As a kid I spent a lot of time fleeing black panthers, mad dogs and haints. I never actually saw one, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. For that matter, I’ve never seen gravity either.

Every time I went to the woods with Uncles Bill, Bobby and Harold Holt to hunt muscadines or play Tarzan we were chased by a black panther.

Once we were wading in the branch, catching tadpoles when Bobby, who was especially vigilant, heard a noise and sounded the alarm.

“PAN----THERR!” He and Harold bolted for home, their heads thrown back, running wide open and screaming hysterically. Bill bolted also, but then remembered me. We took off running barefoot, making a beeline for the house, riding down saplings and ripping through brier patches. Whew! It was a close call.

Mad dogs were always on the prowl and every kid knew that getting slobbered on by one was enough to drive you mad. You’d be locked in the smokehouse and fed through a crack until you died a horrible death.

We lived on Grandpa Barksdale’s place near Copeland until I was 6 years old. Uncle Robert’s family lived up the road. One day a mad dog came loping down the gravel road, head lowered, drooling froth. It bit Uncle Robert’s milk cow on the leg. A few days later the cow began bellowing and acting crazy. Uncle Robert locked her in a stable where she slobbered, butted the wall and bellowed incessantly. I peeped at her through the cracks and it was a frightful sight. Finally, Daddy and Uncle Robert shot her, dragged the corpse to the woods and burned it. From then on, the sight of any strange dog raised a cry, “Mad-doggg!” and sent kids climbing the nearest tree.

Black panthers and prowling mad dogs were scary enough to make any kid wet his pants. But they were nothing compared to haints. Haints can’t be seen and can’t be outrun. If you were caught by a haint you’d be dragged down to hell and never return. Hants weren’t to be trifled with.

The only thing worse than encountering a haint was being chased by a pack of dogs at the same time.

When we lived at Madison Crossroads, to reach home, I had to walk down a gravel road past a pack of hounds then down a long driveway through a cemetery. It would severely challenge any 14-year-old.

On a moonless summer night just before I reached the tenant house where the dogs stayed, I picked up a supply of creek rocks, crossed to the far side of the road and tiptoed barefoot. If I were lucky, maybe they wouldn’t detect me.

A howl went up and the pack came after me. I threw my supply of rocks and then took off running, hounds on my trail. I turned into the cemetery and just when I thought they would catch me, I saw a haint. My fuel-injected, 4-barrel carburetor, ram jet after-burner kicked in and I took off running and screaming. I skidded onto the front porch, and if I hadn’t been almost decapitated by the swing, I would have crashed through the front door.

Afterwards, there were many occasions after a night of prowling those hounds helped me outrun haints, a feat which was said couldn’t be done.