I grew up in a very rural area in the deep south. My childhood was spent running up and down the roads with local kids that were dear friends to me. We'd spend hours traipsing through wooded areas, swimming in bayous, hunting snakes with machetes or bb-guns, making bow and arrow sets... I could go on but I just wanted to point out that I spent a lot of time outside and that my time outside usually involved some type of wilderness.

There was a particularly large patch of wild land that we referred to as the "cow pen". Note that there were no cows, or even grazing land for cows. It was just called that and we accepted it. I could tell many stories about things we encountered in the cow pen and could even draw a Lord of the Rings style map denoting the various areas in the cow pen such as Skull Hill or the Lost Woods but those are tales for another time.

This particular event unfolded over the course of a week or so and involved many of the local children. The first time any of us noticed anything odd occurred one afternoon when I was hanging out with my friends Ben and Aaron. We were playing some type of childhood game near a barbed wire fence that marked one of the boundaries of the cow pen. The area we were at had a large oak tree that we often climbed and at one point had even built a tree house in. Behind this tree was a cleared path that was about 5-7 feet wide. Behind that is where the thick foliage of the cow pen began to appear.

While we were playing I heard what sounded like the laughter of two little children coming from just inside the cow pen. I distinctly remember thinking that I heard a boy's laughter and a girl's laughter. I stopped running around (often our games were some type of chase/tag variant) and quickly realized I wasn't the only one who had heard it because Ben and Aaron had both stopped as well.

It wasn't just the laughter that caused us to stop. Children laughing and playing was a common enough sound in our area. What was odd about the laughter was that it echoed around the immediate area. The three of us froze and looked at each other wide-eyed.

Aaron called out for his little sister Carrie, thinking perhaps she and Ben's little brother John were playing a trick on us. Again we heard the echoing laughter and this time, being focused on the area the sound was centered on, we saw the bushes shake and I swear I saw the outlines of two small children behind the foliage.

The three of us jumped over the fence and plowed into the shrubbery but were unable to find anyone nor any evidence of what we had witnessed.

Needless to say we were sufficiently spooked once the adrenaline wore off and we stayed well away from the cow pen for the next few days.

Fast forward to one afternoon some day after the experience. I'm not sure how long it had been but I don't think it was more than three. Ben and I were hanging out on a swing in his carport. We would often do this, chit-chatting about random things or listen to music. In my peripheral vision I was vaguely aware of some of the younger kids playing around the area we had heard the laughter but didn't think much of it. It had been a one time occurrence and we didn't really speak of it afterwards because it was a little freaky.

While we were hanging out we heard one of the kids by the fence let out a yelp. I turned to see what was going on and the two kids who had been playing over there came running up to us as fast as they could. They stopped at the carport and were both panting heavily and nervously looking back. We told them to calm down and explain what had scared them. They both started talking at the same time, very excitedly. We were able to glean from the fragments of their statements that they had experienced the same thing that gave us a scare. Little children's echoing laughter and something moving just behind the fence.

Ben and I looked at each other in a knowing manner and I then followed his lead in talking to the kids in the manner that "know-it-all" older kids talk down to younger kids. We explained to them that it was just a figment of their imagination and not to be worried.

After they were somewhat convinced they left us alone and Ben and I started talking. I asked him if he had told his little brother or anyone else and he replied that he hadn't. We immediately went to Aaron's house and asked if he had told anyone and he said that he hadn't.

We were definitely concerned but really didn't know what to do. We were sure that saying anything to our parents would just result in them treating us the same way we had treated the younger kids.

Over the course of the next week or so the same thing kept happening to different kids in the area. The last occurrence I know of that happened was on a Sunday morning. I know this because almost everyone was at church for the morning service. I went at a different time so I was the only kid around.

It was fall that all of this was going on and we often played football in each other's yards. I had left my new football in Ben's backyard the day before and wanted to get it and toss it around a bit while I was waiting for them to get home.

I went down to his house and said hello to his dad who was working on his truck in the yard on my way to their backyard to get my football. It happened to be right next to the cow pen fence, in a different location than were we had experienced whatever it was we experienced.

I hadn't heard much about anymore occurrences of the kids so I wasn't thinking about it as I went to get my ball. When I reached down to pick it up though I heard the same laughter that had scared us all, echoing through the trees in that section. I looked up and saw a fence post rattling and the shrubbery pressed up against it was moving as well. Nothing else was moving...

I grabbed my ball and hightailed it from there. Ben's dad looked at me strangely as I zipped past him but I didn't even stop to say anything, just ran straight home.

Afterwards, I told my buddies about it later and we were all scared at that point. To my knowledge, that was the last time anyone experienced anything like what I've been relaying.

The occurrences described above may be strange enough for many of you and I'm sure skeptics can point out any number of things. I'm not trying to prove anything, I've just always thought that what happened just wasn't normal and wanted to share my story.

As if those events are strange enough, the real kicker occurred a few months later. I was at a family New Year's Eve party sitting with my Mom who was chatting with my cousin Janis. I don't even really know how the topic came up, I think they were reminiscing about their childhood experiences in the area I grew up in. As a child I would often tune out "grown up talk" which is what I thought of when adults were hanging out doing nothing but talking. Somehow though they started talking about the cow pen.

This was obviously something that I was interested in so I started paying attention to what they were saying. Keep in mind that I hadn't one time mentioned anything to my mother about what myself and the neighborhood kids had experienced. While they were talking about that area, Janis started talking about a family that lived far back in the cow pen many, many years ago and how it was so tragic that their kids had died at a young age and been buried back there.

They noticed I was paying attention intently and asked if everything was okay. I was a bit shocked and nervously asked about the kids. Janis told me that it was a boy and a girl and that she didn't think they could have been more than 7 or 8...