Outracing the Devil introduced with the Jeffery Song and The Thing About Ghost Stories

Nobody's scared of Jeffrey, nobody shivers with fright, for Jeffrey is no congo steam, not the kind who shouts boot in the night. Jeffrey likes hearing ghost stories, but only the ones that are true. If you collect stories for Jeffrey, his friend will tell stories to you. Hello, my name is Katherine Wyndham, I live in Selma, Alabama, and I collect ghost stories.

Now the nice thing about ghost stories is that you don't really have to believe in ghost to enjoy hearing a ghost story. A good ghost story just makes you wonder and ask, could that really be true? Or do you suppose that actually happened? Or how could that be? Now there's not a town in the south, I'm sure, that does not have good ghost stories. Just go there and let people know you're sincerely interested. Somebody will tell you a great ghost tale, one that will truly stretch your imagination. Not far from the town of Washington, Georgia, there used to be a tavern, a popular stopping place for travelers in that area, a tavern that was operated by a man named Abram Simons. Abram Simons had a beautiful wife named Nancy and he adored.

And Nancy adored Abram Simons too, though people used to say they were rather a strange couple. Nancy was well educated, brought up in the church, laughed to go to the smunner church, which was not far from that tavern. Abram Simons, they say, could not even read and write, but he was one of the wealthiest men in that part of Georgia. He could do sums in his head, he could figure out how much a thing would cost, how much the unit price of everything would be, could add and subtract and multiply and divide faster than any other man could do it on paper, all in his head. And so they made quite a team there at that tavern that they operated, they always made money there. Nancy was gracious and friendly to the guest. Abram Simons kept kale the books and sold it they made money. But really, it was not the tavern that Abram Simons was so interested in.

He was interested in horse racing. He prided himself on having the finest race horses in Georgia. He was getting ready for the annual Washington Jockey Club race, and he intended to race his fine horse named Babylon, and he intended to win the prize. He'd gone into Washington that day, riding Babylon, so that he could get the papers, the mail, whatever had come. And perhaps the people he met there had kind of forgotten that he was not able himself to read or write. Perhaps they never thought it strange that he never opened the paper himself to see what the news was, but that he always folded it neatly and took it back to the tavern with him, waiting for Nancy to read the news to him. But on this occasion, the preacher came up to Abram Simons as he mounted his horse there, and he said to him, Abram Simons, you're a wicked man, you care more about horse racing than you do about your own soul, and the devil's going to get you Abram Simons.

And Abram Simons was angry, and he started to say something cruel to the preacher, but he bit his tongue and he whirled his horse and he headed to it home. And he was very angry because he remembered how often that preacher had been to the house and how gracious and friendly they'd always been, sharing the food and the lodging with him and never making a charge. And he kept thinking that it was not a nice thing for him to say. And he wrote along day on Babylon, and suddenly Babylon's hoof prints began to beat out a rhythm that said to him, the devil's going to get you, the devil's going to get you, the devil's going to get you. And Abram Simons tried to shut out the noise and tried to change the pace of his horse so that the hoof prints would not be saying, the devil's going to get you, the devil's going to get you.

And he was glad when finally he rounded a curve and there were the lights of his tavern. And he saw that there were roaring fires that night and the sparks were flying up the chimney and he thought, I must warn the servants, those sparks land on the dry, shingle roof, my tavern will burn. And he was glad to have something else to think about because he didn't like hearing his horses, who say the devil's going to get you, the devil's going to get you. He went in and he handed an answer to the mail and he started to tell her about the encounter he had had with the minister there in town, but then he thought better about it. He said, no, it'll just bother so I won't tell her. It was sometimes after that that Abram Simons began to prepare for his funeral. He didn't do it in a morbid way. One day he just said to Nancy, I found the place where I want to be buried.

And Nancy was a little surprised because she had always thought he would want to be buried in the cemetery, the radio cemetery. But Abram Silen says, oh no, I don't want to be buried there with a lot of strangers. I want my own grave, all by myself. So he picked him out of place on a wooden knoll back at the tavern there. And he built a stone wall around the side and he put in a plain iron gate there. And then he said, now Nancy, I want you to remember this. When I die, I want you to bury me standing up with a musket at my side. She said, but why Abram? Why? And he laughed and said, so I can shoot the devil. And she tried to get him to explain where he never would.

And that was a long time ago. And the tavern is burned now. But back behind the place where it stood, there's this solitary grave. The stone wall covered with moss and the plain iron gate that creaks on its hinges when you enter. And there's buried Abram Silen standing up with the musket at his side so he can shoot the devil. And people who live along that road say that late at night they still hear the hoofs of the galloping horse going down the road. But they never see a horse. But they say the hoof sounds as if they're saying the devil's going to get you. The devil's going to get you. And the people who hear that sound at night tell each other, listen. That's Abram Simon's ghost trying to outrun the devil.