It wasn’t that difficult tracking her down. I’ve uncovered stiffer mysteries. Her name wasn’t listed anymore, but nobody’s really are. Certainly not tarnished starlets.
But Pilot’s Creek? Jesus…She never left. Moved right where all the action happened.
Nobody chooses to live in that shithole. Not unless they want to drop off the face of the earth. Slip into obscurity and wither away. Nothing but old folks’ homes crammed full of desiccated rednecks and mobile homes on cinder blocks with Confederate flags draped in their windows. I’d need to be careful where I poked around down south. Last thing I want is to get lynched.
All the long-forgotten trailer parks lining the pine-ridden interstate sound the same.
Sandy Pines Trailer Park.
Three Pines RV Oasis.
Moonstone RV Park.
Amber Pendleton rented a slip in the Whispering Pines Mobile Home and RV Park. Guess what name she’s registered under? Ford. You believe that? The balls on this woman…
Found you, Amber, I remember thinking. Nice try.
There’s no phone listing. No cell number. Maybe no phone at all. It’s clear she doesn’t want to be found. Miss Pendleton’s interviewing days are long gone. She hasn’t spoken publicly since ’97. Not since the trial. But when had that ever stopped me before? A dead end was just a barrier to break on through to the other side…Where other journalists gave up, I jumped. I fucking flew. Air Jordan journalist right here. Spread those wings!
This is the part of the podcast I love the most, if I’m being honest. Thrill of the hunt. Tracking these people down. Confronting them with their own truths, no matter how hard they tried to hide from them. Their own secrets. Ambush them with my warhorse:
An Olympus LS-12 portable recorder.
This baby comes equipped with two directional microphones that branch off at the top, like antlers, along with an omnidirectional mic nestled in between, a crown capable of recording lower bass ranges.
The sound quality is to die for. My Olympus can pick up everything.
Everything.
I live for that look in my interview subject’s eye. The shock. Watching their pupils dilate the moment they realize they’ve been found. That they can’t hide anymore.
Not from me.
I had hopped in my car. Drove all nine hours from Brooklyn to Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for Christ’s sake. Slipped through the Mason-Dixon for the first time in not-fucking-long-enough. My family comes from the Carolinas and you damn well better believe I was more than happy to leave it behind in the rearview mirror the second I could. Coming back down to Crackerville was not my idea of a swell time. But you got to follow the story, now, don’t you? Follow it to the pits of hell, if you’ve got to—or, in this case, Pilot’s Creek.
Close enough, you ask me.
Now it’s time to go knock on Amber Pendleton’s door, Olympus in hand. And when she opens up, the aperture of her hidden life expanding to let me inside, I’m going to press record and bring the mic up to her and fire off: What happened that night, twenty years ago?
Or something like that. I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to say just yet. Introductions are the hardest part to script. Still working it out in my head. All the way down I-95. On the drive, I riffed a bit on introductions. The hours in the car offered me a chance to wax on possible preambles. How I wanted to tackle her.
I can respect Miss Pendleton’s desire for privacy. But nothing stays private forever. Not these days. Nothing belongs to the past anymore. These stories take on a life of their own, bloating up into urban legends with each retelling. I can’t let that happen.
People always forget the source, that kernel of truth buried within every story. The truth was that grain of sand embedded in the oyster, layering up with enough lacquer that it eventually becomes an urban pearl. Beautiful to look at, sure, but its origins are always ugly. Painful. Better left forgotten for those involved. I’m far more fascinated with that first grain of sand, that little bit of grit that everybody else forgets. Tries to hide. Keep secret.
I want the truth. The real story.
It all boils down to perspective.
A point of view.
Somebody to tell the story.
Amber Pendleton had already consigned her life to the big screen. Sold her soul to cinema. If she wants the world to leave her alone, she shouldn’t have chosen a career in the movies. What little career there had been. Miss Pendleton’s IMDb page is pretty much relegated to one role and one role only:
Jessica Ford. Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave. 1971.
Written and directed by Lee Ketchum.
There are a smattering of cameos here and there, leading up to ’95. Nothing really to write home about. Forgettable slasher films. Then her CV stops altogether. A dead-end cul-de-sacking with Sergio Gillespie’s unfinished opus I Know What You Did on Jessica’s Grave.
It all ended that night.
Actors’ lives are fair game, as far as I’m concerned. To the fans. To the press.
To me.
I just have to find her first.
Everybody had seen the movie. It enjoyed a bit of a bump on VHS after what happened. Even got a DVD release.
But did anybody know the truth behind Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave? The real story behind the making of the film? What did they know about Amber beyond the fact that she was a failed child actress? A diminished starlet eclipsed by her first and most infamous part?
What did people know about the aborted remake? About its director, Sergio Gillespie? Where was he these days? What about the real source of inspiration for these movies? Who knew the history behind the ghost story? Did people even know who Jessica Ford was? Her mother, Ella Louise? How deep did this legend actually go? What had it done to Pilot’s Creek?
This is what I do best, if I’m being frank. Let me break it down for you: I seek the true story behind these urban legends and bring them to light, exposing them as the hoaxes they are, discrediting these ham-fisted mysteries and reaping all the downloads my podcast can rack up.
Perhaps you’ve heard an episode?
Heard of me?
I’ve spent the last couple years amassing quite a catalog of debunked ghost stories. You’ve probably listened to Episode 4: “The Haunted Mt. Vista Inn.”
Or how about Episode 13: “The Wandering Ghost of the I-95 Rest Area.”
Or my personal favorite, Episode 32: “The Pool Witch of Water Country Water Park.”
All urban legends I’ve put to rest, all tales I punctured with proof and lots of legwork. I exposed these hoaxes and a dozen other tall tales for the shams they really are.
I’ve got no qualms bursting people’s bubbles. Hell, I revel in it. There isn’t a ghost I can’t take down. But this one—Jessica Ford—would be my biggest yet. My white whale.
I’m ready to tackle the Legend of the Little Witch Girl.
Bring her to light.
Expose her.
What makes Jessica Ford’s story so tantalizing is the fact that it’s two stories, if not three, all wrapped up in one. A nested doll of urban legends. Uncover one and you find another horror story hidden inside.
First, there’s the historical account of Jessica and Ella Louise Ford. What happened in real life to those two poor souls in Pilot’s Creek. Rooted in this small southern town, its superstitious citizens feared the Fords were witches and ended up burning them both at the stake. Grim stuff, really. Burning a little girl? Brutal. If that weren’t bad enough, now the whole town believed—still believes—the ghost of little Jessica wanders along her grave, night after night, just waiting for some dumbass to take her hand and lead her to her mother’s resting place. Wherever that was.
Second, there’s Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave in ’71. This is where the myth reaches a larger audience. Where Amber Pendleton first intersects with the Fords. At nine years old, Amber gets cast in the role of Jessica Ford for the movie based on the Legend of the Little Witch Girl. Lee Ketchum only had one movie in him and it nearly drove him insane. The production was a fiasco, all on account of little Amber snapping on set. She claimed her co-star, Nora Lambert, who played her mother in the movie, had attacked her. Dragged her in the woods. Tried molesting her or some weirdo shit like that. I read through enough interviews and even listened to the DVD commentary to pick up on the vibes that Amber Pendleton was one crumbly cookie. This movie must’ve fucked her up royally.
Truth told, nobody would be talking about Amber or Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave today if it hadn’t been for what happened on set. Her story took on mythic proportions, gathering up its own momentum until everybody now believes that little girl came upon a real ghost out there in those woods.
The ghost of Ella Louise Ford.
There you have it. An urban legend is born. Now everybody’s got to track down a copy of Jessica, just to see if they can spot her. See a spook captured on camera.
Bullshit.
Last but certainly not least, the legend’s real clincher…the remake.
The failed remake.
The debacle on set. The story roots itself in Amber Pendleton once again, somehow. The disappearance of Danielle Strode. The search through the forest. The discovery of her body…and Amber, wandering in the woods, practically catatonic.
Three stories for the price of one urban legend.
Can’t beat that.
I know Amber is hiding something. I’ve got a nose for these things—and, well, after I Know What You Did on Jessica’s Grave cap-sized, there had to be more to the story than what the press originally reported. There just had to be. Twenty years later, still nobody knows for sure what exactly happened to Danielle Strode. The girl had disappeared and…
And then…
Well, I’ll just have to find out for myself, now, won’t I?
I’m more interested in what happened before the police came upon her body. The sequence of events leading up to the discovery of Danielle Strode’s corpse.
What Amber had done.
That’s where the real story is hiding.
Amber’s secrets are still out there, hidden within the woods.
Just waiting for me.
These horror fan sites pontificate ad infinitum about what could’ve happened. The message boards are littered with fan theories. The supernatural conspiracies. It is downright laughable how far some people will go to prove their crackpot ghost scenarios. And yet no one, not a single one of these die-hards, has ever gotten this close.
Nobody has actually tracked Amber down.
Not until yours truly.
She quickly slipped into obscurity after the hearing. Once the lawyers were through with her, pecking at her testimony like vultures stripping the flesh off roadkill, there was nothing left of her. The press hounded Amber for as long as they could squeeze a headline out of her, all through the trial, but once the judge brought down his gavel and the case came to a close, Miss Pendleton vanished.
The tabloids painted a purpled portrait of Amber feeling resentful of Danielle for stepping on her toes. Amber had portrayed the part first, so when this pint-sized actress played her daughter in the reboot and did it better, something must have snapped. Amber just couldn’t handle it. So she kills Danielle. Cold blood. That’s the going theory, anyway. The defense proposed it, the press loved it, and Amber never denied it. Never said a word. She simply sat in the courtroom, staring off at the wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall.
Talk about a witch hunt.
Authorities discovered Danielle’s body the morning after she disappeared.
Eight hours later.
Her corpse was found partially buried within a clearing in the woods. Somebody—presumably Amber Pendleton—had begun to inter her body. She was resting in such a way that the police first thought Danielle Strode was simply asleep, a blanket brought up to her chest. She looked like she was resting. Dreaming. Her eyes remained wide open, staring blankly up at the sky. Her skin had a cool blue hue to it, her lips purpled from exposure to the cold. She looked like a doll. A porcelain doll. When I pored over the forensic photos, I couldn’t help but think of Danielle as a lost toy. This little girl, so still. So pale.
The police came upon Amber not too far away from the crime scene. She was still in costume, dressed as Ella Louise Ford, wandering aimlessly through the woods. She offered no resistance. The officers guided her through the trees without a single peep from her.
Amber was put on trial for the girl’s murder. Who else could it have been? A slam-dunk from the prosecutor’s point of view. When Amber was brought onto the witness stand, no matter how much they grilled her, all she ever uttered was, “Jessica was jealous.”
That’s it. That was her entire defense. When Jessica Ford saw Danielle pretending to be her, dressed just like her, the Little Witch Girl grew very, very resentful.
“No one should step between a daughter and her mother,” Amber had said. Said it in such a low tone, the judge had to ask Amber if she would please repeat herself for the record.
That was it for Amber. Not another word out of her for the rest of the trial. I scoured the courtroom testimony and I couldn’t find anything.
Amber was acquitted.
Actually acquitted.
The evidence never quite added up, even if her defense was absolutely loony tunes. You believe that? Hundreds of innocent black women have been sent to death row for less.
Apparently, when the verdict was read aloud, Danielle’s mother, Janet Strode, let out a wail from her seat in the gallery. Just a long, mournful howl. She had to be escorted from the courtroom by Danielle’s father, who held her up as she continued to moan the whole way out. Amber never looked back, simply staring at that wall.
The studio couldn’t recoup. The remake was deep-sixed before it even got off the ground. No film survives that type of setback. They had to write it off. Whole kit and caboodle.
The footage still remains. They hadn’t shot much. Production had just begun when…whatever happened happened. The production shut down and the dailies were tossed into storage, never to be seen. The footage took on its own legend. It became just as mythic. Everybody—well, the horror fans, at least—was dying to see. Eventually, it popped up online. I found clips of raw footage on YouTube. Just a bunch of shots of the Pilot’s Creek Cemetery at night. The headstones are all backlit. A fog machine pumps a low-hanging veil of mist over the ground. Sergio Gillespie did his best to replicate the feel of the original film. Easier said than done. They were still shooting on celluloid in ’95, but there’s no grit to the film stock. It looks too smooth. Too sleek. Polished. Nothing like Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave.
Then Amber Pendleton enters the frame.
She’s stunning. Dressed in this thin dress. Practically translucent. The moonlight seems to pass through her somehow. Like she’s not even there.
A ghost.
There are three takes of the same shot on the reel. Amber Pendleton slowly sauntering her way through the cemetery. Staring off into some fixed point behind the camera.
Yearning. That’s the only way I can describe it. She’s yearning for something.
Someone.
She holds the pose for a beat and, as Porky Pig sputters, That’s all, folks…That’s all that exists of her role in the movie. Of I Know What You Did on Jessica’s Grave.
Amber Pendleton never worked again. Nobody survives that type of scandal. Not in this town. She was a pariah now. The rest of her days had been spent drinking herself into oblivion in some rundown mobile home park, alone, practically in the backyard of the scene of the crime.
Until I found her.
Here we are. Standing at the door of her trailer. Has to be hers. The graffiti spray-painted across its broadside is a dead giveaway…
WITCH.
The tendrils of bright pink have faded through the years, but still, there it is.
WITCH.
Rather than paint over it or try scrubbing the letters away, Amber must’ve resigned herself to the vandalism. Perhaps she washed it away at one point. Perhaps the tag kept growing back, the letters like kudzu over her trailer. Strangling it.
Do people around these parts actually think Amber is a witch? Some superstitions die hard, I guess…
I wandered around the RV park a bit, just to get the lay of the land. I spotted a few kids kicking the dust around the parking lot. Local color. I could get a quote, I thought.
“Excuse me,” I said, clearing my throat. “Is this where Miss Amber Pendleton lives? Is that her trailer?”
There were three white boys. Probably around six or seven years old. Maybe eight. I’m not great at determining age. Their faces were smeared with dirt. They stared blankly back at me as if I’d just spoken in some foreign tongue. Eyes wide. At first, I figure it’s because I’m black. That’s been my go-to since crossing into Virginia. Hell, just about everywhere I go these days.
I realized one of the boys had a stick in his hand. He’d been prodding a dusty lump on the ground when I first called over to them, quickly hiding the stick behind his back, as if he’d been caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t. Wasn’t until I walked over that I realized the lump was actually a hatchling. A baby bird. The wet origami of its crumpled wings was still writhing over the ground. Its thimble-sized beak open and closed, gasping silently. Was it crying? The poor thing hadn’t even opened its eyes yet. Never would. The boy jabbed his stick into the bird’s purpled eyelid. A jet of jelly spurted over the ground, swallowed up by a whorl of dust.
Nobody said a thing. I only stared, taking in the sight of this hatchling squirming beneath the stick, pinned to the ground, unable to free itself. Its beak open and closed.
Open and closed.
Open and…
Froze.
The boys look back to me. Waiting for me to say something. I don’t know, scold them or something. Anything.
“Amber Pendleton,” I said. My voice very even. Very clear.
The boy pointed his stick toward a trailer, the tip of it dripping in ophthalmic jelly. I turned toward the rusted, dust-covered trailer. WITCH was the only address Amber had at this point in her life. The only address she’d ever need from here on out.
“Thanks,” I said back to the boy, but the three of them had already run off.
A ring of terra-cotta flowerpots held on to a few withered husks that had been hydrangeas at some point in their life, now nothing more than dried stalks. One pot had shattered, the dirt spilling out from the shards. Nobody had taken the time to clean it up.
I had my Olympus tucked into my pocket, ready to rock. I took in a deep breath. Psyched myself up. Brought up my fist…and knocked.
And waited.
And waited.
Glancing over my shoulder, I started to get the sneaking suspicion nobody lived here anymore. Should’ve slipped those boys a five, asking if Miss Pendleton had flown the—
The door opened.
Turning back around, I’m taken aback by the crescent sliver of Miss Amber Pendleton. Her weatherworn face stares out at me from the small gap in her door. She doesn’t say a word. A chain-link lock suspends itself at her forehead. Her eyes have dulled over the decades. She looks nothing like her photographs from the trial. Certainly not from the dailies.
This isn’t what—who—I expected to see.
She looks older. Not tired, per se. Resigned. Gray streaks run through her hair, nothing but ash now, tresses like spent cigarettes weaving around her head.
“…Miss Pendleton?”
No response. She’s not doing anything but staring impassively back at me.
Waiting.
The words are gone. Faded from my mind. My mouth is so parched. When was the last time I had a sip of water? “My name is Nathaniel Denison and…and I…”
The chain lock slides along its runners, then falls. Amber disappears into her trailer, into the shadows, leaving the door open behind her. “I was wondering when you’d come.”
DEBORAH PENDLETON WANTED TO BE A MOVIE STAR. LIKE MOST YOUNG GIRLS with stars in their eyes in the sixties, growing up watching Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood, Deborah dropped out of high school her junior year and moved to Los Angeles. Coming from Kansas City, however, Deborah wasn’t equipped to protect herself from such an unforgiving city as L.A. After a few odd modeling jobs and featured extra work, Deborah became pregnant…
And that was the end. Deborah’s dreams of ever becoming a movie star faded to black.
Amber Lee Pendleton was born on September 26, 1962.
Her biological father remains a mystery. His name, his whereabouts, everything. Some have speculated he was the Devil himself, but nobody believes in the Devil anymore. Not in Hollywood. The devils in L.A. are the casting directors. The producers waiting on the casting couch. The men ready to exploit a young, innocent, aspiring actress with no one to protect her.
That devil exists.
Amber possessed a radiance that her mother could only admonish. She looked like her father, as far as Deborah was concerned. She was a constant reminder of the past. Her failure.
Deborah quickly came to resent Amber. For what she stood for. What she could have been but would never be.
Amber’s freckled face and button nose were the picture of wholesomeness. People on the street would constantly stop and remark on how adorable little Amber was.
Some went as far as to suggest she could be in the pictures.
Had Amber ever acted on camera before?
Deborah realized she might have a second chance at stardom after all. This time with her daughter. She quickly focused all of her attention on preparing Amber for a life in show business. It wasn’t long before Amber was auditioning for television commercials. Local ads. Anything to put Amber’s radiant smile out there in the cosmos. A bright, shining star.
But that would all pale to the role of a lifetime, only a few years away…That role would be none other than Jessica Ford in Lee Ketchum’s seminal Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave.
Amber’s life would soon change forever.
Amber would soon meet Jessica.