I blew it off as maybe just a bad dream, and thought nothing more of it.

Patty came over two days later to pick up Grace. I had been babysitting Grace at that time, while her Mom worked. But this time when Patty came to pick her up early, it was different than at other times in the past. This time, Patty’s boyfriend Mark was with her. Patty walked in the door, talking very loudly. I heard Patty from my bedroom, where I was on my computer chatting with friends. Grace was on the couch asleep. Patty was talking in a hysterical tone, all the while pacing the floor back and forth. She was talking loudly to Mark saying, “I don’t know how that I am going to tell Grace?” Patty repeated herself over and over several times. I jumped up from my computer chair, and started walking toward the living room. Anxiety was building up inside of me as I walked down the hall. I walked into the living room and shouted,”Oh my God, What has happened?” Patty whose eyes were filled with tears said, “Joey’s dad called me at work. He told me that Joey had been hit by a van, and his skull is cracked, and he is in unstable condition in the hospital.” Sympathy and sadness gripped my being. I held it in for a second then, I remembered what Grace had said to me on the phone days before about Joey being in an accident. Then Patty crying hysterically said. ” Joey’s dad is so upset! He feels so badly that he had just bought Joey a brand new bike today. He said that he felt that this would not have happened. If he had not bought that bike!” My eyes bulged out with surprise, and the deepest of chills filled me. I screamed over the top of Patty’s hysterics, “Dear God, Patty, don’t you remember Grace’s dream? With a look of pure shock Patty exclaimed, YES! now I do.” I said, “Did Joey’s dad tell you anything else ?” Patty said,” Yes, he said to tell Grace, that Joey said that he loved her, and that it was his fault that he got hurt”. Wide eyed with utter awe, shock, and amazement. We both just stared at each other. Grace started crying then, she had woke up, and heard the conversation. I asked her about the dream, and all she could do was mumble, and cry saying, Why me!! Why me!! over and over again. It terrified her, I think to have dreamed about this accident ,and then for it to come so accurately and vividly true.

Grace’s precog dream was in every detail, exactly like what happened only two days later. The only difference was that Grace was not with him in the accident. Maybe in her precog dream, she went ahead in time, and witnessed the accident. That is the only explanation that I can think of to make sense of this occurrence.

Joey recovered. He, his family and all of my family, were shocked that Grace had foreseen the accident in such detail. Honestly, it still boggles my mind to this day, and makes me wonder exactly how, and why these premonitions happen. Grace knowing about it ahead of time, didn’t change it at all. With the skeptical mind that I have, I wonder what is the purpose of knowing something is going to happen, yet still not being able to change it. When Grace tells me about one of a dreams now, I listen very closely and intently. I don’t think Grace or Joey told his dad about the dream before his accident. I think also that neither of them may have taken the dream seriously themselves. But, Grace did tell him to be careful after her dream.

Part Three

From childhood, I remember my Mom telling me stories about her mother. Mom told me that Vivian her mother was a card reader. Not the regular reading of Tarot cards, but the reading of a plain regular deck of cards. I looked this up later on line, and it is called Cartomancy. Mom said that

Mom had a fear of black cats. Both, Mom and Edith my aunt would throw salt over their shoulders , and make an X on the windshield, If a black cat would run across the road while they were out driving around. I thought that this was ridiculous. Since, usually it was me that was the recipient of an eye full of salt, while sitting in the back seat of the car.

Later, I read online that these folk tales, and a fear of black cats was a product of a fear of witches, and their familiars.

Mom had an experience of a self proclaimed witch trying to take her husband away from her, and I will write about this at a later date. But, she did the salting before that happened.

Mom said also that ghosts followed her from house to house. So, basically we moved every six months or so. I found this irritating as well. As a youngster out of rebellion I guess, I was determined to prove Mom wrong through scientific theory.

Mom warned me not to touch any of the jars in the pantry that she had canned “If I was on my menses?”. I did later behind her back while I was menstruating. And, the particular jar that I touched ruined later. I read later that women give out bacteria during menses, but it confused me that I was no where near her while she was doing the actual canning. So, how did the bacteria get through the glass? It was probably just a coincidence.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely adored and practically worshiped my Mother. I just was a total skeptic of things that I did not understand.

Mom had a magnetic aura and charm that everyone around her felt. I will share more about her later, but want to stick to the basic facts now.

So, basically I didn’t pay any mind to what mom said that was in anyway superstitious until we moved to this neighborhood , and really I was the last to believe any of the tales. Patty was probably too young to remember any of mom’s superstitions, since Mom passed away, shortly after we moved here. I inherited the house in this bizarre neighborhood. Where over thirty people have claimed that strange things have happen here.
Grandma Vivian could foretell the future. Since, I knew that Mom’s entire family were Christians, this confused me. All of Mom’s aunts, cousins, and everyone that I knew went to church. Mom said also that Grandma Vivian read cards for a living. So, from this I gathered that she was a psychic. From her description of Grandma Vivian’s life, and the tragedies that had befallen her. I assumed that this was not something that would be good. Mom said also that there was a curse on the family. I shrugged this off as superstition, as I did most of what Mom said while telling these tales to me, that frankly scared the living daylights out of me.

Mother’s ancestors were from the Appalachian Mountains. So, I assumed that there was much folklore, and superstition surrounding all of this. Mom said that her Mother was the 7th daughter of the 7th daughter, and that a gift was passed on the eldest. Sheila my oldest sister was Mom’s oldest living child. Mom miscarried her first baby. Sheila was born, then Mom’s next baby was a stillborn, then I was born, then Patty. So, Mom said that David, mom’s sister’s oldest son inherited the gift. This confused me more, I have not found anywhere online in Christian websites that gifts are given through heredity. Though preachers seem to run in families, this seemed more confusing given the facts, that preachers usually taboo card reading, and Astrology.

Mom did everything by the Old farmers Almanac. I googled it on line, and found its predictions pretty accurate. The Almanac stated that this summer here, in this region would be cooler than usual, and it has been.

Part Four

When, Patty was around twelve. She started complaining of seeing faces in the window. Sheila had married, and wasn’t living here anymore. Patty is much younger than me, and I felt that she was just a normal hormonal teenager with a vivid imagination. Patty seemed to want to stay up later, and later to avoid these things that appeared to her in the window. Of course, the skeptic that I am, I told her to just ignore them, and that they were just her imagination. Patty protested for a long time about this, until finally she just stopped talking about it.

Sheila’s daughter Lee Ann came over to spend the night on occasion, and she said that she saw faces here too. Human faces and monkey faces. Lee Ann is a brilliant intelligent adult now that works as a nurse . Patty is as well, educated, brilliant ,and intelligent. Yet, they both claim still that they really saw these things here in their childhood.

Patty told me that in her early twenties that these faces were telling her, that her then boyfriend was no good for her. Patty’s boyfriend at the time was cheating on her with another woman, a co worker at her place of employment.

Part Five

I met Laura, a neighbor on a warm June afternoon. This was about five years ago, I remember the month, because I remember being out in my front yard taking photos of the sun. I always find the sun is brilliant ,and seems to glow, and stand out more on summer solstice.
Laura approached me, and we made small talk about the weather, and about the news, Laura looked at me with a very serious look. The kind of stern look someone gives when they have thought about something for a long time, and wanted answers. She said, “Linda where do you think that people go then they die?” I said, ” Well in church they say we go to heaven.” I had not met Laura before, but saw her sometimes coming by on the church bus. She had moved on my road a few months previous to this introduction, after marrying a neighbor’s son . She lived two houses down from me. But, for some reason, we had never actually met until then. Laura looked at me again with a very stern look and said, “Have you had any weird dreams lately?” this question suddenly got my heightened attention. I said, ” Yes I have ! ” I didn’t really want to spill my guts to a total stranger. That is just the type of person that I am. I said, “Yes these dreams have been keeping me up all night.” then, the thought came to me that I should maybe just listen to her for awhile, and not tell too much. I didn’t want her to think that I was strange, or anything. And, I could tell that she was beginning to look in an impatient way at me. She was looking at me like she couldn’t wait to tell me something. Her face turned to a troubled confused look. This told me something was really bothering her. I said, ” Laura have you had any weird dreams?” She nodded solemnly, then preceded to open up to something of a revelation that gave me a really unsettling queer feeling about her.

Basically, Laura told me that when she first moved here on my road, that faces started appearing to her, and that these faces were of monkeys. She said that these faces talked to her. At this time, my mind started remembering what Patty and Lee Ann had told me, and all said the same thing. That monkey like creatures, faces appeared to them. Some saw faces of monkeys, some of humans, but the faces were the common denominator.

What startled me about Laura was that, when she started telling me about the faces telling her bad things. She said these faces told her that her husband was no good for her. I then, remembered that Patty had told me the exact same thing. That the faces had told her that her then boyfriend was no good.

Laura went on to tell me that the faces were telling her to do bad things to her husband. This scared the crap out of me. Naturally, my logical mind couldn’t comprehend this.

Then, Laura went into more detail. I asked her, “What do you see?” She told me that these things would sometimes sit on her dryer and talk to her. I asked her, “What else do you see?” She told me that a little blonde haired girl came to her. She said that first of all, that she would hear music from another time period. Then, the little girl would appear. I asked her if she was awake during all this, and she said, “Yes, I can be doing house work, and all these things start happening. She also told me that none of this ever happened until she moved here, and that she hated to come home sometimes, when she is somewhere else outside of the neighborhood.

The strangest thing about all of this is that neither Patty or Lee Ann had never met Laura before my first meeting with her. And, Laura had no friends or associates in common with Patty or Lee Ann. How strange is it for three women to have seen faces. Two, to have been talked to by these faces. And, both Lee Ann and Patty, to have never met Laura, and all of these things happening in the same neighborhood. What are the chances of that?

Part Six

There is a quote in the movie, the Moth man Prophecies that really stuck with me after I saw the movie. Gere’s character was asking the professor that had written a book about the Moth men about them, his character was searching for answers. So, he sought the professor out. The professor simply said. “You noticed them, and they noticed you”. Meaning that Gere’s character had noticed the Moth men, and they took note of him. This makes sense to me that someone that doesn’t notice these things as many others do, are unaware of their presence.

I think this applies to things that go bump in the night. I have often wondered why these things contact others. New agers claim these things are ghost. Christians say they are demons. People that believe they are UFOs say they are aliens. Maybe energies do linger, and are from some other dimensions that exists.

I talked to a friend that is named Mary. She is the mother of my niece Grace’s best friend. Mary said that she was a psychic. She predicted that Patty would have a car wreck. Patty was going to work at the rest home where she works, and a deer ran out ,and totaled her car. Mary also told me that these faces, and apparitions were demons probably,of people that have passed on in this area. Angela basically said the same thing, that spirits clung to wood. And this is a heavily wooded area. I read on line also that this is thought to be true.

I wonder if these things were conjured up some how by someone that lived in the area at some time in the past.. Mother’s best friend Angela lived in our neighborhood ten years ago. I asked her if there was anything strange that she knew of when she lived here.. She told me that the police did in fact find a house near here where animal sacrifices had been done. I heard this rumor several years, before I asked her about this. She told me also that she loved it here. She said behind her house that something like fire lit down on the rocks behind her house. Angela thought they were angels. Angela told me that the woman that moved into her old house ,after she moved said that a man would come to her. Both Angela and her friend said about 3 am. and that they saw things in the backyard. Angela saw angels of fire. Her friend saw men walking around in the back yard. This sounds like ghosts. Angela’s friend said that when this man didn’t come around that she missed him. Also, Angela told me a strange thing, that her friend said that this man somehow reminded her of her dead mother.

So, after I talked to Angela, and she told me about what happened to her friend. I googled ghosts and spirits, and read that sometimes spirits impersonate dead relatives, and are evil spirits. So this could account for this happening.

What confuses me is:. Why does it seem that ghosts, evil spirits, and aliens seem to hang out together? Or does it just happen that thirty people that live in the same neighborhood are just hallucinating?

Part Seven

Three nights in a row before I met Laura. I dreamed of a clown like opaque figure floating over me, just hovering there above me. This image seemed to be trying to get my attention. Somehow this image reminded me of my mother. So, I understand what Angela’s friend was talking about this thing, that represents itself as a dead loved one.

Several weeks after talking to Laura. I dreamed of a little girl, and a monkey like creature. I was still lying down on the bed, and I awoke to a monkey like creature rising up beside my bed. I threw a pillow at it. Then, turned over to go back to sleep, and a little blonde haired girl about nine was sitting on the left side of my bed. She was staring off into space, like she didn’t know where she was. I felt a tremendous energy in my bedroom. Yes, it was scary.

A few weeks after that, I talked to my neighbor across the street, named Bobby, who is in his late 50’s, and he told me that he had a similar dream. He was amazed that I had “seen” her too. There was no way that he could have talked to Laura about this, because he and Laura’s husband never talked to each other, or he to Laura. They didn’t like each other. Something about Laura’s hubby calling the dog catcher on him for allowing his dog to run loose.

So after this, Bobby and I started asking people in the neighborhood more questions.

My friend Ellen that I met while working in a factory near here lived about four blocks from June Jenkins road. She said that a little blonde haired girl drowned in the lake across the road from the big oak tree, where the old haunted house was torn down. However, this little girl was only five. The girl that me, Bobby and Laura saw or dreamed about looked around nine.

Patty and Grace use to live near Ellen. Remember “the spot” that I mentioned in Part one, well before I met Ellen or Patty knew Ellen. Grace and Patty were riding by that spot, and heard a little girl say “let me in”. They both came screaming to my house in hysterics, and told me about this happening to them.

Later, Patty befriended a woman named Cathy that claimed to be a psychic, and she said that she saw at that very spot “the spot” a black man with his hand missing on one side, and the other hand holding on to a little blonde haired girl’s hand.

“The spot” was where Ellen told us later that the gear slipped in the van, and the van went rolling toward the lake on the other side of June Jenkins Road. The aunt of the little girl tried to get her out of the van, but couldn’t. Ellen said she saw the whole incident as she was coming home that day.

Ellen said that she and her daughter heard something walking around in their house sometimes at night, and her microwave would always stop at the time 3:33. She said also that about 15 of her neighbors had weird experiences around June Jenkins Rd.

You could say it was the power of suggestion that I dreamed about the little girl after talking to Laura, but how can you explain Bobby dreaming about her too. Bobby said he wanted to move from here, that all this scared him so badly that he wanted to get out of here, and he is a man. It wasn’t just female hysterics anymore.

Now , more are added to the number of weird occurrences in a seven mile radius. It just wasn’t me, Patty, Bobby, Laura, Cathy ,Angela, Angela’s friend, Lee Ann, Mary, Grace, Ellen and her daughter, and their neighbors. So far totaling around 26. There are more.

Part Eight

I usually don’t like to write about morbid things like mortality rates and data. But, it seems that there has been an unusually high amount of accidents on June Jenkins Rd. Considering that the road is only two miles long, it is strange. Accidents, however have happened in many of the adjoining roads as well. For many years, the faces had bothered Patty, and the memory of them still in her mind made her ask questions from people, that she would meet in the neighborhood. When Patty went to work at a local rest home. She met a lady named Gail that lived on June Jenkins Rd.

In the past, I had noticed as I was driving along June Jenkins Rd, that there was a house at the beginning of it with a gigantic cross in the front . I thought this was weird in a way, but anyway, that just happened to be where Gail lived. Gail told Patty that things came into her house at night, she called ghosts and spirits, and that her family put the cross in front of the house to repel them. One story was that their rocking chair would start to rock on its own. Gail is the one, that Patty told me , that had pulled my cousin Tommy, out of the car after he crashed into the tree in front of Gail’s house. My cousin survived, and the friend with him did as well, though he broke both of his arms, both survived. Gail told Patty that eight people had died after crashing into that tree, and that after my cousin’s accident, her family had the tree cut down. I looked at newspaper archives about the road, and not only at that tree, but at several trees on the road, people have been killed in car accidents. One such accident, that I read about was a car full of teenagers on route to high school. Three of the teenagers died in the car including the driver, a survivor said that the driver, “Just seemed to go off the road”. It is strange that so many car accidents have been on that road. Other accidents have happened as well on adjoining roads.

As the story goes a man got mad at his girlfriend, and sped off on his motorcycle. It is said that he was going over 100 mph. He slid off the road about a block from the old Jenkins house, and was decapitated by the fence that borders it. It is said that he was in three parts, and that one part was still left on the motorcycle when he was found. Somehow, that accident made me think of what Patty and Laura had told me about the faces causing chaos. I wonder if these faces talked to this poor man as well?

A man and his daughter, that was nine, ran into another car at the junction of the road that the old Jenkins house sits upon, and the air bag went off breaking her neck.

One of Tommy’s friends was killed in a car wreck two blocks from the air bag accident. Two days before his friend was killed, about three blocks from the coming accident, I saw a strange shadowy creature walk across the road in the distance. I didn’t see it’s head, but the body was large as a cow, although it ran like a deer, I could see through it. Somehow this creature reminded me of a dog. I looked up this description later on-line, and shadowy looking dog creatures are called hell-hounds. When I approached the place that I saw this thing run to from across the road. There was a wreath on the fence exactly where it disappeared into the woods.

This was two months before Bobby’s girlfriends son James died from an accidental over dose of his sleeping medication.

One of Tommy’s best friends drown in a creek not far from here.

However, everything has been quiet for over four years now, I suppose that June Jenkins Road, and the area has had enough blood for a while.

Here are some things that I have found out about this area from the library’s old newspaper articles and the history of the area.

When settlers came this area, they remarked that there was no trace of Native Americans here, though surrounding areas were heavily populated with them. I suppose the Indians felt it was not a good place to be.

The entire area was a battlefield during the Revolutionary War. This could explain the angry faces that Patty and Laura saw that tried to create chaos.

This area was once a plantation called the Jenkins Plantation, and there is a slave graveyard six blocks from Jenkins Shop and Go. This would explain Cathy seeing a man with one hand missing holding with the other hand onto the hand of the blonde haired little girl.

Sheila’s other daughter Julie came to spend the night once here, and I heard her talking to someone. I walked into the living room, and she was reaching up in the air, and talking to someone or something. I had had a dream several nights before about a blonde haired boy with a warped face that appeared to me, by coming directly to my face which woke me up. I heard children giggling in the background. This was before Julie came to spend the night. When Julie woke up, I told her about what she had been doing. She told me that she dreamed about blonde haired children, and that she talked to them but didn’t remember the conversation. I had not told Julie of my previous dream. Maybe these children were the plantation owner’s children? I can only speculate. But. one thing that most of all the people, that I have talked to have told me was that, most of the activity, the feeling of something weird or seeing unusual things here happens in the spring time, especially in May and June.I looked everywhere for information, and there is no mention of the owners of the Plantation having a daughter or children. I can only guess that maybe the owners daughter is the one that the road was named after, and that she may have been born in June, hence the name June.

But, I do know one thing for a fact, this place is haunted