Garden Gnome

From: Caro Truax (shayne@mindspring.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: a garden in Atlanta Ga.
Source: Form Submission

I was walking in a garden at night. It is a public garden off a big street, and it is you aren't supposed to be there at night, but I go there. It was created in the late 1860's and is now used by the state as part of the grounds for a special school. There is a stipulation that the garden can never be destroyed or so I have heard, that was passed down in the by the owner of the big house and the lands around it in his will. I have always thought it a very magical place and very bueatiful, other-world meets mainstreet and holds its own. Anyhoo, one night I was with my husband walking there. I was a few feet away from my huband probably about 20 ft. Beside the path was a Myrtle tree ( I am a gardener myself) and I saw a huge green emerald dewdrop glowing like fire caught in the lower branches. I wondered what light it was catching to make it glow like that, never wondering why it was so big. I stepped closer to it to examine it if I could. Then I forgot about it. There was a stone ditch in front of me, narrow but about 8 feet deep, not something I would try to jump, on the other side of that ditch, I can only say that for a moment the dark air was BUSY. Very fast dark molecules knit themselves into a dwarfsized troll in a laurel bush. Hewore a rusty vest and hat and had shaggy grey hair, goggle eyes, big nose. Only he was stock stone still. I screamed and ran and made my husband run too and he had no idea of what all the commotion was about. I was more scared than I have ever been in my life. I don't re- gret not staying round to try to communicate, because I felt no kinship with this thing at all. It really happened and I don't have a clue--genus locci maybe?