This is the story of the Woodchopper. Its a spirit that would bother my in-laws, starting along time before I had ever met my first wife. I was told this story by them one night when I was living in their home just before my ex and I were to be wed.
But first, to bring this story up to that point, and since this is so close to the beginnings of our times together, ill start when we first met.

I'd gone to three different high schools, this one being the last one i would ever attend. When I started school that year, I had immediately fit right in with a handful of strangers that used to hang out in the school cafeteria at various times due to each having classes at various times along with free periods at various times between classes. One of those times, when a few of them and I were sitting together, somehow the conversation began with one person saying to another that they know a girl thats in a bad relationship but don't know how to end it.
That conversation brought me to heading out one night walking around five miles to meet the girl. When i left my parents home, it started snowing just a little. In the end, it was a foot and a half inches of snow.

Details are not important as to the stupidity of our first encounter in this story, so given that, it goes into the,' just another story,' category.

My ex brother in law was my only friend at my two weeks at one of my many different junior high schools I had gone to throughout those years of hell.
So after meeting the parents, I was sitting in the living room waiting for my new possible girlfriend to get back into where I sat. It was shocking to see that long ago friend and be her brother was unreal. He popped his head around a corner and asked me how I had been doing all these years. I was shocked, amazed, puzzled, and almost ecstatic with joy all at the same time to suddenly be in the same house with that guy just then. I was so confused, that i know I must have given him a nonsensical response that he probably just blew off like you would do in getting slightly burnt toast at breakfast in a friend's house the next morning from the mom. We hit it off just as if we began the friendship when we first met to the point when we parted in the eighth grade. He was gangbusters happy to see his sister and me getting together.
I ended up spending close to a week at their home while being put to work there.
We hit the road in the morning every day with three or four sqashed together like fish in a sardine can, depending on who was willing to get wood out in the woods in the dead of winter, with sometimes three feet of snow at times, way up on those old logging roads that her old man dared to go. Before getting used to this new adventure of wood gathering, cutting, chopping, and loading, my concerns were more of a processing of how in the _ _ _ _ did I get myself into such a scary/wierd situation? Were they simply just showing their gatefullness to finally get the girl out, or were they using an intimidation tactic to let it be known that it might take years before finding my body way out in the wilderness, so high up in the mountains where nobody ever goes. It was probably just a case of having another body to make their work easier and the day go by faster.
School finally opened back up from being closed during those snow days. We both went to different schools, where she was still in junior high, i was two grades higher attending my 10 1/2 grade at high school. And that's another story as to how that worked.
The two of us had been corresponding on the phone ever since it was time for me to go back home. We had decided to take a skip day together so I had to get on a city bus that she took everyday in order for her to get to her school ten miles away from her place. The plan worked out perfectly, except for her extreme fear of doing such a rebellious thing. In the end. I let her make the final decision, and both of us never looked back. This brought us to many adventures together but setting them aside while moving on to the reason we lived at her parents home together is best to... lets just say, its one of those shotgun wedding storys only to be imagined.
While sitting at the dining room table, as the family did alot of, it was my girl's father that was pushed into starting the story of the woodchopper. During the telling of it, each one of the family siting at the table would give their bit of that story to life at given times, making it sound so real that it gave me goosebumps as they were telling it.
They explained that in the back yard, there's a huge chopping block they use for chopping wood into small enough chunks of wood that will fit into their wood stoves they have in the basement and in the living room. Theres been times that they left the axes buried into the top of the block forgetting to take them down the concrete steps leading into the basement and locking the tools up inside the wall cupboard thats just inside the door. Those times that they forgot to put the axes and mauls away for the night, they would find them just where they left them, outside in the chopping block. Dad warned them that if they keep forgetting to put the tool away, they will be punished. He never once went through with the warnings, but they eventually got it right as time went on. After those earlier on learning times pretty much ended, very rarely would they leave the wood chopping tools outside until the next day. Something spooky started happening a short time later after they went to bed on some occasions.They noticed on a couple of mornings that the basement door leading outside to the backyard was being left open. And, there was the arguments of who's turn it was to gather up the tools and bring them in.. it wasn't until they noticed a pattern of this strange occurance starting to emerge when they all agreed that they heard the sound of wood being chopped late at night before falling asleep. This began to occur more and more as this was catching up to the current time, around the time that I came into their home. I never heard any kind of noise during any time i spent the night as a guest or as an unwanted guest sneaking into my girlfriends bedroom the many times I did this, so I just figured that that they were all hearing things, probably just a figment of their imaginations. But all of the family members had heard the same chop! And then a brief moment of silence happened until, chop! This apparently had been happening more and more frequently that this weird thing kept doing this, and when they had gone downstairs into the basement, would notice the backdoor was wide open, and the tool cabinet had been unlocked with its doors open. They would go up the concrete steps to the outside world and see the axes and mauls stuck into that chopping block.
Although their little scary story telling night was amusing to that family, they seemed to be very intense and serious about its legitimacy. My skepticism, I kept to myself, but deep down I didnt think it was at all fiction.

So moving another four months ahead, my girlfriend and I, were staying at a house being rented out to a friend of mine that I had met four months earlier. This guy was a friend of a friend's sister who knew my girlfriend's brother. He got me a job working in a fish products processing plant.
We worked together that first four months and then the season of herring came to an end. There was to be a couple of months of either going elsewhere for work, collecting unemployment compensation, but i hadn't worked long enough by the time I had gotten laid off from that fish factory to qualify, or the other form of employment that my friend, who we were now roomates with, had a very large friend that was the manager of two huge, very old apartment buildings always in need of repair. Being so extremely oversized as his friend was, he couldn't get around alot or basically unable to do many things, so he had a handyman that did all the repairs. This jack of all trades guy was usually very happy, and intoxicated while being sent here and there fixing things for the boss. It was an under the table job, didn't get paid alot but at least, it was something. I became his helper, but thats another story. My friend was giving me that position in which he usually worked himself when the off-season came. He told me that i wouldn't be working for a couple of weeks, because the boss is still on vacation. That was just fine by me.
So one night while staying at my friends huge three story house, and by the way, it was sectioned off in three individual homes,we were on the top floor with two bedrooms and a full sized bathroom, kitchen and living room with two closets. It was something like what the Amityville horror house looked like, anyway, my
girlfriend was in the bathroom, that one night, when I heard her yell for me anxiously in somewhat of a terror filled urgency. I went to the door. She told me fantically to come in. It was something about that wood chopper story through her less than calm need to be heard and understood, is what i thought she was attempting to convey. And then a few seconds later, she told me to hush and listen as she was pulling on her pants, while pulling herself from off of the toilet. So I quit talking but didnt hear anything. It wasn't too very long begore I had heard some kind of noise coming from the bathroom. Just then my girlfriend began being weird, kinda happy/scared needing my approval for the vindication of her families little secret and a solid apology for me calling her a liar. I had never called her a liar, and let her know that fact. She explained that since I didnt believe her about this woodchopper entity, I was basically calling her a big fat liar.
So while standing in the living room, we heard the sound of an axe chopping a piece of wood that was totally unmistakable. It was the chopper of wood. I couldn't explain it away or jokingly mess with her ever again about it after hearing that sound for the first time that night.
It chopped again and again four or five more times but it was coming from outside one of the windows in the livingroom now, then from the wall directly behind us, and then from the side of the house. It got louder each time. We both felt that we had enough and started for the door. Once we quickly made it down the two flights of stairs, we started running. It had been almost a storm when we left that spooky house, so in the end we were soaking wet. We kept on running even with going against the strong winds and rain stinging our hands and faces.
My parents home was about a mile away so thats where we headed. We stopped a few blocks from my parents house at the steps of a local church, and banged on the door, then the stained glass windows but got no response. After a few minutes in each other's embrace, it happened again, "CHOP". We looked at each other in horror and took off running. We ran to my parents front door and went straight into my old bedroom, but someone was in bed inside so we went to my brothers bedroom where someone was in bed also, but the walkin closet had a twin size mattress and boxspring bed and a dresser in it. Thats when my girfriend let out loud cry of pain. I turned the light on so she removed her sock to see what it was all about. I saw a gash on her big toe almost the entire length of the toe. It was hard to look at such an opened up toe wound, that had appeared to be slashed into two hunks of meat. I quickly grabbed a washcloth out of one of the drawers my mom had put the extra ones into, and I had her hold onto it covering her toe tightly when the person sleeping in the bed got up and came into the closet. He was a friend of my brothers and wanted to know what all the noise was about.
So thus began the story from my girlfriends parent's to us being there because of the woodchopper.
By the time we were finished, we showed the cut on her toe. But, it wasn't there. Needless to say, we didn't go back to that house anymore and just stayed there at my parent's home, since my mom and dad were in Germany and had me and one of my brothers watch the house until my dads tour in Germany was done.

A long time had gone by when we visited my girlfriends parents. One of the first things we talked about was that night. Her dad said, right after we finished telling our story, that the woodchopper ain't ahappenin no more. Cause on one super windy night, the chopper spirit was bugging them with extra axes and hatchets, so he said to it, "go back to hell or from wherever you came from!!! IN JESUS'S NAME BEGONE!!!". He said it had never bothered them again, amen!