The Cemetery | True Ghost Stories & Spooky Folklore | Ep #62

0:01 Welcome stranger to Madam Strange Ways, where I, Madam Strange Ways, narrate your true strange stories of the unexplained. Whether you're a skeptic, A believer, or some secret third thing. Stick around after the story where I'll share my strange thoughts and research about said strange story, and along the way I'll drag you down a slew of strange rabbit holes, kicking and screaming if needs must. Before we get. To the true strange story, however, the strangest just of Shout outs to my Patreon patrons TJ Hotter of the Tapes of Trepidation podcast, Chi Man Music, Ted Keith, Tori, Octavia Corvidae, and Keith 2 if you can believe it.

0:42 Thank you so much to my Sinister Spectral 7 for supporting the show. Hear your name at the beginning of every episode, get a free sticker, and get access to bonus content like guided sleep meditations and Madam Strange Notes episodes for joining the Patreon at patreon.com/madam. Strange Ways sounds like it's about to rain Hellcats and Hellhounds outside, so you know what that means. Settle in for a true strange story here with Madam Strangeways. The Cemetery by Tori When I was a kid, I grew up around the corner from a cemetery.

1:34 We never thought too much of it since we walked past it all the time. There was a baseball field and a little ravine. That separated the two. Places that us kids liked to go hiking. Sometimes at night we liked to go for walks down the road that went by the cemetery that led back to the city landfill. There wasn't much on that road back then, a few properties with a couple of houses but not much else. It led to a dead end after a couple of miles, so we would only go part way and then turn around. We would tell each other ghost stories while we were walking. Everything from the Lady in White to devil worshippers that someone from our small town had seen in the cemetery.

2:20 One night we were walking at night. There were no St. lights back there, but the moon was bright and we had our flashlights. Remember this would have been somewhere in the late 80s to early 90s. When we got to the cemetery gate we were looking in and talking about going inside to walk around, but none of us were brave enough to go, so we just kept walking down the road. We decided we had gone far enough and turned around to go back to my house. And on our way. Back we were looking into the cemetery of course, and my cousin said that he saw something in one of the trees. He was using his flashlight and aiming it to where he said he saw it, but we didn't see anything.

3:03 We finally walked on a little further and we heard the trees rustle. Thinking it was an animal like a raccoon or something since there were lots of woods around, we searched with the flashlight again. That is when we all saw it in the tree. It was a dark shadow that looked like a person. It was crouched in an old oak tree on the lowest branch. When we aimed our flashlight on the spot it was gone, but as soon as we moved it away it was back again. That's when we saw it pull what looked like a bow and arrow out and aim at us. We didn't know what to do so we froze. It appeared to fire the arrow in our direction and we could hear the sound of the bowstring and the arrow flying. We even heard it hit the ground close to us. Well, that's when our flight response finally kicked in and we ran home as fast as we could.

4:02 We never saw anything following us when we looked back and that was all we heard or saw that night. We stayed up most of the night in our blanket for it in my living room, too scared to sleep. The next day we went back while the sun was up and found the spot where we had been standing the night before. We looked around for the spot we heard the arrow hit and found an Arrowhead rock sticking out of the ground right around where we thought we heard the arrow land. We didn't touch it because we were scared that something would come to find it. It was common to find Arrowhead rocks in the woods behind my uncle's house down the road, but we had never found one just out in the open or close to the cemetery.

4:49 That was the last time that we walked down that road at night and we stayed away from the cemetery too. Years later when I was. Learning to drive, my mom would take me and let me drive down that road and past the cemetery and I would still look over and think about that night. It still gives me chills to this day thinking about it. And there we have yet another Tori story. We love a Tori story here on Madam Strangeways. Welcome, Tori. Thank you so much again for allowing us to share one of your famous Tori stories.

5:36 If you're new to the show, welcome. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. So happy to have you. If you're new to the show, there's how many? Four possible, possibly 4:00-ish Tori stories that you can listen to. Let's see. There's the girls, there's How I Met Henry, there's the lady. And now here's the cemetery. I feel like I'm missing one, but I feel like I say that every time. Anyway, you can go back and listen to Tori's previous stories. All excellent. But if you're not new here, welcome back. Welcome. Welcome back. Yeah, you. Welcome back. So happy to have you all here. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Madam Strange Ways. Now, Tori, I can't blame you. For avoiding the cemetery. And even the street.

6:19 For forever. As long as possible I can just see you as a teenager learning to drive like. Sideways glancing at the cemetery, you know, in the street, like, oh God, like holding your breath, like please, please, please don't follow me home. Scary Archer, man. Archer Ghost. No thank you. No thank you. I do. Listen, I I'm not going to be out at a cemetery in the middle of the night. I'm not going to be there because I'm in bed asleep. Honkshu, me, me, me, me. I'm sleeping. I'm not in a graveyard, but I love the vibes. I love the idea of being in a graveyard at night. I love the the aesthetic of being in a graveyard at night.

7:00 So sad that it went this way. I mean, what other way does it go when a story begins? You know, at a in a cemetery at. Night. I mean, how else is it going to end? It's going to end like this. It's going to end in terror. Very scary, but also like see, and I know I say this every time that we're talking about kind of like a, a, what I call like, you know, not just a retro ghost story, but kind of like an analog ghost story, you know, from before smartphones. Anytime I love it, maybe not before the Internet, but definitely like I love ghost stories before smartphones. I'm not sure what it is, but I know I'm not alone. I think even some of my patrons, I think some of them also agree. And if you agree, you could also be a patron. It's so easy.

7:45 madamstrangeways.com, you can join there or patreon.com/madam Strangeways. Anyway, even if you're not a patron, what do you think? Do you, how do you feel? Do you have an opinion? Do you prefer ghost stories that happen before smartphones? Vote now on your phones. e-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com on your cell phone. How you feel about stories pre and post cell phones, Smartphones to be to be specific. Are you a smartphone? E-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com, Let me know. But I think one of the reasons that I do love these, like analogue or, you know, retro stories is like, especially in this case where there were a bunch of kids together and what is it, You know, like, what is it about?

8:30 It's just so much hearing. Nothing scary even has to happen. And you guys, and you can scare yourselves. If you're in a group of, you know, teenagers and it's at night and you have a flashlight already right there, you've got a perfect storm. For everyone to get spooked for some reason. You know, like, whether or not we're talking about, you know, urban legends or they're talking about the hook man. Do kids talk about that anymore? Do kids talk about the hook man? Are they all just talking about Slender Man? Is this Slender Man the new guy with a hook and the hooks, like on the car door? Is that a thing anymore? Are you a child? Let me know, Madam. Strangewaysthatshebuilt.com Do you know the hook man? Are you the hook man? Let me know Madam strangeways@gmail.com. But that's what I it's just, it's like, it's such a nostalgia of being able to like scare yourselves when nothing scary even needs to happen.

9:19 You just have to like just just just the idea that something scary can happen kind of gets everyone riled up and gets everyone on edge. And, you know, like going to like a haunted house, you know, but you don't even have to go to a haunted house. You can just go out in the darkness with a flashlight. The cemetery does help. The cemetery helps. And so that's my segue into, you know, this is what we do here at Madam Strange Ways. We, the royal, we the royal strange we meaning just me, just me. We like to talk about not only the paranormal, but we also like to talk about maybe some, you might say naturalistic explanation, some theories, and also, you know, folklore. But this is what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about just a few things to begin with from a theory perspective, and then we're going to get into some folklore.

10:07 So I will start with this segue talking about how just having a bunch of kids together at night with a flashlight is already spooky. You add a graveyard into the mix and now, Oh no, it's very scary. That's what we're going to be talking about for a naturalistic or skeptical kind of angle to try and explain this situation. So here's the thing backed by science, BBC Science Focus. This is from sciencefocus.com. A study performed in the 1990s by psychologist Doctor James Horan found that people are more likely to believe in the paranormal if they've been primed, which is a word that I say a lot on this show because this is exactly how relevant it is. I, I realize I've never, I've never backed that claim up. I always just kind of say you've been primed. You've been primed, but now this is it. This is it.

10:58 Listen to this. This is a psychological term, primed. Primed is a psychological term for when the introduction of a stimulus influences a subsequent stimulus. For instance, how seasoning changes the taste of a steak. That is an interesting way to explain this and not at all how I would have gone about it. But let me just digest this seasoned steak example. OK, we're moving on. He took two groups of people around the disused cinema, explains Weissman. He told one group it was an architectural tour. Architectural, yeah, And they experienced nothing anomalous, he told the other. It was a haunted.

11:40 Disused cinema and lo and behold, some people in that group started to experience things. When there's ambiguity, suggestion can tell you how to perceive and how to report what you're experiencing. Magicians and psychics use it all the time. So there you go. There you go. This is from the study in the 1990s. So sure, that explains why you guys might have also you as in Tori and Co. This explains why Tori and Co might have seen a shadow in a tree that looked maybe like a human with a bow and arrow. But does it explain why they heard the sound of a bow and arrow and why they heard a an Arrowhead kind of like landing like I'm picturing, like, you know, the sound of an Arrowhead hitting the ground.

12:25 Everybody knows what that sounds sounds like. Why did they hear those sounds? And then of course, you might be asking, but then how do you explain having found an Arrowhead in that exact place? Well, I've already thought of that, obviously, because I have a few pages of notes and links to share with you now. OK, I I will say I cannot explain why they would have heard the sound of the bow and arrow. I don't, I can't explain that except that like I have said, in what episode was it the disembodied growling? In the disembodied growling episode, I do go into how easy it is to fool our sense of hearing, our auditory sense, very easy to fool.

13:07 So maybe it has something to do with that. I won't. I won't go into it right now, but you can go listen to disembodied growling after this one if you want to hear some thoughts about that. However, what I can potentially explain is why you might find an Arrowhead just in the ground randomly. I mean, aside from the obvious possibility that maybe there just really was someone up in a. Tree at night. In the cemetery alone, shooting in bow and arrow at children, That's possible. Is it probable? Probably not. Probably not probable, but it's possible that somebody dug up or found old arrowheads and then notched it onto an arrow. I don't know.

13:52 Fletched. That's a term that has to do with arrows anyway. Used an old fashioned Arrowhead and then shot it at some children. That could explain everything. Is that Occam's razor in play? This is maybe not a great. Example of Occam's Razor. OK, no, Occam's razor is that everybody in that group got themselves spooked and they were primed. That's Occam's razor. Occam's hair comb. Is that there? Was an Archer in the tree shooting at them? OK, no, but for real, I do actually have some pretty interesting information about. Arrowheads and. Specifically, why you might find an Arrowhead just randomly in the ground.

14:35 But before I get started, I do want to say that I did spend some time reading the Native Governance Center page. How to Talk about Native Nations, A guide. So I'm trying very hard to be very respectful of any Native nations that I discuss, But I am imperfect. Highly imperfect. Deeply, deeply imperfect. So please let me know if I've made any mistakes. And as always, I have also practiced my pronunciations, so again, if I don't get those perfect, please forgive. Me, I'm so sorry, I try so hard. OK. So we're talking about arrowheads, right? OK, reminder, this is set in Texas, specifically around Austin, otherwise known as Central TX.

15:17 Historically, the following native nations considered the area around Austin, their territory. So we have the coehiticons, the Tunkawas, the Comanches and the Lip and Apaches probably amongst others. Those are the ones that I have found the most in my research. So the coehiticons have been in Texas and Northeast Mexico for over 11,000 years. That is so many years. That's a long time. OK, This is from texasalmanac.com, written by Robert Plochek. Plochek for the Texas Almanac 19981999. My favorite. That's absolutely my my favorite. Edition of the Texas. Almanac Classic he says in prehistoric times as far back as 37,000 years ago, which is way more years ago than 11,000 as far back as 37,000 years ago, some anthropologists estimate primitive peoples who are the ancestors of modern American Indians existed in Texas. A burial site in the Permian Basin dated to 12,000 years ago was discovered in 1953 and the skeletal remains labeled Midland.

16:23 Many Lubbock Lake Park is at the site of a primitive civilization dated to 12,000 years ago as well. So clearly native nations have been here for. Very, very long time. So it's not. Uncommon to find arrowheads in Central Texas between 500 and 1000 years old or even older? Because archaeologists agree that there were indigenous humans living in Central Texas between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, right? So as far back as basically 18,000 BCE, which is before Common Era. You know, I've been trying to standardize the years that I use or the terminology that I use. So I'm trying to switch to BCE and CE.

17:04 So before Common Era and Common Era when I'm talking about years. So just fun fact. So as far back as basically 18,000 BCE during the actual Stone Age, that is during the Stone Age, which is a very long time ago. But if you're thinking that, well, OK Madam, but like, you're probably not finding arrowheads lying around Willy nilly from the year 18,000 BCE. But as it turns out, the Stone Age actually only ended as late as 2000 BCE. So the Stone Age lasted a very long time. So no, you're probably not going to find arrowheads from 18,000 BCE lying around in Texas.

17:45 But the Stone Age did last as late as 2000 BCE, which by the way, is when humans first began to use horses for transportation. What? And also, by the way, did you know that the Stone Age encompasses 99% of human history? 99% of human history is the Stone Age. So you know, with that context, I guess it is pretty understandable that you might find. Arrowheads from the Stone Age. But maybe the arrowheads that you can right now currently find littered around Central Texas and Austin, maybe they aren't from the Stone Age. Maybe they're more recent than the Stone Age. OK, but a 1000? Year old Arrowhead.

18:26 Just in the ground is still crazy to just find it, especially considering that you can just literally I I. I'm not exaggerating when I say just lying around because you can find arrowheads just sitting on the surface of the dirt like they were just tossed there a few months ago instead of back in the year 1026. You don't have to dig for it, which sounds made-up honestly, unless you're into geology, which I am not, but luckily I have access to rock nerds specifically because of the Internet. Thank you Internet. According to geologists, Central Texas has semi arid soil with very little topsoil, so it's dry and dusty and it's easy to sift through, but also is prone to severe flooding. So over time, the process of flooding and drying out and flooding and drying out and flooding and drying out effectively unearths the old arrowheads from the ground deep below, especially near creeks, so that these arrowheads can basically just work their way up to the surface without you having to even lift a finger.

19:31 So Tori, you know, I, although I can't explain, we're just, you know, we're just, we're just spitballing mundane theories, right? If I had to explain from a mundane, A mundane POV, I would say that y'all were primed because you were in a cemetery and also you did find an Arrowhead, but that it is, you know, relatively common to find arrowheads just on the top of the ground. However, I will add the caveat that in the story Tori Tori, in your Tori story, you did specifically say that it was not common in that area to find arrowheads, but were you looking for them? I don't know were you?

20:12 Let me know. Let me know you know where to e-mail me, madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Were you often looking for them? Or is this a case of like cognitive bias? You know you don't normally look around on the ground in the graveyard, and so if you did normally look around on the ground. Rhyming in here for some reason. If you did, look. Around on the ground in the graveyard. Maybe you would find more arrowheads, but probably you guys weren't looking around on the ground in the graveyard, in which case you would only find one when you went looking. I'll never know. We'll never know, guys. That's the thing about so many of these stories. We will never know what actually really happened.

20:54 But that's it for the mundane explanations. So we're going to move into the paranormal and also folklore. So from a paranormal standpoint, I mean, I think it is pretty standard procedure to see a shadow figure or a ghost perhaps in a cemetery that just feels right. It feels right. And I tried so hard to find some myths and legends, you know, specifically not only just about from Texas, but also like Native nations that are about. Archers or or. Bow and arrow use. And here's the thing. I kept coming up against this author whose last name is Archer, and so she happened to write a book about myths and legends.

21:39 And so when I'm trying to search for Coehedicon or Texas myths about Archers or bows and arrows, it's all coming back to this one book. And this one book actually does not include any. Folklore or any myths? About any Archers, the last name is just Archer. And also when I'm Googling, Google is like, oh, when you say myth, do you mean a popular misconception about archery? No, I don't. If I meant that I would Google that, I would Google popular misconceptions about archery. Can you guys hear Cleocatra? OK, but wait, OK, I just used I just used DuckDuckGo as my search engine DuckDuckGo and I got a lot better results. So shout out to duckduckgo.com.

22:33 Give it a go give it a DuckDuckGo. Can y'all can you you know what duckduckgo.com you can use that. You just need to credit me, Madam Strangeways. Let me know. OK, so now these. Better results like to. Be fair, none of these are specific to any of the Native nations around the Austin area specifically that I mentioned earlier. However, this is what I found regarding archery or bows and arrows specifically in Native folklore and myths. Because reminder, there was a shadowy figure of an Archer in the tree in the cemetery. That's why I'm so hung up on trying to find stuff about Archers from the fitting avidarcher.com. The Lakota believe bow making was a gift from the Thunder beings.

23:15 These beings are guardians of truth and protectors of the people. The bow enables the Lakota to hunt Buffalo and sustain their communities for survival and cultural identity. In another Lakota teaching, the moon gave the bow while the sun gave the arrows. I like this one. This symbolizes the balance of male and female energies. The bow represents the feminine and the arrows the masculine, teaching the importance of harmony and balance in life. OK, sure. A tale from the Carac people tells of Coyote who tried to stay awake all night to receive the. Longest bow and the. Greatest power. But he fell asleep and received the shortest bow instead. Which is I fear I'm the coyote. I fear I am the coyote.

23:57 However, he was given exceptional cunning, making him the cleverest of all animals. In which case, I am not. I am not. The coyote in that case, unfortunately. For the Navajo, bows are important in the blessing way ceremony. They symbolize protection and harmony in life's journey. This ceremony helps maintain balance and harmony in the community, highlighting the bows role in guiding and protecting people. So even though none of these are specific to the native nations that are found in Central Texas, you know, there's like a through line, right? There's there's something similar in all of these stories. There's harmony and there's balance and there's protection. So then, Tori, here's what I would ask you.

24:41 Was this figure in the cemetery good or bad? Maybe they were good. Because Tori, maybe the shadow in the tree in the cemetery was trying to stop y'all from entering the cemetery to keep Y'all safe. You know, not necessarily from ghosts or, or goblins or zombies or things that hang out in cemeteries, but maybe maybe the figure was protecting you from being hurt. You know, maybe if you guys had entered the cemetery, someone might have gotten hurt. I mean, what about tetanus? Did all of you have your tetanus shots? Because no doubt those old gates weren't kept up. And maybe there's, I don't know, rust and bacteria.

25:23 And then what if one of you cut yourselves and then you got lockjaw? So really, thank you. Ominous shadow figure firing real arrows. Thank you for for protecting these children from getting lockjaw. Or because I don't know the specifics about the cemetery, were there any tribes represented in the cemetery? Were they, were they buried there? Because maybe in that case, this, this shadow Archer, this spectral shadow Archer was protecting they're dead from y'all, which I can't really blame the spectral shadow figure for doing. I mean, even if none of their dead are buried, they're, you know, it's still their land. They've still been here since the Stone Age since. So maybe they were just protecting their land. But I feel like I can't fairly discuss, but I feel like I can't fairly discuss Native nations without discussing what they went through, which is messed up. So the Trail of Tears, which I've touched on very briefly in a previous episode, the Trail of Tears is the forced relocation of 100,000 plus probably emphasis on plus Native American nations to Oklahoma, which was driven by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

26:38 That's what it was called. That's the actual name of the ACT. You you may be thinking, Madam, Texas wasn't a state until 1845, but the Removal Act was in 1830, so Texas can't possibly have been involved in the Trail of Tears. However, and this is from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Mirabeau B Lamar, a poet and former president of the Republic of Texas, was determined to throw the Cherokees and other eastern tribes out of Texas and what became known as the Cherokee War. The Texans attacked the Cherokees, destroyed their crops in villages, and chased them north of the Red River into present day Oklahoma.

27:23 Rather than be destroyed, many of the other tribes, the Caddo, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Delaware, and others accepted military escort out of the country, meaning the Republic of Texas, with a few exceptions. Lamar succeeded in his policy to rid East Texas of the Indian refugee tribes. So no, technically Texas was not a state at the time. Technically, Texas was not officially involved in the Trail of Tears. And yet, you know, they sure managed, you know, they sure managed anyway, to burn Cherokee crops and villages and run them into Oklahoma. And that brief paragraph does not even begin to scratch the surface of the sheer depth of horrors that were visited upon native tribes, not just in Texas, but of course, most of North America. And we'll wrap the episode U with some fun facts about bows and arrows, because I took these notes and they didn't really have anywhere to go, but I thought they were interesting, so here you go.

28:20 This is from texasbeyondhistory.net. The bow and arrow was a relatively new weapon system in central TX 1000 years ago when the Graham Applegate Rancheria was inhabited. It had come into use only a few centuries earlier, around 700 CE. Remember Common Era? And that was AD, but now we're saying CE. 700 CE. The bow and arrow was spreading across much of North America around this time. On the other hand, the bow and arrow came into use relatively late in the Americas. This weaponry was known to the Late Paleolithic people of Europe over 10,000 years ago, but it appears that the native peoples of the New World only took it up during the last 2000 years.

29:01 Unfortunately, archaeological evidence documenting the spread of the bow and arrow is largely lacking due to the fact that these weapons were made primarily of wood and other perishable materials. So there you go, did you ever wonder? Hmm, did you ever wonder to yourself, Well golly Gee, I just sure wonder when the bow and arrow started to get used in the North Americas, especially compared to the Late Paleolithic people of Europe, I wonder. Well, if you ever wondered that, first of all, you are weirdly in the right. Place. You are in the right place. But second of all, same. I also wonder that no, I've never wondered that in my life until I was doing this research, but here we are.

29:42 So what do you think? Do you think this was a paranormal event, or do you think that there's a perfectly normal, naturalistic explanation for what happened? Do you think that there was perhaps a Coahedicon ghost guarding that cemetery, or do we think that arrowheads are just kind of floating around? Everywhere in central TX. Because of geology. Let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode And if you have your own true geez. And if you have your. Cleo cat dress being so cute and if you. Have your own true strange story that you'd like to hear read on the show I want to hear.

30:27 About it. I want to hear about it. You don't even know. I want you to send it to me right now at madamstrangeways@gmail.com. You know where to send it, madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Send it right now. Stop what you're doing. Stop. Stop. What you're doing, stop what you're doing. Well, what you're doing right now is listening to me. As soon as you're done listening to me, you need to stop what you're doing. You need to stop what you're doing and write it up for me. Mm hmm. Type E, Type E, Type E on the old keyboard. I'm going to need to know. I'm going to hear your true strange story so I can share it on the show. And I cannot wait to read it. Remember that you can feel afraid and not be in danger. You're safe here with me, probably. Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the unexplained.

31:24 I'm running A1 Madam Show here so please. Do me a strange solid and follow the podcast. Leave me a rating on Apple or Spotify, and maybe even join the Patreon at patreon.com/madam Strange Ways for bonus content. Madam Strange Ways is produced and narrated by me. Madam Strange Ways theme music is by marina.ryan@marinamakes.co. Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Roldan at Cult of Teddy on Instagram, every Strange story is shared with the permission of the author. You can submit your own true Strange story to madamstrangeways@gmail.com. See you soon, She. Said ominously.