The Claw

When I first started to write this post, I had point to go along with the experience I was about to relate. I was going to use an example from my past as an analogy. But I figured that I always over-analyze everything in my life, maybe for once I should just tell the story and leave it at that. Besides, sometimes the point of a story is the telling.

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Not to far north from where I grew up, there is a small village called Adalja. It is bassicaly a small farming community, however there are a few very large, and expensive mansions there as well. The weekend homes of the rich. There was also a urban legend about the place, a kind of ghost story that all us knew growing up. Every one in my area had heard it. Kids love scary stories, especialy when they revolve around a place they know.

Basicaly it goes like this. About 80 or 90 years ago, I can't remember, Adalja was really just an area occupied by a couple of farmers. One of the farmers had the idea of developing the land into a housing community for wealthy people, imagine a bunch of little Xanadu's all in a row. The other farmers all thought this would be a great idea, and they went in on it. However the largest, and well the nicest piece of land belonged to old man McPherson. McPherson was very much a man of the land and he loved his farm, what was more he refused to sell the land to the developers. This was a problem for them as they needed his land to make their community work. The project was delayed for some time. However McPherson came down with Tubriculosis and had to go to a sanitarium (in case you don't know, back in the day a sanitarium was a type of hospital where those with infectious deseases like TB or smallpox went and were quarintined) The word was that McPherson had a bad case of TB and probebly would have died. The developers thought that this was there chance. He didn't have any close family and his wife had passed away some time ago. There would be no one to speak up for him. They forged some documents, passing his deed to them, and started to build. Although McPherson was out for about 6 months, he eventualy recovered. He returned to his land late at night but he was shocked to see his neighbours starting to build on his land. His old house and barn was already torn down. He went over to the other farmers house where the other men were having dinner. A fight broke out and McPherson was shot, and thought to be dead. The men decided the best bet was to hide the body, so they draged it to one of the houses and mixed up some concrete. The idea was to pour the slab of the basement with McPherson's body underneath. They poured the concrete and thought the job was over. However McPherson wasn't dead yet, he tried to claw his way out, but eventualy suffocated. The next morning when the men went to look at their work, they saw a chilling sight. Skicking out of the middle of the floor was a concrete covered hand reaching out, the claw. The sight was cursed. Suposedly a searies of calamities befell. One man was crushed to death when a palate of bricks fell on him. One man went crazy. There was a fire which burnt down some of the homes, etc, etc, etc.... Needless to say the project was cancelled and left to nature to reclaim, no one has ever attempted to build on that land since. However in the ruins of the old house you could still see the claw of old man McPherson reaching out.

A nice scary story to be sure. However there is some truth to it. There is a town called Adalja, there was a building project on the land some 80 years ago that was never compleated, no one has claimed or worked the land since, and if you look carefuly as you drive by, in the forest you can see the ruins of a few old houses deep in the woods.

One day my friends and I decided that we were going to see if the legend was true. We wanted to see the claw. Of course we decided to go at night. So we brought a few flashlight, and a cooler full of beer. We were young, 15, 16 year olds and any excuse to drink is a good one. I remember all of us were a little nervious, but the beer gave us "courage". The forest was creepy, all light by an almost full moon. Every thing looked menancing. It was an eerie feeling, even now I still get goosebumps.

We finaly came up to the ruins of a large house, one wall had colapsed and a lot of the floor was rotting. This was the house where the claw was. We downed the rest of the beer, and all of us went down the old steps to the basement, it was pitch black. We were searching for about 15 miniuts when "Ryan's" foot caught on something and he fell. We all turned and nerviously trained our flashlight on the object sticking right out of the concrete.....

It was an old tree root that had poked out. Needless to say we were all scared shitless, but of course none of us admited it. We hightailed it out of there right after that. We never did see the claw. But we did live the story for one night. And no matter where any of us that night go in life, the story, the experiance will live on forever.