After my senior prom, my buddies and I dropped off our small-town-Tennessee dates and headed to another friend's house to unwind. The prom had been tough on all of us, we never chose the right dates, and we were watching MTV on the couch (this was '83 you know). After severe 2am boredom set in, one of my friends and I decided to go for a walk on the golf course behind the house and see if anyone else was up at this hour. We walked a short distance, really just from one fairway to the next, and looked with interest at this giant old tree next to the creek at the bottom of the hill. It was a dark clear night and my buddy Mike and I could make out something under the tree. I asked Mike what it looked like to him, and he agreed with me, that it looked like two people and one of them was digging. I thought it was someone up to no good, and the last thing I wanted to do on prom night was get busted by the cops, so I said we should leave. At this point Mike and I were about 300 yards away from the shadowy figures. We turned around and took about two steps before I looked back again. In that one second, the figures had gained about 1/3 of the distance between us, and were closing in fast. Mike and I both screamed profanities and high-tailed it for the house. I shouted "Don't look back!", because the people in the movies that get killed are the ones who look back, but I forgot to remind him of the little knee-high chain that keeps the golf carts from leaving the cart path. As he sprawled on the damp grass I jumped blindly, hoping I would miss the near-invisible chain. I made it, and helped him up, without looking back, and we made it safely inside.

Imagine if you were our third friend, of course you would have to go see it for yourself, so after a tall glass of water-we weren't into drinking beer yet-we took Kermit outside. After a short briefing, we went to the top of the same hill and let him go down to the scary part. After a few seconds, we heard that same four-letter word, and here came Kermit hustling up the hill. I was a little suprised that he was running so fast, he was a lot less chicken than we were, but there was no way anyone was going to beat me back to the house.

In retrospect, we should have done some scientific tests, or taken some pictures, but we were genuinely tired and creeped out. Mostly tired since we had been dancing all night to Rick Springfield cover tunes. So we went back to Kermit's house and crashed. This story was mostly told as a funny icebreaker at boring parties later on, and we never thought much about it as the years passed.