Comet

The Swamp Road Chronicles^®

"Comet"

Dear Swamp Road Chronicles,

This story is a little old, but I'm glad I have a place to share it. Here goes:

It was 1997, my fiancé Jim and I wanted to get a good look at the comet that everyone was talking about. It was called 'Hale-Bopp', and it was big and bright; it had a second tail that was fainter and it had, as I recall, a streak of blue in the second tail.

Because the second tail and the blue streak were fainter, we wanted to find a really dark place to view it from. The darkest place around Pataskala where we both lived was undoubtedly Swamp Road. It has no homes or lights out in the middle part. We decided to go there. It was almost midnight and I asked Jim about the ghost of Sally Blackstone, but he said he didn't believe in ghosts, so he was ready to go, so we went.

We parked in the darkest part of the old swamp and it was just what we hoped: darkly dark-dark. We could see the comet clearly, including the second tail and the faint blue jet of gas. It was amazing.

We had gotten out of his old 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado and laid on our backs on the hood of the car so that we could look upward more comfortably. That hood was 6 feet long and could hold 4 or 5 people! We watched for about 20 minutes and really enjoyed looking at that endless universe and that fantastic comet that we would never see again during our lifetime; it won't be back for 2,000 years.

When we were done, we got off of the hood and went to get back in the car.

It was very dark, alright, but there was enough light to see a young woman standing about 50 feet behind the car. She was in a white nightgown, barefooted with long, straight light-blonde hair. She appeared to be looking up at the comet too. "It's Sally! Get in the car!", Jim screamed at me. I was way ahead of him. We flew out of there as fast as we could go.

We have gone back to Swamp Road a few times but have never seen Sally again, but really, once was enough.

As submitted by Rose & Jim Rayburn 1-16-23 Lancaster, Ohio

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