Shark Attacks in North Carolina -- and Things in the Ocean I've Learned About

  I learned on Monday morning that a 12-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy lost their left arms and suffered other serious injuries in separate shark attacks in Oak Island, North Carolina, according to a newscast.

I found this info on the Internet: “The youths are hospitalized at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, said Martha Harlan, a spokeswoman for the hospital. The girl's left arm was amputated below the elbow, and she suffered lower leg tissue damage, Harlan said, while the boy's left arm was amputated below the shoulder.”

Sunday's late afternoon attacks happened less than 90 minutes apart. The girl was attacked first; the boy was attacked about two miles away – both of them were said to be in waist-deep water.

I am praying for the victims of those attacks.  

When I heard that report, I thought about the times I stood in waist-deep ocean water in Charleston (S.C.) or Myrtle Beach. I sometimes ventured neck-deep from shore, never thinking much about sharks. I guess we didn’t hear a lot about shark attacks in the 1950s and ’60s, when I lived near Greenville, S.C.

During my 1971 stint in Vietnam, I was privileged to leave Long Binh for a one-day excursion to Vung Tau’s beautiful beach. Little kids sold us pineapple slices on sticks before a bunch of us GIs splashed into waves rolling in from the South China Sea.

We later heard this message over a loudspeaker: 

“Get out of the water! Get out of the water!”

We clamored to shore and asked, “Why?”

A short distance down the beach, some GIs were gathering. We hurried to see what they knew about that get-out-of-the water warning. They were looking at a dead, 3-foot black snake lying on the sand.

“That’s a sea snake,” one of the soldiers said. “There’s a herd of them going up the beach. They can kill you.”

(A group of snakes is generally called a bed, den, pit or nest – not a “herd.” I was later told that a bite from a sea snake is not usually fatal. But I think tangling with a sea snake could possibly scare you to death.)

According to “Wikipedia,” sea snakes, also known as coral reef snakes, are “the Hydrophiinae” and are found in warm coastal waters from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Sea snakes are a subfamily of “venomous elapid snakes that inhabit marine environments for most or all of their lives.” They are closely related to venomous terrestrial snakes in Australia. All have paddle-like tails and many have “laterally compressed bodies that give them an eel-like appearance.”

Yes, there are things in the ocean that can “get you.” 

As a youngster, I used to read about electric eels and wonder if one might “get me” when I went to the beach. And on occasions when I’d hear my pastor preach about the account of Jonah and the big fish that swallowed him in one gulp, I'd remind myself to “get right with God” before moseying into the briny main spilling onto Myrtle Beach.    

I guess you won’t find the kind of sea snake we saw in Vietnam swimming off the coast of North Carolina, but you may find sharks, and sharks are the sea creatures that seem to terrorize us most.

The movie “Jaws,” a 1975 thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name, put shark-phobia into lots of folk. In that fictional story, a huge great white shark attacks beachgoers. A police chief, a marine biologist, and a shark hunter tangle with Mr. Shark. The music in the film is pretty spooky, too.

At my age, I don’t intend to “bathe” in the ocean, anymore. I enjoyed doing that as a young person. But, now, I don’t move very fast, and I’m a bigger shark-bait than I used to be. And I know lots more about things in the ocean that can “get you.”

The Great Tribulation

What about the “Great Tribulation”? When will it take place? And will Christ remove Christians from the world before the Great Tribulation begins?    

Those questions recently prompted me to begin watching these two weekly programs televised by the Daystar network:

“The Hal Lindsey Report” (11 p.m. EST) is a half hour series hosted by Hal Lindsey, a Christian author and Bible prophecy theologian.

“The End of the Age” (11:30 p.m. EST) is a half hour presentation hosted by Irvin Baxter, a prophecy teacher and founder of “Endtime Ministries.”

Hal Lindsey appears to believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church. “Pre-Trib” folk believe the Church will be raptured – taken out of the world to be with Christ – before the Tribulation begins.

(Note: Most Bible scholars say the Tribulation lasts seven years. The Great Tribulation represents the last 3.5 years of the Tribulation. The second or last part of the Tribulation will exceed the first three and one-half years in severity and is called the Great Tribulation.) 

Here is the Bible passage many Pre-Trib believers say will be fulfilled before the Tribulation:

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 NIV).

Baxter seems to purpose a Post-Tribulation view of “the last days.” That view holds that Christians will experience (go through) the Great Tribulation before the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ.

Baxter says, “ . . . this 'great tribulation' is also prior to the return of Christ and the rapture . . . ” ( from http://www.endtime.com/the-rapture/).

There are also at least three more Christian end-times views: Pre-Wrath, Mid-Trib Rapture, and A-Millennial. But for this discussion, I’m talking about Lindsey’s and Baxter’s perspectives.

I gathered the following about “the Tribulation” from http://www.gotquestions.org/Great-Tribulation.html:

“The length of the Tribulation is seven years. This is determined by an understanding of the seventy weeks of Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27) … . The Great Tribulation is the last half of the Tribulation period, three and one-half years in length. It is distinguished from the Tribulation period because the Beast, or Antichrist, will be revealed, and the wrath of God [some question whether that will be the wrath of God or still be the wrath of Satan, at that time] will greatly intensify during this time. Thus, it is important at this point to emphasize that the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation are not synonymous terms. Within eschatology (the study of future things), the Tribulation refers to the full seven-year period while the ‘Great Tribulation’ refers to the second half of the Tribulation.”

I also read this at that same Internet site:

“It is Christ Himself who used the phrase ‘Great Tribulation’ with reference to the last half of the Tribulation. In Matthew 24:21, Jesus says, ‘For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall.’ In this verse Jesus is referring to the event of Matthew 24:15, which describes the revealing of the abomination of desolation, the man also known as the Antichrist. Also, Jesus in Matthew 24:29-30 states, ‘Immediately after the tribulation of those days . . . the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.’ In this passage, Jesus defines the Great Tribulation (v.21) as beginning with the revealing of the abomination of desolation (v.15) and ending with Christ's second coming (v.30).”

Hal Lindsey says four empires have ruled the Jews: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. He notes that the European Common Market is the “revived Roman Empire” and will figure in end-time events that include persecution and intended destruction for Israel.

Russia, Lindsey says, is the country referred to in Ezekiel 38: 15-16 (NIV):

“You will come from your place in the far north, you and many nations with you, all of them riding on horses, a great horde, a mighty army.  You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.”

Russia is the furthest country directly north of Israel, Lindsey says, adding that Russian may be drawn into war against Israel due to its relationship with Iran.

Lindsey talks about great destruction that is predicted to happen during the Great Tribulation.

Revelation 9:13-18 (NIV): “The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. … ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’  And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand [200 million]. I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths.”

In that passage, John, the writer of Revelation, was perhaps describing (in terms he knew) images of modern warfare, including nuclear devices.

Lindsey says the United States probably will have lost its world influence and not figure greatly in world affairs during the Tribulation.

“There is no mention of America during the Tribulation period . . . nor of any righteous nation,” Lindsey says.

He says that judgment is coming and that God will withhold judgment while his people are still on earth. For that reason, God’s people, the true Church, will be taken out of the world before the Tribulation, Lindsey says.

Irvin Baxter may agree somewhat with Hal Lindsey on how events will unfold as the  Tribulation approaches, but he appears to feel that Christians will have to endure the Tribulation, which includes the Great Tribulation.

He says that a secular peace-making leader (the Antichrist) will arise in Europe and a religious leader (the False Prophet) will arise in Israel. The Antichrist will be a political figure who is also religious, and the False Prophet will be a religious figure who is also political, Baxter says.

The False Prophet will be someone perhaps “like” “the world’s leading ‘Christian,’” Baxter says, adding, “Most so-called Christians will support the Antichrist.”

The two figures, the Antichrist and the False Prophet, will deceive people. The Antichrist’s powerbase will be Europe, Baxter says.

“All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast [the Antichrist] – all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. …  Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb [the False Prophet], but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs … ” (Rev. 13:8-13).

To unify the world, a form of identification of citizens will be implemented.

Baxter says “E-Verify” has evolved and perhaps will be accepted in the U.S. as a way to use “national ID cards.”

“A cashless society is not far off,” Baxter says.

Microchip implants in humans will usher in, perhaps, the worldwide ID system (the “mark of the beast”).

“It [the second ‘beast’] also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. … calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666” (Revelation 13:16-17).

When will the Tribulation (7 years) begin?

Lindsey indicates it will begin after the Rapture (the “catching away”) of the Church.

When will the Great Tribulation (3.5 years) begin?

Baxter says, “The Great Tribulation begins three and one-half years after a peace agreement.”

At that time, right before the Great Tribulation, the Antichrist will reveal his true evil intentions toward the Jews, some scholars say.

Baxter referred to Jesus’ words found in John 14:29: “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.”

Lindsey and Baxter may largely agree on much the Bible reveals about end-time events, but they seem to differ about when Christ will come for his Church.

I believe Christ will come for his believers either before or during the middle of the Tribulation. I don’t want Baxter to be right.  

Do 'Old Guys Rule'?

On a recent Thursday, I drive to our local grocery store, Harris-Teeter (HT), in Aberdeen NC. I usually major-shop there on Thursdays to cash in on a five percent Thursday-discount the place gives to folk over 60 years old.

I grab a shopping buggy from a cart-corral in the parking lot and venture into the “sto.” I lean on that cart to help keep my feet from hurting due to spinal stenosis.

I see mostly seniors shopping. The place isn’t too busy. I bee-line to the free-cookie stand that displays these words: “For kids of all ages (one per customer).” HT has me trained. I salivate when I hear the name “Harris-Teeter” … talk about “Pavlov’s dogs.”

I’m trying to lose weight, but I buy hotdog buns and bun-length wieners.  

A white-haired fellow with a northern accent asks an attendant, “Where are the brats?” (I figure he doesn’t mean his children). The clerk shows him some bloated-looking, hotdog-type things, and the white-haired fellow smiles.

I get orange juice and head toward the milk. An old guy is opening the door to the cow-juice. His wife, who wears glasses, is holding up, with her left hand, a full newspaper page that lists HT bargains. With her right hand, she holds – a few inches from the page – a large magnifying glass (with handle). She has her right eye near the magnifying glass. I smile and wait. They finally decide on the milk they want, and I snatch a gallon of “one percent.”

I procure other stuff and roll to checkout. Two people are ahead of me. In the checkout lane to my left sits a little girl in a special grocery cart. It’s made like a car and has a steering wheel. The blond-headed child is two or more years old, and she’s turning that steering wheel and having fun. She looks my way, smiles, and says, “Hi.”

“Hi,” I say, smiling.  

I can tell from her eyes that the youngster is a Down Syndrome child. She’s with her grandparents. They don’t seem to mind that I spoke to her. They chat with her and smile. Her grandparents are perhaps a little younger than I am. The gray-haired grandfather wears Bermuda shorts and white track shoes.

I begin thinking of some of the possible challenges the child in the cart will face – and of some tests and trials the child’s parents and grandparents may encounter. The grandparents and the child seem happy and appear to be enjoying their trip to the grocery store.

The grandfather turns to talk with his wife, and I see these words printed on the back of his T-shirt: “Old Guys Rule.”

I can’t help thinking, “Oh, dear fellow, if you could ‘rule’ and alter things that happen and ‘come your way’ in life, would you change your granddaughter?”

 
I don’t know that he would. But I know this: There are many, many things beyond his and my “rule” or control.

About Those Thoughts I've Struggled With

For a recent Saturday morning men’s breakfast staged by Sandhills Assembly of God (Southern Pines, N.C.), I met with five other men at 8:30 a.m. at Mac’s restaurant in Aberdeen, N.C.

Juan Sanchez, our men’s ministry leader and a retired Special Forces soldier, sat at our 6-man table and talked about “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” He spoke about this verse:

“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NKJV).

  

Mentally picturing that “bringing every thought into captivity” concept, I recently envisioned an armed man (me) in a uniform. That man put handcuffs on a rebellious fellow (who represented a “thought”). 

The armed man then led the rebel to a prison. Inside that prison, men peered through iron bars and jeered at the armed man. He opened the locked door of the prison cell, took the cuffs off the rebel, and forced that sneering fellow inside with men (thoughts) who were similar in nature.

Juan “spoke to me" on that Saturday morning. I realized, again, that my thoughts often defeat me.

Someone said that we have the ability to think ten times faster than we can speak. If I don’t control my thoughts, they may “run away with me.” 

In musing about thoughts “running away with me,” I picture a strong-willed horse “with the bit in his mouth,” as the old folks used to say. That saying refers to the “bit,” the “metal mouthpiece of a bridle whereby a rider controls a horse,” according to Internet sources.

There is a place behind a horse’s teeth where no molars grow on his gums. A horse can jostle the bit and get it out of that area behind his teeth. Once he has the bit firmly between his teeth, the horse won’t be harmed when his rider pulls back on the reins. The rider then can’t control the horse by puling on the bit and hurting the tender flesh behind the horse’s teeth. 

   

When a horse has “the bit in his mouth, he can run where he wills, and the rider has to hang on for the ride, or get off.

“Taking the bit between his teeth” means “to take control” or “to throw off restraints and proceed on a headlong course,” according to “Wikipedia.”

As Juan spoke about “binging thoughts into captivity,” I reflected on my tendency to let a degenerative thought “get the bit between its teeth.”

  

Too much of my thinking runs toward the ditch of self-defeat. Some of my musings spring from my melancholy tendencies. Many of my thoughts float (or surge) up from my fallen nature. We all have that problem.

Though I say I desire to “have the mind of Christ,” I sometimes allow fallen-nature thoughts to rest in my head.

Someone said, “You can’t help it if a bird flies over your head, but you can help it if he builds a nest in your hair.”

Thoughts: They come to our minds. 

Some thoughts we experience are from God. Some are from “good” sources. Many are just everyday thoughts. But some thoughts come from the dark side. And others may even be “satanic.”

We must stop fallen-nature thoughts from building nests in our hair.

Controlling our thoughts is perhaps ultimately impossible to do without Christ’s help. Can we, by sheer willpower, “bring thoughts into captivity” without the help of Christ?

Captured thoughts are not to be left in what we might think is “limbo.” Thoughts won’t stay captive by themselves. Nature abhors a vacuum, someone noted. Something will fill your mind. Thoughts are to be brought “to the obedience of Christ.” When Christ becomes the focus of our lives, his thoughts and words will direct us, and then we won’t fall prey to our fallen-nature thoughts. 

    

Oswald Chambers says, “Your mind is the greatest gift God has given you, and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. You should seek to be bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). 

Chicken-and-Dumplings and Stuff Such as That for Thanksgiving

Living in upper South Carolina farm country as a child in the 1950s, I learned lots about chickens, fried chicken and chicken and dumplings.

My mother, father, sister and I usually ate Sunday dinner – city folk called it “lunch” – at my paternal grandparents’ home. My dad’s only sibling, Uncle Fred, and his wife, Frances, usually joined us. We all attended the same rural church.

If his sermon ran a little long and people appeared restless, a preacher in those days might say, “Y’all stay with me, now. That fried chicken will wait.” That elicited chuckles from some Sunday morning pew-dwellers who would later pucker up to poultry. Nobody I knew back then ate “out” on Sundays; they all headed home for Sunday dinner, which was usually the largest meal of the week.

When I was old enough to feed myself, Mama let me choose my Sunday piece of chicken. I always chose a leg, because other parts seemed too prone to hide bones that might get stuck in my throat.

Most farms kept chickens, and Southern fried chicken was a staple. I’ve seen my grandfather chop off a chicken’s head and seen my mother wring one’s neck. I have visual memories that help me understand the meaning of that old expression: “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

Martha Brown, a friend and a retired nurse, told me she was eight years old when her mother let her try her hand at “wringing.”

“We lived in town [Greer, S.C.] but had chickens,” Martha said. “After spinning the chicken's neck around several times, I threw down the chicken. She was alive, but quite drunk, and ran to the street. A car hit her on busy Cannon Avenue. I can still see that car and that chicken. That was my first and last attempt at wringing a chicken's neck.”

Martha's family ate that chicken, despite the miserable creature’s mode of demise. A hen or rooster’s death by vehicular chicken-side probably doesn’t rate much lower than that of a chicken meeting its expiration date by “wringing.”

My mother’s side of our family was known for chicken and dumplings. Mama was one of nine children, and I guess an old chicken (or chickens) had to go a lot further when served as the main course at a meal for that crowd. My maternal grandmother put lots of dumplings (cooked balls of dough) with the chicken. Those dumplings were good enough to eat by themselves. Maybe that’s what Grandma counted on.

I’ve seen Grandma cook chicken and dumplings in a huge dishpan. Chicken and dumplings seemed to satisfy the hunger of Grandma’s offspring, who tended to look more like dumplings than some people on my father’s side of our family.

I can’t think about chicken and dumplings without remembering a Thanksgiving Day I, as a child, spent with my paternal grandparents. We gathered at the home of my grandfather’s brother, Jay, and his wife, Nell. Their small house, sided with asbestos shingles which were painted a pale, foliage-green color, sat beside a flat, paved road in rural Taylors, S.C.

During the previous summer, I had wandered into Great Uncle Jay’s sugarcane field, cut a section of a plant and sucked sweetness from that fibrous stalk. The ancients defined sugarcane as “reeds that produce honey without bees.”

Sugarcane stubs dotted that gray-hued field by Thanksgiving morning, when my grandfather, Uncle Jay and a few other male relatives, wearing faded coats and hats or caps, cradled shotguns and traipsed over sprawling acres of Southern landscape. They returned mid-morning with their harvested game – rabbits. Their wives prepared the main course for our Thanksgiving meal: rabbit and dumplings.

I’d never hesitated in dining on Chicken Little or Henny Penny, but putting a fork into Peter Cottontail didn’t appeal to me. That day, I dabbled at the dumplings. Who wants food that has a hare in it, anyway?

The REV. WILL B. DONE* HURTS HIMSELF ... and thinks about blaming God

A few years ago, the Rev. Will B. Dunn battled a bruised bursa in his right hip after he fell on some ice while walking to get his morning newspaper. (He believes in preaching with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, so to speak.)

Will’s driveway is cement and has an upward incline to it as you walk toward his mailbox. One day in November (as I said, a few years ago) some ice came during the night, and Will couldn’t wait till it melted. He had to have his newspaper to read about world events in order to see if the Rev. John Hagee was on the right track as to how end-time events might shape up.

So, Will put on a coat and trekked to his mailbox. He has a little holder underneath the mailbox where his paper person puts the newspaper. Will made it to the box, but on the way back, his leather-bottomed shoes failed him. Whoop-sy! He fell backwards and twisted as he went down. He whopped onto his right hip. Ker-splat!

He lay sprawled flat on his back for a few minutes. During that time, he thought about “predestination” and wondered whether his falling was “meant to be.” He thought about his wife, who died from cancer a few winters ago, and wondered why that was “in God’s will.”

He then thought, “Lord, why did you let me fall?”

He quickly repented and prayed silently, “I’m sorry, Lord. I didn’t mean to blame you. I should have waited till the sun melted the ice.”

Will felt a bit better after he repented of blaming the Lord. But his hip was hurting “like the devil,” as some of his Bypass Baptist church members might say. They like to blame most everything on the devil, though Pastor Will B. knows they bring lots of stuff on themselves.

“The devil don’t have to work all that hard,” Will B. once said from his Bypass Baptist pulpit. “Most of y’all bring a heap of hardships on yourselves.”

As Will lay on his cold driveway, reflecting on why he was lying there, those words he delivered to his flock came back to bite him and “hit home.”

“I’m a-laying like a turtle on its back,” Will thought. “I better get up from here.”

The words Jesus said to the paralytic came to Will’s mind: “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.” And Will thought of these words in an old chorus his church used to sing: “We’ve got the power in the name of Jesus.”

Will longed for that power. He wanted to touch his own hip and have it become well. Wouldn’t that be some more kind of testimony to give at the church-house?

Will laid his hand on his hip and prayed out loud. Nothing happened. Then he thought, “I don’t want one of my members riding by and seeing me in a discombobulated condition. I need to present an ‘I have it all together’ image before my people.”

Then he wondered just how much human pride was in that thought. And he mused about the pride behind his idea of wanting instant healing. In his mind, he saw himself standing before his congregation, bragging about his healing, about how he laid hands on himself and got healed without anybody having to help him. He saw himself elevated in the eyes of his congregation. No longer would they question his authority. No more would his members be thinking, “Maybe we need a new pastor.”

Will then thought about this concept found in the book of James: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives.”

“Uh-oh,” Will said to himself.

He realized his thoughts were playing ping-pong in his head, so he decided he’d done enough thinking while lying on his backside. He managed to struggle to his feet, and, holding his newspaper like something he paid a price to get, he limped to his front steps, hobbled up them, and made it through his front door.

Soon, Will sat, hurting, in his easy chair. He prayed a blessing over two pieces of toast and a small glass of orange juice and he gazed at a nearby photo of his deceased wife, Nancy. A tear ran down his cheek as he prayed softly but out loud, “Lord, I trust you in all things and ‘lean not to my own understanding.’ In all my ways I acknowledge you and ask you to direct my paths . . . in Jesus’ name, amen.”

(*The Rev. Will B. Done is a character in "Kudzu," a comic strip that was discontinued after its author/artist Doug Marlette died in a car accident in 2007. I enjoyed Marlette's work and wrote this fictional story based on his created character "the Rev. Will B. Done.")

The Halloween Party and Pastor Jimmy Thompson

When I was a kid in rural South Carolina in the 1950s, Halloween wasn’t considered too evil, as I remember. I don’t recall much being said about it being a bad thing. During my childhood days, my church wasn’t big on bashing the occasion.

All I knew back then about Halloween was that you dressed up like somethin’ and went to houses to get goodies—we wanted candy and not just apples. Living on Groce Meadow Road near the Mountain View area of Greenville, S.C., my younger sister, Shirley, and I only got to say “Trick or treat” at the doors of a few houses.  Walking on a country road on Halloween night was scary in itself.

I recall learning this song in third or fourth grade at Mountain View Elementary School: “Hallowe-ee-een, the witch is riding high / Have you see-ee-een her shadow in the sky? / So beware, don’t you dare to even boast / Or a ghost to your dismay / Will hear you say that you don’t care / Say a prayer / Or it may come and pull your hair.”

We heard that song on a school record player. I sort of knew there weren’t any real ghosts around Mountain View, so that little ditty didn’t frighten me much. My family attended Gum Springs Pentecostal Holiness Church, and I’d heard about a witch trying to call up Samuel the Prophet after he died. King Saul requested that the witch get in touch with Samuel, and both he and she were scared silly when Samuel actually appeared. At least that’s the way I understood that Old Testament story, which led me to believe that seeing a ghost would be a very rare experience. I learned at church that “a great gulf” was “fixed between the living and the dead,”  and my family told me that ghosts weren’t real.

I heard lots of preaching about the Holy Ghost but not much talk about Halloween-type ghosts. Church folk now tend to talk about the “Holy Spirit” instead of the “Holy Ghost.” I reckon “Holy Spirit” sounds more comforting than “Holy Ghost,” which comes from the King James translation. 

The first Halloween carnival I attended was staged at Fairview Elementary School, near Greer, S.C., when I was in sixth grade. My sister and I were new to the school because our family had moved that summer from Mountain View to “Burgess Hill,” located in the suburbanized outskirts of Greer. Fairview School had a Halloween fundraiser. I bought a ticket to visit one scary room at the carnival.

An older girl in charge of that room blindfolded me and led me to “exhibits.”

“OK,” she said, “Put your hand in here to feel a dead person’s brains.”

She guided my hand into a container. I felt some cold, slushy stuff that seemed to have cooked macaroni in it. A chill went up my spine. The power of suggestion was working on me.

She led me a few more steps.

“Now, these are the dead person’s eyeballs,” she said.

Again, the solution my hand touched was cold, and I felt “eyeballs” that must have been grapes. Before I left that room, somebody jumped out of nowhere and scared me.

Trick-or-treating over the years on Burgess Hill yielded some good eats. Word got around about which houses had the best treats. One lady up on the hill served candy-apples. 

I had my driver’s license by the time Faith Temple, the church my family attended, held a Halloween party for the church’s youth at the Greer home of Josie and Bruce Foster. (They might have called it a “costume party” rather than a Halloween party; I don’t remember.) Randolph and Hendrix were the Foster’s sons. Recognition was to be given to the person who could best hide his identity at the party.

At home, before that party, I dressed up as an old lady. I had a rubber mask that was made to look like the face of a weathered old sailor with a hooked nose. In the rubber mouth of that mask hung a half-smoked rubber cigarette. A little red color on the end of that cigarette made it appear real. The half-smoked replica of that cigarette hung from one side of a sagging mouth. The mask had no simulated facial hair, so its image could pass for either a man or woman. I put a kerchief over my head and tied it underneath the mask. I wore a shawl over some kind of old dress that went to the floor. I was over 6-foot, 2-inches tall, but when I arrived at the Foster’s home, I exited my car and walked bent-over (I think I had a walking stick) to the door of their basement, where the party had already begun.

Pastor James H. “Jimmy” Thompson, always supportive of our church youth, was there, and he kept on following me and trying to guess who I was. All the costumed people except me were identified before the evening drew to a close. But I guarded my identity. People asked me questions, and I replied in a disguised voice. Pastor Jimmy, especially, continued following me, trying to figure out who I was.

Finally, after winning recognition for being the unidentified costumed person, I stretched to my full height and took off my mask. Pastor Jimmy said he failed to identify me because I stayed bent over the whole night.

I miss those old days – back in the days when I didn’t know too much about Halloween.