| abstract | - This is a true story that happened to me several years ago. This story will not be as scary as some creepypastas, but that is because I do not have free roam to freak you out. I must stick to what happened. The place was Johnstown PA, in what I believe to be Mid August. My name was Adam. At the time of this event, I was thirteen years old. When I was younger, I lived in Johnstown. I would spend the school year in Johnstown, and visit my father in New Jersey during holidays. I would always return to Johnstown in August to leave time before school started up again. One year, a day or so after returning back to Johnstown, my mother took my cousin Ben, who was only a couple months older than me, and I to the local Drive-In Theatre to watch the movie Monster House. The movie was about three kids who went into a living, murderous house. Ben and I would look at the sky now and again, because it was supposed to be a good night to see shooting stars. However, while looking for the stars, we saw something eerie. We could see horizontal bars of light in the night sky that rotated about slowly and stretched from horizon to horizon. There was about two or three of them. As we were staring at these we also saw what seemed to be regular planes in the sky. Though they could not have been normal planes, as they occasionally would reverse flight direction immediately without stopping or losing speed. It was like we were watching a video and someone threw it into rewind in the blink of an eye. We tried to show my mom the horizontal concentrations of light, which she was surprisingly dismissive about, but we couldn't keep her watching these "planes" long enough for her to see one change direction. They only did it four or five times all together the whole time, and to catch it someone would have to be watching for it or look at just the right time. We caught ended up catching the last part of the movie, but we still were keeping our eyes on the sky. When the movie was over, mom dropped us off at Ben's house, as we were planning on spending the night there. We did not stay inside that long, as we decided to go to the Mound, which was maybe a five minute walk from his house. The Mound was a large, wide open, risen but flat field. It was about the size of a football field, and was surrounded by a thin ring of trees. It was well taken care of, and mowed regularly. There was a large stone staircase leading up to the top of the Mound from the sidewalk. Right at the top of the stairs was a large free flying American flag. Though the field itself was flat, at the edge of the field was a steep hill down to the road. I have included a diagram so you can see how it looked. Ben and I came to the mound from the lower right part of the diagram, and climbed up the slope between points B and C, like we always did. We walked to the center of the Mound at point A to lay down in the soft grass as we looked into the sky for shooting stars. We were side-by-side with our heads towards the flag and our feet towards the opening between B and C. It was quite dark out, the sky was nice and clear, and everything was very quiet, so the situation could not have been better. We stayed there for maybe fifteen minutes, catching sights of the shooting stars and saying things like "Did you see that one?". After a while, I saw something in the corner of my eye. A large, solid, white mass zipped from point B to point C right along the edge of the flat field, right where it crested into a slope. It went from in the woods in B and disappeared from in the woods in C. It happened in the blink of an eye and without sound, but its white body contrasted against the night's darkness so it stood out. I briefly looked to where it had disappeared to and immediately dismissed it. I figured that staring at shooting stars was making my eyes play tricks on me. However, I saw Ben slowly stand up with his eyes locked in the direction of point C. He had an unnerved and slightly frightened look. "White thing?" I asked quietly. "Yeah," Ben mumbled. We had both seen it. I stood up with him, and we both abandoned the stealth idea by sprinting over to the flag pole, which had bright lights around it all night every night to illuminate it. I guess the lights seemed like a source of refuge or safety. We got to the pole and quickly turned around. We discussed this with each other, piecing together that we had both seen the exact same thing. We stayed by the flag pole for awhile, looking into the trees trying to find something in the darkness. After a few times saying "Did you see something over there?" and then deciding that we hadn't, we bolted down the stairs and hurried along the sidewalk back to Ben's house. Ever since, we had both been to the Mound numerous times, but neither Ben nor I had seen this thing again, nor had we heard of anyone else seeing anything like this.
- "The Mound" is a horror and sci-fi novella H. P. Lovecraft wrote as a ghostwriter from December 1929 to January 1930 after he was hired by Zealia Bishop to create a story based on the following plot synopsis: "There is an Indian mound near here, which is haunted by a headless ghost. Sometimes it is a woman." Lovecraft did not like this premise of what seemed to be a conventional ghost story. The outline was so brief it allowed for a great deal of license, so he made it into a 29,560 word story about a mound that conceals a gateway to a subterranean civilization, the realm of K'n-yan, which one of the main characters enters and lives in for a while. The story is one of only three by Lovecraft where a non-human culture is described in rich details, the other two being At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time. It is not as well known as the later two, as it was ghostwritten for another author, but is considered to possess the same high level of quality and imagination. The mound in the story is located in Binger in Caddo County, which unlike the fictional towns and locations in the majority or his works is a real town about 60 miles (100 km) southwest of Oklahoma City. He places the mound about a third of a mile west of Binger, an area where there are no mounds, which seems to make this geographic detail the only fictional part of its location. There are several mounds in the area, but not as described in the story. One of them is called the Ghost Mound and according to a local legend is haunted by ghosts. It is located closer to Hydro, rather than Binger. It does not look like how Lovecraft described it, and is a natural formation. This is most likely the mound that inspired Zealia Bishop to present her story idea to Lovecraft. It is possible a second nearby mound, known as Dead Woman Mound, may also have inspired her. Unlike the first, there is no ghost story connected with it, though it gained its name when the buried body of a dead woman was found there. The story was not published during Lovecraft's lifetime. After his death, August Derleth abridged the story radically, and it was published in the November 1940 issue of Weird Tales. This abbreviated version was reprinted by Arkham House over the years until the original text was finally published in 1989 in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, although some Lovecraft anthologies such as The Loved Dead by Wordsworth Editions continue to use the abridged Derleth version.
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