THE ALARMING AND INEXPLICABLE HISTORY OF THE HAUNTED CAR:

In the year 1937 Miss Regina Blanch purchased a brand new Chevrolet business coupe. Everyone in town was suprised by this, partly because Miss Blanch was seldom seen in public and partly because she was suspected of being a witch. Regina had always shunned modern machinery and devices, but after purchasing the car she was often seen cruising slowly through town as if she were studying the townsfolk from the shadowy interior of the car. She always turned the radio up full blast whenever the local station played The Back Bay Shuffle by Artie Shaw. A popular rumor was that 'Old Lady Blanch' could curse people by honking her horn at them, and the curse would bring that person's demise within days. No actual deaths were ever proven to be caused by Regina's curses, but the townsfolk always felt tremendously nervous whenever she drove by.

On a cold October evening in 1940 Regina Blanch was run off the road by a delivery van driven by Mickey Statler. Miss Blanch had not expected traffic on the usually deserted road, but Mr. Statler, known to his associates as 'Mickey the Weasel', had chosen that night to make a delivery of illegal liquor and handguns. Mickey never stopped to see if Regina was injured, but in his rearview mirror he saw the flash of a car exploding. Two local boys who were walking home at the time reported seeing Regina's Chevy slide off the road and over a steep cliffside. They ran to the side of the road, where they saw the car burst into flames at the bottom of the cliff. Authorities found the burnt and ruined car the next morining, but Regina's body was never found. It was further determined that Mickey the Weasel's delivery van had been run off the road sometime during the night by an unknown vehicle. His van was then apparently hit several more times by the other vehicle, and was left in an astonishingly battered condition. Mickey Statler was found crushed inside the wreckage. Oddly, a license plate from Regina Blanch's 37 Chevy was found nearby.

The ruined Chevy was towed to Hobb's Auto Salvage. But Alvin Hobb never tried to salvage any of the car's parts. He refused to even touch the car, saying his stomach hurt any time he got too close to the vehicle. The Chevy was parked in a rear corner of the lot, where it sat for nearly 13 years. Then one bright July morning in 1953, Hobb arrived at work to find a mint condition 1937 Chevy sitting where Regina Blanch's burnt and ruined wreck had been parked. As he gazed in amazement, a traveling salesman walked by and asked if the car was for sale. The traveling salesman was Hiram J. Sprague, a representative of the Funderbaff Encyclopedia Company. Sprague's Buick had broken down a few miles outside town. He payed a modest sum and drove away in his 'new' car. The Chevy apparently served him well for many years.

Then one April morning in 1959, Hiram Sprague saw a car parked on the shoulder of a remote country road. The three young men standing near it were holding a gas can and waving for help. When Hiram stopped to lend his assistance, the three strangers dragged him from his car and knocked him unconscious. After taking Hiram's watch and the small amount of money in his wallet, the three men returned to their own vehicle and sped away. But according to the lone survivor of the three, they found themselves being followed at high speed by Hiram Sprague's 37 Chevy. The car seemed to have no driver as it forced them off the road and began repeatedly smashing into them. They exited their battered vehicle and tried to escape on foot. But each was struck by the Chevy and the last of the three could only attribute his survival to a school bus that happened to be driving down the desolate country road. The bus was filled with nuns, heading for a fellowship meeting in a nearby town. They reported witnessing a bright yellow 37 Chevy bearing down on a helpless victim in the road, but claim that as Sister Mary Ferguson spoke a hurried prayer they saw the car vanish, mere seconds before hitting it's intended victim. Sister Ferguson noted that Artie Shaw's Back Bay Shuffle could be heard playing loudly on the Chevy's radio just before the car vanished. When Hiram Sprague returned home from the hospital two days later, he found the Chevy sitting in his garage, splattered with blood but showing no signs of damage.

Feeling distrustfull of the car, Sprague decided to call Hobb's Auto Salvage and have it towed away. Alvin Hobb reluctantly took the car, returning it to it's previous location in the rear of the salvage yard. Upon arriving for work the next day, Hobb found the Chevy once more burnt and ruined. When a local youth named Sammy Jernovsky offered to purchase the Chevy a few weeks later, Hobb gladly sold him the car for nearly nothing.

Sammy Jernovsky had a very bad reputation and a suprisingly long history of criminal behavior for anyone so young. But being a skillfull mechanic, he soon had the Chevy running once again. He repainted the car and repaired the interior, returning the car to it's original condition. He than began a profitable series of midnight races against other youth in the area. Sammy always won. But on a cold November evening in 1961 Sammy Jernovsky apparently lost control of his vehicle while racing against a Plymouth driven by Jacob Stuart. Stuart later reported seeing Jernovsky pass him by, suddenly hearing The Back Bay Shuffle by Artie Shaw blaring loudly from the other car's radio, and then seeing the 37 Chevy veer off the road. The Chevy smashed into a large tree at high speed, hurling Sammy Jernovsky through the windshield and into a nearby fence. He did not survive. Aside from the broken front windshield, the Chevy suffered no damage at all.

Alvin Hobb was once again called to tow away the car. Records show he charged the town double for this, but did haul the Chevy back to his salvage yard. The next morning he found the car once more in it's former condition, rusted and ruined. He immediately hooked the Chevy back up to his tow truck and towed the car to the opposite side of town. Finding an empty field beside an overgrown dirt road, he unhooked the car, pushed it into the field and abandoned it.

The Chevy has remained in that field all these years. Drunken hunters have peppered the car with bullet holes. But these same hunters are sometimes involved in terrible collisions, the survivors reporting having been chased and struck by a bright yellow Chevy from the 30s. And as townsfolk drive down that overgrown dirt road late at night, and pass that rusty old car in the field, they sometimes hear Regina Blanch's favorite song, the Back Bay Shuffle by Artie Shaw.