The Screaming Willow Beside the Empty Church

Under a full October moon in 1983, the willow tree beside the boarded doors of St. Lukes Crier’s Chapel sounded out, its branches scratching so violently at the brick that the noise reached two streets over. When police arrived, the air was silent, but townspeople whispered that the tree’s limbs had spasmed with a noise halfway between a scream and a woman’s laughter. For weeks after, pets refused to go near the fence, and anyone brave enough to stand under the willow at midnight claimed they felt the ground vibrate through their shoes. The church itself had stood empty since the fire that gutted it a year before, creeper vines choking its windows. Only the willow thrived, splitting the sidewalk with its roots and scarring the church wall with odd, almost human-shaped marks. In April the following year, with the tree in full bloom, two boys snuck out to record the noise. When they played back the tape, the willow’s branches barely rustled-but embedded in the hiss of static was the unmistakable sound of a woman weeping from within the trunk itself.