My family owns a ranch in central Florida. It is a cattle ranch with horses, turkeys, deer, every wild animal imaginable, and a breathtaking landscape. My friends, family and I have enjoyed many camping expeditions and cookouts over the years. When we head out into the woods, we often choose different hammocks around the ranch as our spot. In case you are unfamiliar with what a tree hammock is, I will provide you with the definition from wikipedia.com. Hammocks are dense stands of hardwood trees that grow on natural rises, only a few inches higher than surrounding wet lands. Hammocks are distinctive in that they are formed gradually over thousands of years rising in a wet area. As a result they typically have a large and diverse density of various forms of plant and animal life. They appear as teardrop-shaped islands shaped by the flow of water. Each large hammock on our ranch has a name. There is sunset hammock, tiger bay hammock, wolf hammock… you get the idea. We camp and cookout at these different locations because they are beautiful and shaded from the hot Florida sun. On our land, there is one hammock that we steer clear from and that is Edward “Chain’s” hammock. Back in the early 1900’s a tram was being set up through the area to move lumbar across the state. Local prisoners were used for the manual labor. They were chained together and brought out by the state to work. It is said that one night, on a full moon, two prisoners planned an escape. They were able to break their chains with tools they were using and took off across the property. Both men were killed in Edward hammock. The first hid in a water tower but fell from it, breaking his neck. The second was shot and killed by an officer in pursuit. It is said on night’s of a full moon, you can hear the rattling of chains out in Edward hammock, which is now nicknamed chain’s. When the night sky creates shadows against the trees, they are of men strung up with chains. There have also been reports of rusted old chains found lying out in the hammock for no reason at all. The story has been passed down from generation to generation in my family.
I chose this story because it really is in my family and it is interesting to me, but it ended up being harder than I expected. I wanted to evoke that spooky, creepy feeling we get in haunted houses. This story has more of a feeling when you are at that spot. It's the noises and the darkness and the spooky feeling you get in your stomach that makes it scary and I had a hard time capturing that in pictures. I chose the picture of the moon because it goes with part of the story and it is a classic in scary stories. The pictures of the water tower are a site in the story where one man loses his life so that evokes a certain feeling. The pictures of the chains are obvious to the story as well. The other pictures were shadows cast from my dad who helped me and pictures of the area. I thought the pictures would be easier than they were because I found it hard to capture the "spooky" feeling with only sight, no other senses. I also did not want to use images of actual people because that isn't part of the legend to see actual ghosts or people, just shadows and sounds. I didn't feel the order of the photos were as important in my story because it wasn't really a sequence of events. I put the picture of the full moon last because it was my favorite picture and I wanted it to be the last one seen.
