The Ghost Deer Woman - A True Story
About fifteen years back I had been sitting out on my porch pretty late into the night. I have deplorable eyesight, especially in the dark. My eye kept picking up motion by this huge cottonwood tree right by my driveway. Realizing it's probably just the wind blowing the branches I ignore it just focusing on the big moon and smoking my cigarette. Later, after a dozen times of my eye being drawn to the same place I go inside and grab a samurai sword I keep on top of my television. I go outside and walk toward my driveway.
As I approach the big tree trunk a woman walks around the tree and asks for my dad by name. I tell her that he had passed away five years prior and I ask her what she wants. She admitted that she had hoped for a ride since she had been walking all day. She said that she had to get to a nearby town by morning. The fact that it had been hovering around a hundred degrees right up until a couple hours earlier I offered something to drink. As we walked to the porch, I informed her that my dad had passed away five years earlier. She offered her condolences as I headed back inside. I grabbed a big, icy glass of my killer iced tea and gave that to her. While she drank that I told her that I didn't have a phone and my car was low on gas(the struggle), or I would be able to help her out. She said that she would make it and thanked me for the tea. I filled her cup from the pitcher and wanting another cigarette myself, I offered her one.
We sat in silence for a minute as we both smoked and innocently enough the conversation turned to spooky stories. Being famously proficient in telling a good story myself(wink), I told one that I had heard as a young kid. I admit that I was enjoying the company as well as the moon drenched, rolling Oklahoma scenery, this was when she blew my scary story out of the water with three stories that soon had me feeling those old, familiar goose pimples.
She began by telling me that she had been a Riverside(a local boarding school)student back in the seventies. While she had the dorm to herself she had been studying until late one night. Getting tired, she just left the light on and leaned back on her bed. Just shy of falling to sleep she came to the realization that she could hear a deep, growling breathing. Her eyes popped open and she surveyed her room. From where she lay, the entire room was in her field of vision and there was nothing in the room with her. Contrary to what her eyes told her, she still heard breathing. At this time she told me that not only could she hear the breathing, she could also smell the breath of something unseen. It was a warm smelling asphalt odor and it was tinged strongly with sulphur.
Nearing panic, she thought back to her upbringing and her grandmothers words. She spoke out loud and telling the presence in her room that it could not harm her. She told it that it had to leave her alone and that it can't touch her. She reported that the breathing quit then after a silence of thirty seconds she heard a deep mans voice tell her, "Yes I can!"
She admitted that this really messed with her for a long time. I commiserated with her, and realizing my throat was dead dry, I drank from the pitcher that was still in my hand. I hoped that she was ready to continue down the road, but she continued with another story.
"My good friend from New Mexico got it worse than me," she said. She got caught trying to sneak out to snag her man up. She said that they gave her kitchen duty for a week as punishment. On one of those evenings she was in the kitchen alone washing all the pots and pans. The only entrance to the kitchen was in her field of vision. Soon though, even though nobody could be in the kitchen behind her she got the feeling that someone was leaning over her shoulder. She resisted turning around for a while but that persistent feeling of being watched was too great. Right at the instant that she was going to turn around a terribly loud LuLu rang out on her ear.
I felt shivers traveling up and down my spine as she said that her friend had to be shipped back to her family, and a psychiatric hospital. At this time I lit up another smoke(I used to be a chain smoker). She let me know that it was a long time before she saw that friend, and that she had missed so much time in that hospital that she never returned to school. She ended up getting her GED. I definitely regretted bringing up scary stories and I wanted to go inside and watch something light hearted before bed time. I wasn't in luck because she had another story to tell.
"It was for another ten years that I saw my friend again," she told me. She said that she kept in touch with her friend through letters and phone calls. This being before the time before the internet. Then one day her friend invited her out to her Rez for a feast or ceremony, I can't remember which. My visitor said she went to New Mexico and visited her friend at the dance that was also going on. That night she and her friend were going to sleep in her friends camper shell in her pickup.
There was a mattress thrown back there and they were going to spend the night camped out. Just before bedtime her friend told her that if she woke up and had to go to the bathroom, not to go out to the desert alone. Her friend told her that there were WereDogs around there. Asking what the hell a weredog was, her friend told her it could appear like a regular dog. The difference was that it would stand up like a man and its tail would come jut forward like it had a "thingy" and that they tried to mate with human females. My visitor told me she was incredulous, and a little scared, but she went to sleep after awhile.
Around three in the morning she woke up and the need to pee was overwhelming. She wasn't sure whether or not her friend was just messing with her so she laid there considering waking her friend up or not. Then, when she was shaking, trying to hold her pee in she got up and climbed out of the back of the pickup. She followed a small trail for a little bit then found a place to pee. She pulled her pants down and crouched near a bush. As she urinated a noise near her caught her attention. Casting her head one way and the other she searched for the noise.
She then noticed a big dog walking down the trail she had just walked. So far the dog hadn't noticed her so she frantically pulled her trousers up and fastened her belt. She remained crouched there hoping that she wasn't noticed but suddenly the dog stopped walking staring directly at her. She admitted that she was almost hyperventilated waiting under the animals stare.
Then her heart and jaw dropped as the animal stood up on its rear paws and its tail jutted forward. With a loud groan, and knowing that she had to walk past the creature to get back to the campsite, she began running. She had to veer past the dog, but it didn't try to stop her. It did however, begin thrusting with its hips when she was right next to it. Then she broke out into a scream and a full pitched run as she ran back to the pickup.
Her friend had opened the camper window before she got home so she tried to make it into the truck with a panicked jump. She almost knocked herself out, and cut her scalp terribly, but she managed to get into the camper. She said that she woke up the entire camp and it was almost thirty minutes before anyone managed to get anything out of her more than a scream. That night her friend managed to contact her family, and just like her friend, she had to be sent home to the hospital for her scalp and then counseling......
I just sat there dumbfounded and I was genuinely afraid. I managed to stammer out that I had work the next day(a lie), and that I needed to get some sleep. I gave her about five cigarettes and some matches and she walked off down the silent highway. I told my aunt about the events of the night and all my aunt had to say was, "You didn't see her legs did you?" I acted like my aunt was joking, but I sure hope I wasn't on that porch with DeerWoman. I'll never know.
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