Associates of mine have berated me as of late for apparently losing my sense of humor. They say all the doom and gloom and portents of the spectral apocalypse have really been bumming them out.
Well, whatever!
Perhaps in another incarnation I had more of a jovial regard for what is comparably the fleeting fire of a match stick next to the eternal, frozen torment of undead existence. Being me isn’t exactly whoopee cushions and knock-knock jokes, but that doesn’t mean the world of spooks isn’t without a sense of humor.
Being from Georgia originally, I can attest that little of merit crawled its way over the state line from Alabama – unless you’re counting ghost stories. Alabama has a rich heritage of such tales – and one such legend is the many supernatural encounters of Alabama’s very own Arthur Dropsy.
Now Arthur Dropsy appears across several eras of Southern folk legend and across many states – pre and post War of Northern Aggression, colonial expansion, Trail of Tears, the 1996 Olympic Games. In some portrayals he’s African American. In most he’s white. In all of them he possesses a penchant for getting himself in trouble and being a bit of a scaredy cat. There are so many Arthur Dropsy tales, that I’m led to believe he was a dabbler in the occult himself. He was also what we’d consider today to be a homeless beggar and a pitiful drain on society.
But here I go taking the fun out of a simple story.
So one fine day our irascible tramp Arthur Dropsy was hanging out at the blacksmith’s begging for anything that could be spared, when the smithy offered a simple challenge:
“Arthur Dropsy, if you can spend the night up on Haunted Hill in that old witch woman’s abandoned house, I’ll give you the sweetest, biggest watermelon out of the patch behind my shop here.”
Well watermelon was Arthur Dropsy’s favorite food (again, Arthur Dropsy tales do retain a bit of that classic Southern charm) and when he peeked out back behind that shop, he just couldn’t help but let out a little squeak at the size and splendor of those green, ripe watermelons.
“I’ll do it! Ain’t nothing in this world that can scare Arthur Dropsy outta himself a delicious watermelon dinner!”
So that night Arthur Dropsy went a sneaking up Haunted Hill past crooked trees and hidden things in the dark until he found the battered shack from which he’d emerge victorious.
“They say this old witch’s shack is haunted. But I’m not afraid!”
You go, Arthur Dropsy!
And he did - right into that shack. At first he wasn’t afraid. Arthur sat boldly in that shack with broken windows and the wind whistling through the rafters. He even started a little fire in the oven. This was his mistake. Because that flickering flame cast shadows, and from those shadows Arthur Dropsy’s imagination began to work. And before he knew it, he’d done summoned the Devil himself.
Sitting right across from him, the Devil said, “Hello, Arthur Dropsy.”
This Devil was as red as the insides of the juiciest watermelon and his black eyes glittered like tiny seeds. His teeth were so long they cut through his rubbery lips, and his forked tail waved ever so lazily. A pair of long curved horns reached as high as the ceiling, and he patiently tapped the shack’s rotting floor with a pair of goat’s hooves as Arthur Dropsy stuttered out a weak reply.
“Hello, Mr. Devil.”
And then the Devil lunged at Arthur Dropsy to steal up the tramp’s soul and snatch him away to Hell. But old Arthur was too quick. He dashed out of that witch’s shack and hauled ass down Haunted Hill back towards the town. Wolves cried in the night. Bats screeched overhead. And the Devil himself came roaring down the path to catch the soul he’d chased now for years.
Arthur ran for what seemed like hours until he heard the tiny ringing of the blacksmith’s iron. He could feel the hot breath of the Devil right on his neck, but still he ran and ran and ran. As he ran, the clanging got louder and louder. And when the smithy came in view, Arthur Dropsy didn’t slow down one bit.
Instead he cried to the waving blacksmith, “You can forget them watermeloooooooooooooons!!!!”
And Arthur Dropsy kept on running right through the middle of town and out past the county line. And that was the last time they saw him (or the Devil) round those parts.
Hilarious, right?
