Such is the case with Ralph Meisse, of Sciota, who remembered a brutally cold, moonlit December night several years ago on the old Werkheiser farm, site of the father-son suicide.

Meisse was on the land to, as he put it, "cop a Christmas tree." There was a crusty coating of snow on the ground, and it crunched beneath the soles of their boots as they tramped along the ridge on their larcenous way.

"My buddy, Paul," Meisse began, "was about thirty yards away from me. He was cutting a tree for himself, and I was looking for one for me.

"So he's cutting, and I'm looking for a tree. We hear something coming. There are no houses except the farm house just over the hill.

"We heard this 'crunch-crunch' sound, it sounded like a man walking. It was not a deer. Both of us folded into a tree to hide from whatever it was."

As Ralph and his friend cowered in the protective branches of a tree, the sound seemed to come closer and closer.

"Whatever it was, it walked right by us, and there was nothing there. Nothing at all. The footsteps were maybe 15,20 yards away from us. We heard the noise, it came between us. There was the sound of the crunching snow, but when we finally looked, there were no foot prints.

"Whatever it was, it stopped between us for a moment and started to walk again. It walked right over the ridge."

Whether it was the cold of the night or their own fears, the two young men froze for what seemed like an eternity before proceeding back off the ridge.

"But Paul, he wouldn't go back over that ridge ever again," Ralph concluded.

Ralph said it has always seemed that property around Suicide Ridge (or Hanging Road, as variations have it) has been difficult to sell, and many other stories have been told about the area.

Take, for example, the tale of Charlie, a friend of Ralph's. Charlie was repairing the slate roof of a barn in which a man had hanged himself. As he positioned himself near a fairly large hole in the roof, he looked down into the barn to see the hangman's noose still dangling from a rafter.

Shaken by the sight, Charlie began to slide down the slick and steep barn roof.

He might have fallen to his death, had not an unseen force grabbed his leg and saved him.

Such is life, and death, on Suicide Ridge.