Sweet hot balmy July that year near the sea in Delaware. The funeral of old uncle John Willian Hausend.
Beside the fact he was buried in a suit, the Mortician was an artist, for the cadaver looked as if he was a middle aged man sleeping.
The heat that summer seemed to bring flurries of insects and rodents through in waves. So the ten relatives who stayed for the funeral were constantly shielding themselves from the flying swarms and the odd creepy crawly. It was a heatwave.
Burial went smoothly, except for the fact the coffin door was just slightly a jar, and the soil we shoveled over it seemed very light. One may have thought about a faster rate of composition. After the perfect righteous speeches about the hereafter, most people's minds contemplate the inevitable rotting.
However that blazing summer back in 1881 the corpse of that celebrated uncle may have been more active after death than could ever be believed. Local seasonal farm workers had complained about their nights being disturbed by some large figure walking through their campsites at night. Eerily so, some other local campers who came down for seasonal farm work were attacked by something they said had torn their tent open and was wearing an expensive suit.
The shock of it all made some of them run north again to give up on the rest of the season, The county sheriff then found them heading north toward Milford and confirmed their story. He couldn't convince them to stick around, they looked absolutely petrified even 10 hours after the incident. and despite not one of them being injured. The sheriff became suspicious and positively curious.
The local camping farm workers all moved a few kilometers further away from the "incident". The very next night there was another incident, a local homestead 1 km from the grave was disturbed by a tall man in a suit.
Sue, the woman who had witnessed the strange occurence stood talking with neighbors and the sheriff. Were all coming to the same conclusion. That old uncle John William had returned from the dead to disturb the living. The thing that most disturbed the sheriff was there was no footprints or evidence of tracks outside or near the places the man in a suit was seen. He quietly contemplated it all as a hoax from a rival red wheat farm.
A few nights with no incidents, 3 new farm workers came into the area and set up camp. This time even closer to the fresh grave. John william's grave was dug in an old churchgrounds, yet there was no church anymore and the only evidence of it being holy ground was a steel fence grate almost fully immersed in weeds and bramble. The only headstone was that of John william, the rest had been taken years before to form some sort of barricade during the war that passed through more than a decade passed.
The same night the 3 new farmworkers moved in, they were attacked during the night. The three farmworkers had bite marks all over their bodies. the three of them had died of their injuries well before dawn.
This time the sheriff had been called off to an incident across the state in elizabeth town North Carolina.
So his son, a simple young man of 17 years old, who had spent time with his father on the job, but was a simple soul. He was not good at foraging or checking details. Or any type of dritical thinking for that matter.
Sue convinced the sheriff's son to check the grave. He was highly sceptical, but after a short intense arguement the son agreed. at the grave site they noticed there was a gaping hole. Weeds and long grass all pushed down heading toward the beach that was only 90 meters from there.
they followed the tracks down to the shore to see something unspeakable.
An alligator the size of a man was over the corpse of uncle John William, tearing it apart and gobbling pieces down. It must have found it possible to head north during this year's heatwave.
This seemed to solve everything for the sheriff's son. No matter how much Sue from the homestead recounted the events of the past evening, He would not be convinced of anything supernatural.
He ran back to their small cabin on the road to get a rifle, getting back in 20 minutes, eagerly expecting to find the alligator still feeding. Even though there was still an arm half eaten on the beach, there was no alligator to be seen. which would mean there would be no physical evidence.
He cursed and hit the long grass with the butt of his rifle. He knew this was as doubtful and unbelieveable as the stories of the man coming back to life. alligators never came this far north. it was difficult to see them in south carolina. This alligator was far too big. Too big to navigate the swamps from florida all the way here.
