Yes, it's true I was once a watchman for the Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville,although that was many years ago now.I had been on the cemetery staff for a number of years when the famos Civil War and publisher of the Baltimore American-Felix Agnus-pu up the life-sized shrouded bronze statue of a grieving angel,seated on a pedistal,in the Agnus family plot just before his mothe passed away.Some sort of scandal erupted over the statue about a year after it was erected in the cemetery.It turned out that this "original" sculpture was actually the copy of a piece commissioned by Henry Adams,grandson of President John Quincy Adams,as a memorial to his wife.Agnus was given a lot of grief about the statue, but he hung on to it and later on he,and then his wife,were buried in its shadow.The statue was eerie by day,showing a figure frozen in a moment of grief and terrible pain.At night, the figure was almost unbelievably creepy,the shroud over its head obscuring the face until you were up close to it.There was a living air about the grieving angel,as if its arms could really reach out and grab you if you weren't careful.The Agnus plot was not my favorite place to walk after dark once the statue appeared.I had often wondered if statues or houses or even people were changed when they were named,takeing on something of the characture of the name they received.After seeing the Agnus status-which bore the nickname "Grief"-I came to the conclusion that this was true.When doing my nighttime rounds,I had noticed that some parts of the cemetery had an almost luminouse quality,even on nights without a moon, as if some type of blessing lingered over the ground.Other parts seemed quite and peaceful,as if the people lying there just wanted to rest throughout eternity.But the Angus plot was differnt.With arrival of the dark angel,a sence of anger and malice seemed to fill the area.It was not sorrowful grief represented by the statue.The greif it characturized was the angry, vengeful grief that will not forgive,that stalks those who have brought about such a terrible pain. Such were my musings as i made my nightly rounds.Even the moon was full,the area around the statue remained dark,as if the silvery light could not touch the place where the greiveing angel sat and brooded in her bitter anger.Slowly,I came to dread the time when i walked past the statue.It felt as if a storm were brewing in that part of the cemetery, and i did not particularly want to be there when it broke.I began to notice on the very darkest nights,at the time of new moon,that gray shadows seemed to cluster near the statue; strange,shimmering wisps that may or my not have been ghosts and dark spirits.I've seen a ghost or two in my time,having inherrited the Second Sight from my mother,and these were not the gentle beings I had glimpsed in the past.I refused to walk alone in the graveyard on those nights.I suppose I should'nt have been surprised when the stories when the stories began.I was not the only person who noticed the dark atmosphere surrounding the statue.Folks visiting the cemetery after dark were often spooked at the sight of it.I began to hear rumors that the statue-nicknamed Black Aggie- was haunted by the spirit of a mistreated wife who lay beneath her feet.I laughed out loud when my children told me that story.But the tales continued and grew more bizarre.I heard many reports of the statue's power.According to local gossip,the statue's eyes would glow red at the stroke of midnight,and any living person who returned the statue's gaze would instantly be struck blind.Any pregnant woman who passed through her shadow would miscarry.If you sat on her lap at night,the statue would come to life and crush you to death in her dark embrace. If you spoke Black Aggie's name three times at midnight infront a dark mirror the evil angel would appear and pull you down to hell.They also said that spirits of the dead would rise from there graves on dark nights to gather around the statue. (Well,okay,i could'nt discount THIS story,as i had seen similar happen myself during my nighttime rounds.Probably the dark atmospere surrounding the Agnus plot attracted them.)People began visiting the cemetery just to see the statue,which made my watchman's job much more difficult; especially when people came in the middle of the night or when they tried to deface the statue in some way.Then a local fraternity began making the statue of Grief part of their initiation rites."Black Aggie" sitting, whereby candidates for membership had to spend the night crouched beneath the statue with their backs to the grave of General Angus,became popular.Once i heard about that the cemetery had to hire additional watchmen to chase away nocturnal visitors.A new story began to circulate about that time.According to the college students,one of us watchmen heard a scream on the stroke of midnight and hurried to the Agnus plot, only to discover the body of a young man lying at the foot of the statue. The young man had apparently died of fright. I would have laughed at that story if I'd found anything about Black Aggie laughable by the time.The statue was more of a pain in the neck then a menace to me now.I was nearing retirement,and so was reluctant to give up my job,but sometimes the Black Aggie legend got to me.Well,the years passed-far too quickly-and the time came for me to retire.I was on night duty again during that final month of my career,and i spent much of my time rnning off Black Aggie thrill seekers.but on my very last thursday,the cemetery was strangely quiet and bereft of visitors.It was one of those silvery, moonlit nights where everything seemed magical and luminous,and I strolled through the night feeling as light air. Even the approach to the Agnus plot did not seem dark and menacing as before, and I had almost forgotten about the grieving angel until i came right up to it. It was midnight,or close enough to it as to make no difference,and as I drew near to the statue,it stirred.I stopped dead in complete astonishment,my arms pricking with a sudden superstitious fear.The shrouded head turned toward me and i saw the gleam of glowing red eyes beneath the concealing hood.Right up until that moment,I had always discounted the stories i heard about Black Aggie,although I had known from the start that there was something dark about the grieving statue.My flashlight dropped from my nerveless fingers, but my legs were frozen to the spot, and i couldn't run.The air around me was filled with a darkness that slowly blotted out the silvery moonlight,and sense of twisted grief and anger pulsed through the night.Words flashed into my head as i felt the dark angel's pain,and i spoke them aloud: "You were named Grief,not Anger,nor Vengeance. Sleep now, grieving angel, and grief no more." Then I spoke a few Latin phrases my grandmother had taught me when i was small and frightend by nightmares-Exorcizo te, immunde spiritus, in nomine patris et Filii, et Spiritus sancti, ut exeas, et rededas ab hac famula Dei.These word could help drive away the Devil or his minions should they try to harm me.The Latin had always seemed meaningless to me,until that night.But in the darkness of the Agnus plot, the word seemed to boom with a hidden power,and the shrouded figure slowly resumed its seat as I spoke them,the red glow fadeing from its eyes.Gradually,the silvery moonlight returned, filling the whole area driveing away shadows. I groped around on the ground for my flashlight,my eyes never leaveing the statue.Had I imagined the whole thing?Were there college students hideing behind the statue even now,laughing silently at the trick they had played on the old watchman? I didn't stay to find out.my last night on the job passed without incident-after we drove off a carload of Black Aggie hunters-and I left the cemetery at dawn without looking back.I heard later that one of the angel's arms was cut off one night and found later in the trunk of a car.The car's owner claimed Black Aggie had cut off her own arm in a fit of grief and given it to him,but the judge sent him to jail nonetheless.The disruption caused by the statue grew so acute that the Agnus family finally donated it to the Smithsonian museum in washington, D.C., where it sat for many years in storage. So the Druid hill Park Cemetery lost its grieving angel,which was all for the best.But sometimes i still wonder about the statue called Black Aggie.Was it really haunted? Or was the whole thing just a crazy story?

THE END