Fremont Undertaker - Campfire Story

Fremont Undertaker: Thank you for joining me this evening. You're in for a treat tonight. Because see, this story is a true story. You're not gonna believe it, but it is a true story. So here we go. I know you know where Fremont, North Carolina is. I've had some very interesting things happen to me in Fremont. So right now I'm going to tell you about the Fremont Undertaker. I've told you some stories about things that happened to me when I was a little boy. And I've told you about strange noises in the woods, mysterious lights, and things that go bump in the night. But tonight's story is different. Because I wasn't a child when this happened. And actually, I wasn't alone when this happened either. That's what makes this story so interesting, is it didn't happen just once. Years later, I had another experience in practically the same location. And here's something else. Both nights, the moon was in exactly the same phase, waxing gibbeous. Now, is that a coincidence? Probably. But you know, I don't know. believe in coincidence, so you don't ever know. But after you hear this story, you'll have to tell me what you think. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we're going to meet the Fremont Undertaker. Now, if you've ever traveled around eastern North Carolina, you know that we have some mining lonely country roads. You can drive for miles past tobacco fields, old farmhouses, abandoned barns, and stretches of swamp where the trees just practically swallow the road. And after midnight, well that's a very different world. The particular experience happened outside Fremont. It was getting close to midnight. We were traveling along a rural road in an area where there's swamp pasture land, some old tobacco barns. I'm talking old tobacco barns, the old stick barns like we used to hang tobacco in when I was a child. And there was an old abandoned farmhouse there. Now let me explain something to you. These are certain things that you expect to see driving around eastern North Carolina late at night. Deer, Obviously. Raccoons, they're everywhere. And occasionally you might see somebody walking down the road. But there's one thing you certainly do not expect to see. You do not expect to see a horse-drawn hearse carriage. Not a modern funeral vehicle. Not some old Cadillac. I'm talking about the kind of hearse you'd expect to see in an old Western movie. carriage designed to transport a coffin. And standing there next to it was a man dressed all in black. He was tall. He was wearing clothing that reminded me of an old-fashioned black tuxedo, something like I had seen in a movie from years gone by. And he had on a top hat. Now that was strange enough, but what really caught my attention was what he was doing. He appeared to be tending to the hearse. And there was a lantern. Imagine driving down an isolated country road in eastern North Carolina. Approaching midnight, the moon is waxing gibbeous, and you come across a scene that looks like it belongs in the 1800s. No movie cameras, no film crew, no historical reenactment. This was in front of your eyes, just a strange man. Dressed like an old-fashioned undertaker attending a horse-drawn hearse in the middle of nowhere. And remember, I wasn't the only one that saw this. Other people saw it too. Now I'm a curious fellow, and people who know me can certainly tell you that, that I'm curious. And I like to talk a lot too, believe it or not. And something like this, well, you know, I needed to take a second look at it. And that's where things became stranger. We turned the car around. We drove back to the location. And right there, the man was gone. The hearse was gone. The lantern was gone. There was no sign he had been there at all. We couldn't find a single thing. Now, I'm not suggesting that the man with the horse carriage couldn't have traveled somewhere else in the meantime. Of course he could have. But I'm telling you something. When you encounter that scene, that unusual, in a place that isolated, that late at night, with the moon waxing gibbeous, and you return just a couple of minutes later to find absolutely nothing. Well, you'll remember that. And I sure did. Now you'd think that would be the end of the story, but just another strange thing happened on that very country road. Years went by. And in 2023, I found myself traveling through that area again near a bridge on Highway 222, just outside Fremont. And I remembered what I had witnessed earlier. After all, you don't see a horse-drawn hearse and a man in a top hat every day. But I certainly wasn't expecting anything unusual to happen. I was just driving. The end. My vehicle's collision warning system activated. See, I've got one of these new cars that will drive itself and it'll stay in the lane, and if it senses something, it'll slam on brakes. Well, I approached that bridge to where I had seen the Undertaker with the horse-drawn hearse and the top hat. And right as my car approached that bridge, it was in autopilot, it was driving itself. The dashboard lit up, red lights, the collision alarm went off, and the car slammed on brakes and came to a complete stop. And let me tell you something that got my attention. But there was a problem. I couldn't see anything in front of me. Nothing explained that warning. No vehicle, no animal. There wasn't even a raccoon up there. There was no person standing in the road. Now I realize these systems are not perfect and they can give you a false warning. But considering the point where I was at, the exact spot. where that I saw the man in the top hat tending to his hearse several years back. I couldn't help but I couldn't get it out of my mind. I mean how do you how do you unsee that? And that's where things got interesting because they're crossing the road right there in that spot. Were wet horseshoe prints. Horseshoe prints, folks. I got out of the car and looked at them. I took my flashlight, shined it around. I followed those footprints. And in the same general area where we'd encountered that strange horse-drawn hearse years earlier, they appeared to lead across the road towards an old abandoned trail and the old farmhouse. Now before anybody gets too excited, there are real horses, and occasionally horses do cross the road. And occasionally vehicle collision systems will malfunction. There's absolutely nothing supernatural about it, neither of those things. But I'll tell you something: it's one thing to see a horse-drawn hearse late at night. And it's an entirely different thing to return several years later to have your vehicle warn you about something you can't see, and then discover wet horseshoe prints on the ground. in the same location. on the same bridge. Now that was enough to really get my attention. So that little interesting detail about the moon. I got curious about the nights that these things happened. So I decided I would look into the lunar conditions. And I discovered something very unusual. On both nights, you remember me telling you, the moon appeared to be in its waxing gibbeous phase. That's where the moon is more than halfway illuminated and getting closer to being full. In fact, the illumination was 64%. Does that mean anything? Probably not. Like I said, I don't believe in coincidence. The moon goes through phases every month, and plenty of people travel these roads under wax and gibbeous moon without encountering the supernatural. But I found it interesting. Two experiences, years apart, the same general location, and remarkably. Similar moon overhead. And when I say remarkably similar moon overhead, I'm talking about 64% waxing Gibeous. Now, is that a coincidence? You tell me. Now there's one final detail to this story. And it's something I'm going to be careful about telling because I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm saying. Approximately a month after that second experience in Fremont, I was involved in a terrible automobile accident. I was in a head-on collision that nearly cost me my life. True story. Now I'm not telling you the strange encounter had anything to do at all with my accident. And I'm certainly not suggesting that some supernatural undertaker appeared to warn me about my future. And I have absolutely no evidence that anything like that happened. But when something nearly takes your life, you tend to remember the unusual events that happened. right around that time. And I remember Fremont. I remember that old hearse. I remember that man dressed in black with a top hat. And I remember those horseshoe prints. Now maybe there's a perfectly ordinary explanation for everything we witnessed. Maybe somebody with an antique horse-drawn hearse just happened to be traveling through eastern North Carolina close to midnight. And maybe the second time a horse crossed the road and went off in the swamp and I couldn't see it for my second experience. And maybe my collision system simply malfunctioned. It's all entirely possible. But it will make a heck of a story to tell around the campfire, doesn't it? You know, I have quite a few ghost stories here in eastern North Carolina. Strings, lights along railroad tracks, mysterious figures walking lonely roads, stories about old houses that people refuse to enter after dark. And some of those stories have been passed down through generations. But this one, this one's personal. I don't know who that man was. I have no idea where he was going. I don't even know that it was a man. But I do know what business somebody has dressed like an old fashioned undertaker, had a horse-drawn hearse along that lonely road. What was he doing? What I do know is that we saw him and there was a group of us. And years later I experienced something else in that same area that brought the whole thing back to me. And I'll tell you something else. I've spent a considerable amount of time wandering around the swamps, forests, rivers, and back roads of eastern North Carolina. I've seen some really strange things. And occasionally I've encountered things that I could not explain at the time. But I don't believe every strange occurrence needs a supernatural explanation. Sometimes the mystery It's what makes the story worth telling. So if you happen to find yourself driving along Highway 222 outside Fremont one night and you see a tall man wearing a black suit and a top hat standing beside an old-fashioned hearse with a lantern burning beside him, well, you might want to pay attention, because the next time you travel that road, He might be there, he might not. And your collision warning system might go off. But there's absolutely nothing in front of you. You might want to take a long look at the road to see if you see any horseshoe prints. And ladies and gentlemen, that's my story about the Fremont Undertaker. Now I'd like to hear from anybody who lives around Fremont. Have you seen anything unusual like this around these old country roads? Have you heard a story about an old-fashioned horse-drawn hearse? Or maybe a mysterious Undertaker? Because I'd certainly be interested in hearing it. And who knows, maybe somebody out there has the explanation I've been looking for. Until next time, this is Todd. Keep your campfires burning. Keep your eyes open. And remember, sometimes the strangest stories aren't the ones somebody tells you. They're the ones you experience yourself. and before I go, I gotta share one more thing with you. The first time I saw The Undertaker, the moon was waxing gibbeas. When I had the experience, Where the collision alarm went off and the car slammed on brakes and stopped, the moon was waxing gibbeous. When I was involved in my wreck that nearly took my life, do you want to guess what the moon phase was? You guessed it. Wax engineers. Now do me a favor, click the like button, leave a comment, and share the video. Consider subscribing to the channel. YouTube subscription's free. Facebook subscription is, I don't know, $12 a year. That helps me stay out here, helps me keep telling stories. All through the month of October, it's spooky season. I'm gonna tell campfire stories. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. I'll see you on the next one. This time.