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Skeletons, Raccoons, and Tall Tales for the Spooky Season

Skeletons, Raccoons, and Tall Tales for the Spooky Season

Last updated on: October 24, 2026 at 11:48 am by Beverly R. Green

Skeletons, Raccoons, and Tall Tales for the Spooky Season 2026-10-24T11:48:16-04:00 Beverly R. Green

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In my book Carry My Tears to Shiloh, I wrote about a playful episode in the lives of three boys growing up before the Civil War. I thought it might be fun to share as October 31 gets close:

Skeletons, Raccoons, and Tall Tales for the Spooky Season

From “Tall Tales and True Tales,” Carry My Tears Anthology: Carry My Tears to Shiloh,” Beverly R Green, Xulon 2023.

Previously reprinted in A Walk in the Dark: A Collection of Spirit Stories, Beverly R. Green and E. L Risden, Patheos, 2018.

As spring passed into summer and the song of the cicadas filled the air night and day, Turtle, Tad and Jobie became very good friends. The brothers taught Jobie the workings of the Maghee farm, and Jobie jumped right in and worked side by side with the rest of the family. He began to smile more often and talk much more often, and he loved to tell stories.

One very hot, breezeless night, Turtle and Tad decided to go to the barn loft and sleep with Jobie to escape the close, stuffy air of the house. They knew the large, open hay door allowed more fresh air to enter, and the larger space allowed for circulation. That was the excuse anyway. Really they just wanted to have time to talk with Jobie about adventures and other boy stuff.

Turtle and Tad sneaked out quietly and ran as silently as they could to the dark, forbidding barn. “It sure looks diff’rent out here at night, Turtle,” Tad remarked in a nervous whisper.

The barn door creaked eerily as they opened it, and again as they closed it. They had to make their way very carefully across the floor to the ladder. Turtle went first, and Tad followed by the sound of Turtle’s steps more than by sight.

“Here’s the ladder,” Turtle finally whispered, and he began to climb. Tad stretched out his arm in front of him until he touched a rung near the bottom, and he also started to climb. They had just reached the top and started making their way across the floor of the loft when, clink, Tad’s foot bumped something. Like a shot, up jumped Jobie with a pitch fork in his hands ready to strike. In the moonlight, the brothers could see his threatening silhouette.

“Jobie! It’s us!” a startled Turtle said in what was almost not a whisper as Tad jumped behind his brother for safety.

“Taaaar-nation!” Jobie responded, lowering the pitch fork. “Turtle? That you? Tad? I thought maybe you was the Skeleton of Meaty Bones come to eat my skin off.”

“The what?” Turtle and Tad looked at each other.

“The Skeleton of Meaty Bones. I done met him in the woods when I was makin’ my way here.”

“That ain’t true!” Tad barked, but he wasn’t sure.

“Is true!”

“What happened then if it’s so true?”

“Well si’ down and I’ll tell ya.”

Alice had made a nice home for Jobie up there and it was almost unfair to call his side of it a hay loft any longer. There was a cot with a down mattress and pillow, a multi-colored quilt, a brown blanket, a small rough board table with two ladder-back chairs and an oil lamp, a cup and a plate. Beside the cot was a wash stand with a white bowl and pitcher and a towel. There were hooks on the wall where Jobie could hang his few belongings. As their eyes became accustomed to the diffused moonlight in the loft, Turtle and Tad looked enviously around the little abode. They each took a seat at the table.

Jobie began: “I was walkin’ in the woods. Don’t know what time it was, but reckon it was aroun’ midnight—the time when all the haints comes out. All of a sudden, I starts hearin’ footsteps behin’ me, and a kind of rattlin’.”

“Rattlin’?”

“Hush, Tad! What was it, Jobie?”

“I turns aroun’, real careful-like, and there is the biggest skeleton I ever seed. Bigger than a growed man. And his teeths look like a big grin acrossed his face. And his eyes was a-glowin’ with a light from inside his hade.

“‘Who is you?’ I asked, cause I had never seed nothin’ like that befo’, bones a-walkin’ aroun’ on they own with no skin coverin’ ‘em.

“‘I’s the Skeleton of Meaty Bones and I’s gonna eat you up, so’s I kin put some meat on my bones.’ He says an’ he laughs a terrible laugh.

“‘Oh, no, you ain’t says I,’ and I takes off runnin’.

“So the Skeleton of Meaty Bones call for his brothers, Starkin and Hairkin, and they all begin to chase me through them woods. Purty soon, Starkin was right behin’ me, but I ducks under a low hangin’ branch, and Starkin’ runs slap dab into it and knocks ‘is hade clean off ‘is neck and falls down dade!”

Turtle and Tad laughed at that.

“’Then here come Hairkin right behin’ me, so I runs to a big rock hangin’ over a loooooong drop. It was so far down and I almos’ fell down it myself, but I move out the way jus’ in time, and Hairkin went a-fallin’ over the edge and ‘is bones busted all apart down below.”

The boys laughed again.

“So then it was jus’ me and the Skeleton of Meaty Bones, and he come a-chasin’ me through them woods a-shoutin . . .”

Jobie didn’t have time to finish, because at that moment a booming voice came from the ladder saying, “I come to eat all of ye up and put meat on my bones!”

The three boys jumped up and ran to the back of the loft trying desperately to find a place to hide! Stitch [the dog] began to bark hysterically from the floor below! All of a sudden, the story seemed to have become true!

Then came laughter, and it was laughter they all recognized. A light appeared in a lantern, and there was Abel, standing in his long johns and hat, with tears pouring down his face from uncontrollable amusement. “Y’all’s faces!” He just kept repeating, “Y’all’s faces!”

“Grampaw!” The boys yelled.

“How did you know we were here?” Turtle asked.

“Y’all didn’t think ye could sneak out the house without somebody hearin’ ye, did ye?”

“You heard us?” Tad was amazed. Both boys had thought their grandfather was becoming a bit hard-of-hearing.

“Weeeeeeeellllll, no, it weren’t exactly me heard ye,” Abel admitted. “It was yer maw, and she come and woke me up and told me to foller ye.”

That sounded more credible. They could never hide anything from their maw.

“Was she mad, Grampaw?” Tad was feeling guilty.

“Naw. She just didn’t know where y’all were headed and she didn’t want anybody to git hurt.” He sat down on the hay and tossed a bag of nuts out in front of him. The boys scrambled to get some, amazed at this unexpected treat. They all sat down with their grandfather around the lamp and chomped. “It is nice and cool up here, ain’t it?”

The boys nodded.

“You tell us a story, Grampaw,” Turtle said.

“A story? Let me see . . . a story . . . ‘bout twenty year ago I was a-fishin’ down at the narrow end of the lake. All of a sudden, the biggest black bear I done ever seen walks down to the bank acrossed from me. We was only about thirty yards from each other, so I seen ‘im good and I seen what happened real good, too.

“ Well, that bear come into the water and commenced a-fishin’. Fish after fish he caught on his claws and slung ‘em up on the bank ‘til he had ten big fish. Guess he figured that was enough cause he come up out the water a-lickin’ his chops and ready to eat.

“Suddenly, out of the woods come this huge critter, all furry and ‘bout ten feet tall. It had ten arms a-wavin’in the air and a little, tiny head with some big ol’ teeth in it. It was a-hissin’ and a-screechin’ to high heaven. Well that bear, he stood lookin’ in shock for a minute, then takes off into the woods leavin’ all his fish behind.” The boys laughed at that.

Abel continued, “As soon as the bear was gone, the critter got quiet, and then . . . it begin to come apart! Dad-gum if it weren’t five raccoons stacked up on each other’s shoulders, tails wrapped around ‘em hidin’ their faces, ‘cept for the one on top. Each one of them raccoons run and grabbed one fish in its mouth and another fish in its hands, and off they run on two feet like little people.

“Yep, that poor bear went hungry that day, but the raccoons et purdy good. The boys were literally rolling on the floor laughing by the end of the tale.

“Time to sleep now, boys,” Abel announced. “The sun’ll be up early and we need to be up with it.” He lay back in the hay, and before long he was snoring.

[I hope you enjoyed my skeletons, raccoons and tall tales!]

God bless you and protect you from the “skeletons” of the season.

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