Halloween On Max Patch Mountain

"Years ago," began Nancy as she maneuvered the car out of the motel parking lot towards Max Patch Mountain, "Max Patch was used as a landing strip for small aircraft. Legend has it there were once three entrepreneurial young sisters determined to make their fortune from the mineral water of Hot Springs. There was already a resort and spa in the little North Carolina town, so the girls decided to market the health benefits of mineral water as a beverage. They bottled up some samples, packed their carpetbags, and struck out for the big city.

"The girls so charmed the most influential restaurateurs that they soon had orders from all the finest establishments in New York City. Elated with this promising beginning, the three decided to return to Hot Springs in style and hired a pilot to fly them to the landing strip on top of Max Patch.

"It was a clear, but moonless night - in late October, I think it was - when the little plane skimmed over the southern Appalachians near Max Patch. The wind had risen, and the pilot struggled to maintain control as he strained his eyes through the darkness to locate the treeless summit. At last the grassy strip came into view. As the pilot banked and circled for an approach, a sudden blast of wind swept unimpeded up the side of the bald mountain, rolling the plane sideways. The pilot tried valiantly to level the plane, but it was no use. The plane dropped suddenly, stubbing a wing tip on the ground, and then cartwheeling into a fiery, mangled mass which no one survived.

"They say that the ghosts of those three sisters bitterly haunt Max Patch at night, searching for the orders that would have launched their fortunes. And if someone happens to be hiking up there when the sisters show up.... Well, those three sure don't want anyone else to find the orders and steal their business."

"Is that true?" asked Emily, as they pulled into the Max Patch parking area.

"I don't know," replied Nancy, climbing out of the car. "It's just something I read somewhere."

The light was quickly fading as Barb, Emily, and Nancy started hiking. They followed the Loop Trail to the Appalachian Trail and began climbing.

"Yoo-hoo! Hi-ho!" called out Emily and Nancy in the lead. "Here we come; you bears stay down away from the trail!"

Higher and higher they climbed; the higher they went, the stronger the wind blew. Above the trees and brush, the cold wind chilled their ears and whipped tears from their eyes. The sun sank lower behind the mountains, staining a pink and burgundy band across the sky.

"I hear voices," said Emily. "You don't suppose...."

Peering into the darkness, they could just make out two dark forms coming toward them down the trail from the summit.

"No, it can't be the ghosts. There's only two of them," said Barb reassuringly.

The night grew darker, colder, and windier. At the cut-off trail the girls debated continuing to the summit or returning to the car, deciding to wait and see what the other two hikers did.

"Hello," they called out as the others approached. They could see now that it was a woman in a hooded jacket and a man sporting a trimmed gray beard and wearing a buffalo-checked lumberjack's shirt. Neither answered the girls' greeting; the woman seemed to shrink further into her hood, and the man merely stared at them uneasily.

"Maybe they think we're the ghosts," whispered Emily.

The two went down the cut-off trail, and after a few minutes the girls followed; it would take them right to the car. The darkness closed in so that the shapes of the two hikers below were visible only because they moved. At the foot of the mountain, the two hikers stood in the parking lot; they had no car. The girls slipped quickly into their car and started down the winding gravel road, leaving the man and woman in their dust.

Speculating as to what the couple was doing and where they lived, the girls negotiated the narrow, curving road. The headlight cut a small tunnel of visibility, outside which the dark world ceased to exist. The twisting route through the moonless night demanded close concentration, and the three were startled when they heard a dull thump. The car suddenly lurched over an unseen obstacle and stalled.