Local Legend Vol. 2: The Thing That Happened to You

Volume 1 was the story your whole county knows. This one is smaller and harder to tell.

Write your partner about something that happened to you that you have never been able to explain.

Not a story you heard. Not a story about your cousin. Something you were actually there for. The light that paced your car on a county road. The footsteps upstairs in a house where you were alone. The voice that said your name. The animal in the treeline that was the wrong size, or moved the wrong way, or stood up. The night you knew something before you had any way of knowing it.

"I was eighteen, fishing a strip job pond with an older couple and their two kids. Past midnight. Something hit the middle of that pond so hard we thought it was a fish, until a rock came out of the treeline and landed in the water. We lit the woods up with every flashlight we had and there was nothing there. Nearest person was fifteen miles off, down at the river.

We stayed a while, listening to branches snap and something knocking on wood all around us in the dark. Then a log came out of the trees and splashed one of the kids, and we were done. Packed up and piled in the Jeep.

Tony wasn’t satisfied. So a couple of us took lights and went up in there and searched. Never found a track, a light, a person, anything. The knocking kept going the whole time, all around us, and we finally just left."

I have turned that over for years and I am no closer to an answer than I was the day it happened. I suspect a lot of you are carrying something similar.

What you’ll do:

You’ll be assigned one partner. Write that person a handwritten letter about your experience. Tell them how old you were and where you were. Tell them what you actually saw or heard, in the order it happened, without cleaning it up. Tell them what you decided it probably was, and whether you believe that explanation when you are lying awake.

The part most people skip, and the part I most want you to include: tell your partner whether you ever told anybody. If you did, tell them what that person said. If you never have, say so. That is usually the real story.

If nothing like this has ever happened to you, you are allowed to write about the closest you ever came, or about somebody in your family who had one and what it did to them.

What to send your partner:

One handwritten letter, at least two pages. Longer is welcome.

Optional: a photo of the place, a rough map, anything that helps your partner picture where they are standing.

A note on tone:

Some of these are funny and some of them are not. If yours sits close to something painful, write it anyway if you want to, and know your partner is a stranger who signed up to receive it with respect. If you would rather keep it light, keep it light. Nobody here is being graded on how haunted they are.

Rules:

Handwritten. Typed is fine if handwriting is genuinely difficult for you, just mention it to your partner.

Mail within three weeks of assignment. If life falls apart, message me before the deadline and I’ll work with you. Silence is the only thing that earns a 1.

Rate your partner honestly and promptly once their letter arrives.

Minimum 4.5 rating to join. New members welcome, I just want people who finish what they start.

Deadline to sign up: Sunday, October 25 Mail by: Sunday, November 15

I’m swapping in this one too. If you were in Volume 1, come back. I liked what you people sent.

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