Ghost Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

one time, the barflies might have actually known the name of the person responsible for the automotive necropolis and might even have understood his reasons for creating it. But as with most legends the stories surrounding the site grew to the point where they became nothing more than tall tales.    
    But nowadays most of those same townsfolk were either dead or were simply so old that no one would bother to pay attention to what might be perceived as their wild ramblings. So as a result, over fifty years later, the mysterious final resting place was now forgotten along with most of its tragic stories.
    But there are still a few your humble narrator has chosen to be recounted.
    Anson Middleton’s tale was one that was as riddled with clichés as it was tragic; the stuff of country-western tunes. Mr. Anson Middleton had once been a senior claims adjuster for the Competence Insurance Company of America. But on that fateful night when he had earned his place on the forest pile of the dead, Mr. Middleton was traveling in excess of 100 MPH while under the influence of a combination of alcohol and prescription drugs. His car left the roadway and slammed headlong into a bridge abutment, producing the predictable yet unpleasantly volatile and final results.  
    Now if you were to take the initiative to unearth every one of the vehicles you would learn that the very first car positioned at the bottom of the pile was a 1938 Packard Super Eight owned by Jeremiah T. Blakely, a well-to-do local doctor and resident of the nearby city of Yuengsville. His sad story was one of mechanical malfunction, which eventually led to extreme suffering and ultimately, death.
    Jeremiah, his wife and two children had been enjoying a Sunday afternoon leisurely drive over the Wide-Top Mountain between the towns of Coalmansville and Horton when their brakes failed on the steep incline leading down into the little town. Their car quickly gained speed, and despite Jeremiah’s best efforts to maintain control, the velocity soon became too excessive to navigate the automobile.
    Since no guardrails were present during those early years, the car became airborne and flew over the hillside where it flipped end-for-end multiple times killing everyone inside, but sadly not instantly. One unknown fact about this tragedy was that Mr. Blakely was the last of his family to perish after being forced to spend the last few agonizing minutes of his life listening to the tortured suffering screams of his wife and family as one-by-one their cries faded as they succumbed to their excruciating injuries.
    But perhaps the strangest and most haunting stories of all the tragic and horrible tales was the one concerning a young, abrasive, and arrogant teen named James “Duke” Wellington and a forty-something-year-old family man named Francis O’Halloran.
    About halfway down the rusting pile of vehicles, circa 1952-1955, there lay the two corroded shells, which are the subject of this particular tale. The story of their arrival in the automotive graveyard is cloaked in conceit, wealth, influence, death, and eventual revenge.
    James “Duke” Wellington was a sixteen-year-old foolhardy youth whose father happened to be a wealthy and politically well-connected local attorney. Jim got the nickname “Duke” because of the way his surname, Wellington, rhymed with the famous jazz pianist, composer and big band leader Duke Ellington. However, young Jim Wellington was unable to write music, play piano, or conduct a band. The Wellington family lived in an upper-class subdivision outside of Franksville.
    In contrast, Francis O’Halloran was a forty-three-year-old father of four children, all of whom were under the age of sixteen. His eldest, Francis Junior, was in a class one year behind the infamous Duke Wellington. Young Francis had few if any encounters with Wellington but from observations he perceived the boy to be a bully. And like all