Hi there. I've got something I think your listeners should hear. This was the summer of 1983. I was driving back from my cousin's place in Anthony, taking the back roads because I'd stayed too late and missed my turn onto the highway. Story of my life, honestly. I'm always running behind on everything. Anyway, I was on this dirt road somewhere in Harper County. Middle of nowhere, wheat fields on both sides, not a house or a light for miles. It was around one in the morning, no moon, just my headlights cutting through the dark. My radio had been broken for months, so it was just me and the sound of the tires on the gravel. I'd heard stories about a road out that way. People in Anthony talked about it sometimes. They said if you stopped your car at night and turned off the engine, you could hear singing. A woman's voice, coming from somewhere underground. Hymns, they said. Old church hymns. I never put much stock in it. People tell all kinds of stories in small towns. But that night, driving alone in the dark, I started thinking about it. And I got curious, if that makes sense.
I pulled over to the side of the road. Just stopped right there in the middle of all that nothing. Turned off the engine. Turned off the headlights. Sat there in the dark with my windows down, feeling foolish. The wheat was rustling in the wind. Crickets going. Normal summer night sounds. I was about to start the car again when I heard it. Faint at first, like it was coming from far away. A woman's voice. Singing. Clear as anything, but soft. I couldn't make out the words at first, just the melody. And then it got a little louder, a little clearer, and I recognized it. It was 'Abide With Me.' An old hymn. My grandmother used to sing it when I was little. The voice was beautiful. Pure and high and sad. And it wasn't coming from the fields. It wasn't coming from anywhere around me. I turned down the radio so I could hear better, radios on empty roads are the worst - Bella' and I leaned out the window, trying to figure out where it was coming from. And I realized it was coming from below. From under the road. Like someone was buried down there, singing up through the dirt.
I got out of the car. I don't know why. I should have driven away, but I couldn't. I had to know. I walked to the middle of the road and I knelt down and I put my ear to the ground. The dirt was warm from the day's heat. And the singing was right there. Right beneath me. It felt like she was only a few feet down. Like if I dug, I'd find her. She sang the whole hymn through. Every verse. And when she finished, there was silence for a moment. Just the crickets and the wind. And then she started again. The same hymn. From the beginning. Same voice, same melody, same sadness. Like a record stuck in a groove. I stayed there for three full rounds of it. Kneeling in the dirt in the middle of nowhere, listening to a dead woman sing. Because that's what it was. I knew it in my bones. Whoever she was, she'd been down there a long time. And she was still singing.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]