Larry, Looking For Trouble And Finding It

Here is another account that happened to my late husband, John, when he was between 16-18 years old. He had this friend named Larry. He thought Larry was a bit of a lamebrain, but they shared an interest in working on cars back when you 'could' work on a car before they became so computerized. They and a couple other guys would do what most boys did. They liked to ditty-bop around in their cars together and get into a little mischief from time to time. Nothing serious. Just being adventurous.

One day Larry got the notion to check out a graveyard in Willoughby, Ohio where John was living at the time. He had heard some stories about it being haunted. John knew the one he was talking about, but he told Larry that it was a stupid idea. However, the other two guys that Larry mentioned it to were game for it.

John rode along grudgingly just to see if they'd really follow through with it. They arrived sometime after midnight. The story was that there was a girl in blue that was killed by a train a long time ago. No one knew if it was an accident, or a suicide, but she was wearing a blue dress when they found her body. She had no identification in her purse or in her suitcase. The girl simply left a boarding house she was staying in and boarded a bus. Only to be found much later by the railroad tracks. It was the biggest mystery in Willoughby at that time period. I remember hearing about it many times myself. Since no one knew 'who' she was the townsfolk took pity on her and got her a headstone engraved with 'The girl in blue' and the date that she died. They weren't too sure about a birth date, other than she appeared to be in her early twenties. No one knew from where she came, or where she was headed. It was a rather sad story. I had seen the grave myself, but in the daytime and with the utmost respect.

The story was that she must have been in town to meet a paramour, but possibly was jilted by him. Being heartbroken she, then, jumped in front of an oncoming train out of despair. Thus, she was not at rest. It was said that she would wander around the grounds looking for the man that she thought loved her, but never finding him. The girl in blue became something of a legend in Willoughby. To some degree, she still is.

Well, the guys got there and Larry and the other two wanted to see if the legend was true. John would not enter the graveyard at all. He stayed by the car. He told them they were a bunch of jerks wandering into a cemetery at night. He told them that he, personally, did not believe in disturbing the peace of a cemetery and that he had too much respect for them. The guys berated him a bit, but John stood his ground and refused to join them. John and I believed in the same principles. We were, both, Christians and believed in the supernatural since we both had encounters early on. We learned what you should and should 'not' do and areas that you shouldn't venture into to begin with. I guess you could say that we accumulated some wisdom from our past experiences, eh!

However, the 'three stooges'-as John later called them-just 'had' to prove how tough and brave they were and proceeded to enter the cemetery through the wrought iron gates while John waited by the car smoking a cigarette. John said they were gone long enough for him to smoke a few cigarettes. He said he could hear them talking in the distance but couldn't make out the conversation. He could hear them chuckling and getting a bit loud, but he wasn't the least bit curious as to what they were doing. He just remained steadfastly by the car.

He said they must've been gone about twenty minutes, or so, when he heard Larry calling out to him. John answered back to him asking what he wanted. After that, John said he heard all of them screech and saw them running back towards the gate where he was waiting. Once they got through the gate, Larry was heaving and winded, but kept yelling "Get in the car, just get in the car. Now, man." They all piled into the car muttering expletives and screaming to just "take off". Larry was so rattled that he, accidentally, backed into a small sapling before regaining his wits and putting the car in drive.

Once they were finally on the way out of there did, they quieted down enough to tell John what happened to them. Up to that point John didn't utter a word. He could tell they were freaked out of their wits. According to Larry, they were joking around and daring someone to come forward or do something. They never expected 'something' to happen, but it did. While they were standing near the girl in blue's headstone, they thought they heard someone walking in the leaves not far from them. When they looked off to the side about 20 feet, or so in the distance they saw a figure coming towards them. That was when Larry called out to John thinking it was him. However, when John answered back from 'outside' the gates they 'knew' that something was wrong. They just stood there, fixated, on the figure coming towards them. They could tell it was a man, but what actually sent them screaming was the fact that they didn't see 'any' legs as he was coming towards them. They could hear the crunching of the leaves as he was moving, but there were no legs and feet to make the sounds. They 'all' saw it. From there they just bolted out of the gates and didn't look back. John admitted that he had a sense of "I told you so" satisfaction because he tried to tell them not to pursue the idea. That was part of the reason that John referred to Larry as a lamebrain. I agree. I met Larry a few months after John, and I got together. There's nothing wrong with him. He's just a natural born jerk.

However, when I asked him about the Cemetery adventure, he absolutely 'refused' to talk about it. It left him that shook up.

In regard to the 'girl in blue', she was finally identified in 2000 something. The local paper, the News Herald ran a special story on her. Someone took the initiative to send that story to other states in the hope of ending the mystery of solving her identity. They drew an artist's conception of her based on the old autopsy report and eyewitness accounts as to what she looked like.

She was an unknown from 1940 something when she perished, and the mystery began. However, she 'was' finally identified after all those years by one of her brothers in another state who was elderly by that time. Most of her immediate family was very sparce, but at last she was identified. He came out to Willoughby and thanked the paper for printing that story and releasing it elsewhere because when he read it and saw her picture, he said it closed a hole in his and other family members' hearts. The mysterious girl in blue had a 'name' at last. They erected a new stone with her 'name' inscribed on it. I'm not mentioning her name out of respect for the family that waited so very long to find out what happened to her so long ago. It's nice that she has family to recognize her and be aware of her. I wonder if Larry read that story!