Post by Angela on Apr 19, 2009 12:35:58 GMT -5
Maria Behind the Scenes Stories
So many of the people we interviewed, that had acting roles in the documentary and are a part of this message forum feel like family to me. It goes much deeper than just knowing you as interviewees, actors, and forum participants. I have become very attached to so many of you. I have laughed with you, shared experiences and memories with some of you, visited in your homes, and traipsed through cemeteries with you. I will never forget that night last fall when some of the people we had interviewed invited me and Matt and Eric to go with them to The Germanton Methodist Church Cemetery after dark for a wiener roast and ghost story swap. We didn't leave there until a little after midnight. We all laughed up-roarously when Matthew came running across the cemetery with that big microphone in his hand and just as he got to the edge of the campfire his feet slid out from under him and he fell to the ground and slid for a good three feet. The hardest I laughed however was when this young boy Cameron was so proud of himself when he finally figured out how to get his hot dog to stay on the end of that coat hanger long enough to get it roasted and he hollered "Maria, take my picture take my picture so people can see I roasted my own hot dog. Just as he swung the coat hanger in the air to show if off I snapped the camera and just as I did my camera caught his hot dog at the exact time it flew off the coat hanger and went sailing through the air right in front of this tombstone where he was standing. He didn't even know it had flown off and he just stood there grinning like a mule chewing briars. I laughed so hard tears were rolling down my cheeks and I was bent over double. And then that night we were shooting the scenes on Payne road. It was well after dark that time too and I'm talking "Stokes County dark" . It was pitch black when I got there and I was walking across that bridge which I had heard was haunted and I was creeping along it real slow so as not to stumble and fall in the dark when the voice of Linda Lane who played the role of Fannie Lawson called out through the darkness..."hang on Maria, Fannie's coming to get you." When she said that my mind immediately conjured up an image of Fannie Lawson rising up out of her grave and coming to get me. At that point my legs seriously started shaking. Later on Linda told me there were bears in the woods surrounding Payne Road and that she had just seen one. I bought that tale hook, line, and sinker and coward in Court's pickup truck until Linda told me she had only been joking about seeing a bear. We've eaten at the same table together, attended the funeral when a loved one of yours died, hugged each other, even held your hands when some of you teared up and your voices broke when you recalled that terrible day. There was no way after all that that I could just say "thank you for the interview' and walk away and never be in touch again. Not after sharing so much of ourselves together.
Maria C. Hodges