greypatch3 on 20/4/2009 at 23:32
Quote Posted by Turtle
Good.
Now that that's out of the way, you can help me find a short story.
It involved a man who lived in the mountains in the western US. His wife died and he laid her body on a table and washed her for her burial the next day.
During the night he heard something skulking around his cabin.
Then he heard screeching sounds like a pissed off cougar or bobcat fighting something in the dark.
When he woke in the morning, he noticed the bottom of his wife's feet were dirty leading the reader to assume that she had reanimated and protected him from the beastie.
We read it in English class in late middle/ early high school.
Any ideas?
I've heard that one before, though not by any particular author. I think it's a folklore story that might have been written up by somebody (like the stories in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, though that story is definitely NOT in those anthologies). Considering the time period, though, I would recommend looking into Ambrose Bierce, who is actually the author of a short story that was driving me nuts for a long time, "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," where the main character is being hung by the neck, and escapes...or does he?:eek:
The version of the above story I heard, though, was not dirty feet; the wife, it turned out, had not died but had gone into a paralytic state, and it was assumed she died, but had enough strength to fight against the wolf (or cougar, depending on the story) with her teeth. The animal ripped her throat out and definitively killed her at that point, but the husband first notices that she is alive because she managed to bite the animal's ear off and spook it enough to make it run off.
Malygris on 19/8/2015 at 03:28
I literally just received an email about this from a guy named Gene - Fox_Fire_07 at Yahoo. I almost dismissed it as spam, but it contained no links of any kind, just a reference to Horrer Howce (the proper spelling of the title), the name of the author, and the title of an anthology it's in. It mentions that the book is available on Amazon, but as I said, no link. It's a friendly, helpful email from some guy I've never heard of before, in response to a question I asked six years ago.
First, I guess, is this some new kind of stealth-spam I'm not familiar with? And second, if not, does anyone know who this Gene guy is? Is he a member? If so, then thanks very much, but what the hell, man.
This concludes our thread necro for the day. Thanks for your time.
demagogue on 19/8/2015 at 04:32
To me it sounds like the situation is the guy was either googling the story or something random, it hit on your post, he knew the answer, so he answered it. Since it was a random search, he didn't have a sense of the date or context.
Isn't that how it usually works? I've seen this kind of thing happen now and then.
nickie on 19/8/2015 at 08:20
Quote Posted by Malygris
First, I guess, is this some new kind of stealth-spam I'm not familiar with? And second, if not, does anyone know who this Gene guy is? Is he a member? If so, then thanks very much, but what the hell, man.
This is a new member. I'll pm you with further details but I do several checks on new user registrations and they didn't lead me to think this was a spammer.
