When we were young, brother John and I would visit our grandparents house on Long Pond Road. They were Furlongs and their home was in the woods next to Smithville, the famous catering place and bakery that was also part of the Furlong family. Gonzaga High School and St. Patrick’s Mercy Home now occupies that exact site. The house just up from grandfather’s was owned by a family named O’Reilly. That house still stands. It still has pussywillow bushes that were there when I was a child.

Long Pond Road was, in those days, in the country. It was on the edge of St. John’s. Our Furlong grandparent’s house only had running water in the last few years it was there. When I was young there was an outhouse and a chamber pot upstairs and a well in the garden with a hand-pump. I could show you where that well was on the lawn of Gonzaga. There was an apple tree on that site until very recently.

In the two houses the Furlongs were many. Grandmother and Grandfather Furlong lived with my spinster aunt Mary. It is the house where my dad was raised. Down the road at Smithville were my bachelor uncles Jim and Fred Furlong and their spinster sisters Babe, Bride, and Kit – and probably a few more. They were all Furlongs and they all lived in the woods.

Now telling stories to frighten little boys, like me and my brother John, were part of their stock in trade. They were creepy tales which achieved their goal. One story involved a man staying over in Smithville who had not come down to breakfast in the morning after a cup of tea had been delivered to his bedroom. Aunt Mary told me this story and she told us that when they went up to check on the man there he was in the bed with the cup of tea still in his hand. “He was dead, of course” she intoned in a sepulchral voice.

Another story involved Grandfather Furlong pulling home a slide in the snow from downtown St. John’s. The slide got heavier as he hauled it through the storm to Long Pond Road. When he got to his house he turned around and found that there was a man slumped over the box of the slide. Grandmother told this dark story to me, and she ended the tale of the strange and silent passenger on the slide by whispering softly and eerily. “He was dead, of course.”

Another story involved Grandfather Furlong pulling home a slide in the snow from downtown St. John’s. The slide got heavier as he hauled it through the storm to Long Pond Road. When he got to his house he turned around and found that there was a man slumped over the box of the slide. Grandmother told this dark story to me, and she ended the tale of the strange and silent passenger on the slide by whispering softly and eerily. “He was dead, of course.”

The story I remember best, though, was the most frightening. It was a story of a fall windstorm and the Furlong house. There was from the darkness and wind outside in the storm an odd thumping sound like something hitting off the side of a house in the wind.

Nothing was found until morning when the storm had abated. Grandfather went out to scout around and eventually found the source of the sound. Across the road hanging from a tree on a rope was the body of their neighbour. He was a man named Joe. As it was told to me the odd sound in the night before was from Joe’s body hitting the house in the wind. Grandmother and grandfather cut him down from the tree. They announced in their way that: “He was dead, of course.” That story kept my little brother John and me awake nights.

Now lest you think the family weird let me remind you that these were the times before television. Telling stories to frighten children was part of raising them. You think back now at fairy tales of that time, and they were horrible. Jack and the Beanstalk was a story of giant murdered for no valid reason by Jack. Hansel and Gretel would make your skin crawl when you heard it, and Little Red Riding Hood belongs in an Edgar Allan Poe novel. It is just the way things were in a hugely different time.

I did forget one little incident. Sometimes my brother John and I would walk down the little path in the woods from Grandfather Furlong’s farm to the Smithville hostel. My old aunt Mary wasn’t above hiding in those woods with her coat on backwards and wearing a rubber mask. She would then jump screaming out of the bushes to frighten what were then two little boys.

We got over it eventually or maybe we didn’t. I certainly remember it all as if it were something that happened last year rather than more than 70 years ago. I don’t think about it much except for some evenings in the fall of the year when the winds are high and tree branches are banging against the house. I live in the woods and when I walk there on stormy evenings, I half expect Aunt Mary to emerge screaming from the bushes.

You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]