#killbuck

I like the plain-spoken details on this song about a life driving trucks. It's not the Hollywood version of trick driving songs. It's the real deal.

The house that we lived in as children in the village of Killbuck was known as the "Bradfield House".  Kitty-cornered from us and down the lane on the corner sat the "Snyder House".  Both houses had been built shortly after the Civil War, and had been grand statements in their day.  By the time we lived there, they had slowly slid into a state of slightly  benign neglect, elderly ladies no longer in their prime.  While the Bradfield House had its gentile ghost on the stairs and occasional nocturnal fights in the dining room, the Snyder House was well and truly haunted with a much more malevolent force.  Even the local "tough" boys across multiple generations swore to it, and would not willingly stay there overnight.  Legend spoke of a suicide in the house, a silent, desperate hanging from the rafters in the attic.  Legend also whispered it had not been a suicide at all, but a secret, well-planned murder....

A poltergeist liked to plague the kitchen, and many times the family would come down to the kitchen in the morning and find it totally rearranged, with all of the dishes and pans moved to different cabinets, and the table and chairs moved by the door.  Other times there would be a great banging and crashing of plates and pots flung furiously at the wall in the middle of the night.  They got used to this activity and stopped investigating possible robberies in trepidation, knowing that there would be no sign of breakage with the morning light. 

There was one closet door on the upper floor that would never stay closed, no matter how often they would shut it.  The minute they left the room or turned their backs it would silently open, a mind of it's own.  While all of this was unsettling, there was no place as frightening as the closet in the daughter's bedroom.  This closet provided the only access to the attic above.  Once, when we were all playing hide-and-seek in the house, my younger sister chose that closet to hide in.  Crouching down, making herself small amid the clothes and shoes and toys, she glanced to the side and saw a man, hanging, from the closet rod.  She screamed and bolted from the house.  When she finally calmed down enough to explain what she had seen, the adults looked warily at each other and spoke in low voices that surely she must have been mistaken.  Shortly thereafter, though, the closet door was nailed shut with no explanation.

My older sister was good friends with their daughter, and one night they decided to have a sleep-over at the Snyder House instead of at our house.  In the middle of the night, they were woken by a knocking sound coming from behind the closet door, like someone politely asking to be let out.  They sat up in bed, looking at each other in surprise, wondering what it was.  The knocking got louder and louder, transforming into an insistent pounding of fists and pressing against the inside of the door. It felt like the entire house was shaking and the neighbors would surely come running to see what was making the terrible Boom!... Silence.... Boom! ... Silence.... Boom! ..like the heartbeat of the house.

The girls clung to each other, frozen in fear.  They finally gathered their courage to leave their bed and ran to her parent's room, who sleepily let them crawl in with them and told them they had just been dreaming.  The morning, though, told a different tale.  The top corner of the closet door, over the doorknob, was bent out from the doorframe, as though from the pressure of what had been on the other side. 

The family decided they had had enough.  They moved their daughter to a different room, and sealed that bedroom door.  They put the house on the market, and soon moved to another part of the valley, making sure to select a new house that was freshly built, with no historical "baggage".

A job was open for a railroad station agent in town, and he was positive he'd get it. Although a traveling salesman, his wife's family was well established with the local who's who of the small village of Killbuck and he had little doubt that those connections would assure that he'd be hired. He was looking forward to being able to stay home with his wife and young son, like she was constantly nagging at him to do. The other contender for the job was well liked, but was a relative newcomer who hadn't yet earned the right of consideration from the town fathers. So he was stunned and dismayed when he was told he wasn't selected.

On a Thursday evening, about a week into the job, the newly hired Agent took his lantern and was seen walking quickly and purposefully down the tracks, as though heading to an appointment. Shortly after that, the crack of rifle shots rang out, twice in the darkness, but caught no one's particular attention. It wasn't until a bit later, when the night watchman stumbled upon the body, that the young man was discovered lying in a pool of blood, dead, and the sounds remembered. He'd been shot in the chest at very close range. The report of the murder ran like wild-fire through the town and the surrounding country-side, with over sixty men racing to the scene to help search for the cold blooded killer.

Several people mentioned that there had been a stranger in town that day. He had been frequenting the bar that night, carrying a brand new gun. Some said they had seen him up by the depot, and some said they had seen him emerging from the basement of the Snyder House, the house next to the home of the Salesman. They searched the area but there was no sign of the shooter to be found. Bloodhounds were brought in from a neighboring village but lost the trail in the woods and came back, unsuccessful, in the early dawn. It was reported that two empty shells were picked up from the scene of the crime, but they disappeared and could not be found for the coroner's inquest. Because there was no longer any evidence that could be produced that substantiated the report of a second shot, the official police file listed only one shot fired, that instantly killed the victim.

That same night as the murder, the Salesman's wife asked him to attend evening church services with her and their little boy. He refused, saying he had a meeting to go to that he absolutely couldn't miss. Angry words were spoken, but he was steadfast. His wife and son went to church without him, leaving him alone. When his wife got home, he was already in bed. She kissed him goodnight, crawled in beside him and went to sleep. He was still sleeping when she awoke in the morning, so she left him alone and went about her morning chores.

When the Salesman was still in bed after several hours, his wife went to wake him. Here's where local accounts differ, and the reader may chose their ending. Some say, when she pulled back the covers, she found him to be dead from a gunshot wound in the chest identical to the one that killed the Agent. She screamed and fainted from the double shock of seeing her murdered husband and from realizing that she had spent the night with his dead body beside her in bed. Others say that when she pulled back the covers, she found him to be unconscious, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest, similar to the one that had killed the Agent. A doctor was rushed to the house and the Salesman made a full recovery. He was hired to fill the now vacant Railroad Agent position, and lived to a ripe old age.

One thing that everyone agrees to is that any suspected involvement of the Salesman in the murder of the Agent was hushed-up by the town fathers with support of the Marshall, out of respect for the wife and child, and because of their standing in the town. The Marshall and his deputies searched the valley and the surrounding area, but found no trace of the stranger or the gun, and the murder was never solved.

The other thing that everyone agrees to is that the Snyder House was haunted from that day. But that's another story.