About twenty-five years ago (say, the mid-1990s), my
ex-brother-in-law (I was married to his sister at the time) told me kind of a
chilling story. Although it has nothing to do with cemeteries, I thought I’d
share it with you anyway, since it is about death. I thought of it the other
day as I was browsing the bourbon section at my local liquor emporium. I don’t
recall ever seeing this brand, “Slaughter House” American whiskey, but when I
saw the label, I immediately recalled the story he told me.
So my brother-in-law was working for a roofing company in northeast
Pennsylvania at the time and his crew had a job installing a new roof on a
warehouse out in the boondocks. Off and on throughout the day, strange noises would
filter through the trees.
At lunch time, when all the hammering and generators
stopped, the noises became more apparent. At the end of the day as the crew was
packing up, the job foreman said, "Crazy sounds coming from that
slaughterhouse back there in the woods, huh?"
But that's not the end of the story! My brother-in-law, who
was a musician (played electric guitar in a band at the time) said to me, "I'm
seriously thinking about sneaking back into the woods there with a tape
recorder and recording those sounds, then using them as an ambient background
track for a song."
I never heard the sounds myself, but he described them as
"animal-like." I don’t know if he ever made the recording.
As an aside, when I was working on this post, I mistakenly left the leading "S" off the title (blame the "cut and paste" function - I always do), so it read "laughter House." Amazing how one letter can make all the difference! I made the photo above, by the way, at the Point Pleasant, New Jersey, boardwalk amusement park. We will assume no slaughtering occurred inside ...
