I've seen it. I've heard it. The first place was Chicago. The second place was Charleston. A fellow was talking and when he found out I collected stories he said he had one to tell me. As he spoke it was like seeing into a nightmare. His eyes were haunted and he actually shivered. He wouldn't tell me exactly where except that it was somewhere in the Carolinas. There was a hill he had heard of. A hill where no one would spend the night. A hill where it was said that no one had spent the night. It was said that there was a reward for anyone who spent the night there. He decided to take his girl and go there. Sounded like a place where they wouldn't be bothered. Arriving at the hill they parked and watched the sunset. He said that it was beautiful. From then until almost midnight he and his girl caroused. They were interrupted by the car shaking as though someone had jumped on the back bumper and off again. Figuring that someone was messing with them he jumped out of the car and raced around the back. There was no one there. Nothing to be seen. Muttering to himself he got back into the car. He told me that about ten minutes after he got back into the car it bounced on its springs yet again. Nothing in the rear-view mirror. No sound of footsteps running away through the night. Nobody at the back of the car. His girl was getting nervous but he was angry and told her that they were staying. No pranksters were going to chase him away. Twice more it happened. The car bouncing on its springs. No one in sight. No sounds of running steps. Nothing to be seen. He stayed outside the car around behind it despite his girl pleading with him to leave telling him that she was scared. But he wouldn't run. He'd catch whoever it was that was messing with them and thoroughly thrash them. So he stood there in the dark leaning against the back of the car, his arms crossed just waiting for someone to show up. His girl cowered in the car. And then the car jolted again. Startled and still angry he knew that no one had gotten by him. No one had touched the car except where he was leaning on it. He said that despite the warmth of the summer night the air around him felt frigid for long moments when it happened. His girl was crying now, still cowering in the car. He was getting worried himself. He was moving around to get back in the car when it once more bounced on its springs and then moved forward three feet. Despite the fact that it was in gear and the parking brake was set. The locked rear tires left gouges in the dirt of the hilltop. His girl was cowering against the passenger door and had screamed when the car moved. He told me that then his nerve broke and he leaped into the car and drove from there just as fast as he could safely go. He said he had never gone back there and he never told anyone where exactly it was. I remember accusing him of suffering from excessive hormones and too much booze. He didn't get insulted. He looked at me with those haunted eyes and then nodded to himself. He asked me to follow him. He led me out to the parking lot. Standing in front of his car he told me that it was the one he had parked on that hilltop. I asked him what that had to do with his story. He beckoned me to follow and we went round to the back of the car. He just pointed at the trunk lid. The paint was damaged. Looking closer I could see that it appeared burned. Burned into that paint was the handprints of a child. I asked to see the inside of the lid, figuring I would catch him out because burning that paint with a torch should have gotten the metal hot enough to show damage to the interior paint of the lid. But there was none. I thanked him for his story and made note of it. It was several years later when I was stationed in Charleston that I heard the tale of the haunted hill once again from a neighbor and his wife. It was my turn to shudder and feel haunted and then I had to tell them the story as I had heard it half a country and many years away. It's a story of an urban legend which I cherish and remember to this day. 795 words.