If there’s one thing everyone in Newnan can agree on, it’s that we looooove a ghosssssst story. Every first date I’ve ever had involved me arguing in favor of “Ghosts are real! YOU’RE THE ONE THAT IS FAKE!” and not getting a second date.
But this is a safe space. There are no hot girls reading this. I am surrounded by the eyes of Uglo Truck Driving Lizard Folk. Hi, UTDLF! Thanks for not being a hot girl!
Todays ghost story deals with youth, the woods, curfew, and A LUMBERJACK (maybe).
I don’t really know how to start this one off. This event happened several years ago. I was 16 at the time. I’m 22 now. I don’t think about it often, as it has stopped being so freaky to me since the years have passed. But every time I tell someone about this occurrence, no one understands what it is. So maybe since you all have had some sort of experience, you can help me.
It was summertime. My family is from Middle Georgia and we had a camper at a campground down in Chattahoochee Bend State Park that we would go to on the weekends. We spent every weekend there just about. It was a lot of fun to me because there were kids my age there and we could come and go as we pleased since it was a safe little campground. I had several friends down there, but for some reason this weekend no one was doing anything except for my friend Josh, who was 16 at the time. We were pretty close. He’s like an older brother to me.
Anyway it was late at night, I don’t know why I was up even (probably just being a rebellious 16 year old staying up watching TV haha). Josh was up too and texted me, asking if I wanted to go ride dirt roads in his new truck. It was really late, like 2 am late, but my mom and stepdad knew and trusted Josh, so did I, so it wasn’t a big deal. I met him at the end of the campground since his truck was pretty loud. He picked me up and we went riding. We didn’t go very far before he decided it would be best to go back to the campground just in case cops were out and we would get in trouble for being out past curfew.
There’s a little store nearby where you can go eat, buy fishing gear, things like that. He parked his trucked there and we sat and talked about what he should do about missing his ex-girlfriend. Now it was closer to 3am by the time all this happened. (Not sure of the exact time.) Josh is also a short guy. He’s probably 5′-5″ and 125 lbs. I’m about the same, only I have an inch on him. Well, this little guy has a huge lifted truck (you know how southern boys are!). It sat on 37 inch tires and was lifted a good 6 or so inches. As we were sitting there talking, the whole back end of the truck just dropped down and back up real quick. Almost like someone jumped on the bumper. Now remember, this is really late, with no one was up (the campground mainly has older couples in it with older children, plus it was pretty deserted that weekend), and we were in a well lit area, so we could see around the truck since we were in the middle of the dirt cul-de-sac type in front of the store.
As soon as this happened, we both immediately stopped talking and looked back to see who it was. We couldn’t even believe what we saw. There was a very dark figure at the back of the truck. It looked like they were standing on the bumper, but they didn’t come up very high over the tailgate (estimating that they probably weren’t but about 4 ft tall. The weird part was, that the “figure” was hooded (sounds so cliché, I know, but it was). We couldn’t see a face or anything, just an outline. Kind of hefty but not huge or thin. The sheer disbelief of the situation, the sudden appearance of this figure, left us both in shock and surprise. After seeing this, which happened in a split second, I turned to look back at Josh and asked him if he saw that too but he was already out the door walking back there to see what it was! I freaked out because I was afraid this “boogie man” (as my dad called ghosts, haha) was going to get me. I lock my door, fly to the middle of the truck, and yell for him to come back in! I didn’t even know what he was planning on doing by going back there, but he isn’t afraid of anything. He came back in the truck and I asked him what he saw because he looked terrified! He said he didn’t see anything. (I think that’s what scared him the most.) I has also looked around to see where the “figure” had vanished to, but didn’t see anything. I think we would’ve seen a person if they were running to hide because it happened so fast. Plus, who would be out that time of night in a dark hood? It’s not a high traffic area at all.
We decided to leave from where we were. We went down the road closer to his house but we were both so freaked out we just decided to call it a night and he dropped me off. We only spoke about that a few times after it happened. We didn’t tell anyone at first because we figured no one would believe us. Plus it’s hard to start out a story by saying, “Well me and my guy friend were out riding dirt roads late one night”, haha, cause everyone thinks other things by that point! I think what scared me the most is Josh isn’t afraid of anything so to see him so scared really freaked me out. The figure was scary too, but I didn’t get the sense of anything evil, just spooked the life out of both of us! Since then I have told several people of that story, everyone gets freaked out, but no one has had anything similar happen. It’s a pretty good story to tell now that I’m not afraid of it anymore. At the time, neither of us had any recent passings, nor were we under any type of influence. Maybe it was just a ghost having a little fun scaring two kids who should’ve been home at that hour! We will never know.
Harold here, the Ghost Hunter of Summer Grove (and all surrounding areas of course). The ghost story we’ve included today has a lot of the ingredients to a believable story. Can you imagine how many people passed away at The Bend over the centuries? And the likelihood of a ghost trying to catch a ride out of Newnan seems really, really high.
I appreciate that the storyteller is stretching that they were not under the influence, and I don’t want to be accusatory, but it sure reads like two kids were getting into shenanigans and didn’t want to include that part in their story. But then again, everyone knows that kids in Coweta NEVER COMMIT CRIMES.
I like to think it’s a ghost, likely a lumberjack, trying to get away from the trees that tumbled and took his life. Go be free, Lumberjack. Go be free.
Newnan Time with Harold 