Has anyone here heard the tale of...The Graveyard Marauder?
Well, long long ago, once upon a time (1975), late September in a
little town called Youngstown, Ohio...there is a sloping cemetery, a
big ol' graveyard built on a hill just across the street from St.
Elizabeth's Hospital (the winding, hilly road between the hospital
and the cemetery is so treacherous that people say, "Well, if yer
gonna crash, this is a convenient place to do it!")...and there were
severe acts of vandalism occurring in the cemetery 2 to 3 nights per
month, usually during full moons...broken headstones, shattered
flower pots, lawn mowers and landscaping equipment and light posts
destroyed...so the caretaker employed a private detective, a retired
policeman named Dick Featherstone, to stake out the place at night.
Featherstone had a police-trained German shepherd, Brutus, also past
his prime and retired but still an ominous prescence at 180 pounds
with its coal black face and all its teeth intact...so the man & dog
hunkered down in the greenhouse, the only structure on the property
with a working heater, every evening at dusk, with some Snickers bars
and a bowl of water, trying to stay quiet...watching...waiting.
After four chilly, uneventful nights, on the first night of the full
moon, Featherstone was cracking open another candy bar when someone
or something crossed the path of light between the greenhouse and a
lamppost several yards away...something big and squarish and moving
fast, blotting out all illumination for half a second. Though
Featherstone heard no sound outside, Brutus' ears perked up and he
eeked out the smallest whimper - a sound Featherstone had never heard
from the animal. The small square window panes of the greenhouse were
fogged-up with the evening chill, so Featherstone rubbed a circle in
one of them with his shirtsleeve to see outside...nothing...still
nothing...he rubbed the window pane and squinted into the
darkness...then, out of the mist, moving gracefully despite his size
and bulk, the shadowy silhouette of a tall man, at least seven feet
in height, with wide squarish shoulders, a deformed peanut-shaped
head and extra large hands. From Featherstone's position, the
towering creature appeared to be naked, at least from the waist up,
though he couldn't be sure in the bad lighting. Featherstone's
breathing rate increased so he kept fogging up the window pane and
kept wiping it clear with his shirtsleeve. Brutus had deserted him,
for the first time ever, and was cowering under a table on the
opposite side of the room. Featherstone watched the towering
silhouette outside, standing in one place but contorting his arms,
neck, head and torso as if in anguish...yet still making no sound.
The private eye's heart pounded as he reached for the comfort of his
standard police-issue .38 revolver...he left it strapped in his
shoulder holster but flicked off the safety switch...he kept rubbing
small circles in the window pane until...*squeak*...it made a sound,
and the hulking figure outside froze then turned its head directly
toward Featherstone, who also froze and held his breath.
Featherstone wished he had brought a bigger gun, or at least had
loaded magnum cartridges in his weapon, because he was not sure that
he could, if necessary, bring down the burly, sinewy giant with his
little bullets. Featherstone lost sight of the thing for a moment,
then darkness came again...the man-thing was right outside the
greenhouse, eclipsing the lamppost, its hand dangling at its side
right in front of Featherstone's face - a hand that looked big &
powerful enough to squeeze the air from a basketball. Long
breathless seconds passed...light flooded back into the greenhouse as
the behemoth backed up to where he had been standing...Featherstone
carefully, silently cleared the window pane again and watched the
thing resume his contortions then reach down with one hand and grab a
headstone - a stone he would later discover weighed almost 400
pounds - and tear it out of the soil where it had been planted. Big
clods of dirt fell from the stone as the goliath lifted it higher,
higher, higher still, 'til he held the stone effortlessly over his
head...Featherstone grabbed for his gun but fumbled it, dropping it
into the darkness, and his legs would not work to retrieve it, for
they were cramped and stiff from crouching too long and he was frozen
in fear, and he was still trying not to make a sound, even though
Brutus was now openly whimpering and actually covering his eyes with
his paws, and Featherstone waited for the imminent crash of the
headstone through the greenhouse window...but it didn't come.
Instead, as Featherstone watched, with one hand the thing twisted the
headstone like a piece of cheese and let it fall to earth in three
big granite chunks, and every glass pane on the greenhouse shook as
the last, biggest chunk hit the ground. The creature, whatever it
was, then dashed out of sight, and as it did so smashed the glass of
the lamppost and plunged all into darkness.
The next day, in broad daylight, Featherstone examined the
scene, the shattered lamppost and the broken granite headstone...and
no footprints were visible in the dark, moist soil.