Your
True Tales
November 2004 – Page
24
Footprints
in the Graveyard
by Wil Jensen
In 1986, I was in the the Army stationed at Ft. Carson, Colorado. On the side, I moonlighted as a security officer for a local security firm, off-base in Colorado Springs. Typically, I worked Friday and Saturday evenings because I could be out late, not having duty the next day.
My usual gig was pulling parking lot security for a very active night club, then when that closed (approximately 3 a.m.) I would do a patrol through a local cemetery using a keybox. (Basically, that's a cylinder with a keyhole in the middle that you carried. At various places in the patrol area there are keyboxes that you extract the key from and click the box with, providing a date/time stamp on a tape inside proving when and where you were on patrol).
The time of year for this event was around February. It was a clear, frosty night with a bright moon. I can't remember if it was full or not, but it was at least gibbous. The moon lit up the grounds and was bright enough to cause shadows under the trees.
The graveyard was locked, but I had a key to enter its gate. As I made my way through the grounds, I arrived at one of the key boxes. I got out of my car, approached the box, clicked the key, and looked around as I prepared to re-enter my car. With flashlight in hand, I happened to be pointing at a scrubby little pine shrub when it shook violently for a second, then went still. Naturally, my curiosity was piqued, so I walked the 20 yards or so over to the bush to check it out. (Please know that my flashlight was on the bush when it shook and didn't move from it when I moved to it.)
When I arrived at the bush, I saw nothing that would indicate what could have caused the shaking. It was only a couple of feet high and rather sparse, and no animals could be observed. This wrinkled my brow, and I began scanning the ground around it for any sign of what I could have missed.
As I said, it was already frosty, and on the far side of the bush I saw what looked like human footprints (the frost in the grass was discreetly disturbed) leading off from the bush in the opposite direction. This seemed impossible because the bush sat by itself in broad moonlight, and, as I mentioned, I had kept the bush illuminated while it shook and as I approached it.
No one (alive) should have been in the cemetery at that time of night. This caused me to draw my weapon, just to ensure I was ready should I run across a trespasser. In retrospect, this is significant because my training taught me not to draw my weapon unless there was a significant potential to use it. At this point, however, I was spooked.
As I looked around, the hair on the back of my neck went up and I heard what I thought was the frozen grass crunching under gentle footsteps in the area behind me. Steeling my nerve, I spun around, intent on facing whoever was traversing the terrain. No one was there. As I looked around, my flashlight ended up on the ground in front of me. There again were more footprints (not my own; I wear a size 17 shoe) similar to what I had seen on the opposite side of the bush. This time, however, they came to a stop about six feet away, ending with two feet standing together.
I never heard another noise, nor can I claim I saw the footprints being formed by some invisible, spectral wanderer. My brain decided the events going on where too unreal to deal with, and I got in my car and left.
To this day I can't explain what happened. The rational side of my head wants to write it off as the "power of suggestion" due to the fact that I was in a graveyard.
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