When I was about six, we moved out to the country, from the town of Hickory Flat, Mississippi.

  Shortly after we moved, a woman named Martha Parker died and was buried at Pisgah Cemetery, right on the front row. I had watched the original “T…he Walking Dead” movie not long before that and was horrified when we drove along a few days later and her casket had been dug up and sitting out on the lawn, with the lid up.

  I freaked! Had Miss Martha come back?

  We were later told someone had noticed at her funeral that she was buried facing west and they wanted her dug up and turned around, so when the final ‘bugle blows’, she will be facing east.

  Daddy agreed to be a witness for the cemetery workers and I was supposed to stay in the vehicle, but I didn’t.

  When have I ever been one to follow rules?

  When I walked up and down looked at her, I saw something MOVING in the casket!

  There was some stuff running out of her mouth that must have got activated when she hit the fresh air or the casket was bumped around. She had on a blue dress and had a strange expression on her face.

  Daddy ran me back to the car but it was too late, I had recurring nightmares about that for years. This was the first time I had ever seen a corpse.

  Later, when I started driving, I would force myself not to look over to her grave, each time I passed.

  But, one night several years ago, I had been thinking about Miss Martha’s dilemma of being turned wrong in her grave and, when driving by at dusk, involuntarily glanced that way and immediately spotting ’something’ standing near her grave in the cemetery.

  Thought I was going to puke or have a heart attack before I realized it was one of our local ‘characters’ who enjoyed partying and, sometimes, even sleeping, in that cemetery and all around on that road.

  He didn’t have a car and would sit around and wait on someone to drop him off a few beers.

  He told me once, when I picked him up and gave him a ride, he felt safer sleeping in there than out on the road. He didn’t believe in ghosts himself and he knew nobody ‘above ground’ would be bothering him, as long as he reposed on a grave there at night.