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I briefly knew Jim Beauchamp's son, Kash, who was a number-one overall draft pick. (It's not true that Steve Chilcott is the only number-one overall who didn't make it, but Kash was the top pick in the ol' January supplemental draft, so you can say he doesn't count.) He eventually became the Braves bench coach in the nineties, which makes me wonder why he ended up in indie ball instead of getting a big opportunity himself.
Anyhow, I like to think this is Kash, but it's probably a brother or more likely a sister.
HAUNTING AT OLD BEAUCHAMP HOUSE
By: CowboyNEOK@aol.com
After my parents were divorced, I went to live with my grandparents at their farm house which was on the edge of Grove, a small town on the shores of Grand Lake’o the Cherokees in Oklahoma. My family had lived there for two generations, and there had been both joys and tragedies that had occurred on the family homestead. I would discover some tragedies were more discussed than others. For instance, it was well known that the house had burned down during the Great Depression, and had left the family all but homeless. They lived in what was left of the garage until they could build a new house on the basement foundation of the old family farmhouse.
My bedroom just so happened to adjoin the steps that led to the basement. Many times, I would awaken and feel like something… SOMETHING was in the room and watching me. There were spots in the house, particularly in my bedroom, that were ICE COLD no matter what time of year. My grandmother told me, at a very troubling time in her life, she had been awakened by her long since deceased mother. My grandmother said my great-grandma looked radiant and had sat at the foot of her bed, and made her know everything would be okay. The experience had been very comforting to her.
Again, there were things about our family history my grandparents had never shared with me. One night in the dead of winter, I was watching television. I was about sixteen and my grandparents would let me stay up past their bedtime. I began hearing a bizarre strange, mewling sound. Because we lived on a farm, I thought it might be an animal of some type, but I had NEVER heard such a weird cry. My hair stood up on my arms and the back of my neck. It was one of the coldest nights of the year, and it was snowing but I put my shoes on and walked outside because I wanted to put my mind at rest. I didn’t think I could sleep until I discovered what had made the noise. I walked outside and scanned the property looking for any stray cattle, and then I heard the noise AGAIN! BUT it was coming from DIRECTLY ABOVE ME! I looked up into the oak tree next to the house and there was a large branch that had grown over the roof. A glowing ball of light was pulsating about a foot above the branch and the strange mewling sound CAME FROM THE LIGHT! I almost fainted… and I froze just like one does in dreams. It seemed like an eternity before I shakily made my way back into the house. I really thought I was going to wet my pants. I went straight to my grandparents room, and woke them up with a shaky voice. My grandfather was a lighter sleeper than grandma and woke up and joined me in the hall. He said, “What is wrong with you? You look scared to death…”
I haltingly explained to him what I had seen, and told him it was a weird, WEIRD sound, and he asked me to mimic it. I did my best to make the noise, and all the color drained from his face and he quickly turned his head. I saw a tear fall from his eye, and he wiped it away. I asked him what was wrong, and he said I had just made the same sound his baby brother made when he cried. His brother had been born with a cleft palate, and another malformation of his mouth that made it impossible to nurse and he had eventually died of starvation. I had never heard the story of my great uncle and was absolutely SHOCKED! He asked me where I saw the light, and I took him outside and showed him. He told me I was pointing to where his nursery had been located before the old family farmhouse had burned and they had rebuilt a the current home on the foundation. At that point, I felt vertigo but we were both able to make it back into the house. I spent the rest of the evening wondering why my family had kept my great-uncle’s sad death a secret. I decided they did it because it was so sad they wanted to keep it to themselves. Eventually I fell asleep.
Its been years, since I’ve lived in that house and since then Grove High School has built a baseball field named after my father, major league baseball player - Jim Beauchamp, directly across from the old Beauchamp house where I used to live. I often wonder if those that attend the games ever see a glowing, pulsing ball of light slightly above the roof, or hear a lonely, strange mewling sound coming from the ol’ Beauchamp House.
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