Barbara Swenson (Incident Location-Cookeville Tenn.)

by Barbara Swenson
(New York, N.Y)

In the mid 60's I was 16 and visiting Tenn. with friends. Some college boys told us of an old civil war cemetary off the highway, out a long dirt road ending in a circle, with a back ground of tall trees near Cookville. They said a giant bubble had haunted the gravesite after its closing and locals were drawn to church because either the chaplain or his organist had gone crazy and started ringing the bell non- stop, and the other had disappeard. At that time they boarded up the small one room church never to use it again, and the graves were left to decay.

We were told that since that time, a large spheriacle object much like a bubble, had haunted the cemetary. Locals had seen it come up on one side of the highway, cross in front of their cars, and disapear down the otherside of the highway,and college kids would come to the cemetary on a dare, only to have the bubble engulf their car and wake up the next day with no memory of what had transpired.

Of course we wanted to see this bubble. One night at midnight my frind, and her brother (all three of us from Wisconsin), let the 2 college guys drive us out the high way, on to a dirt road, then onto a 2nd long dirt road that ended with a circle that housed the delapitaed one room church, and the graveyard of sunken graves with antique grave stones.

We pulled up and sat there in the dark for a good half hour with the motor running, as the college guys were too scared to turn it off. On a dare I got out and walked over to the graves, but when they started to crunch and sink in, I hightailed it back to the car. A few minutes later everyone started to get bored, so we decided to leave. The driver turned around, left the circle, and started back down the dirt road. My friend and I were on our knees looking out the back of the car still hoping to see the infamous bubble....when THERE IT WAS!

It was behind the graveyard, as high as the highest tree, floating between the tips of the giant trees, so it couldn't have been suspended by them. It definitely had shape and form, so it wasn't a light being focused into the sky; it most definitely was a bubble a giant blue-white bubble just floating in the air.

The two of us started screaming, and our driver took off down the road at 100 miles per hour; of course when we were completely out of site, I wanted to return and take another look. No one would agree of course, so that was the end of it.

Back at school in the fall, I wrote the whole experience in a story for English Class and got a C over an A because the teacher said I made up the story. At the end of the year she apologised saying she had read about this phenomenon outside Cookville, although I still think she thought it was swamp gas; me, I'm not so sure.