Every town has its own scary story. Whether it’s ladies in white, haunted and abandoned buildings, supernatural forces, we all have something.
With Halloween coming up, I felt like I should talk about my hometown’s spirit: Jimmy in the Trees.
When I was younger, I was always told to be home before the streetlights came on, as I believe we all were, but the reasoning was far different.
“You get back in here before dark, Tommy,” my mother would say, “you don’t want Jimmy in the Trees seeing you out there.”
The sentence alone would cause enough fear to ripple through me that I hadn’t once dared to test it. I didn’t know much about Jimmy’s story at the time, but I knew even then that my mother’s words had held some ounce of truth within them.
The part that made the whole belief in Jimmy even worse was that next to every street had a line of trees on it, or every house had a tree in its yard; suffice to say, Jimmy could be anywhere, at any point, just watching for his next catch. I always imagined him as a kid like me, but with white eyes and for some reason in amish clothes. I think that’s because Children of the Corn was a big movie back then, and there were parallels to Jimmy, at least in my prepubescent mind. Even mine and my friends’ grandparents held some belief in Jimmy, as anytime we would visit they would threaten to send us out at night to let JImmy take us away.
So many of us believed in the character that we hadn’t dared to press on the story for so long. That was until Jonathan decided to defy his parents.
He was a close friend of mine back then, and I remember being at the playground with him as the sun was going down. The streetlights were just starting to activate, signifying that it was time to head in, and the group of us were all finishing up our games to head in.
“I’m not afraid of no Jimmy.” Jonathan said.
“He’s not even real, I can prove it!”
We all fought with him that he shouldn’t test it. “Don’t be crazy Jonathan! You know Jimmy will get’cha!” Even now, rewriting this memory, the hairs on my arms are standing on end.
Regardless, Jonathan went his own way, walking down the street and kicking along a soccer ball.
He was found three weeks later in a sewer drainage tunnel. We weren’t told of his condition, but time would reveal the truth to us. The kids in town learned later in life that Jonathan was found with his eyes missing from his face, a smile carved into his cheeks in a crude and grotesque fashion. His chest was torn open and his heart was also missing, along with most of his innards being destroyed from decomposition and being eaten by rats and other creatures.
The newspaper had said that he must’ve fallen into a ravine or something and got sucked into the sewer before drowning, the state of his physical condition was due to rodents finding his corpse.
We all believed otherwise, even the adults.
We all believed in Jimmy in the Trees.
Eventually I grew up and moved away for college, and hadn’t returned to my hometown until two weeks ago as my grandfather had been hospitalised from a severe battle with lung cancer. I don’t know why, but when I went to visit him, the thought of Jimmy wouldn’t leave my mind, and I was compelled to ask about it; now that I was older, I was curious to know the full story of Jimmy in the Trees, and what the whole deal was with him. When I asked him to tell me about it, my grandfather’s eyes immediately filled with so much fear and sadness that I felt as if I had struck him down then and there. Yet, he composed himself, sat himself up in his bed, and he told me this.
“When me and your grandmother were younger, about the same age as you were when that poor Jonathan boy had died, there was a family that lived in town with us. There was a boy that we had gone to school with named Jimmy, and there were his two parents, Elenor and Michael. Well, one day, just around sunset, Michael was found walking around town with Elenor’s head in his hands, covered in blood from head to toe. When police brought him in to question what had happened, Michael had said nothing for two days straight, he just sat there. In his cell. Staring at the wall across from him. Finally, on the third day, he snapped out of whatever was going on with him, and was confused as to why he was there. When the cops explained to him what was going on, Michael had broken down and demanded to see his wife, but they would not allow it. He asked where Jimmy was, and they told him they didn’t know, which was true. For so long no one knew what had happened to Jimmy or why Michael had brutally murdered Elenor.
Michael was given the death sentence and was put to the electric chair only weeks later.
The following summer, however, a man was walking his dog past Michael and Elenor’s home when the dog had gone wild, jumping at the tree in their front yard, barking and snarling at it. The dog began to tear at the bark and tear at it until finally it revealed where Jimmy had been. Somehow, and in some way, Jimmy had been shoved into the tree, his body broken and contorted in such a way that at first, the man who had found him didn’t even think it was a human body he was looking at. When he was removed from the tree, it was discovered that Jimmy’s body was in the same state as poor Jonathan’s was found, his eyes missing and his innards torn from his chest. So many children began to go missing after Jimmy was removed from the tree, and all that were found were found in the same state.”
I just sat there as my grandfather said all of this, dumbfounded by the story he told. And yet, there was more to the tale. Through the week, I continued to talk to him about what had happened and even asked my grandmother and my parents about the events. The belief is that, and I know this all sounds crazy, but we believe that Jimmy was possessed by something. Something evil. And his mother had known this, so she somehow, in a way still unknown to us, murdered her son and buried him in the tree in some insane fashion. Jimmy’s father was affected in the process and had killed his mother for what she had done to his son. Now, whatever evil was inside of Jimmy is within the trees, and at night, he’s able to return, enacting what was done to him on kids who dare remain outside.
We have a little poem about it we teach people who come through town.
There’s an evil in town, hear this tale if you please
Be warned of Jimmy, O’ Jimmy of the Trees
A boy full of evil, tormented with hate
Tortures any young soul that stays out too late
When the street lights go bright
Stay out of sight
For it’s then when Jimmy will give your heart a bite
Believe this tale, or think it’s lies
But be warned that Jimmy has a hunger for eyes
I’m 30 years old, and even now, I’m too scared to even look out a window at night. I swear sometimes I can feel him just outside, roaming the sidewalks, searching for any child that may be out there.