Everywhere there are spooky places; locales where "things" have happened or are said to have happened. A certain blackwater creek bottom I know is one of these spots.

I, of course, know better than to believe everything I hear about "haints," spectral phenomena, and things "my cousin saw and heard" deep in a swamp somewhere. But, hey, deep in a creek bottom, in tree-filtered silvery moonlight, the psyche plays tricks. It ain't a bad thing, either. It's as much a part of a successful outdoor experience as a stringer of catfish.

Listen up.

The creek runs silver in the moonlight, belying its normal blackish daytime hue. The blackness of the sluggish water seems to have fled to the leaves of the bankside trees, old gnarled oaks that cast surreal, ghostly shadows. Spanish moss drapes their outermost branches like rotten lace on skeletal arms.

A weird, unearthly place, this nighttime creek bottom. A setting for ancient unsolved mysteries, perhaps. Maybe even the very site where, 150 years ago, Eustice Jackson murdered his cheating wife and her virile young lover. A place of spectral doings and old restless ghosts.

I am drawn to this place, in spite of its ghastly portents and a little because of them. The ghosts here, if indeed there are ghosts, seem to bear no malice toward mortal intruders. I am a somewhat fearless journeyer here, though I'll not venture near the old cemetery on the ridge, where hardwoods give way to pine and scrub.

I stay, instead, near the creek, close by the flowing water where the catfish are fat and the mosquitoes voracious. The briars tear at my britches, and the dank mud sucks at my boots. Old Eustice and his alleged victims, however, let me pass unmolested.

While here, I take from the creek and give little back, save the occasional bullhead I consider too small for the skillet. I try not, though, to leave any but the scantiest evidence of my passing. Like the restless spirits purported to haunt this swamp, I am reasonably unobtrusive.

I fish my bush hooks in silence, wanting sometimes to talk to myself, but a little afraid I'll be joined in conversation by someone (something?) with whom I do not wish to converse. It is always a little spine-tingling to move along this creek bank after dark, but a little fear is a good thing. It keeps me on my toes.

Though I am quiet, the woods around me are not. There are things that rustle the deadfall leaves, splash daintily in the flowing water, and crash clumsily through the underbrush at my approach. Natural (supernatural?) sounds that jump-start the heart and make feet and legs act independent of mind and rational thought.

At times I wish I was not so alone. It would be nice to share the fishing and the feeling with someone else. But the old legends, stories remembered from childhood, are too real. Friends have "better things to do" than spending a night in Jackson's Swamp.

So here I am, by myself in the middle of this haunted patch of wildness. Just me and all these ghosts, real or imagined. Another fat catfish is pulled from the creek, and another unseen night creature brushes my leg.

Sometimes the night wind whispers in the trees. Wind-whisper soon turns into ghost-breath in an overactive imagination. It's easy to see old Eustice wielding his pickaxe in every moving shadow. Coyote yips and bobcat screams become the lastbreath moans of the dying. Unexplained splashes are bodies flung in a rage into the water. Suddenly it occurs to me that I have catfish aplenty. It is time to be going. I retrace my steps along the creek, gathering lines and set-poles as I go. Behind me, the night wind sings and the pickaxe swings.

Back at the truck, I stow my gear. Inside the cab, I lock both doors, something I never do in most out-of-the-way places. I even breathe a small sigh of relief when the engine starts.

I motor in low gear along the trail to the main road. Behind me, the swamp is alive in the summer darkness. The aria of the night wind reaches a ghostly crescendo while the black creek runs silver in the moonlight.

(Email Bob Kornegay at cletus@windstream.net.)