Gather around the campfire and listen to some true horror stories from the haunted Egypt Valley area and its scary cemeteries. All of these were sent to me and are reproduced below with only a few minor adjustments for spelling and punctuation. Are they true stories? Read and decide for yourself....


A Flying Nightmare

We visited Salem Cemetery but nothing eventful happened. We then decided to try Circle Cemetery. Right before entering, there was a big black and white dog lying on the side of the road. He just watched us enter. We decided to circle the cemetery before entering to make sure nobody else was there. Going back around, the dog was still there starring at us. We went up into it, got out, and started looking around. Everyone was drawn to one stone. While looking we saw a big puddle of blood on and around the stone. Then we saw a big black thing standing maybe 6 or 6 1/2 feet tall. It flew staight up into the sky. Its wing span was maybe between six and ten feet wide. We ran to the truck and left the place immediately.


Bloody Claw Marks

On September 13, 2003 me and a group of friends were getting ready to go fishing when we heard the story of Circle Cemetery from a friend who had visited the place before. That's when we decided to visit this so-called haunted cemetery. We drove up to the cemetery and pulled over and began to walk up to "the circle." Then we stepped up to a marble headstone and the air got real cold. We weren't really scared, that was until we heard the dogs bark. But they suddenly stopped and we calmed down a little bit. Then, out of nowhere, our sides started to burn and we lifted our shirts. Three claw marks were stretched across my side like a dog's paw. Two of my other friends suddenly had burning sensations in the face and arms when they looked down they had pricks and my one friend had cut marks above his eye with blood coming out of it. That's when we decided to leave the cemetery.


Cult Activity in the Valley?

I had heard about the supposed haunting of Ladybend Hill but have never seen any spirit there, or in the area of the one larger cemetary in that general area, or the smaller one which has an old stone, small wall around it. But one thing the general area starting just off the old Route 40 had for some years, mainly back in the cemetary areas, was a reported bunch of devil worshippers who congregated there at least during the summertime on certain weekends.

Perhaps this devil worshipper angle is the reason why my old golden retriever, Einstein (who has since sadly passed on from cancer) sometimes plain refused to get out of the car when we arrived in that area. He was a very smart creature, but could also SENSE some things that couldn't be picked up via hearing, eyesight or nose. This in addition to being able to literally think his way through things. But I digress.

Back to the devil worshippers. At one time I happened across another fisherman who pulled up to a small strip pond right across the road from where I was fishing, hopped out of his Buick, got out his tackle and bait, then strapped a .357 revolver along with its holster onto his belt. This didn't bother me, since I was in the habit of carrying a .45 automatic in the Valley and other deserted fishing areas since one never knows what is going to literally come down the road at any given time. And it was, and is, very rare that you see the law in the form of deputy sheriffs in the Valley. The only law enforcement guy to patrol the area regularly was Greg Holt, the onetime game warden, but he has been retired for several years now. But the guy with the Buick said that he normally had the revolver with him also when fishing, but was extra glad he had it when one deputy stopped one day when he was fishing a pond near that one large cemetary. The gist of the conversation was that the deputy noted the Buick guy might find another spot to fish since there was a group of 30 or so devil worshippers who were inclined to do their rituals at that large cemetary, the one which is surrounded by a chain link type of fence and is well kept. Anybody strahying near their rituals was obviously not cared for, but if others kept their distance they apparently were not bothered. The Buick guy thought this was good advice since he only had six shots before he could reload and it usually takes some time to reload a revolver, in which he could be overrun. He wound up taking the advice.

I was working for a local newspaper as a reporter at the time and let my curiousity get the better of me, though, and decided to take a look. Einstein and I went over to the cemetary area one day, and we hopped out to take a look, which we did after I got an SKS rifle out of the trunk and loaded it up. I found a small clear area with several articles of female underclothing hung on tree limbs in one small wooded area away from the main dirt road, but that was the only really unusual thing. I did spend about 10-15 minutes sitting at the edge of the woods furthest away from the cemetary at the very edge of a highwall left over from the old strip mining days. Einstein did one thing at the time I didn't really think about until later. He sat down directly behind me with his tail shoved right up against my back so he could keep an eye on our back trail through the wooded area. Nothing came in to bother us personally, though. But when we went back to the car I did notice one flat tire. I told Einstein to go sit under a nearby tree in the shade while I changed the tire, which he did. And on the way back to the Interstate we stopped at a gas station to have the tire repaired since I figured a nail had gotten into the tread. Wrong answer. Somebody had sliced the sidewall. I figured someone had been observing the area, didn't enjoy my presence there in a snooping around fashion, and had done that as a warning or a method of intimidation. I wound up having to buy a new tire, but figured I would do what I could to try to get even.

The best thing I could come up with was to get the deputies in there to check out an upside-down large car I had noticed in the pond at the bottom of that highwall I had noticed while I was sitting there. I figured if somebody didn't want someone snooping around, this car might have had something to do with it. The upshot was that I wound up leading a deputy to the spot, and pointing the car out to him. This was in late Springtime and everything was grown up again, and there was no sign in the woods that the car had been driven over the edge of the pond in the recent past -- no knocked over trees or anything like that. The deputy said they would look into it more later, and I found a couple weeks after that they had actually gotten the car out of the pond --but they had a heck of a time getting the right equipment into the area to pull it out of there. They never did specify that they found any dead person or anything else like that in there.

This situation occurred several years prior to the wildlife area being put into the Valley out there, which lies in close proximity to that one larger cemetary at one point -- just across the main dirt road from there, matter of fact. By the time the wildlife area got put in I had gotten word from a former resident of the Valley area that a group of the residents had reputedly run the devil worshippers off from out there. This had been reported at the gun range I used to frequent which is now closed down, many miles from the Valley. I didn't inquire nor did the source report how they had accomplished running those people off. Sounded like one of those things that was best not asked about. The Valley was always a desolate place, and had that sort of wild air about it -- and I'm not talking about just the presence of wildlife out there. You'll know what I mean if you've ever been there. It always has had some sort of creepy aura lingering in it, at some places more so than others. When all the rumors about the devil worshippers was going around, for instance, there were a few nights I was driving out of there right at twilight when you almost had to turn your headlights on to see, and there were groups of approxmately 15 or so young people apparently walking toward some sort of congregation point at that first big pond two miles in on the first dirt road leading in from the bottom of Lady Bend Hill. This was one of those situations where I didn't stop and bother to ask any questions about what they were doing. No use sticking my nose into something I might not want to find out the answer to. But I suspected the worst.

I never actually saw any groups of devil worshippers or Wiccan groups performing any cermonies. One time, though, a ranking deputy told me there was some sort of Wiccan group performing some rituals, reportedly, at the small cemetary at times. But I never saw any of those either. If one staked the place out and were discovered, it'd probably lead to a fairly desparate encounter in the middle of the night. Once again, I didn't see any point in getting involved in that sort of thing just for the sake of satisfying curiousity. Especially since that one kid in this area killed his parents one day and was reportedly influenced by some devil worshippers in one way or another.


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