By Ben S. Cared Clayton Town Historian

Forest Phear was a farmer, and a fine-un too, till the bottom dropped out of the stock market in ’87 and made millionaires homeless overnight. Many good people even killed they’self, rather’n face the hardships ahead-um. But people still needed to eat, and the government needed to feed-um, so farmin’ subsidies was increased and many a once proud man went on the “government dole.” With 13 mouths to feed Forest took the government’s handout. He had to. But when he did, something inside him died.

There are many ways to kill yourself. You can use a gun or a rope, or you can climb into a Jack Daniels bottle and never come out. Forest just seemed to stop livin’. It was a slow cruel death just wastin’ away day after day, witnessed first hand by his 13 children. The oldest Phear boy, by 6 years, was Seymour Phear. Named after his mama’s daddy, Seymour had dreams of becoming a doctor, but those hopes were dashed when he was forced to take over the family farm at the ripe old age of 15. Forest was buried in’92, but Seymour told people “He was good as dead long before that.” The death certificate said that he died ah old age, but what killed him was a broken heart.

Try as he did, farmin’ did not seem to work for Seymour. Tobacco, wheat, corn, even hay seemed to refuse to grow on the Phear Farm. Either Seymour did not have the green thumb that his daddy did, or maybe the dirt missed old Forest just as much as the rest of us did. Either way, there were mouths to feed in the Phear home, and no one else to feed-em but Seymour. One thang you could say about Seymour was he left no stone unturned when figerin’ out how to make a dollar. Unable to grow much worth sellin’ the Phear roadside produce market went through a variety of businesses, worked by the Phear children. Lemonade Stand, Ice Cream Parlor, Gift Store, Plant/Flower Store and Tourist Trap, were the most successful incarnations, and Seymour was always looking for the next get rich quick scheme to save the farm that had been in the Phear Family for over 100 years. None of these schemes ever worked, but that did not let Seymour stop him from trying something new. By 2002, what had been a thriving 50-acre farm had been sold down piece by piece as money was needed. All that is left is at is left was the dirt the Phear Farm House sat on, a large cemetery with 100 years of dead Phears, some dense forest and un-farmable dirt

The one single thing that Seymour was good at was huntin.’ He just loved to hunt stuff, and to make ends meet he and the other Phear boys would stay out in the woods for days at a time, shootin’ and skinnin’ anything that moved, from squirrels and rabbits, to deer and even a wild pig or two. Seymour would field dress the meat and sell it to the other farmers in the area. Finally this seemed to catch hold and make some money, but it was not long before the wild game just ran out. They had even fished dry the lake on the Phear property, and was havin’ to go further and further out to find somethin’ to shoot. Committed to his position as head of the household, even when Seymour had nothing to sell to others, he made sure that the Phear clan had all they could eat. Even in the leanest of times, the Phear children was quite portly.

Seymour was the oldest child with 4 brothers and 8 sisters. You could spot a Phear kid from a block away. They all had skin so pale that it looked white against their jet-black hair. If you got closer up, you would also notice their sunken eyes and prominent almost canine lookin’ teeth. Rumor was that all Seymour could feed’um was stuff that he killed, and a diet of mostly meat causes these types of deformities.

Growin’ up, Seymour was never a bad kid. No more than the usual runs in with the law that happens in a small community with littler’ nothing to do, and plenty of moonshiners willing to sell White Lightin’ to anyone with change in their pocket. Resentful for havin’ to drop out of school to run the family farm, Seymour Phear hated his life, hated his family and most of all, hated that farm. It was not long before he started actin’ up. Fights and Public Nuisance was the largest category on the Seymour Phear’s rap sheet, with strangers mostly.

Seems Seymour also hated people that he did not know, and at the slightest provocation would fly into a murderous rage and have to be pulled off to keep from killin’ the poor guy that crossed him.

For a while, you could find Seymour in the city lock-up purty much every Sunday mornin’. The local Sheriff, Al Khillya, had been life long friends with Seymour’s paw and took pitty on the boy forced to be a man. Al would be sure to sober Seymour up and let him out in time for Church. You shoulda’ heard the tall tails Seymour would spin as excuses to keep from goin’ to jail

There was some suspicion of an armed robbery or two that Seymour was most likely to have pulled off without getting caught, but the most serious thing Seymour was accused of was murder, in the disappearance of Tain T. Rite. Tain and Seymour was both courtin’ Sally S. Cream at the time and most people swear that Seymour just “cut out” the competition. No body was ever found though, and with no more than hearsay, Seymour was never charged with nothin’. But the town folk knew, and so did Sally who would not have nothin’ to do with Seymour afterin’ that.

It was about that time that the game was running out, Sheriff Khillya started seein’ an increase in people showin’ up missing after traveling though the area. Bein’ so close to Raleigh-Durham, they had always had more-in their share of runaways and out of towners passin’ though, many of who found the end of Seymour’s fist, but reports of people not showin’ up at there final destination seemed to swell up about the time that things got toughest for the Phear family. It seemed an odd coincidence at the time, but it made the hairs on Sheriff Al’s neck stand up. From years of police and detective work, Al knew that this was a sure sign that he was on’ta something’.

After asking questions to folks around town, Al came across another oddity. No one in town had seen hide nor hair of Seymour or any of the Phear clan for that matter in several weeks. So’s Sheriff Khillya decides to visit the Phear Farm and see if’in there was any foul play a goin’ on. Arriving at the farm Al was surprised to find the roadside store locked up tight and none of the Phears in sight. There was pumpkins everwhere, ready for the fall festival season that was approachin’. Pokin’ around a little deeper, Al finds all of the barns locked tight as well. A new Banner on one barn read Pitch Black, and Al could only wonder what in the tar nation Seymour was up to in there. Just then the unmistakable sound of a chainsaw is heard in the distance, coming from a clump of trees out near the Phear farmhouse. The freshly graded dirt road out to the tree line was too muddy for the squad car, so Al hoofs it out to investigate on foot.

Now a chainsaw is a very common farm tool and hearing one work out on a farm is not unusual, even in the fall of 2003, and Al was not more interested in talking to who ever was using the thing than he was afraid of what the saw was being used for. But when he got into the woods, Al suddenly drew his gun at the horrible sight he seen. It was an archway over the path made entirely of skeletons…human skeletons; the meat scrapped off the bones cleaner than a butcher could do it. Al’s first thought was that wished he had brought the squad car to call for back up, but other then his worthless Deputy there was no one worth callin’ anyway. And it was just Seymour Phear. Maybe he is a little nuts, but Al could handle him as he had done on many a Saturday night after beatin’ somebody near death.

Pushin’ further into the woods, Al passes crime scene after crime scene. The killin’s looked fresh, but there was no need to check for a pulse on these poor victims. 

In some cases there was so little of the pour dismembered soul there, a pulse would be impossible. A cold shiver ran down the spine of Sheriff Khillya remeberin’ the wild stories that Seymour would come up with to keep from getting’ arrested for those robberies.

Some of them were whoppers, and Al wondered what excuse Seymour would come up with this time. “Devil Worshipers” the thought! It would have to be that some kind of evil cannibalistic cult from the west coast had done all this and Seymour just happened to be chasin’ them off with a chainsaw right when he got arrested.

The sounds of the chainsaws got louder and louder as Al passed scene after scene of mutilation, so many corpses that he stopped countin’ at 34. Or was it 35, too many body parts for that pile to be just one person. Either way, this makes Seymour a bigger serial killer than John Wayne Gacy, and as Al moved along the path, he could not help but think that there was a book or even a made for TV movie in all this. He would have to remember to take lots’a notes and photos.

Al can see movement through the trees in the direction of the whirrin’ chainsaw. He decides to get off the path and cut though brush to reconnoiter the best way to get the drop on Seymour. At the edge of a clearin’ Al hears the voices of Seymour and a few others he couldn’t make out. From behind a tree he stops to take a read of the situation. There on the fresh cut trail was a wagon, hitched to an old farm tractor. On the wagon were 12 kids of various ages.

With his revolver still in hand he searched the area for Seymour. Suddenly the doors of an old shack burst open and the sound of a revin’ gas powered engine was heard. From out of the door rushes a maniac wheedlin’ the longest bladed chainsaw Al had ever seen. In a blood stained apron and wearin’ what looked like a Leather Face mask from Texas Chainsaw massacre, this guy was charging the wagon full of now screaming children. Al stepped into the clearing leveled his gun and hollered, “Freeze!” The kids on the wagon turned lily-white faces toward Al, as he screamed “Freeze!” at the still advancing lunatic. A single shot rang though the woods. The sound of the saw was silenced, but the screams from the wagon full of dark haired Phear children continued!

The next day, radio stations started airing advertisements for a brand new Halloween event called the Farmer Phear’s Hayride. They buried Seymour in September, as reservations started piling up for what the commercials called the most realistic scenes of any hayride in North Carolina.”

The newspapers report of the “accident” said it was an honest mistake, and that the police department was very sorry for the incident. The investigation showed Khillya did it buy the book, and poor Seymour just could not hear the Sheriff over the sound of the chainless saw. Al Khillya was forced to retire from the force shortly there after, and to this day, Al still claims that Seymour was up to somethin’ more than just a Spooky Hayride, says he was tryin’ to cover up the murders of hundreds of tourists, and the Hay Ride was just to hide the bones and skulls of all people he killt. Some say the shock of what he had done just drove him crazy.

Seymour was gone, but there were still 12 mouths to feed on the Phear Farm. So the event will go on as planned. Take a tour…If you dare!

Ben S. Cared Clayton Town Historian