You are here: Real Ghost Stories :: Haunted Places :: The Cursed Tree

Real Ghost Stories

The Cursed Tree

 

This unfortunately will not be that big or scary of a story as my past two, but I think it's worth telling.

The last two stories were of the last significant events of our group, so this one kind of rewinds the clock and is actually the first event that formed our group and gave us all the bug to investigate local happenings.

As a kid I grew up in Amherstburg Ontario and loved investigating all the local hot spots for paranormal activities. Amherstburg was full of activity with a rich history in war and odd happenings. Many events proved to be just rumours but a handful of them were not. It was these few events that impressed on me and convinced me that there is more to these places than rumours.

My whole rollercoaster ride within the paranormal world started in the first few months of grade 9. I was new in High school and was making friends and learning the ropes. I made a good friend in my history class and we decided to volunteer our time to the local Haunted house. I loved the idea of designing and working in a place where you scared the crap out of people all night. It was the early 90s, a time where the slasher films were the summer blockbusters and hanging out late at night and crawling all over the town getting into trouble was the main entertainment. This is the fertile grounds in which our group was formed. Working in the haunted house and having a good history teacher that was also very involved in the haunted house made it only a matter of time before we started hearing about all the town's vicious history and rumours of all the local "hotspots"

At this time our group only consisted of me and my friend; intrigued with all the stories we immediately started plans to prove them out to see if there was any truth to them. So we decided to go and see what the truth was about a known cursed tree just on the outskirts of town. This was one of those old dead creepy trees. I do not know what kind of tree it once was, but it no longer appeared to be of this earth. It was tall and mostly bleached wood in colour. No bark and no smaller branches. It was once a big tree but the main trunk and major branches were all that was left of it. It was probably about 50 ft. Tall and twisted with large humped /swollen areas on the larger branches.

The tree was on the outskirts of town. This specific area was an old shallow ravine that ran across the backside of town. Being low ground it was often flooded in the rainy seasons. The main road passed over the shallow ravine with a small land bridge. On one side of the main road was a forest on the other was a small dirt road. The dirt road was very prone to be washed out and was not well kept.

The tree was located on the side of this dirt road only about an eighth mile from the main road. On the opposite side of the dirt road from the tree was the old part of the Amherstburg graveyard. Behind the tree was a grass field with a stream cutting through it. Past the stream was a hill and on top of the hill were several old farm houses. This was once a larger farming establishment from back in the 1800s. The houses were close together and facing each other. They were smaller houses except for one and they were in bad disrepair. The local lore was that the family that lived there had several murders take place within the family and left the place abandoned. On the hilltop and around the houses and surrounding the grass field was forest.

The cursed tree was at the edge of the grass field very near the dirt road. The tree stood out by itself and was a scary sight even from some distance. The tree had several holes in the trunk and they would often bleed black sap. The ground around the tree was bare. Nothing grew under or around the tree. People would say the tree was cursed and anyone who touched the tree would be cursed. Often dead animals would be found lying under the tree. It was also rumoured to be the location where the ghost of one of the murdered family members of the nearby farm stead dwelled. With the history of this tree you can see why we were so interested in investigating it.

It was just after the haunted house had finished; in the first couple days of November, we set out to visit this tree. It was not hard to find. But it was definitely an eerie sight. The tree looked as it was described with the little holes in the trunk and everything. Under the holes were brown rusty stains where the sap had dried. It was definitely a creepy tree, but we quickly got bored. There was nothing really interesting happening. We looked around; the ground where nothing grew was as described and we could see the houses on the hill through the autumn trees. It was all eerie but nothing too unusual. We quickly turned to the graveyard on the other side of the road and started to walk and read the grave stones. There were a lot of very old graves. Many of the stones were weathered white sandstone. I remember wanting to get a rubbing of some of the older ones. After a couple of hours it was starting to get late. The sun was low in the sky and we were about to leave, but decided to take one more look at the tree before we left.

Walking from the graveyard placed the tree perfectly in front of the old farm houses on the hill, it was quiet the image. (Perfect for a horror movie.) As we approached the tree I was looking towards the old houses. At first I thought I saw a deer moving along the tree line. But as the image moved closer to the houses I could get a better look and it seemed to be a person. I could tell it was a girl in a light coloured summer dress. I told my friend and he saw her too. We thought she was a local girl and being young men we thought we should go introduce ourselves. The houses were not that far away from us, we only had to pass the tree and cross the field. But as we passed the tree my friend noticed that the tree had started to bleed. It was very true about that tree. It did bleed! It was not a thick molasses like sap that I expected it to be. It was thin like black watery oil. It ran down the tree like tears. It was very odd. I was surprised on the amount of black sap that it was bleeding. Within minutes all the holes had running sap and the sap had trickled to the base of the tree. With the weird tree bleeding thing we lost track of the girl. Regardless we decided to cross the field and see the old houses. It did not take long, a few minutes' worth of a hike and we were there.

Immediately the area struck me a strange. The houses and the old farm seemed lost to time. Everything was left were it was last used and just left for what looked like decades. Farming tools were left leaning on the side walls of the barn. The barn was left open, even an axe was left stuck into a rotted old stump. Everything was overgrown with weeds and it was all rotted and rusted. The house porch was so rickety that my foot broke through the wood when I tried to walk on it. I found it so hard to believe that this place was so intact. Every kid in town knew of this place and I assumed had visited it. But the place looked undisturbed.

We looked around, but we could not see any sign of anyone being there recently, even the girl we just saw. She was nowhere to be found. We looked over the homestead and moved into the woods around. We found some very odd things, like an old pair of leather boots covered in the leaves and a couple of old wooden rain barrels. All these odd things led us a little deeper into the woods on the far side of the house from the tree. Just before the trees broke open into another farm field, there was a small pile of rocks. It was scary; it looked like an old grave. It also had been there for a long time. We looked the place over and decided it was best to leave before it got dark. We definitely did not want to be there when it was dark.

On the way back we could see the cursed tree past the houses and nearby trees. For a brief moment we both saw the girl under the tree. She disappeared as we lost sight of her as we moved past the houses and the trees. We stopped for a second once we broke into the field between the farm houses and the cursed tree. It was a long country road and the tree was out in the open. The girl had nowhere to hide and yet she was gone. We both quickly realized that we had seen a ghost.

On the walk back home (we were without transportation in those days) surprisingly all we talked about was the tree. The fact that the ghost was seen did not seem to frighten us as much as the fact that she had been under that tree. We came to the conclusion that the tree must bleed when she is around. I can remember that that brief image of seeing her standing under the tree through the woods stayed with me for a long time.

Alone this event was not very scary. But there was some events that happened that I think greatly adds to the legacy of this tree.

The next year, 2 senior kids had a horrific event happen just meters from the tree. The papers reported that the two kids had been drinking and were walking home in the middle of the night and for some strange reason they both decided to stop and sleep in the middle of the road. A truck came by and hit them. The accident killed one of the kids and seriously injured the other. The event saddened the whole community. The story never sat right with me. It did not seem right even through alcohol was involved. It also bothered me that it happened so close to the tree.

The other event happened a couple years after I was out of high school. A guy driving home late at night swerved off the road and crashed into the tree. The tree fell on the car and killed the driver. The passenger lived and made a statement that they had seen a girl standing in the middle of the road and swerved to miss her. I often wonder if it was the same girl I saw years ago.

I still pass that area every now and then. It looks a lot different today. The tree is gone and the road is now built up and paved. The subdivisions have expanded and filled the old farm land behind the grave yard and pretty much taken up all the area on that side of the street. The old farm houses were bought and cleaned up and are now lived in. But no matter what they do to this area, I can still remember what it looked like and it still gives me Goosebumps thinking about it when I pass the area at night.

Other hauntings by old_dude

Hauntings with similar titles

Find ghost hunters and paranormal investigators from Canada

Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, old_dude, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

LaurenAKK (7 posts)
 
7 years ago (2016-10-21)
Awesome, thanks for "confirming" this location.:) That's where I always suspected it to be. Only an "Amherstburger" knows why there would be a monopoly game board behind me. I drive down that road on my way to the arena multiple times a week and I always stare at that creek and the surrounding area, thinking about this story. Now, I'm going to stare and try to find the bump in the ground!
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
 
7 years ago (2016-09-29)
Lauren it is not hard to find. The place looks the same as I described it. So standing in front of it you would see the same landscape. But now you would have a monopoly board behind you and a water tower to your left. I think the roadside has been dug up and re graded so many time but you can still see the lift in the ground where the tree once stood and the area is still full of dead grass.
Miracles51031 (39 stories) (4999 posts) mod
 
8 years ago (2016-07-14)
LaurenAKK - we strongly discourage our members giving addresses, or exact locations. If a member does provide that information, it gets deleted. Privacy and respect are important.
LaurenAKK (7 posts)
 
8 years ago (2016-07-14)
Really wish I knew where exactly this place was! I was really paying attention to the description of the location and trying to figure out where this tree might be but then I read in the comments that the tree is gone.: (Very disappointed. But I'd still like to know exactly where the farm house was.
27flowers (2 stories) (25 posts)
+1
8 years ago (2016-06-20)
Love,love, love this! I have always had a "thing" for trees, especially the old crooked ones where you get the feeling it has witnessed so many years go by and changes and they just stand there silently taking it all in! I strongly believe that nature holds onto the powerful events -negative or positive that happen around it and somehow becomes part of it with a strong connection to the paranormal. Maybe it was a source of energy for these manifestations and that's why it appeared so depleted? Sounds a bit out there but just my wonderings!
I heard of an old superstition in Ireland that a lone tree growing in a field is always avoided or not removed for fear of being cursed, something along those lines...

Thanks again for this read, will be sure to catch up on your others!

-27Flowers
Zander (7 stories) (141 posts)
 
8 years ago (2016-04-17)
Ditto, Angelus ~ Old_Dude is an excellent story teller. I'm right there with you.
angelus_crudus (3 stories) (35 posts)
+1
12 years ago (2011-12-15)
Hey OldDude, I've been reading your stories and I like all of them I've read so far. The way you write is refreshing and I don't find it long winded at all. I could swear I was at that tree with you guys, or in the ravine with the stones. Very interesting!
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-09-07)
old_dude!
What's shakin" baby! How's tricks?
I hear tell that they had one long ago but it was too much of a hassle to maintain. That's all I know, and it was before my time. However, I also wish it could be brought back. There are so many times I feel like I'm stealing someone else's comment space and there was always more I wanted to say.
What a lot of us have done is to use our own stories to carry on with a conversation. That way we aren't getting in the way. And you can usually tell from the amount of pages that a story has if it has become one of our makeshift chat rooms.

Jav 😊
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
+2
13 years ago (2011-09-07)
Too bad this site dosn't have private disscussion threads. I'd love to discuss some of this stuff off to the side!
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-09-07)
I hate being so long winded but I have such trouble communicating the essence of what happened. THe only way to do it is with details. I try to filter it as much as possible and only add pertinent information.

Also My experiances were really not pre-planned, they just kind of happened as we discovered things or the opportuinites arose. So when I am writing this I try to collect all my experiances with a single event and group them in chronological order.

I had a fairly adverntureous teenhood and got into all kinds of touble so many events that I write about had a ton of other things going on at the time that I have filtered because they are not paranormal related. (exspecially some of the events in the basement of the appartment building... We had a lot of naughty fun only college kids could get away with!)

So I try to put it all together to make it make sense.

Also my stories are not writen in chonological order, but you have to kind of read them in the order they were writen to develop a working knoledge of the times and places.

Thanks again for liking my stories.
quixoticqt (5 stories) (104 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-09-07)
Your stories are so good that I ran out of all my daily karma point adding.πŸ˜†
Any time I read any of your stories the "Daily vote limit exceeded" pops up for all your comments.
I have to say you are one of the best writters; Every time I click on your story I sometimes get overwhelmed by how far I have to read down... But then I start out, get pulled to the tip of my chair😨 and then the stories done *sigh*.
Mountaineer (4 stories) (176 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-26)
My first favorite story. This was really well written, and it was a great story. Old trees in general are always a little spooky, and during that time of year (late October through early November) has always been designated by people as an eerie time when spirits walk the earth. One thing for sure is that all the old buildings on my farm are a heck of a lot spookier around that time of year. You can almost feel the spirits touching you when you stand outside and a late October wind howls through the trees.
Madyrina (68 posts)
+2
13 years ago (2011-08-26)
old_dude: another great read! I thoroughly enjoy your stories. This, like you others, is going into my favs. ❀
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
+2
13 years ago (2011-08-26)
Hi Missy,

Yeah none of that ever sat right with me either...
No one ever really spoke about it, but I think something odd happened. Especially being that dead animals would be found under the tree all the time. I have not heard of any problems since the tree was removed.
Hopefully that means it is all gone and resolved.
MissyM (2 stories) (152 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-26)
I'm going to sound like a broken record but I as well think your stories rock! My Fav being Ouija Board From Hell. (even made 3 of my co-workers read it and loved it as well.)

I find it so odd that two drunk senior kids both fell asleep on the road near the tree. One drunk I can definitely see (having had to stop in the early morning for a drunk passed out on the road before. But?both? Normally one would have noticed and laughed at the other to get up.
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-22)
old dude,
I'm with Hippychick. Your stories rock!
This one gets me for the loneliness. That girl seems to be all alone out there. It just touches me, I can't help it.

Jav
hippiechick83 (5 stories) (112 posts)
+3
13 years ago (2011-08-22)
old_dude:

A.) All of your stories are in my favorites, you just rock that hard. πŸ˜†

B.) ohmyfreakingosh... Your stories are scary as anything... And I thought my experiences were odd. Yours takes the cake for sure.

AND

C.) Thanks for sharing and keep 'em coming because seriously, you're awesome at writing stories. 😳
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-18)
I definately feel that the girl was connected to the tree.

As for the pile of stones... I hope they were not a grave, but man they sure did look like one. Hopefully a pet. I do not think a body would have been missed. They were not that far away from the house. I would imagine that if there was an investigation for murder they would have found the stones. Either way they too were creepy.
ILee (1 stories) (91 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-18)
old_dude, I just love reading your stories! Your words seem to just float right off the page and make me feel like I was part of your eerie adventure.

It could be possible that the girl has some sort of attachment to the tree or maybe even to the pile of stones which could be the grave site of a beloved pet.

Again, thanks for sharing your story!
clever210 (3 stories) (189 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-18)
Very well written account. Thanks for sharing this with us! 😁
winx717 (2 stories) (31 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-18)
I don't really have anything to contribute other than this story was so well-written. I haven't read your other stories, but I will be after I finish typing this comment! Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I felt like I was right there with you!

Great story, old man!;)
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
+3
13 years ago (2011-08-18)
This was a tree that you would have to definatley see to appreciate.

Before I actually went to see the tree, a lot of the stories and facts around this tree were explainable.

Dead trees typically look eerie. Some dead tres leak sap, some times black sap (we had a Beech tree that was hit by lightning it leaked thick black sap twice a year)

The dead animals and things under the tree was disturbing... But possibly explained by the local wierdoes.

When I got there is was definately creepy and a very surreal feeling about the area.

The fact that the tree bled only after we saw the girl was very odd. The amount of water black sap was odd too.

It was out in the country a bit so the girl was definately out of place... And the way she was dressed and how hard it was to keep tabs on her all added to our conclusion of her being a ghost. She dissapeared and reappeared very far away from where we first seen her.
bacchaegrl (506 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-18)
Oh man, if I had a creepy tree like that near my city, you couldn't keep me from it! Sounds like quite an adventure you had. I know everyone has already gushed all over how great your story was, and I agree. I just wanted to say a little something about how you never fail to disappoint!
Javelina (4 stories) (3749 posts)
+2
13 years ago (2011-08-18)
old_dude,
Well, you don't need shadow creatures and Ouija Boards to creep me out!
No sir! Just walk me up to an abandoned old farmhouse that looks like the people just up and left in the middle of their chores and never came back.
Yep, that will do it for me alright.
That tree really bugs me. I have a couple of thoughts on what may have caused that tree to bleed so freely, and for the darkness of the fluid, but I don't think they can account for the girl.
A young girl in a light colored sun dress... In November?! Unless we're talking Indian Summer, I don't think this girl fits into the flesh and blood category. And her being the only 'person' you saw out there the whole time, gives me a lonely chill up the back of my neck. Poor thing... Plus the fact that you saw her twice is weird too. Almost like she wanted to be sure someone did see her. Spooky.
The smaller pile of stones? I'm praying that it was a much loved family pet that had passed away in it's sleep.
Being on a hill that overlooks a cemetery might sound creepy to other folks, but for some reason it just sounds peaceful to me. Everything else gives me the Twilight Zone Heebie-Jeebies, but the cemetery? Not so much.
Thanks for the weirdness Old Dude. I like that this one was a little less heart stopping. And your word for it was perfect... Definitely eerie.

Thanks again old dude!
Jav 😊
Madyrina (68 posts)
+2
13 years ago (2011-08-17)
old_dude: your stories never disappoint; extremely well written, and an eerie glimpse of your home town. Great story, I'm looking forward to your next one. ❀

This comment from Moongrim is hidden due to low rating. Show comment

taz890 (12 stories) (1380 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-17)
old-dude I doubt you got that boring lol
Anyway keep them comming have to keep adding them to favs. Really enjoy them
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-08-17)
HI Taz,
I too think something happened with the girl and the senior kids. But if so the surviving kid never soke of it... At least not that I ever heard of.

I have a handfull of these stories and then I am pretty much out. Most of these events happened during my highschool years. Once I got into College and life set in, I got to be a very boring person.
old_dude (16 stories) (112 posts)
+3
13 years ago (2011-08-17)
Truth, If you go out to take pictures you should try to use a camera that uses UV filters. Or night settings. I know of a few people that have taken pictures at graveyards with these settings and they get very interesting pictures. Very scary in some cases.
taz890 (12 stories) (1380 posts)
+2
13 years ago (2011-08-17)
old-dude again fantastic story and so well written, make's you feel like your there!
A great read and I hope you add more of these soon

It does make me wonder if this girl had anything to do with the 2 senior kids accident?
Carl

Read previous comments

To publish a comment or vote, you need to be logged in (use the login form at the top of the page). If you don't have an account, sign up, it's free!

Search this site: