My mother grew up in the Appalachian mountains, where ghost sightings and stories were, if not common, then certainly plentiful. The year was 1946, and she was ten and her brother twelve, when the following occurred.

For the last four nights, Letty and Jack and watched as the two women walked out of the holler and around the road above their house. Both wore long dresses that scraped the ground as they walked and bonnets tied tightly over their heads. The weather was too warm for such clothes, but it wasn’t completely unusual to still see women dressed that way.

They swung in the porch swing, watching as the women made their slow way around the road. Their neighbor, Mrs. Woods, lived across the road from them. She was standing at her mailbox as the women approached. She nodded and spoke, but the children watched as the women made no move to return her greeting.

“I wonder who they are.” Letty had watched them each night as they left. They knew most of the people who lived up the holler, but no one seemed to know who these women were.

Jack practically jumped from the porch swing. “I’m going to find out.”

“What are you going to do?”

Jack grinned. “I’m going to follow them tonight.”

Jack hurried through their yard to the road, coming up behind the two women. Letty watched as he casually fell in step only a few feet behind them. Soon they were out of sight, and she waited for her brother to return with his news.

It was nearly a half hour before Jack did return. His hair was slicked down with sweat when he ran up to the porch, panting.

“I followed them.”

“Well? What happened?” Letty leaned forward in the porch swing, waiting to hear.

Jack took a deep breath and glanced over his shoulder toward the road. “I followed them all the way up to that curve. You saw how close I was behind them?”

Letty nodded.

She had seen, and she knew the curve he meant too, a hairpin one about a quarter of a mile beyond their house. “Go on.”

“Well, I followed right behind them, all the way to that curve. They never said anything or looked back at me, or nothing, even though they had to know I was there.” Jack continued, “I got to the curve with them, and one minute they were in front of me, and the next they were gone.”

Letty’s eyes were wide. “Are you sure?”

Jack nodded, and she could see the fear in his face. Letty’s first thought was that he was pulling her leg, but he looked too scared for that. Goosebumps raised on her arms as she listened.

“I looked everywhere. I went around the curve and back. I looked in the bushes along the side of the road. I even went up the hill a ways so I could get a good view and spot them. They weren’t anywhere.” Jack had calmed himself enough to sit cross-legged on the porch, but all the excitement had drawn the attention of their mother.

“Jack, did you follow those women?”

He nodded, staring up at his mother through the screen door.

“Leave them alone. They’re not bothering you, and we won’t bother them.” She wiped her hands with a starched white dishtowel as she talked.

Jack didn’t argue, but Letty asked the question that had been in both children’s minds. “Are they ghosts?”

Their mother looked first at one and then the other before answering. “I don’t know what they are. Two women were killed on that curve when I was around your age, but that’s been a long time ago.” She watched as both children’s eyes grew larger. “You’d better leave them alone from now on.”

Letty and Jack watched the following night as the two women made their way again from the holler. Jack didn’t follow this time, or any of the nights to come. Late that summer, just as their nightly passing had almost become routine, their walks stopped. My mother never saw them again.