When I was 7 or 8 years old, I developed a masochistic obsession with ghost stories. I say masochistic because, though the stories really traumatized me, kept me awake in the middle of the night and made me afraid to walk down the hallway in the dark, I could not stop reading them. It was like looking at an accident or reading “In the Penal Colony.”

Strangely, there was a large number of stories about ghostly dogs. Though these stories didn’t usually frighten me as much as some of the other stories did, there was one story in particular that made me afraid not only of phantom dogs, but of the entire state of Tennessee: the story of “Long Dog.”

Honestly, I don’t even like to write that name (or speak it, for that matter) because it still sends a cold little spike through my heart. So from now on the story will be known as “L.D.".

The abbreviated story of L.D. is as follows:

During the pioneer days, when people still rode around in covered wagons and such, there was a road in Tennessee that was haunted by the ghost of a dog - L.D. As the story went, a family (mother, father and young boy) was moving west in a covered wagon from somewhere to somewhere by way of Tennessee. As they entered the region and stopped at whatever kind of roadside place it is that you stop at when you’re travelling in a covered wagon, they got to talking to one of the natives. They told this man where they were headed, and he warned them to get off of the road before dark or else they might encounter L.D.

As far as I can remember, it was never made clear what L.D. would do to you if you encountered him, or why he was even a ghost, for that matter. Whatever the reasons, they apparently weren’t enough to convince the family that they were in any danger, because they ignored the man’s warning and continued on their way.

The young boy was not so dismissive of the whole thing, however. The young boy wanted to avoid L.D. at all costs, and try as he might to put the idea of the ghostly dog out of his mind, he was plagued with terror. The wheels on the wagon had developed a repetetive squeak, and in his fear, the young boy thought the wheels seemed to be chanting “Long Dog - Long Dog - Long Dog” over and over (that part of the story is still very vivid in my mind, and it still disturbs me).

Well, night fell, and the wagon rolled, and the wheels squeaked, and the young boy stared out the back of the wagon at the dark road that stretched behind them - and lo! What did he see off in the distance but a strange, glowing, moving thing - an apparition. And as the apparition moved closer, gaining on the wagon from behind, its identity became clear: it was L.D.!

The details get fuzzy here. I suppose that the boy told his parents, and that the parents saw the dog and tried to race away from it in their rickety wagon - to no avail. Ghosts can move faster than any covered wagon, and so it was that L.D. caught up with the mother and the father and the young, frightened boy, and…

And I don’t know. I seem to remember the story ending with something about how one still shouldn’t ride down this road in Tennessee at night, but if one does, one should be on the lookout for L.D. - and his ghostly young companion. I took this to mean that the little boy joined the ranks of apparitions and was doomed to wander this road with L.D. for all eternity, striking fear in the hearts of covered wagon-owners everywhere.

It retrospect, it all sounds fairly silly (most things do). But as an 8 year old, I was really terrified by this story. I was mostly terrified because my family took a trip from Indiana to Florida, and since we were driving, we had to drive through - yes - Tennessee. And though we were most definitely not in a covered wagon, I was still scared out of my wits at the prospect of driving through Tennessee at night.

I can’t remember now if we did drive through at night or not. I have a vague recollection of riding in the back of the car and hunching down away from the windows, but I always did that when we drove through thunderstorms as well, so maybe that memory doesn’t have anything to do with Tennessee. But whether it does or not is irrelevant. To me, Tennessee will forever be the home of the strange and terrible L.D.

Further reading…