Thriller Thursday 10-3-24 WINNER.......................................... Your winning story of the day..............................................
Bill The Thrill!
"(The names of the people and cemetery have been changed for privacy)
My wife is from South Arkansas and while visiting there one weekend last spring, her grandmother wanted to visit the cemetery where her family was buried to put new arrangements on a few of her family's grave sites.
My wife, her mom, grandmother and I pull up to the cemetery, get out and head toward the graves. We were the only people there, no other cars etc. It was your typical cemetery, being older there were some trees but not a lot, mostly flat land and gravesites - it was nicely landscaped and well maintained. Once we got to the grave sites where the family was buried, my wife's grandmother starts telling me about their family history and who each person was and how they were kin to my wife.
After about 10 minutes of talking this older man appears behind us and ask how we were doing. He is tall; he's wearing a grey shirt and pants, work boots and carrying a rake in his hand. He had a full head of white hair and what I remember most about him was his eyes, they were a piercing blue. Needless to say, never seeing or hearing him approach us - we were startled thinking that we were there all alone in this graveyard. We basically, all in unison, said "We're good, how are you?"
He ask us where we were from - we told him and he tells us his name is "Bill Johnson" and that his family bought this land 200 years ago and that his whole family including his wife and children were buried here. He points in the direction towards the front of the cemetery (where we walked in) and said "Right over there is where we're all buried." We ask him if he knew any of our family members that were buried here and he knew a few of them - he even told us things we didn't know about some of them! I ask him if he lived in the area and he said "I'm 92". Thinking he couldn't hear well, I just smiled and said something like, "That's great".
After a little more small talk he said he needed to go and do some more work and told us it was nice talking to us and walked away. When he left us he starting whistling a song - My mother in law said is he whistling "When the roll is called up yonder" (an old church hymnal) we listened and sure enough he was.
As we were getting ready to remove and add new arrangements my wife asks me if I would go to the car and get some items. As I turned and walked towards the car, I looked around for the old man (it had only been maybe 30-45 seconds since we said our goodbyes) - he was nowhere in sight. My first thought was that he had fallen, you could see all around this cemetery and the trees weren't big enough to hide him.
I keep walking towards our car and looking around for him and as I get to the front entrance of the gate I see a lot of gravesites with the name "Johnson" on them. As I got closer, I see a grave of a husband and wife that had their pictures on them, next to the grave site on the husbands side was a rake like the old man was carrying , just laying there on the ground. I looked around and still didn't see the old man. As I walked by, I stop to look at the pictures and almost fell out. The photo of the man looked exactly like the man we just met - Bill Johnson, eyes, hair, everything! The date on the headstone for the man was (Birth 1921 - Death 2008) this would put him around 92 years old! The name on the grave...Bill and Louise Johnson!!!!!
I yelled at my wife and family to come check it out and they were all freaking out. My wife's grandmother said "On that's just a coincidence".
When we left that afternoon, we got into the car and as we drove down the road I turned on the radio and was trying to find some tunes, the only radio station that would come in clear was a Christian station. Guess what the song playing on the radio was.....I kid you not....."When the roll is called up yonder". Grandma was speechless - We turned the radio off and road in silence all the way home."
