- Asked Angry George, "Where do ghosts play golf?"
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- No one replied. Angry George, Irish Frank, Tyler the
Cramp and myself were warily peering into "The Trees of Woe"
that line the right side of the second fairway at Swallow Creek Golf Club.
Until George's bizarre question, it had been deathly quiet, except for
the intermittent rustling in the hedgerow that had made us all stop in
our tracks in the first place.
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- It was a sound we had all heard before at the Creek.
The short, violent shaking would usually emanate from the same general
area. It always seemed to come from above the ground, which ruled out small
forest creatures and it was too forceful and sustained to be just a large
bird in the trees.
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- After a minute or two of creepy and disturbing silence
we continued on our way. "On a golf corpse," said Angry George.
"Get it?"
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- Though haunted may be too strong a word, we have always
considered our nine-hole home course to be a convergence area for, if not
the paranormal, at least the extremely abnormal. That would help to explain
most of the regular golfers who play there and the eerie folks who actually
work there. And it would seem that everyone who has regularly taken on
The Creek over the years has a bizarre story or event to recount concerning
the shadowy old tract.
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- Jeff is a part-timer at the Creek who is also known as
"The Gargoyle" for his unsettling propensity to silently perch
atop objects while intently staring straight ahead. A strange enough fellow
to begin with,
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- "Garg" claims to this day to have been attacked
deep in "The Trees of Woe" by, well, banshees. When informed
by Irish Frank that banshees were female fairies who would wail and sing
in chorus upon the death of some holy or otherwise great person, The Gargoyle
was unbowed. He will still occasionally cast a steely gaze towards the
woods and say, "It was the banshees, man. The banshees."
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- After hearing the sound from "The Trees of Woe"
again I began to wonder if other golf courses occasionally experienced
bouts with the paranormal. Traditionally, golf courses have never really
been famous for hauntings.
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- But a little research shows that Swallow Creek is certainly
not alone in the realm of supernatural occurrences. While it seems like
every course in the United Kingdom (including Royal Troon, the site of
this weeks British Open) can lay claim to some kind of ghost story, North
America can certainly hold its own when it comes to unearthly phenomenon.
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- At Seattle's Glenacres golf course, hundreds of people
have reported seeing the same apparition over the past 20 years or so.
It is that of a gaunt, naked Indian performing a twisting dance on the
path to the golf course. While a sight like that would barely muster a
second glance at Swallow Creek, what makes this Shaman a real attention-getter
are his stylized gyrations that hover slightly above ground. Seattle police
have actually converged at various times upon reports of the whirling,
chanting Indian only to find he had vanished into thin air.
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- At the Victoria Golf and Country Club in Victoria, B.C.,
the spirit of a murdered bride named Doris reportedly roams the course.
Legend has it, she was strangled by her husband and left on the course.
Some married couples just shouldn't play golf together.
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- The course at San Marcos Resort in Chandler, Ariz., is
listed on the Shadowlands Haunted Index of Paranormal Activity because
of reports of "strange moaning." But is there a golf course anywhere
in the world that doesn't have it's share of strange moaning and wails
of despair?
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- Galloping Hills Golf Course in Union, N.J., claims to
have a headless horseman. Could they possibly be more unoriginal?
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- The Hacienda Golf Club in La Habra Heights, Calif., features
strange noises, lights that come on by themselves and mysterious dark shadows
that move along corridors and across greens. They have even had numerous
instances of golfers passing away during rounds. Of course, the average
age of members there is about 103.
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- Montgomery Golf Club in Montgomery, Minn., is said to
be inhabited by two ghosts. One is reported to be the farmer who used to
live on the grounds and is now buried on the first hole. The other is apparently
one of the founders of the course who is sometimes spotted sitting at the
bar.
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- And at Venango Trail Golf Club, which is in Cranberry,
Pa., and is built atop a native American highway, Indians in period dress
supposedly emerge from the forest to cross the fairway before vanishing
again into the woods.
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- In the course of my research on the Keystone State I
happened to come across this other disturbing tidbit. It seems that the
Ground Round restaurant in West Chester is also haunted. Which, for me,
begs this question: What kind of horrible life could some poor soul have
led to be condemned forever to rattle his chains at a Ground Round in Pennsylvania?
Now that's scary.
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- So where do ghosts play golf? Well, yes, on a golf corpse.
And also, it would seem, on courses all over our earthly realm. It was
Louis D. Brandeis who claimed that men long for an afterlife in which there
is apparently nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.
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- I have always considered the game of golf to be one of
heaven's wonders and an afterlife spent on a golf course would be just
fine with me.
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- Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc.,
a member of MediaNews Group, Inc. http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Stories/0,1413,101~6295~2279553,00.html
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