They’re coming to get you Barbara

This story will probably go down as one of the funniest things that happened at Horror Realm last weekend.  My wife Kristy alluded to it in her last post, but I thought I’d give some blow by blow detail.  I just wish more people had witnessed it.

As most of you know I grew up in PA spending a lot of time in the woods.  I’m familiar with the sounds that animals make versus humans and so on and so forth.

On Saturday afternoon my dear friend Michelle (aka DeadMama) asked if we wanted to go up to the very famous (in the undead community) Evans City Cemetery.  For those of you that don’t know this cemetery, it is where the opening scenes of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ were filmed.  Well, you know me, I said *we* would love to go!  So come 5 PM Kristy, Michelle, Mike (Michelle’s husband) and myself jump in their rental and go find a Bob Evans because they don’t have those in Louisiana where they are from.  That was the first chuckle of the night for me.  Michelle has a fetish for Bob Evans.

After dinner we come out of Bob Evans and Kristy had mentioned to Michelle I get carsick in the back seat (very true, growing up in PA was tough) so I got in the front and Mike handed me the map to which I laughed because we had to go right past my hometown of Sewickley to get to Evans City which is near Zelienople.  We tool along and Mike and I discuss his time in Iraq and injuries from an IED (he is going back in January).  Finally we get to Evans City and head up through the hills to the cemetery and it looks just like in the movies.  The tree tunnel, windy road and building are all still there. Oh, did I mention it was dark? Very dark?

The maintenance building in the cemetery 

We park the car in the almost the same spot as in the movie and Michelle scampers out saying she knows where the headstone is that Barbara was kneeling at.  At this point Kristy realized her coming wasn’t the brightest of ideas.  In the back of your head you know there is no such thing as zombies but the front of you mind is saying ‘No Zombies, No Zombies, No Zombies’.

DeadMama as Barbara at the Coles Headstone

Mind you we have NO flashlights but the LED one on my military grade cellphone.  We finally get to the headstone and DeadMama gets down in front of it re-enacting Barbara’s scene here.  This is really funny because she will be playing Barbara in an upcoming play down in Shreveport.  Michelle jumped up and said she new where the other headstone was so went walked across the cemetery to find that marker/monument.

  Kristy loosening up at Michelle’s encouragement and re-enacting another of Barbara’s scenes

At this point we decide to go help Mike with a geocache.  This is where pods are placed all over the world and you use a GPS (not a car one but the real deal) to find the location.  You then open the pod, sign the roster, and go back to the Web and update that you found it.  The one Mike is looking for is near the war memorial in the middle of the cemetery but no matter how hard we looked we couldn’t find that one.  He knew there was one down by the entrance sign so we headed in that general direction in the car.

The modern entrance sign

So we get out of the car leaving the lights on and doors open and walk over to the sign where I took the above picture.  What you can’t see is the hill side that goes up behind the sign and is totally wooded.  Mike, using his GPS, realizes that the geocache is in the woods and says screw it. 

Michelle, Kristy, and I are taking pictures and I hear rustling up in the woods.  No big deal right?  Probably a deer, bear, or bobcat.  None of those will mess with you.  I say nothing.  I hear the rustling again and ask if anyone heard it.  No one did.  I hear the rustling again and it is moving towards us and FAST!  The next sounds I hear make me laugh today (not so much then).  A pair of red Chucks (Michelle) and sandals (Kristy) running as fast as they can to the car.  I realize I’m not the first to run so I take off like a bat out of Hell for the front seat and we realize Mike hasn’t moved.  The IED kind of messed up his hearing so I yell his name and he sees us jumping in the car and he comes running.  We peel out of the cemetery and take off down the road.

About ten miles later it became funny but that first ten miles was awfully quiet!