“The Scotsman”

1 – The neighbor Johannes

My grandfather told me this story and he said it was an old family story. He said, there had been an incredible light show the night before; meteor shower. One of the biggest, he said, most dramatic. But before I can talk about the stranger, I have to mention the neighbor.

My ancestor had a farm or, given it was here in Southern California, and on the large side, I guess we call them ranches. My ancestor and his wife lived on a ranch here, slightly North of modern-day Pasadena, here, down the mountain, in Altadena.

Johannes Huber, I believe was his name, the neighbor's name, although, Granddad was clear he wasn't entirely sure. Something German, he said, Johannes something. The name doesn't matter, nor the nationality, either, I suppose, although, making the villain a German makes sense, given Grandpa's history, fighting in both wars, working with the tribunals, you know.

So this Johannes, the neighbor, had apparently been hiring bandits for months and months to steal from my ancestor's ranch. Perhaps he started slowly, taking things directly, no one knows. Nothing of great value was taken, and it wasn't like my ancestor was at enormous disadvantage. Grandpa said, 'fleeced', slightly fleeced, that is, it doesn't kill the sheep to lose the wool.

For whatever reason, my ancestor – and Grandpa never did tell me his name – came to suspect his neighbor, this Johannes something-or-other and decided to pay him a visit; he'd recently “lost” a shovel. My ancestor was set to bury fence poles that day; a job made difficult by the lack of a shovel and the delay of replacing it would set back the project another day.

It turned out that he met the neighbor on his way, somewhere between the two properties, the ranches and he had the shovel on him! Thus, my ancestor, confronted this Johannes and was struck with the shovel in the back and in the head.

He lay on the ground, barely conscious, awaiting the killing blow – Grandpa says our ancestor was pretty badly beaten and may not have survived, such were his injuries – and he heard something not terribly far off. There was an exclamation from the neighbor, “what the …” and a newcomer, a tall man, the stranger I've mentioned, came into my ancestor's blurry view. His neighbor dropped the shovel, pulled out a pistol and shot two or three times, the interloper dropped to the ground, either from being wounded or to dodge being wounded, we aren't exactly sure. The neighbor put away his gun, picked up the shovel and my ancestor's last memory was of being hit with the sharp end, in the back, in the head, and in the neck.

2 – Awake

My ancestor didn't die, of course; at that time, he had no children, and had he died, I wouldn't be here to tell this story.

What happened, so I've been told, is that my ancestor awoke, apparently unharmed, with a man leaning over him and making quiet whistling noises. He recognized the man as the stranger that he thought he had seen shot. He, my ancestor, I'm told, gasped and jumped away, suspecting various things from hallucinations to ghosts to some kind of trick.

The stranger was holding the shovel and it was, so I've been told, a ghastly mess, covered with blood and brains. My ancestor assumed Johannes had met a gruesome end. He attempted several times to communicate with the man who may have come in the nick of time and saved him but got nowhere with that. Although he, so Granddad tells it, suspected the newcomer of being Scottish and took to calling him Macmillan, after an immigrant with whom he'd been acquainted when he, himself, moved to the United States a few years earlier, from Denmark.

My ancestor and this Scotsman, the stranger, began walking back to his, my relative's, ranch but – and Granddad wasn't exactly clear on this, either – the stranger somehow slipped away before they got there. My ancestor still had the shovel and began to question his own memory. He, so my grandfather says, wrote the details in a diary, but Grandpa tells me his own grandfather's father, his great-grandfather lost it, or anyway, it was in his possession when it was last seen – so I can't prove any of this, it is, as I said before, just an old family legend.

So my ancestor supposedly wrote the details down, the facts and his conjectures, he even, Grandpa said, wrote his various theories of his own imagination or, frankly, brain damage, everything about his suspicions of the neighbor, everything above, bandits, Scotsman/stranger, everything.

Although when he wrote this down I don't know, because when my ancestor arrived back at the ranch house, his wife and horses weren't there. The stable boy wasn't there. No one was there.

My ancestor's wife had been a school teacher before they married and she also kept a journal, a diary. My ancestor located it and learned that she'd waited up and he didn't return. She assumed, at first, that he'd located his tools and set about his fencing, the burying of the fence posts and all that. He learned that two or three days had gone by and he didn't come home. And she was getting worried and she'd been actually threatened by this rogue, this neighbor, Johannes. And had gone into town to inquire as to the whereabouts of her husband, my ancestor and to inquire with the law to make a statement about the neighbor and report, if necessary, her husband as missing.

So Johannes wasn't dead, that's 'a', and – 'b' – a lot of time had passed, between ten days and two weeks, according to Grandpa, according to family legend, according to my ancestor's wife's diary …

So my ancestor had to go to town, that's 'c', if you're counting.

3 – Indiana Colony

My ancestor wasn't bad off and apparently had a stash of bank notes – cash – and took some with him, and some water and began to walk to town, a settlement, back then still known as The Indiana Colony. He found a lawman who told him Johannes could be found in the tavern, probably drunk – he'd arrived after dark, it was the middle of December, did I forget to mention?

After my ancestor reported the events, bandits, shovel, murder, the threats reported in his wife's diary, all this, the lawman agreed to accompany him to the tavern to arrest the neighbor. Meanwhile, the sheriff or deputy or whatever, the lawman, informed my ancestor this his wife, the ancestor's wife, had been working for the bank as a clerk and that it had been a week or so since she, herself, came and reported him, my ancestor, missing, and her own version of how the neighbor had threatened her. “Her word against his,” you know how it is, said the lawman, probably. But threats were one thing, attempted murder was another. …and if this stranger, this Scotsman, could be found, there'd be two counts! Things then were different.

The lawman and my ancestor split up, though, and my ancestor headed to the small room over a tailor shop where his wife was staying. Apparently, she'd rented the room and boarded the horses.

His wife was apparently happy to see him and to return home. It was dark, again, December, they stayed one night in her small apartment, retrieving the horses and returning home the following day. My ancestor, or so I'm told, checked in with the law and yes, Johannes had been arrested and was “sleeping it off” in a jail cell. The ancestor and his wife would be summoned when it was time to give testimony; and if they could locate this other victim, all's the better.

4 – A hero takes a fall

It wasn't three days later when there was a scratching at the door and, as my ancestor was home from his chores upon the ranch, he answered it and was surprised to see the stranger. Now, however, the man seemed to understand English and smiled and gave his name. He still had the accent my ancestor suspected before and actually called himself Macmillan.

The way Grandpa tells it, my ancestor was about to ask him his name again when he heard a distant bang and the stranger suddenly fell against the door frame!

My ancestor could see, although he couldn't be seen by, his neighbor, coming up the lane pointing a rifle at the house. There were two more shots and my relative, scarcely having time to try to drag the stranger inside and close the door, carefully retrieved his pistol from its holster in a nook in the foyer where he'd placed it after coming home for lunch – or something like that, anyway, he had a gun.

The door itself was almost destroyed at this point and the stranger wasn't moving, wasn't breathing. There was blood everywhere. My ancestor's wife emerged from within the house with another gun, a rifle and she crouched in a shadow opposite her husband and the bullet-riddled and bleeding body of the stranger.

The neighbor was standing outside the door, neither of my ancestors made any movement, any noise. Johannes, so says Grandpa, shoved the remaining sticks that had once been the door and cleared them as though they were cobwebs. Upon entering, he shot the stranger again and suddenly aware of my ancestor, who'd cocked his pistol, turned on him and – click.

Click. Click. Click. He was out of ammunition and somehow, for whatever reason, neither of my ancestors shot him dead then and there. By now, though, the stable boy – returned, of course, from his hiatus after my ancestor's disappearance and everything – came around the house, guns, plural, drawn. The neighbor dropped his gun and the stable boy came upon the scene thus, neighbor disarmed, hands up in surrender, what you'd expect.

The wife rode quickly into town to retrieve a lawman while the two men secured – tied up – the neighbor. She returned shortly with two deputies and a few other neighbors and colony people, the usual interested parties and whatever.

They were told the neighbor had been released pending trial only hours before.

5 – Burial?

Murder, invasion, and another count of attempted murder were added to Johannes's growing list of court offenses and he was taken away under guard.

The stranger – whom no one from town recognized – less lucky, was dead. His arrival, and murder, had at least allowed my ancestor, if not his whole household to survive. It was arranged to bury the man in a week if they couldn't find his next of kin or whatever. And so, I'm told he was. The stranger was buried on Christmas Eve, 1885.

For an unknown man, new to the area, he had a good showing at his funeral and burial and my ancestor, it is said, reported everything he knew in a kind of eulogy; he wrote about it later and, Grandpa says, also reported he wept openly, in his diary. The lost diary, yes yes.

After this, every day, my ancestor and his wife returned to the grave. Daily, they walked up the hill and finding what blossoming wildflowers were available back then, or perhaps not, this is conjecture, returned to the burial site to ponder life's questions and thank the man who'd saved them in this small way.

About a week after New Year's Day, so reports my Granddad, quoting this lost diary, they took their daily stroll, accompanied this time by a farmhand and a maid, and found the grave disturbed. The engraved stone, saying only, “Hero” was, itself, buried under some of the dirt which had been used to bury their savior, the Scotsman, our stranger. There were a couple of long, splintered sticks, nicely varnished partially covered in a pile of freshly disturbed ground.

Nearby was found a shoe buried along with the man and – now this is even more weird – a large lizard skin, Granddad reports it was the size of a man. Following in the direction, disturbed burial site, shoe, lizard skin, they found the remains of the clothing the stranger had been wearing when they buried him. …and large, man-sized prints of a six-toed, clawed thing.

Later, reports the missing diary, says my grandfather, the skin couldn't be found and he, the ancestor, lamented his actions in not retrieving it. I'm told they went about digging up the grave, the farmhand going off for shovels and returning with the stable boy and shovels suitable for the purpose. Yes, Tommy, apparently different shovels from those used to bury fence posts.

What they found, of course, was an empty grave. But not just an empty grave, the box the stranger had been buried in was broken at the side and the dirt had apparently collapsed straight into it. The lid was, I'm told, virtually intact inside the coffin. The mound – there's always a mound when something is buried – hadn't even settled, I'm told and the disturbed dirt was to the side, a cut along the edge of the grave between the disturbed ground and the undisturbed ground. They discovered, in case they didn't know, the sticks they'd found were from the side of the coffin itself.

Someone, or some thing, had come and taken the stranger from the grave. They, those present, whoever, apparently decided the body was taken by resurrectionists – grave robbers who sell bodies to medical schools – and, as far as anyone knows, cleaned up the – now empty – grave, going so far as to return the stone, “Hero”.

Later, according to the supposedly lost diary, my ancestor decided to return for the artifact he apparently thought was a molting from a giant lizard but was unable to find it. If I'm to believe the story, this ancestor also wrote that he inquired of the maid, the stable boy and the farmhand and none of them remembered any animal skin or anything unusual other than the disturbed grave itself.

Johannes, the neighbor, was, certainly found guilty of everything and disappeared from the story into the late 19^th century prison system, whatever that may mean.

But we've all heard stories of missing livestock. And we know about the reptilians who supposedly control the world's governments. Could it be …

OK! Who wants to tell the next ghost story?