The Swamp Road Chronicles®
"The Night the Wheel Came Off"
It
was prom night, 2018. It was me and my girl Ginny, Tom and his girl Melinda. We
were driving around, enjoying some good tunes and each other's company. Ginny
said, "Let's go to Swamp Road, maybe we will see something."
"Why not?", I said, like a fool. I've heard
the stories about Swamp Road and Swamp Road Sally my whole life; my Dad claims
to have had a real bad experience on that road; he won't even tell me the
details and it's been about 25 years now. We were right in the middle of Swamp
Road, the stretch right where Sally is usually seen. I was cruising along about
20 mph, we were all looking around, hoping to see something. Everyone in the
car was real quiet, speaking in whispers. I don't know why, I guess if a ghost
is near it will hear your whispers too. All of a sudden the car began to shake
and it made a loud rattling noise, it sounded as though the car's engine was
about to explode. Three seconds later the right front corner of the car dropped
about 2 feet. It was as if some huge thing had pushed down on that corner of
the car with a ton of force. There was a loud scraping noise, I could see tons
of sparks coming out from under the car in my right rearview mirror. The car
ground to a stop
and I remember yelling, "What the Hell?". The girls were screaming
and Tom was yelling, "What are you doing?" "It's not me", I
yelled back, "Something is wrong with the car." Ginny and Melinda
were crying at the top of their voices and I nearly wet myself. Tom and I got
out to check it out and found that the right rear wheel had fallen off. The lug
nuts had loosened somehow, and there was a long deep cut in the blacktop where
the rotor had cut into it. What are the odds that your wheel will come off right
in the middle of Swamp Road at 3 am? The girls were scared to death, they
thought Sally was responsible, and in the dark emptiness of Swamp Road that
sounded pretty darned reasonable to me. As Tom stood guard with the jack handle
raised above his head as a weapon, I put that wheel back on in record time. I
had to take a nut off of each of the other three wheels to secure the wheel. I
was the longest twenty minutes of my life. I have never been anywhere that was
so scary as Swamp Road at night. And though we didn't see Sally, I could feel
her presence all of the while we were there.
As
submitted by Steve Lott, Hebron, Ohio
3-8-2022.
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