"I never saw a ghost," he said, "unless it was one night when we boys was out with our dogs 'possum hunting. The dogs treed a possum in a little scrubby tree. I was always a good climber; so I went up the tree to shake the 'possum out. I shook and shook but the 'possum would not fall out of the tree. I shook so hard that my hat fell off and I told the niggers not to let the dogs tear my hat. That was no skunk in the tree, 'cause we couldn't smell anything, but when I looked again at the 'possum, or whatever it was, it got bigger and bigger. I scrambled down the tree right away, nearly falling out of it, but I wanted to get away. The dogs acted kinda scared; yet they would run up to the tree and bark. One old dog I had did not bark, he just hollered. We left the thing in the tree. I don't know what it was, but it warn't no 'possum, for I'd shook it out of the tree if it had been."
In further discussing the subject of fowls in talking among themselves, he said that he had often noticed a rooster and some hens standing around in the shade talking.
"The rooster will say something and the hens will listen; then answer him back, 'yes'. One day I heard a turkey hen say, 'we are poor, we are poor'. The old turkey gobbler said, 'well, who in the hell can help it.' Yes sir, they talk just like we do, but 'taint everybody can understand 'em."
He said that he had fifteen children by his first wife. He remained single for thirteen years after his wife's death, and never had any children by his second wife.
"Do you reckon we'll ever get a pension in our old age?" he asked. "It seems to me they would give us old fellows something to live on, for we can't work. How can we live now-a-days? When a man has done good work when he was able, the country ought to take care of him in his old age.
"I was a hand for hard work all my life. I was raised that way; but now, that I can't do nothing, it looks like the state ought to take care of me.
"My father told me when I was sitting up to a gal and I told him I was gwinter marry her, 'Son don't you never cut that woman across the back, for as sure as you do, that cut will be against you on Judgement Day."
"When I was laid up with the misery in my side, my feet swelled up and busted, and I had a awful hurting in my side and back. People wanted me to believe I had been conjured, but I did not believe it, and I told them I would eat all the stuff that a conjure man could bring. Anybody that believes in conjuring is just a liar. God is the only a person who can bring suffering on people. He don't want to do it, but it's because we do something He don't want us to when He makes people suffer. It is the bugger man that does it."
"Uncle" Will said that his father and mother were married by a "jack-leg" preacher who, when told that they wanted to get married, had them both to jump backwards and forwards over a broom. He then told them that they were man and wife.
Source: Will Dill, 555 Pickenpack St., Spartanburg, S. C.
Interviewer: F. S. DuPre, Spartanburg, Dist. 4 5/19/37