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Throughout the Triad, golf courses draw duffers for friendly, if not competitive, rounds during the day. As night falls, clubhouses often become social centers for card games, cigar smoking and the sipping of scotch.

Beau* has worked as a locker room attendant for more than three decades at Shady Tree, a golf club nestled in a rural area of the Triad. Founded more than half a century ago, the course rises out of adjacent tobacco and corn fields on land that was once a functioning farm.

During his tenure, Beau has become a faithful friend to countless club members. For many, Beau’s bar and locker room have become a home away from home, for it is there that they can drink away the worries of work or reshuffle their own domestic troubles with a game of chance.

Beau is known for quietly and compassionately visiting the sick beds of club members, and he’s faithfully attended the funerals of at least 60 of his Shady Tree Golf Club friends.

Near the end of his life, one member made it well known that he wanted Beau to serve as a pall bearer.

“Mr. Carter was one of my buddies,” Beau recalls. “He said I was the best locker room man they ever had here.”

Shortly after Carter’s death and funeral, for which Beau did indeed serve as a pall bearer, Beau was working in the card room setting up tables for that night’s games. Sensing a presence, Beau looked up from his chores and saw his recently departed friend.

“All of a sudden, I saw his face. He was smiling like he was glad to see me and then all of a sudden, poof, he was gone,” Beau explains.

Beau likes to think it was just one of the guys coming back for a last visit to the place where he felt at home.

Shady Tree Golf Club now occupies a new modern club house. It was the quaint, old, rustic building that preceded the new facility that contained the most paranormal activity, Beau says.

Back then, it was not unusual for members to stay until the wee hours of the morning, barely able to tear themselves away from a lucky run of blackjack or gin. Consequently, Beau often found himself still at work at 3 a.m., cleaning up from the evening’s games and setting up tables for the next day.

In the old clubhouse and the new, the men’s lounge is on the lower level of the three-story facility. Back in the day, the front door stayed unlocked until the last member left the club. Then no one worried about a stranger walking into the club uninvited.

One such night Beau was downstairs all alone. “All of a sudden I heard a noise. Boom!” he said, reproducing the sound in a deep guttural voice. The first “boom” stopped Beau in his tracks. Four more “booms” quickly followed.

“I wanted to go out the back door and would have if I didn’t have to lock that front door,” Beau remembers. “I told myself, 'I can’t be afraid. I have work to do.’ Finally, I went upstairs. I looked around to see what was going on and I quickly went to the front door and flipped the lock.”

At the moment he turned the deadbolt, another boom thundered through the building and Beau hurried downstairs and out the back door, glad he had at least locked the door even though he hadn’t set the burglar alarm as he was required to do.

When the manager arrived that morning to open up the building, he found the front door — the door that Beau had fought his fears to lock — unlocked. Beau explained the events of the night before, swearing that he most certainly had locked the door’s deadbolt.
Throughout the remaining years of that old building’s life, Beau continued to hear the booms and still wonders what those sounds were trying to convey.

One other unexplained incident stands out in the club’s history. Again, it was a late night when Beau’s assistant, Robert, offered to go upstairs and lock up the front door. Again, it was in the early morning — four or five hours after the club’s dining facilities had closed.

The old Shady Tree clubhouse had a split foyer. Upon entering the heavy wood doors, you walked into a cozy sitting area, complete with table and comfortable upholstered wing chairs. One set of stairs led down to the men’s locker room and another shorter set of steps led up to the dining room.

Robert walked up the stairs to the foyer to lock the front door only to find a man and a woman sitting in the wing chairs, deep in conversation. Robert politely excused himself and went back downstairs to report his findings to Beau. “He told me there was a lady and a man sitting there in those chairs,” Beau recalls. “Robert was an honest man, so I believed him. But it was time to go home, and I had to lock up the building, so I went upstairs to tell them we were shutting down.”

When Beau reached the top of the stairs, the foyer and the chairs were empty.

As with most old buildings, not a door opened nor a stair scaled that someone in the building didn’t hear creaks and pops as the old wood bore the weight of visitors. Beau and Robert had listened carefully and had heard nothing.

Only one thing is certain. Some members of Shady Tree Golf Club don’t realize their membership expired when they died.

* Columnist’s note: When relaying tales of the supernatural, I rarely divulge the real names or locations of paranormal experiences. Doing so would subject the tellers of these stories and these facilities to ridicule and vandalism. Make no mistake; these ghost stories are real.

Contact Cathy Weaver at CWeaverNR@gmail.com.