Perhaps if I had followed the advice of my elders and never listened to ghost stories I’d never have grown up being afraid of horses.

Thursday, March 29, 2001

Perhaps if I had followed the advice of my elders and never listened to ghost stories I’d never have grown up being afraid of horses. The odds, though, are all against it. I can admire horses, respect horses and even from a distance have a certain affection for horses, but we’ll never really be buddy-buddy.

Back in the dark ages when the best radio had to offer was a singer by name of Little Jack Little singing &uot;The Red Red Robin&uot; and television if mentioned at all would have been mentioned in a science fiction sort of way. In that dark age people sat around telling stories, some of them ghost stories.

The members of my family on both sides were natural born seannachies and with a drawing of a sigh and &uot;I shouldn’t be speaking of such darkness….&uot; could rivet attention in a way you’d scarcely credit.

Before the big depression all the relatives lived fairly close to each other so ghost stories must have been related in more than one house. It always seemed to me, though that the most frightening of them were told in my Uncle Tad’s house. My mother’s elder brother, he lived on a farm. Back then very few farms boasted electric lights. The old kerosene lamps usually cast a limited circle of light and set up a collection of wavering shadows around the room that made you afraid to forsake the family circle even if you wanted to.

The story of the horses was a simple one. My mother’s father had looked out to see a team of horses roaming across part of his land. Since digging had been going on there for a new foundation he was afraid the horses might fall in the hole. Calling to his two sons he rushed out to rescue the animals, but they simply weren’t there. All three of the men had seen them, close at hand they were. The horses, though were not to be seen, nor had they left so much as a hoof print in the soft earth.

Then came the message that a member of the family had died at about the same time as the horses were in the habit of appearing to announce deaths in the family.

Just for the record this happened in 1891. There have been many deaths, but so far as I know no horses since then. Because I was always a little ashamed of feeling that there was something eerie about horses I enrolled in a riding class when I entered the university.

It was a mistake. There were 12 members in the class and 11 horses suitable for beginning riders. Sure. Despite my protests I wound up with the 12th horse. Blue Heaven was his name and never was a name more inappropriate. Blue Heaven bit at one end and kicked at the other.

When we rode around in a circle he applied himself to biting the tail of the horse in front of him, when he wasn’t lashing out with his hoofs at the horse behind him. When the instructor told me to pull him in a bit closer he ran at her and gave all signs of planning to trample her underfoot.

There’s a moral in all this and as soon as I figure out what it is I’ll be glad to share it with you.

Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column appears Thursdays.