This isn't really a ghost story because it's something my father told me. And my father never told me stories...
            I was helping Dad rake leaves on a sunny October afternoon. It had been windy the night before and the maples trees had shivered and howled all night long. Now they stood bare and sober, like big drunks the morning after, with all their gaudy rags left on the ground for somebody else to clean up. It wasn’t hard work, the leaves were dry and big swathes of them rushed into piles with each swipe of the rake. But it was a matter of principle that I show disdain for physical labor of any sort. Soon my leaf piles became raggedy clumps, leaving bands of stragglers in their wake while my father continued to make neat, deciduous mountains. 

            “We could make a stuffed man,” I said, "and give him a pumpkin head.” Of course it was just an excuse; I didn’t want to rake anymore. The sun was making my neck itch under my fleece and I thought I had a splinter.

            So I dropped the rake and went off to rummage in the basement where my mother kept a box of old clothes for Goodwill. At the bottom of the box I found a red plaid flannel shirt and a pair of patched jeans. I grabbed the clothes and went out. I plopped down on the grass next to one of the biggest piles and began to stuff handfuls of the leaves in the shirt. I remember how the leaves rustled around me. They had that wonderful sweet, dirt smell of autumn.

             My father stood next to me for a moment, watching what I was doing. I looked up, expecting a lecture about, you know, finishing a job you start, doing it well, blah-blah but he had a thoughtful, slightly troubled expression.

           “Whose clothes are those?”

            I shrugged. “They were in the cast-off box. For Good Will.”

            Dad nodded. “You should be careful. About whose clothes you use.”

            I insisted that I wasn’t going to ruin them. I’d put them back after Halloween.

            “I don’t mean that,” my father said. “Uncle Ted had some trouble once doing that kind of thing.” With that he tramped off and began loading his pile of leaves into a wheel barrow for the compost pile.

            Immediately I was intrigued. My father’s brother Ted was odd; everyone in the family acknowledged it. He drank and spent most of his days wandering in flea markets and junk shops. He always had a sour tang smell of old pennies. I pestered Dad until he told me what had happened.

            “Ted was always kind of crazy,” my father said. “He’d do anything when we were kids. The stupid kind of brave. One Halloween Ted decided we should make a Halloween Man. Stuff him with leaves and put him in the yard. I could tell he was figuring on using it to scare me somehow. He was always playing tricks. So I decided to get the jump on him. I dared him to make the Halloween man more scary. I dared him to get a dead man’s clothes.”

            I stopped what I was doing for a second to look up at my father. I thought he was trying to scare me but his expression was completely serious. Sad almost. I looked down. Beneath my hands the red flannel shirt had begun to take on a lumpy form. The chest was puffed out with crinkly leaves and one arm was filled, the other splayed out flat and lifeless on the grass. I pushed more leaves in until it rounded out.

            “Of course Ted, in those days, wasn’t scared of anything,” my father went on, “He decided to steal some old clothes from a woman who lived down the street from us. Her name was..” my father hesitated for second over the name… “Margaret Ransom. Anyway Mrs. Ransom’s husband Frank had died that summer. They weren’t very popular in the neighborhood. Kind of a crotchedy old pair, always yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off their grass, quit making so much noise and so on. That night Ted snuck around to the back of Mrs. Ransom’s house. There were those old fashioned wooden bulk head doors that go down to the cellar and they were unlocked. Ted snuck down there and found some of old Frank Ransom’s clothes- still in a basket near the washer. Like widow Ransom had washed them and hadn’t put them away yet. We stuffed those old clothes with dead leaves and propped him up in the yard. We even stuck the ends of the pants into some old work boots. The effect was great, very spooky.  I worried some that the widow Ransom would see the clothes but she never left her house much and we were some ways down the street.”

            I was still busy stuffing leaves into the old clothes as I listened to my father. I was onto the pants by now and I pushed big wads of the leaves, along with the stray twig and pine needles down into the legs. Slowly the lower half of the body was taking shape, swelling up into a stubby half-person. The smell was strong. Sweet and tinged with decay.

             “That night it got real cold and the wind started to blow,” my father recalled. “Ted and I shared a room and through the window we could hear the leaves rustling outside.“ He shook his head. “I never heard leaves rustle so loud as that night. Finally Ted had to get up and shut the window so we could get to sleep.”

            My father paused to pluck off a bright red leaf that clung to his shirt. “ The next morning we went outside and the Halloween man had disappeared.”

            I laughed. “Uncle Ted moved him right?”

            “Nope.” My father shook his head. “He was gone. Ted swore he never touched it. But we never did find the Halloween man, or the clothes. Later we found out that old Mrs. Ransom had died sometime during the night. She was lying in bed. The EMTs said they never saw anything like the look of fright on that woman’s face. Like something from a horror movie.”

            “What did she die of? I asked, and was annoyed to find that my voice sounded kind of strained. I pulled the chest part of my Halloween man closer and stuffed it into the top part of the pants. It was headless and misshapen but somehow, obscenely human.

            “Heart attack,” said my father. He scratched his head. “She was just laying in bed with the window open and a look of pure terror on her face. The room was empty…except for a little pile of leaves on the floor.”

             He shook his head. “To this day your Uncle Ted can’t stand the sound of leaves rustling.” 

            My father frowned, glancing down at what I had made. “Where did you say you found those clothes?”

            But I was already shaking the leaves out, flapping the stuffing out of the old clothes as fast as I could. I decided I didn’t want to make a Halloween man. I’m not sure if I even carved a pumpkin that year.
             As I said, my father never told me stories.