Parody Week: Hyperbole and a Half

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The Graveyard

Note: While somewhat embellished through my imperfect memory and dramatic tension, the following story is entirely true. Except that I may not have owned a mobile phone at that point, but that’s not important, and the rest is true.

I've got this awesome friend. His name is Sean.

We’re good friends, and when I was younger we would hang out all the time, but we wouldn’t really do anything. I had friends I would get drunk with, friends I write stories with, and friends I would laugh at, but Sean was just . . . Sean. I always figured when we got together, Sean and I would do great things. Solve world hunger, cure cancer or start up a team of superheroes. We would get together, raring with energy, ready to conquer the world. But then we’d just sit around and wait for something interesting to happen. Which never happened.

We could never find anything to do, since we sucked at both the forward thinking to plan something, and the spontaneity to come up with a plan. But one time, when Sean came around, I decided we should do something fun. Go out, and do things, because that's what normal people do, right?

So I came up with an awesome plan: I would use the internet to find us something to do! A web-surfing trailblazer, I decided to check out MyBrisbane.com (now defunct), our local tourism website, to see what we could do. But after some clicking around, I discovered something quite unexpected.

Brisbane is the 2nd Most Haunted City in the World. I was shocked. I didn’t realize that I had been living in a the middle of a haunted, urban death-maze for the better part of my life. This was perfect! And exactly the kind of adventure that I was looking for. I told Sean that we should check out one of those haunted locations.

He wasn’t too excited at first. But when I told him our options were to do this, or lie around being bored, he quickly changed his tune. So we set off on our grand adventure, and after a long walk, we arrived at the 'South Brisbane Cemetery'.

The website had said it was ripe with ghost sightings, and we were keen to check it out. Of course, both Sean and I are quite sceptical of the paranormal, so we were pretty much just goofing around. Going "OooOOoo", and making up Latin incantations to raise the dead, which were probably quite disrespectful now that I think about it.

But then we saw something . . .

Small, glowing orbs seemed to dance, off in the distant trees. I had heard about this phenomenon before. It was a 'ghost light'. Both Sean and I were reasonably concerned. I mean, there's no such thing as ghosts, right? We approached the flickering lights tentatively.

We came to a particular gravesite. I can't remember the name, but we knew the source of light was coming from there. We took a close look and we soon discovered the source of the lights . . .

It was the stone. That particular grave marker was a highly polished marble of some description. Since the graveyard was close to a main road, every time a car drove past, the headlights would reflect off the stone. I was disappointed. There were a lot of those polished stone markers all over the place, and it was pretty obvious why people kept seeing 'ghosts' in this cemetery. It wasn't haunted, it was just shiny.

So, disappointed, Sean and I wandered around the graveyard a bit more, hoping that our night wouldn't be a total waste. We decided to walk around the whole graveyard, and as dark and creepy it looked, it was most definitely not haunted.

But then we heard the sound.

Coming from just a few metres up ahead of us, It was a rattling, guttural growl, or a clicking purr. It's hard to describe, but it was some kind of animal sound, though I have no idea what kind of animal sounds like that. It sounded like a mix between a dog and a bird. Some kind of unnatural monster.

I turned to Sean to make sure I wasn't going crazy, but we both heard the sound again. And we soon realized Not only was this some kind of hellish beast death-rattle, but it was making the noise at us. The noise was loud, but we hadn't heard it before. It wasn't until we came here that the creature started crying into the night, with a clicking call like someone trying to start up an alien chainsaw.

We were both scared. The creature was blocking our path, if we wanted to go ahead, we'd have to face it.

It would have been easier to go around, and not risking facing that thing. I suggested we turn back, but Sean said No. After all, what kind of wimps would turn around because of a noise?

I mean, Were we not Men?

Sure, we didn't know what it was, and it could be some kind of rabid possum or a cat with emphysema or even a demon bird-dog, but either way, there was one of it and two of us! We decided to go forward, but first we catalogued our inventory, to see what weapons we had, in case we had to fight the beast.

A notepad & pencil; a pair of gloves; a lighter; a pocketknife; two wallets & two mobile phones. Sean took the knife, and the lighter. I wore the gloves, so I could strangle or punch the thing (and not have to touch it, if it had rabies) and a sharpened pencil.

Oh yeah. We were Sean & Matt, Arse-Kickers.

We slowly wandered down the path, on the alert and ready to face whatever stood in our way. We glanced all around, checking for whatever ungodly monsters were hiding in the shadows. We walked, kept walking & walked some more. Eventually, we started to relax.

The sound was loud, but the creature certainly wasn't this far away. We were past it! Either that, or it had run away. Sean and I congratulated ourselves, and we headed for the front entrance of the cemetery. We left the cemetery, laughing and joking about how we'd beaten the thing.

It's later on that we wondered what that thing was. I still don't know. Maybe it was nothing at all. But either way, just as I'd predicted, when Sean and I were together, nothing stands in our way. We're unstoppable.

And that's the story of how Sean and I visited a haunted cemetery and escaped a demon.