I was born in southern Ohio in the mid-1950s and my parents moved to northern Indiana before I quit

wearing diapers.

But my dad was from central Kentucky just north of the Daniel Boone National Forest. When I was nine years old, my dad was injured on his

job, and for reasons that I'm still not clear about, he went to his parents' house in Kentucky,

where he would soon die. He took five of us kids with him, and my baby sister and my mother

would follow very soon.

My grandparents' home was out in the sticks and many sounds could be heard there while sitting on the porch in the evenings.

We often heard what was described as wildcats, bobcats screaming just like the sound of a woman,

but several times we would hear unusual sounds from the mountains surrounding their home. These were just described as boogers by my uncles who lived

with my grandparents. When we heard these screams or sounds, it meant it was time to go inside the

house and stay there. If a privy trip was needed out back, it was time to go inside the house and stay there.

If a privy trip was needed out back, it was done by several at a time, but it was done really quickly.

A few times they would speak with quiet reverence about bookers, and how they had and still, at times, would enter the home and eat whatever the leftovers were in the bean pot or the slot bucket for the hogs the next day. I once heard them say that you could hear a

booger scraping the bottom of a bucket with a spoon or its nails. We were told to lay still

and keep quiet if we heard anything entering the house late at night.

And on a couple of nights, I could hear the adults talking and whispers about seeing something outside near the window.

One night, as my brother and I were laying on a couch in a sitting room just off the kitchen,

I heard a noise at the kitchen door, and my brother said

he saw something looking in the window. I could not see the window, but I heard whatever it was

slammed the door open, and we could hear the heavy breathing and the smell. Oh, what a terrible

smell, like all the privy had just been brought in with this thing.

We heard what was later discovered as a slop bucket being scraped, slurped, and even thrown

...