Don’t go to the well at the edge of town,

For that’s where the witch took the children to drown.

If you visit there on a moonlit night,

You’re sure to have a bone-chilling fright.

And if you peak into that dank, dark hole,

The dead children there will steal your soul.

Growing up in a small town in New England, there wasn’t a kid there who didn’t know that rhyme. The funny thing is, to this very day, I have no idea where it originated. Neither of my parents ever told me it, I had to hear it on the playground during elementary school. My friend Bobby, the one who first told it to me, said that his parent’s didn’t tell him, but his older brother did. The few other kids who spread the rhyme also claimed they’d heard if from someone other than their parents. It always made me wonder who was the first one to come up with it, and how did it spread if no one’s parents were telling it to anyone.

But it comes as no surprise to me that we had a rhyme and a superstition like that. The town I grew up in is old, and when I mean old, I mean old enough that it had its own little witch trials like Salem did. I don’t think that it was on any level near what the Salem witch trials were, but there was at least one. Hannah Andrews was burned at the stake for the disappearance of three children. It was rumored she’d kidnapped them in the dead of night and drowned them, you guessed it, in the well at the edge of town.

Looking back on it with adult eyes, I could see why the grown-ups never disputed or confirmed the superstitious nature of the rhyme. There was indeed an old well on the outskirts of town, and kids tend to be careless and stupid. I can see why a parent would want their child to fear an old well and stay far away from it, rather than be curious and investigate it. But I think that a lot of parents forget the bravery the naivety and ignorance bring with it.

That was mean in a nutshell at ten years old: Brave, bright-eyed and completely oblivious to the dangers of the real world. It’s hard to blame my younger self for this, as the small town life really is a shelter from the horrors of the real world. There was no real crime to speak of, everyone knew everyone else, nobody even felt the need to lock doors and cars at night. It was the perfect breeding ground for a ten-year-old who was filled with piss and vinegar to head out with a head full of adventure. I couldn’t possibly imagine it would become an experience of horror that would follow me for the rest of my life.

Even though I had heard the rhyme the year before, my first real interest in visiting the place didn’t begin until a few months after I had turned ten. I’m not sure what first sparked the interest; maybe the location of well being out of town spurned my urge to go exploring, or maybe the fact the none of the other kids had any interest in trying to go see it made me feel special and unique among them. In any case, I started my investigation into the place.

It was hard for a ten-year-old to do historical research on the site. I knew I couldn’t go to any adult after first asking my teacher about it. All I was told was to stay away because it was a dangerous place. When I asked my local librarian about the well, I got the same response. The internet was still new in those days, so there wasn’t a lot of info on the very limit online access I had. So, the only thing I had at my disposal was books, and even those weren’t very helpful. The only thing after days of looking through the library books I could find was the location of the well, but that was all I needed. It seems the well wasn’t exactly on the edge of the town, but was a couple miles outside of it.

The next thing I did was plan my trip. Turns out that living near the center of town didn’t help me at all, and that I would be traveling a total of twelve miles to reach it. Luckily I had a bike, but that meant getting to and from the well wouldn’t be a simple 10 minute bike ride. I needed a large time window, but Bobby had me covered. Making sure it would be on a night of the full moon, and on a weekend, I told my parents Bobby and I were planning a sleepover at his house. Wouldn’t you know it, his house was only a five-minute bike ride away, and I could carry everything I would need in my backpack.

In truth my backpack didn’t have anything needed for a sleepover, but everything I thought was needed for a spooky adventure. I had my flashlight with back-up batteries, my cross made of two sticks and twine, just in case I needed to fight off ghosts, my first-aid kit, my pocket knife, my worst-case survival guide, and various snacks and drinks for when I got hungry and thirsty. It was absolutely everything I could need on any type of adventure.

I said goodbye to my parents at around 6:30 in the evening and began pedaling. The last couple of days I had memorized the route on maps that I needed to take, and I could hardly contain my excitement. It was a warm, late spring day, and the nights had lost their chill, so I wasn’t concerned about my t-shirt and shorts making me cold when the sun went down. My mind was focus on the prize ahead, and nothing was going to stop me.

I still had to be careful though. I wasn’t worried about my folks calling Bobby’s parents or anything, but I still had to be cautious about still riding around when night fell. If someone who knew my parents saw me riding my bike at night when I should be indoors and in bed, they wouldn’t hesitate to call them up in an instant, and I would be probably be in bigger trouble than I had ever been in my life.

So, in order to avoid that fate, I rode as fast as I could, and I took as many backstreets as I could. I was just ten years old, but I was a very active and athletic kid, so I managed to reach the eastern edge of town while there was still light. Now all the needed to do was follow the rode a ways and I would be there in no time. I ran into a bit of a snag however.

The road wasn’t as deserted as I thought it would be. Sure, there wasn’t a steady stream of cars or anything, but there were enough that I was afraid someone who knew me would spot me and wonder why I was biking out of town at this time of day. I decided the next best thing to do was to walk my bike through the woods that bordered the road leading into and out of town. It was going to take a lot longer than initially planned, but at least I would have some cover from the few cars coming down the road. But walking my bike would have been a pain, so instead I hid it some bushes near the “now entering” sign and began the trek on foot.

On that long walk, after night fell, I learned very quickly that the forest goes from magically during the daytime, or creepy and terrifying at night. I never lost sight of the road, and there were streetlamps to give some illumination of the road, but everything was pitch black around me, and the sounds of night mixed with the crackling of sticks under my feet sent shivers up my spine. I tried for the longest time to brave it out and not use my flashlight, but quickly convinced myself that the traffic on the road and lessened to the point where I could use my flashlight without risk of discovery, and that thing was out of my bag, in my hand and turned on in the blink of an eye.

Still, my foolish bravery spurned me onwards, and I continued following parallel to the road until I came across it: an old dirt path that cut through the forest up to the road. I was pretty sure this was the trail I needed to follow, so that was what I did, the dim light of the few streetlamps fading away behind me, with only the light of my flashlight saving me from stumbling in the dark.

I had thought that the full moon would help to provide light on my journey, but the sky was cloudy that evening, and the moon was nowhere to be seen. Not that the thickness of the canopy would have let in much light anyway. Up to that point, I had never experience a pitch blackness like that before, and a shadow of a doubt began to creep into my mind. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe I could just tell everyone else that I had made it to the well, and if I turned back now, no one would ever know.

These thoughts plagued my mind as I seemed to walk for miles and miles down this old dirt road. I was so close to turning back when the edge of the beam of light stopped showing trees, and in front of me was an open field. I knew this was the place where the well was located, and now that I was here, nothing was going to stop me now. Or, at least that’s what I thought at first.

As I began to walk into the clearing, I heard something that made my blood feel like ice in my veins, and my feet stopped dead in their tracks. There was no wind, and night-time noises were a little less loud in the clearing as they were in the woods, so faintly, just ever so faintly, I swore I could hear someone singing. I couldn’t make out any words, but changes in pitch, however soft they were, came through to me.

My legs began to shake involuntarily, and my heart began pounding in my chest. Every instinctual alarm bell in my head was going off and screaming at me to turn tail and run like hell, but I couldn’t. Some part of me was overriding it all, insisting that I keep moving forward. I hadn’t even seen the well yet, and maybe the singing was some campers off further in the forest. Yeah, that had to be it, what else could it have been?

Step by agonizing step, I continued into the clearing, shining my flashlight in every direction, desperately looking for the well so that I could say I saw it, turn around, and run out of there like a bat out of hell. Yet with each step, the singing was getting louder and louder. Well, louder isn’t exactly the right word. More clear and defined is a better description. I still could not understand the words, but my mind wasn’t thinking very clearly either. Finally, about 30 yards into the clearing, my flashlight finally shone its beam across the infamous well.

During the daytime, and I can confirm this, the well wouldn’t have looked like anything special. It was just an old stone well, raised about 3 feet off the ground, with the wooden well head and winch long since rotted away. But to me, at that time, seeing it seemingly appear from the darkness, it looked to me like a portal to hell, and it radiated an energy that struck my soul to the very core. If I went closer that that yawning pit, my life was going to be snuffed out: this was a fact. Worst of all, what truly reinforced that feeling within my soul, was I could tell that the singing was coming from it.

But then I did a stupid move, as a stupid kid in a stupid situation does. I mean, there was singing here, and only people sing, so there must be people in there, right? “Hello?” I called out timidly, not knowing what to expect. The singing abruptly stopped, and the shaking that had been in my legs graduated to the rest of my body, and I stood there in the silence of the night, trembling from head to toe.

The clouds must have moved, as moonlight abruptly flooded the clearing. More of the rhyme was coming true by the moment, but I was so close to be the only kid to have visited the well. All I needed to do now was just peek down it quick, how hard was that to do? Maybe the singing was just air down in the well bouncing off the walls or something. What else could it have been, the ghosts of drowned children?

Each step I took closer to well threatened to throw me off balance I was wobbling so much. I didn’t want to do this anymore, I didn’t want to be here, but something inside me just kept driving me to walk closer to the well and look down into it. Was it the wells curse? Did it force anyone who worked up the courage to see it to look down into its depths so that the cursed drowned children can take their soul? Whatever the reason, both my lizard and rational brain were screaming at my body to just stop moving, but it wouldn’t listen.

As I got close to the well, I noticed there was a heavy iron grate covering the opening down into it: a barrier, blocking me from falling into that abyss, and stopping whatever lay in that abyss from coming out to get me. A tiny sliver of bravery returned to me, and looking up at the moon, I could see that it’s light would shine somewhat down into the well. I decided that was all I would need. No reason to shine my flashlight into the gloom and alert whatever may be down there to my presence.

I finally made it to the edge of the well. I clicked off my flashlight and put it in my pocket. I took a couple of deep breathes, clenched my fists, and every so slowly, inch by inch, leaned over the wall of the well to look down into it through the grate.

The moonlight did illuminate maybe five to six feet down into the well. The stones were all very old and deformed, yet still holding strong after hundred of years. Besides them, I could see nothing in the moonlight, and whatever was lower was obscured by darkness and completely silent. For all intents and purposes, it was just an old well. The fear that gripped my heart gradually lessened the longer I looked, and I began to admonish my self for having any fear at all. I decided to wipe away my fear in one fell swoop by administering one last test: one, last, stupid test. “Hello?” I called out again.

Wails and screams responded to my call, and a dozen or so hands reached out of the darkness into the moonlight, all of them pale and boney, all of them reaching up to me, reaching up to grab me and drag me down to an inky doom, to steal my soul and have me spend eternity with them, to be another pair of hands reaching out of the darkness, another scream to join that choir of the damned.

I responded to their shrieks with one of my own, and I ran. I don’t have much memory of the journey back. I know from a couple of scraps and cuts I discovered in the morning I must have fallen down a few times. I know I must have had some semblance of a sane mind left, as my bike was back in the garage when I woke up in my bed, and my parents were surprised to see me home, so I must have kept quiet sneaking back into the house. I wish I could remember any of that, but I can see is those hands emerging from the blackness, and those cries of want and desperation, their mission of seizing me and bringing me down there to be one of them.

Needless to say, I was traumatized. I never told a single other person about my experience at the well, and instead of the young brave jock I thought I turn into growing up, I became the gloomy goth kid who was more into horror and shock. Maybe I was always chasing something that was scarier than that night, something that could replace it so that I could forget it, but that never happened. Nothing could ever compare to that night.

I wish I could say I never went back there again. I wish I had never gone there in the first place. But my mother always says that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. After graduating high school, before leaving the state for college in the fall, I went back to the well one last time during the summer. I, of course, went there during the daytime and drove my car there instead of walked. Parking at the edge of the clearing and seeing the well so clearly in the distance was a weird sight to me. This time there was no singing as I approached the well, and even thought the childhood fear still clutched at my heart, I had resolved to go face my demons one last time before possibly leaving home forever.

My first surprise when I got closer to the well was that someone had removed the grate from the top and left it laying on the ground next to it. This was a little surprising to me, and my steps became more cautious as I approached. When I got to the well’s edge, I peered in, hoping to see anything to combat the experience I had had those eight years ago.

At first there was nothing. The sun was overhead, so I could see down the well all the way to the bottom. The well itself wasn’t that deep, maybe ten feet in total. There was zero water in it at all, and it looked like there hadn’t been any water in it for a long time. As my eyes scanned the insides for anything, a glint suddenly caught my eye. Focusing in, I suddenly noticed what looked like chains coming out of the lower parts of the well. They seemed to be attached to the wall of the well at the base, and all of them ended in metal manacles. Scanning along the gravel bottom, I noticed what looked like old containers of food scattered about, and then I spotted the claw marks. They littered the walls all around the base, the highest of them reaching up around 5 feet, the same height I had seen those hands reach from out of the darkness that fateful night. Then I noticed the a tiny patch of white within the gravel, and stretching down into the well to get a better look, I finally figured out what it was: The bone around an empty eye socket, staring back up at me.

Police were immediately called, I was questioned and released, and the whole town was in flurry. Details weren’t released under after I had left for college, but I made my parents tell me everything over the phone, even though they didn’t want to talk about it. As it turns out, what I saw was a partially decomposed skull, one of a child. But it wasn’t a child from the 1600s. As it turns out, that well had been used as a pick-up and drop off point for child trafficking until about 2 years ago, when the ring had been discovered and arrested. Apparently, sometimes the children would be left alone for so long before being picked up again and moved, some would die, never leaving their places of holding ever again.

That’s what keeps me up at night nowadays, that’s what keeps me seeing a therapist every single week without fail: Not the ghost hands of long dead children, wailing at me for my soul and trying to force me to join them in the dark. Now, it’s the malnourished, desperate hands of stilling living ones, reaching up and crying, pleading with me in their native tongues to take them out of the well, to save them, to join me in the light again. And I just…ran.