GRAVE STALKER

Most folks in Visalia California don’t talk about Jacob Monroe anymore. He was the kind of ghost that didn’t need to die to haunt you. He has long since become a local legend, whispered about in the back booths of restaurants and mentioned in passing when someone died or stumbled close to the edge due to their drug addiction.

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Before he was “The Grave Stalker,” he was just Jacob. An average kid. He played shortstop in Little League. He dated a preacher’s daughter. But something inside him cracked around nineteen years old, like glass under the weight of too much laid upon it. That’s when the drugs started. First pills. Then powder. Then the needle.

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It wasn’t long before he was seen staggering through Visalia Cemetery late at night, thin as a gravestone shadow, muttering to things no one else could see. They say the dead spoke to him—or that he thought they did. That he made deals with them. That the devil himself had his hand on Jacob’s shoulder, pushing or pulling him to his downfall.

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I only know what I saw.

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It was the fall of 1998, and I was seventeen. My father was the caretaker of the local cemetery in Visalia, and I sometimes helped him close the gates at dusk. That night, October 12th, a cold mist clung to the ground like ghostly fingers unwilling to let go. The old creepy oak trees whispered things that didn't sound quite like the wind.

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And there he was.

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Jacob stood over the broken headstone of Macy Raynes, a woman who had drowned herself in Lake Kaweah in ’72. He was barefoot, his skin pale and veined like marble, his eyes… God, those eyes. Bloodshot, wide, not entirely human anymore. Like something else had moved in.

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He didn’t notice me right away. He just stared down at Macy's grave, lips moving. Then he pulled something from his coat—a syringe. His hands shook as he held it up to the gray light. And he whispered, “Just one more. Just one more to quiet them down.”

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But the cemetery didn’t go quiet.

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The ground shifted beneath his feet. A low groan, like old wood bending, rumbled through the earth. I swear on everything holy, I saw fingers—gray, wet fingers—reach up through the soil, brushing against his ankles.

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He didn’t move.

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He injected himself right there, standing above Macy’s lonely grave, as the hands caught hold of him and started dragging him down.

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I ran.

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When the police searched later, they found only his coat and the empty syringe. No sign of Jacob. No disturbed soil. Just a single, muddy footprint on the headstone of Macy Raynes.

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Folks said maybe he finally OD’d. My father said he probably fled town and died in a gutter somewhere. But I knew better. I’d seen him.

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Over the years, people kept seeing him as well. “The Grave Stalker,” they called him. Always near the edge of the cemetery at night. Always around October. Always barefoot.

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Some said he whispered secrets to the headstones. Others swore they saw him dancing—yes, dancing—with invisible partners between the rows of the dead. Some thought it was just a bad trip; others blamed the strange misty moonlight.

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But there was one boy, Jimmy Riggs, who saw him up close in 2010. Jimmy was just sixteen and sadly shooting heroin alone in the graveyard. He claimed Jacob stepped out of the shadows and offered him a choice: Join me here amongst the dead… or drop the needle and go home.

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Jimmy reached in his backpack for a piece of paper and pen then moments later unfortunately chose the needle. His body was found the next morning near the mausoleum, needle still in his arm. Next to him? A note in shaky handwriting:

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“I saw the Grave Stalker, he asked me, and I decided to stay.”

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No one really believed it was Jacob. But the Grave Stalker’s legend grew. A cautionary tale for Visalia’s addicts and lost souls.

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Me? I never went back to Visalia Cemetery. Not after that night. But sometimes, In October around Halloween, I still hear the whispers of a song:

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“In the dark shadows a soul descends

The Grave Stalker, abandoned by friends

one foot in the grave, the other in chains

lost in a world where his addiction reigns.”

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“His bloodshot eyes, a sad haunted gaze

a prisoner of vice trapped in a daze

his life in chaos, nothing matters at all

this grave stalker, he's bound to fall.”

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“The Grave Stalker, he’s dancing with the dead

chasing his demons with a price on his head

a relentless spiral, and his relentless crave

with every fix he's pulled closer to the grave.”

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“The needle whispers, a deadly serenade

in a tomb of addiction his dreams decayed

a silent scream, a hard rain begins to fall

one last fix as the reaper calls.”

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“Drowning in the poison, a soul's demise

grave stalking alone under addiction's lies

haunted by shadows, his debts soon will be paid

a familiar graveyard where soon he'll be laid.”

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“The Grave Stalker now taking his final breath

such an unfortunate life so entangled with death

in the silence near a tomb no hope to be saved

this cautionary tale of The Grave Stalker's grave.”

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This haunting song echoed from the woods behind my house here in Three Rivers. It rode on the wind like a funeral hymn. I now keep my porch light on all night. I don’t answer the knocks on my window or door and honestly, I don’t sleep much.

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I know he’s still out there somewhere. Bound by chains of addiction, dancing with the dead, whispering lullabies to the broken and the damned.

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He’s not looking for peace.

 

He’s looking for company. 

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The Grave Stalker.

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Story by Mark Gammill

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Lyrics by Jacob Porter

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