"An Old Woman's Tale"

Nathaniel Hawthorne

One of her tales was a dream by David and Esther of “The Night of the Living Dead” in which a whole town’s ancestors appeared, walking woodenly, their features not quite distinct in the moonlight. At an appointed hour, they all fled and disappeared back into their graves—and David and Esther woke from their dreams. It was so real.

Then they remembered they had seen an old woman digging between two trees while the march of the walking dead proceeded. What was the old woman looking for? David discovered the same old iron shovel leaning against the house that the old woman had been using to dig. He rushed to the spot where she had been digging. He begins to dig and finally says, “Oho, what have we here?” End of story.

Title: Tales and Sketches. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Literary Classics of the United States. 1972. Copyrighted by the Ohio State University Press. P. 25-33.