Dance Dance Apparition: Part Two

"There's Bigfoot!" commented Michelle.

I looked out the car window. "He's enormous."

Along Interstate 80, there was a giant Bigfoot cutout. It had to be thirty feet tall. I was in the back with Paul, and Michelle and Tif were up front, on the way to the second round of dance competitions.

"We'll be staying where there's Bigfoot sightings," I said. "Near the hotel in Mercer, there have been sightings of a tan Bigfoot every ten years. It was 2005, then 2015, so we're right on time. The hotel is near an overpass, and cryptids love overpasses, so I figure I'll go and look."

"What is it with you and cryptids and overpasses?" asked Tif.

"Well, the Virginia Bunnyman---"

"Nope. Never mind."

"Then when we get to New Castle, there's a haunted mansion very near the competition. Also New Castle is the birthplace of Jack Cole, who created Plastic Man, so that's cool."

"How long until we get there?" Paul asked.

I looked at my watch. "About another hour."

"Aargh."

"But we're coming up on the highest point on Eighty east of the Mississippi. Look, you don't want to miss that."

The hotel room was about typical. Two beds, a TV, a bathroom. I texted Emily while I sat at the desk, to let her know we'd arrived safe, and told her I was going to look for the light-colored Bigfoot.

Good luck, she sent back.

If I find him, I told her, I'll call him Blondie.

I'd  brought my cryptid vest, a packable fishing vest with all my equipment in it. I pulled it on and said,"Think I'll go out for a walk while it's still light out."

"Have fun," said Michelle.

I walked down the hall and through the lobby. I checked the rack; there were a couple of brochures available, but nothing too fascinating. There was a redheaded girl working the desk.

"Weird question," I said. "Do you know of any interesting haunted places around here, or Bigfoot sightings? Anything like that?"

I like to talk to locals when I can. Sometimes they give me a prize. Sometimes I know more about the area than they do. This turned out to be that second time.

She frowned. "No, nothing like that. This is a small place; there's just nothing like that around here."

"Okay. Thanks for trying."

I walked outside. It was a nice evening. I walked down to the overpass; Interstate 80 ran right over the highway, very near the hotel. No sign of Blondie Bigfoot, though. I walked back the other way, past the hotel and to a nearby swamp to the north.

I looked around. No prints or hair samples, but I noticed that everything was dry and light brown. This could explain about the tan Bigfoot, or whatever people were reporting: A light-colored creature would camouflage in this terrain better than a dark one.

When I got back to the hotel room, Paul was sitting on the bed with his cell phone. He said,"I'm sending a message to Rosie and Butters."

"They'll like that," I said.

He dialed the house number and waited until the machine picked up. Then he said,"Hey, Rosie. Hey, Butters. It's me, your best owner, AKA Paul. I miss you, I'd rather be home with you, but I have to be here. I have a dance competition. So I'll be home soon."

Dinner was the Mexican restaurant connected with the hotel. I looked over the menu and settled on the fiesta salad, which sounded healthy enough. Paul said,"There aren't any drinks on this menu."

"They're right here, on the front," I pointed out.

"Oh. Yeah."

"Okay if I order the kid a nonalcoholic margarita?" Tif asked.

"It's okay with me," I said.

"Any luck on your tan Bigfoot?" she asked me.

"Not really. We may still be too close to 80, though you can never tell. I did see why the local Bigfoot is light-colored; everything around here is dry and dead, which probably comes in waves as the area experiences droughts. So a light-colored Bigfoot, or whatever animal people are reporting, would camouflage better than a dark-colored one in this area, as opposed to, say, the middle of Cook Forest."

She looked at me. "Did you really just use weather studies to explain a Bigfoot?"

"I mean....You gotta have a general science background to really do it right."

Paul's strawberry margarita came. He sipped it, and smiled. "I like it!"

I was the first one up in the morning, which was usual when we traveled. Tif was asleep in a chair, and Paul was lying crossways on the bed. Paul rolls around in his sleep; the kid sleeps like he's running a marathon.

I walked down to the lobby to get a coffee. Drank a little while I sent Emily a message updating her. It always made me feel better to have someone back home to contact while I'm traveling. And Emily and I had gotten to be close friends; I was lucky to have her in my life.

I went out to the jeep to check on things; the trailer was down and ready, and the small stool we use for Tif to get in was in the back. Back inside, there was a dark-haired girl working the desk, and I asked her,"Do you know of any haunted spots around here, anything like that?"

She shook her head. "No, nothing I know of. I've never heard anything."
I sipped some coffee.

Sometimes it pays to check with the locals. Sometimes it doesn't.

"I got this, Dad. You can go," Paul said as we walked into the Scottish Rite building in New Castle. He immediately peeled off to join his friends.

"If you need me---" I called after him, and then dropped it because he was already out of range. He and his team, all dressed in their sparkly outfits, went running off wherever they go together.

Tif put her hand on my arm. "Let him go, Dad. He belongs to Team Edge now."

I saw Rachael, the owner of the dance studio, walking across the lobby, and I joined her. "Paul's here, so you know. He's been stressing out all week over his eye makeup."

She smiled. "Oh, he'll be fine."

"He's really thriving in dance class. He does soccer and basketball, too, but he seems to love dance the most."

"That's great," she said. "When the weather warms up, I'll be sure to bring the kids for a haunted tour."

"Think I might go and explore a haunted place right now, actually."

I walked outside and headed west. Two doors down from the Scottish Rite was the Foxfire Mansion, an 1890 building that as said to be haunted and built on a burial ground. I walked down to it, wearing my Rachael's Team Edge shirt and a green hoodie. Usually I'd be wearing my paranormal outfit, but I'd put on the shirt this time because of the competition. I'd done ghost-hunting in worse; last June it had been a light blue hospital gown once.

The mansion was even better than I'd expected. It was under repair, so some of the windows were boarded up, the front steps were cracked, and it was high up on a hill overlooking the city. 

I got out my EMF detector and walked around. It spiked in a couple of places. That was a good sign. I found a cold spot on the north side, and I checked that out for a while. I was a little dubious about the burial ground story; this far up on a hill wouldn't have been as likely. But the place seemed to be haunted. 

I found a spot that wasn't easily seen from the street, and got out a Plastic Man action figure. I could use that as a trigger object; this was about as close as I was going to come to a team-up with Plastic Man. I set an index card down, set the action figure on it, and traced around it with my pen. I could come back the next day and see if anything had disturbed it. Emily was going to love it.

"Dad, how do you get to the livestream for the competitions?" Paul asked, sitting on the hotel bed.

"What in our history together would make you think I'd know that?"

"I'll ask Mom. Can we go get a cup of tea in the lobby?" Paul asked. The kid loves hotels, but he's also easily bored. 

"Yeah, why not," I said. "Come on, let's walk on down and see if there's still any left."

We walked down the hall to the lobby. Paul made himself a cup of tea from the hot water there. There was a third employee working the desk this time, and I decided I had nothing to lose by rolling the dice again.

"Excuse me," I said. Paul watched calmly; he's seen all this before. "Do you know of any haunted places around here?"

"Well, this hotel is haunted," she said. "We get stuff happening here all the time."

Paul turned to me. "Can we take a walk and check?"

"We can. I usually have some equipment on me. The hotel does have kind of a Shining vibe."

We gathered up a couple of my EMF detectors and walked the halls. Paul was a little ahead of me---Probably looking for possible vending machines---And he heard my detector go off. He turned around.

"Was that?"
"A reading? Yeah. We got some EMFs in this area. Looks like the hotel might be haunted, after all."

It was pouring out the next day when I walked out of the Scottish Rite. I had an hour before Paul was on, so I walked down to the Foxfire Mansion again. On the corner, high up on the hill, I looked around.

An 1890 mansion. I checked with the EMF detector as I walked around to the back.

Plastic Man was still there, but he'd moved about an inch from where he'd been the day before. I took some more readings; this was good. The place was very likely haunted.

I walked back to the Scottish Rite, and met the other dads backstage. I'd volunteered to help move props around for the act, so I wound up shoving some stuff around the stage before the kids came on. And then the dance began, with the kids in their shiny costumes coming out....My son among them.

"Who's that girl....Watch that scene....Digging the dancing queen."

Paul lit up the stage. He was out there, dancing with his team, having a great time. And this....This was his part of the story. His much more than mine.

It was still raining afterward, when we went out to the car. Paul had changed from his costume into a new T-shirt advertising the dance competition. I said,"You did great, little man."

"Thanks," said Paul. 

Tif parked her chair and began walking toward the car door. She said,"Paul, you did great. I was really happy to see it. That was wonderful."
"Thanks," said Paul. "Where can we go eat?"

I rolled Tif's wheelchair up onto the trailer, and strapped it down. Tif was standing by the passenger side door.

"Where's the stool?" she asked.

I looked in the back, where the stool usually was. I began digging through the luggage. "I don't see it."

"Did we leave it in the parking lot of the hotel when I got in? Drive off and forget it?"
"Shit," I said with feeling.

"Did we really drive away and leave the stool sitting in a parking lot?" Michelle asked.

"I mean, I want to say no, but....It's not entirely implausible. We have to go back that way to get on 80; let's drive over and see if anyone found it. Either it'll be there or it won't. It's been six hours, but maybe we'll get lucky."

"If we can't find it," said Michelle,"We'll just have to buy a new one."

"I can get into the car if you help," said Tif.

We drove back up toward the hotel. As we pulled across the highway and into the lot, I said,"I see it!"

"You do not," said Michelle.

"No, I really---"

"Oh my god, there it is!" said Tif.

We all began laughing. The stool was sitting there, right where we'd left it six hours ago. Nobody had even noticed it there, the whole day.

I got out of the jeep, held up the stool triumphantly, and then put it in the back. I got back in the jeep, beside Paul, and we headed home. Michelle drove us up onto Interstate 80 going east.

I looked over at my son.

"Proud of you, little man," I said.

Paul smiled.

"Thanks, Dad."

Dance Dance Apparition: Part One

"Paul has his dance competitions coming up," I said. "It runs for like four straight weeks. We have weekends in Lancaster, New Castle, and the Lancaster again. Thanks for printing out the maps and schedules."

I was making notepads for a Sugar Valley store. Emily was hanging out with me in my work area, and we were talking, as we often do.

"No problem, Lou," she said. "Glad to help out."

"Well, you can help out a bit more," I said. "I'll probably be sending you a few messages while I'm there. You're under no obligation to respond, or keep an eye on your phone, or whatever. But I like to feel like I'm connected; like there's someone at home to message."

She nodded. "That's understandable."

"So you're my lifeline, Em."

Emily grinned. "Happy to be your lifeline, Lou."

"If I get a chance, I'm gonna get out exploring," I said. "Lancaster is America's oldest inland city; there's gotta be a few ghosts. I found a legend of a ghost stagecoach that rides through there, and a walking statue in a cemetery. And my friend Kevin sent me an article about a water cryptid down there, and I might look into that."
"Yeah, I printed the article out for you."

"Yeah, thanks for that, too."

"You're a good dad," she said. "I can't imagine Lou without Paul."

I smiled.

"I was there at the time," I said,"And I can't, either."

When we got to the apartment in Lancaster, Paul did what he usually does---Inspected the place thoroughly, checking for traps, cameras, and secret doors. I don't know where he gets this stuff.

"This is nice," commented Michelle.

"Nicer than our place," I agreed. 

She looked in the kitchen. "They have a sign up saying not to drink the water."

"I wonder why."

"I don't know. They have jugs in the fridge that we can use for drinking."

"Probably something like my dad's place," I said,"Where there's a lot of sulphur in the ground and you can taste it in the water."

"Your dad has well water."

"My dad has not-so-well water."

I walked around a bit. The apartment was set up in a way that you could walk all the way around in a square, with the living room, kitchen, and bedroom along the route. There was a big bookshelf in one corner, and I looked it over. It seemed to be mainly religious and Republican works, which I wasn't so interested in. One book caught my eye, and I removed it to look it over.

It was a small paperback spell book. It looked like it had been left by a previous tenant. Black cover, white title: Der Langer Verborgener Freund. Written by a man who'd lived in Lancaster. Inside was a bunch of spells for health, luck, crime prevention, and so on.

Paul rounded the corner and came in. "When do we eat? I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry."

"I'm growing."

"We can go now, and hit the buffet. I could eat something, too."

"So, you enjoying the buffet, little man?" I asked.

"Bet!" Paul said enthusiastically. "I love this! I'm going to go back for ten more plates!"

Paul loved the buffet; he went back for several slices of pizza and some hamburgers. He'd also managed about $3.50 worth of dessert items. I enjoyed it myself; I started with a salad and then moved on to the steak and seafood. Doesn't take me too long to get my money's worth.

The waitress stopped and looked at my shirt. "Are you really a paranormal investigator?" she asked.

I had the black shirt that said "Paranormal Investigator" on it. I looked down at myself for a moment. "I really am."
"No way!"

"Oh, sure." I gave her one of my cards. "Mostly up around Clinton County, but we're in town for a dance competition."

"That's so cool! There's plenty of haunted places around here. Have you heard about the cemetery?"

"I have; gonna try that if I get a chance."

"That's neat. I hope you find something." She moved off to gather plates.

I said to Michelle,"I forgot I was wearing this one."

Paul's first dance was "Respect." We had to get up way too early in the morning to get him to the hotel, which was the largest hotel I'd ever seen. After a while, we figured out where his dressing room was, and at his insistence, I left him there. A little while later, his friends from the team showed up, and he gathered with them.

I watched them run around the lobby and the ballrooms for a while, in the company of two of the moms. One of them looked into the crowd of kids, and said,"There's mine. I can spot the red hair."

"Yeah," I said,"Paul stands out in a crowd, too."

The other mom said,"Mine looks exactly like all the rest of them."

"Don't worry. As long as she stays with the other two, she'll be fine."

We watched the kids until it was time to go on. They got up onstage, and did their dance.

Paul's team. His people; the ones he was happy with. This was his thing. I had Millie, Ashlin, and Tim, and he had his dance group. They finished their dance and left the stage.

The announcer came out to give out the awards. 

"Second place....Team Edge! Respect!"

Paul walked up to receive the award.

That's my boy.

One thing about dance competitions; they wear the kid out. After the dance, we went back to the apartment and he collapsed on the couch for a while.

I went to the bedroom and changed into my LHPS uniform. I put on one of my vests---The travel model with the logo on it---And slung a pouch of equipment over my shoulder. I sent a message to Emily letting her know how things were going, and told Michelle,"I'm gonna go out for a walk."

"Have fun." Michelle was concentrating on a game on her cell phone.

I went outside. I wanted to get a water sample from Mill Creek, and check on the Sea Dog, the water cryptid from 1885. The Sea Dog had been spotted in the Susquehanna, but Mill Creek came off of the Susquehanna, so it was all the same water.

The creek was closer than I'd expected. I walked down a fairly steep slope, across the lawn, and was there. I walked around for a while, looking for a good place to go down and get some water. I found a short slope where I could walk down and collect some, and I got a sample container out of my bag, walked down, and dipped some water out.

I climbed back up to the grass, and there were geese.

Goddamn it. Geese. I'd dealt with these bastards before, showing up to bully me when I tried to get a water sample. There were several of them, all coming toward me and acting all badass.

I turned and ran. There was no way I was going to take on a bunch of geese in hand-to-hand combat. They chased me across the grass. I stopped and lifted the corners of my vest, making myself look bigger and more threatening. They weren't really intimidated. I ran back up the hill, and they decided I wasn't worth the trouble.

When I got back to the patio, Paul was waiting there. "They have a sign up that you're not supposed to go down there, I think," he said.

"Also some vicious guard geese. Let's not tell your mother. Want to help me run a litmus test on this water sample?"
"Sure."

We walked inside and dipped a piece of litmus paper in the water. "Seven," said Paul.

"You guys should test the faucet water," said Michelle. "See why we can't drink it."

"That's not a bad idea," I admitted. We tried the faucet water, and the paper immediately turned a deep green.

"That looks like a nine," commented Paul.

"It wouldn't support much life," I said. "Too acidic. No wonder we can't drink it; we'd be better off just sucking water out of the creek."

"Are you guys hungry?" Michelle asked. "I know you wanted to check out that place where they're having the cryptid festival in June, and there was that cemetery...."

"Lancaster Cemetery," I said. "We can check that out before dinner."

"Her name was Augusta Bitner," I said. "There are a couple of different stories, but they all seem to involve her dying in some sort of accident or illness while she was engaged. She was buried in Lancaster Cemetery, with a statue of her there. According to the stories, the statue comes to life and walks around at night."

"Do I have to not blink?" Michelle asked.

"I think it's not until sundown. Turn here."

Lancaster Cemetery is nice. Not the most elaborate I've ever seen, but pretty. It's not Erie Cemetery, but it's not Stech-Simcox, either. We stopped at a roundabout in the cemetery.

"I think it's that way," I said. "North."

"That's just a grass path," said Michelle. "I don't want to drive down there."

"I'll walk it, and check it out."

I could see the statue as I approached from a distance; it was easy to find and only about fifty feet away. I pulled out my EMF detector and checked---No readings at all. I stopped at the statue, looking it over. It was a girl, about six feet tall, with a pillar next to her. It had her name, the dates of birth and death, and a phrase: "Could love have kept her?"

There was a small pile of coins on the base of the statue, probably a couple of dollars. A couple of other trinkets---Keychains, a plastic coin, a small plastic heart. I dropped a penny on the pile.

I waved toward the jeep, trying to signal Paul and Michelle. Nothing. I waved both arms over my head, and nothing continued to happen. Probably both staring at their goddamn cell phones. I walked back to the van and opened the door.

"I found it," I said. Both of them were looking at their phones. "You want to see it?"

"I'll wait here," said Paul. "I'm wearing shorts, and it's cold out."

"I'll come," said Michelle.

So we walked back to the statue.

"Is it really haunted?" Michelle asked.

"Probably not," I said. "I'm not getting any readings. But this thing gets lots of attention." I pointed to the pile of coins and trinkets. "This is probably within the past week; I'm betting the cemetery association clears this up all the time. So people come to visit, and they tell stories. And it's because of that."

I pointed to the phrase: "Could love have kept her?"

"That's dramatic," I said. "It's memorable, and it suggests a story. People see that and want to talk about it. She died in 1906. That phrase, right there, is exactly what's kept the legends going for the last century or so. That's what makes people tell stories about the statue."

"Getting late, little guy," I said to Paul. "You have another big day tomorrow. Time to finish your tea and get to bed."

He nodded. He was sitting at the counter, drinking a cup of tea I'd made him and watching videos on his cell phone. "I like a little noise," he said. "It helps me sleep."

"Not sure that's how I've always experienced it," I said,"But okay." I sat down with him. "You did good today, buddy. Your whole team did."

"I like competition dance," he said. "I'm glad I signed up for it. I really like it."

I smiled.

"I'm glad," I said. "You do seem to be getting a lot out of it."
"It's fun," he said. "Doing all this stuff with Team Edge."

I nodded. I know how it goes, being part of a team. I have Millie, Tim, and Ashlin; Paul has Willow, Josie, Juliet, Tall Addie, Short Addie, Lili, Sophia, and all the others whose names I don't bother to memorize. 

He thrives in dance class; since signing him up during COVID, I'd seen him come a long way. He'd really grown into it. I had my things. This was his.

"I'm proud of you, buddy," I said. "That's my boy."

Thin Ice: Cold Wave

In decades of ghost-hunting, I'd never seen anything this terrifying.

"Do not touch anything," I said.

Paul and his little friend Emma looked up at me as we stood in the music store, among the expensive musical instruments. I was looking around at the inventory, absolutely terrified that something was going to be broke within the next five minutes.

"Your mom is picking up your violin for school," I said to Paul. "In the meantime, you guys stay calm. Do not test the drums. Do not try the guitars. Just don't. Touch. Anything."

"Okay," said Paul.

"Oooh, are those pianos?" said Emma.

I walked outside into the parking lot. I didn't want to see whatever came next. It was snowing. I dug into my pack, pulled out my binoculars, and looked south, toward the river.

"I have a new UFO sighting," I told Emily. "Well, new for me. It happened in 1992."

I was packaging some papers, and she was trying to fix a printer jam. She asked me,"Where's this one?"

"Williamsport. So I thought I'd take a look while we were getting Paul's violin with the kids. I really didn't want to be in there with them. Paul's friend Emma somehow manages to be both a little sweetheart and a holy terror simultaneously. She's a nice kid, but she's wild. Every time she comes over to the house, we get things broken, expensive perfumes sprayed on the dogs, my shaving cream used to make slime, and whatever else she can think of. In retrospect, bringing her along to the music store was not a well-thought-out move."

"Oh good god," said Emily. "So how'd you find out about this UFO?"

"My friend Norman shared it on his blog," I said. "In February of 1992, a whole lot of witnesses all along the Susquehanna saw boomerang-shaped UFOs with flashing lights in the sky. There were newspaper articles about it; I'm going to check the archives later. My personal file designation for this is WP-92, but at the time it was known as the Williamsport Wave."

"Any ideas?"

"It being 1992, I can safely rule out drones, but otherwise, not yet. Gonna run down the checklist, look at airports, military testing, and stuff like that."

"That makes sense, to have a sort of standard operating procedure."

"If you have any thoughts, let me know. I can use the input," I said. I picked up the small drill I'd brought in. "I'll be down in the basement doing some repairs."

Emily smiled. "Got it."

I walked downstairs. The basement of the print shop was becoming quite a project for me. I'd started by creating a little secret hideout, and then expanded, and the whole thing was becoming a big work thing on my part. I had a whole lot of new shelf space created, I was weekly cleaning out all of the scrap cardboard, I had a workspace, and I even had vague plans to make an exercise area on the south end. 

I walked into my hideout, and got a dry-erase marker. I wiped off the laminated sign that read "42 DAYS WITHOUT AN ALIEN INVASION" and changed it back to zero. My way of keeping track of UFO investigations.

Using the drill, I moved a portable light from one space to a better one, and then repaired a small table and moved it into my work area. I moved some useless junk down to the far end out of the way, and cleared off a shelf and moved it into place. Then I went back upstairs to get some of the stock paper and bring it down, thus clearing some space above for other purposes.

Everyone was in the front office. Emily grinned at me. "We can hear you hammering down there."

"Got some stuff fixed," I said. "Did you know there are three mattresses down there?"

The boss laughed. "I knew about one of them. Did you see the oven?"

"There's an oven?"

We had a vegetable platter on the table; I helped myself to a couple of them. "My suggestion is that we move all the paper stuff away from the west wall. That seems to be where the moisture is coming in. I'll work on that once this seriously gets underway."

Kelli laughed. "You've been at this two weeks, shoving stuff around all day, and you're not seriously underway yet?"

"Well, been making myself a secret headquarters."

"Is there room to lay down one of those mattresses?" Emily asked. "I've been looking for an apartment."

I grinned. "Wouldn't it be cool to stay overnight and ghost hunt?"

"That'd be creepy."

"Nah, you get used it."

"I'll never be late for work," she said. "I can call upstairs and say,'Hey, I'm working from home today.'"

It was snowing and icy at the bus stop on the corner. Of course, that didn't stop Paul and has friends from wearing light jackets and sandals. Meanwhile, I was wrapped up in my puffy vest with my fleece hood. I used to worry that my kid was just weird about the cold weather, but it turns out they're apparently all like that.

"Don't forget, Dad," said Paul,"The Bingo fundraiser for my dance class is Sunday."

"Down at the Piper Museum, right? I've signed up to volunteer for it. I also donated five tour tickets that I had Emily design for me. I won't forget."

The kids were playing around. One of the boys, a nice enough kid, always chats with me about stuff he's interested in. I decided to put the kid to use.

"Hey, Wyatt, you're into planes, right? Do you know any of them that are sort of boomerang-shaped, with a couple of lights on each wing?"

"B-52 Spirit," the kid said immediately. "It's a stealth bomber."

I nodded. "That helps."

The bus came, and the kids all climbed on. "Bye, Dad! Love you!" Paul called as he ran for the bus.

I walked home in the snow. Rosie and Butters were waiting for me when I got there. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. Worked on an article for a while, and then re-read some reports of the Williamsport Wave.

Might have been some sort of plane, but it wasn't a stealth anything; witnesses reported hearing a loud noise as it flew. I found an account from one guy who claimed he'd figured it out, and it was an old dirigible from a New Jersey company, but when I looked up the company, they'd gone out of business by that time.

I checked social media, and saw that one of my former editors had posted a photo. She'd seen what appeared to be a deer in her yard, but it was weird---Short and chubby and not entirely deer-like. I looked at it and smiled.

"It's called a Not-Deer," I told Emily. "That's when people think they've seen a deer, but then they realized there's something wrong with it. They kind of look like deer, but you can see they don't quite line up. This one is pretty easily explainable; people are probably just seeing deer with some sort of disease or deformity. In this case, a former editor of mine posted a photo of what looks like a deer, but it's especially chubby and has forward-facing eyes."

She grinned. "I like how you can just come up with all these different cryptids."
"Oh, there are plenty of them. You familiar with the Squonk?" 

"Is that some kind of Bigfoot?"

"No, the Squonk is a little pig-like creature indigenous to Pennsylvania. They're considered very ugly, and they know it, so they sit in the forest and cry all day."

"Awww...."

"I know. Everyone loves the Squonk. Funny thing is, if the Squonks knew how much people love them, they'd stop crying."

Emily grinned. "Is it still cold out?"
"Like twenty-nine degrees. Solid sheets of ice outside. Plus a wind warning."

"Did you have any trouble biking in today?"
"Oh, you have no idea."

"When's the first day of spring?"

"I think it's March twentieth, and personally I cannot wait."

"So, any ideas for investigating?"

"I figure I'll call DCNR and ask about the Not-Deer. They can tell me if there are any genetic anomalies or anything that could explain it. As for the Williamsport Wave....Well, down at the Piper Museum they have files on a lot of government testing and flights. I need to get a look during Paul's Bingo game Sunday."

"You mean....."
I nodded. "That's right. I gotta sneak into the Piper Museum."

"B-4."

I stood by the door, directing people into the Bingo game. We were on the third floor of the Piper Museum, where I'd once been the curator. Michelle had met a couple of her work friends and gone to play, and Paul had disappeared with some of his little friends from dance class. After telling me that I was embarrassing and instructing me not to look directly at him. And then asking for money.

The owner of the dance studio came up. "How's it going?" she asked.

"Smooth enough," I said. "Not too much overcrowding yet."

She nodded. "Good. Now, those tour tickets you donated....Is that one ticket per person, or....?"

"Nah, unlimited number of people. I've done tours with as many as ninety people; I can handle whoever they can come up with."

"Oh, good. I'll make an announcement. I'm not even sure I know ninety people."

Looking through the door, I saw my friend Ian walk out into the hall, and I stepped out and chased him down. Ian works with the DCNR, and is the guy who books me for speeches and stuff in the state parks. 

"Ian! Hey! Got a question for you."

"Hi, Lou! What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking into deer lately. Is there anything, any condition or something, that might make a deer look like it has front-facing eyes?"

"You know deer don't, right?...."

"Yeah, I know, they're not predators. But is there anything that might give that impression?"
"Discoloration, perhaps. Or a genetic mutation. Or, most likely, some sort of sore that people mistook for eyes."

"That could be. Thanks, Ian. E-mail me about programs this summer, okay?"

"You got it."

I walked into the room across the hall. Michelle wouldn't notice; she was playing Bingo. She was probably used to this by now anyway. I'd been slipping off on some little side quest on family trips and events for the last couple of decades; she'd probably be alarmed if I didn't disappear for a while. 

Down in the lobby, I took a moment to plan out my route. I'd been the curator of this museum for three years; I knew every hallway and stairwell. I knew which doors led where, and which were most likely to be unlocked.

There was a door way back in the back that led down to the hangar. I had to climb over a small barricade, but I walked down the stairs and onto the floor. I walked past the planes; I'd always loved these airplanes. I took a moment to stop at my favorite, the Piper Aztec, and then I walked into the workshop area and behind some old Piper signs.

The staircase was where I remembered it, on the exterior wall behind the workshop. It led upstairs, into the archives.

"I'm in." 

I've always wanted to say that.

There was a lot of stuff in here, if you knew where to look. And I knew---This had once been my office.

I checked the air route map first. It showed me that the area where the Williamsport Wave had been sighted was, in fact, a legal air route---Planes were routed along that part of the Susquehanna. 

That's a start.

I checked a couple of other files, and found what I needed. There had been some aircraft testing done in the nineties at Fort Indiantown Gap. It would have likely taken them along the river.

"Bingo."

I slipped out, retraced my route, and went back upstairs. The Bingo game was still going on. I made the rounds, checked to see if I was needed.

Paul appeared out of nowhere. 

"Dad? We had a spill in the play room."

"Okay," I said. "Let's go see."

We walked into the play room, which was actually just an empty room where they'd sent the kids. Paul and his little dance friends were having a good time in there, occasionally breaking out into songs. One of them asked me,"Did you bring the tickets for the haunted tours?"

"Yeah, that was me."

"He does that all the time," Paul said airily.

Her eyes widened. "Do you see ghosts?"

"Well, we investigate them."

One of the other girls said,"Can you tell us some ghost stories?"
I smiled.

"If you'd like," I said. "We've been to a lot of haunted places."

On Monday, the temperature rose to forty-six degrees by the time I left for work. It's amazing how warm that can feel after almost two months of weather in the teens. I biked in to work with my lighter jacket on for the first time in a while.

Downstairs, in my hideout, I looked at my sign. "0 DAYS WITHOUT AN ALIEN INVASION." I scrubbed out the zero, and added a one.

Emily found me outside the back door of the Hecht Building, along Mill Street, facing the YEarick Building. The bank sign across the street said it had gone up to fifty-two degrees.

"Thought you might have gone down to your secret hideout in the basement," she said.

"I figured I'd come and enjoy the nice weather for a bit," I said. "Looks like spring might be on the way."

"About time. How was your weekend?"

"Bumped into a friend who answered the Not-Deer question. And I did get into the files over at Piper---Turns out there was military testing from Fort Indiantown Gap around that time, so that may have accounted for the Williamsport Wave. All of the secret passages and concealed stairways are where I remember them being."

Emily laughed. "And you just snuck in."

"It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're not above a little trespassing. How was your weekend?"

"It was nice. I spent time with my sister, since she was home from college."

"Ah, good. Glad you had a good time." I looked out at the street. "Nice day."

"Nice day," she agreed, and we turned our faces to the sun.

I smiled.

"The cold doesn't last forever," I said. "Spring is coming."

Thin Ice: Rats

Snow was falling outside as Tif and I sat in McDonald's over breakfast. With temperatures up as far as thirty-three degrees, we'd decided to get together before work.

"What time is it?" Tif asked me.

I glanced at my watch. "Nine-fifteen."

"Plenty of time. I don't have to be in until ten today."

I drank some coffee and leaned back in my chair. "I need to find a yeti."

"The cup brand, or....?"

"No, god, Paul has cups all over the house. We have way too many of those. I need to go looking for a creature; I'm easily bored."

"It's hard to get out in this cold."

"Yeah, I've been having that problem. Actually I've been trying to keep busy; I've looked into two cryptids and a ghost since the cold weather started. But, you know, it's hard when it's too cold to go anyplace or stay outside for very long."

"I'm sure something will come along," said Tif. "Something always does, for you."

"The boss said you're going out on deliveries with him," Kelli told me when I walked in. "He has to pick up some shelves in Mill Hall for the basement."

"Sounds good," I said. "We're trying to clean up a bit down there."

"Take some of your equipment," she told me. "You're stopping at the place that used to be haunted, the old K-Mart building."

"Oh, right, the Van Campen Massacre happened there. April of 1769, if I remember right." I picked up the EMF detector from Emily's desk, and she grinned at me. I'd gotten one a few months ago for office use. "I'll just borrow this one. I'll bring it back."

It was something to do. I went back and cut a couple of gift certificates for Emily, and a few brochures. Then I accompanied the boss out to make a few deliveries. We dropped off a couple of boxes, and then pulled into the hardware store in Mill Hall. I got out the detector and turned it on, and it spiked to red almost immediately.

The boss smiled. He seems to be routinely amused by my investigations. "Checking the place out?" he asked.

"Yeah, this place has been haunted for over thirty years now. They used to see a lot of ghosts back when this was a K-Mart. There was a big battle here back when this was all Northumberland County."

"If I get a couple of shelving units for the basement, can you put them together?"

"Oh, sure. Easy enough."

Back at work, I walked into the front office and dropped the EMF detector back on Emily's desk. She grinned up at me. "You find anything?"

"Thing lit right up. Immediately gave me high readings. It wasn't anything like a full investigation, but it's encouraging."

"There was a battle out there?"
I nodded. "The Van Campen Massacre. In April of 1769, a group of militia officers woke up to find themselves surrounded by over a hundred Susquehannocks. I think seven of them survived the attack. They buried all the bodies in a hole, and I'm pretty sure they're still under Harbor Freight someplace. Northern corner, I think."

Emily shivered. "You know the damnedest things."

"You get used to it. I've written about this a bunch of times."

"Got any other investigations coming up?"

"Well, Ida's birthday is Saturday."

"The ghost in your house?"

"Yep. She was born February first, 1888. Paul and I may stay up late and do a little investigating. We do that sometimes on the anniversaries."

"You should watch Charlie's Angels. Doesn't Ida like that movie?"

"She does! Almost every time I watch it, we get some activity."

I hauled the shelves down into the basement and began putting them together. I walked around and adjusted the lights a little bit---The basement was full of fixtures and outlets that didn't work, but if I ran a couple of extension cords and maximized the ones that did, I could get a decent amount of illumination. Toward the front of the basement, I saw a vent about nine feet up that looked like it went through the wall and into the furniture store next door. I climbed up with my flashlight and took a look.

I went back upstairs to Emily's desk.

"I think I found a secret tunnel into the store next door," I said.

She looked up. "Really? So we could crawl over there and steal their snacks?"
"In theory,  yes. I'd have to use a ladder to get into it, and I think I'd need to work my way over the to vent, and then crawl through that like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. So what I'm saying is, it might be possible. Getting the gang together for one last heist."

She shook her head. "How do you find this stuff? I've worked here over a year and I've never noticed that."

"I have absolutely no life."

I went back downstairs. I shoved some stuff around, and cleared out some more space. By the time I was done, I had a row of shelves and a table I could use as a workspace. I looked things over with some satisfaction.

Out of curiosity, I pulled out the ladder---We had a wobbly wooden ladder I'd discovered pretty early on. I set it up near the vent, climbed up, and peered inside.

I went back upstairs. We can see the sign at the bank across the street from our window, and the temperature had risen a bit. But we were getting freezing rain outside, which was fun.

"I can see light coming through the vent," I said. "It would be a tight squeeze, but it means that it definitely comes out the other side."

"So you're saying you could do it?" Emily asked.

"In theory, I could do it. I also saw a hole in the wall that looked like something might have tried to chew its way out, but that could be just my imagination."

The boss looked up from his desk. "Well....."

"Oh, is there something I'm not aware of? This is gonna be cool."

"Quite a while ago, we saw a really large rat chew its way through the brick wall out front. You know that hole in the brick?"
"We have a rat cryptid, and nobody told me?!?"

"It was really, really big."

"I mean, you get giant rat cryptids, but mostly in New York. I love this; our building has its own cryptid."

"It's Ida's birthday," I said. "You ready to stay up late and do a little investigating?"

"Bet," said Paul.

It was twenty degrees out, but we weren't going anyplace. I was wearing my black "Paranormal Investigator" shirt and a fleece vest. I went upstairs to my office and got out a couple of pieces of my equipment---The laser thermometer, the EMF detector, and a camera just in case. I brought them all downstairs and set them on the couch.

"No digital recorder?" asked Paul.

"I figured we'd watch some TV and that'd be interference."

We sat down on the couch. I turned on my EMF detector, and it flickered to yellow and then went dead. I tried it again with the same result.

"I think I'm losing the battery," I said.
"What kind is it?"
"Think it's a nine-volt. I don't believe we have any of those stocked up."

"We probably should," said Paul. "Want to use mine instead?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea."

I went back upstairs and fished Paul's EMF detector out of his vest. I grabbed my all-in-one, too, and brought it downstairs. If you stay in paranormal investigation long enough, you wind up with multiple copies of everything.

Paul turned on his detector and set it on the arm of the couch. I sat down with him and turned on mine, and looked it over. He aimed the laser thermometer around the room.

"It's about sixty-four," he said,"But I'm getting a hundred over there."

"A hundred? There's no way anything in this room should be reading a hundred. Not with yeti weather outside."

"Now it's gone."

"That could be something."

I looked at my detector, which was flickering. "I think the battery is going out on this one, too."

"All of your batteries are going dead."

"Well, they do get a lot of use."

He glanced over at his detector. "It's getting a reading, Dad."

The light was going up to yellow and back again, repeatedly. I nodded. "That's something. Looks like Ida's here tonight to spend her birthday with us."

I walked into the Hecht Building at the usual time and stopped by Emily's desk. "So I spent the weekend looking at maps and studying the building," I said.

Emily grinned. "I don't talk to you for two days...."

"So it looks like the building, or parts of it, is a lot older than we thought," I said. "I found an old photo showing that it used to be three stories. Edward Hecht ran a clothing store in here from 1887 on, and then around the Fifties, they seem to have torn off the top two. But the layout of the whole thing is exactly the same on the 1925 Sanborn Map. Now, it looks like most of this block was all interconnected at that time, so it's not too hard to imagine that there was a family of giant rats running back and forth on the block."

"Eww."

"I checked with Cryptipedia, by the way. Giant rats do actually classify as cryptids, but they're what you call OTAs---Off-Territory Animals. Normally this is an actual real animal that people aren't used to seeing in a specific area. The Mothman has been thought to be one of these."

"You know," Emily said,"I never told you this before, but years ago, someone recommended you to me."

"Really?"

"Yeah. A few years ago, I was feeling really discouraged, and thinking that this wasn't really a good place to live. And someone told me that there was the guy named Lou, kind of famous, and he worked at the library. They said I should talk to you. And now, we're friends."

It wouldn't have been like Emily to reach out to me out of nowhere, but I was glad we'd met and become friends now. I smiled. "I didn't know that. That's really cool. Sometimes, I guess, things work out the way they should."

"So, what are you going to do now?"

"Think I'll do something I don't get the chance to do all that often. Go hunting a cryptid in my work building."

I walked to the back, hung up my backpack and my jacket by the cutter, and then went down into the basement. It was shaping up pretty nicely; I'd made myself a little office and work area down there, and I wasn't done yet. I found the vent that led to the next building, and paced off enough of a measurement that I could tell where it would come out, roughly, on the other side. 

Then I went back upstairs and slipped out the back door onto Mill Street.

Our back door is directly beside the back door of the furniture store next door. It's a few feet away; I wasn't outside five seconds. I ducked in the back door and found an employee vacuuming.

"Hi," I said. "I work next door."

"Oh, we know."

"I was wondering if I could look around the basement a bit."
"Sure. Go ahead."

I walked down the stairs into the basement, and looked around. All the way in the back, there were a few doors marked "Employees Only." Well. They hadn't specifically told me not to go in there. I opened what I figured was the right one and walked in.

It was a small, concrete room with a very damaged drop ceiling. No wonder they didn't want the general public wandering in here. I shined a light up toward the ceiling and saw it almost immediately---There was a spot where the vent came out of the wall and led back into our basement.

Theoretically, I could crawl from one side of the building to the other, especially if I didn't mind squeezing through the vent. It made sense that rats could live comfortably down here, too, particularly if they had access to food storage.

I got out before anyone thought to come and see what the hell I was doing down there. I walked back outside and back into the print shop.

I had an envelope printing job waiting for me. I looked across the building at Emily's desk, and gave her a thumbs-up. Across the room, she grinned and did it back to me.

Thin Ice: Cold Comfort

Two degrees.

Overnight, the temperature had dropped to two degrees outside. Across town, car batteries were going dead. Ice was forming on the Constitution Bridge. The Susquehanna River was frozen solid.

"Put on a damn coat!" I shouted at Paul as he got ready for school.

"Oh. Yeah." He set down his backpack and put his white coat on. "Will you be home when I get home today?"

"I'll be at work, but your mother will be home. But before I get to work, I'm going to try to write an article."

"Oh yeah? About what?"

"Don't know yet I'll dig through my files and find something." I handed him his pack. "Shoes. You need shoes. Have a good day, kiddo. Love you."

"Love you, too," said Paul, pulling on his shoes as he walked out the door.

I poured a cup of coffee---Tim had given me a Swartz Paranormal coffee mug---And sat down at my laptop. I played around a while---Much freelance writing work can easily be mistaken for playing around---And then took my mug and walked upstairs to my office. I pulled out a random file on ghosts, and flipped through. 

And I rediscovered the frozen ghost of the Pine-Loganton Road.

When I got to work, there was a sign job waiting for me. This required me to spray adhesive on a piece of foamboard and stick a poster to it. Normally I'd just go out in the alley and do it, but it was too cold for any kind of spray adhesive. So I took it down to the basement.

The basement of the Hecht Building is a long, dark, stretchy thing that runs the length of the building. I'd been building a secret headquarters in one of the alcoves. I'd always done that sort of thing as a kid, and had never really outgrown the tendency. I changed a couple of light bulbs to give myself more illumination, then laid the foamboard down on a shelf and sprayed it.

When I brought it back upstairs, Emily was bringing back a printed job of fourteen hundred flyers to be cut and folded.

"Morning, Emily," I said.

Emily smiled. "Good morning. Got a huge stack of flyers for the Catholic school for you."

"You know that place is built on an old burial ground? I mention it on a lot of tours."

"How do you even remember all this stuff? I'd forget it immediately."

"I don't make much of an effort; I don't study it or anything. If it's something interesting to me, it just sinks in and sticks. But I can't balance my own checkbook, so don't get too impressed."

"Find out anything new lately?"

"I stumbled on one I've checked out before. There's a ghost down along the Pine-Loganton Road, which is Clinton County's most haunted road. He was a guy named Harry who froze to death in December of 1894 trying to walk down to visit his girlfriend. His body was found frozen under a tree. The story is that if you listen in a cold winter, you can still hear him calling for help."

Emily shivered. "That's another creepy one."

"I may get out there and check. This would be the perfect winter for it. I might take my rifle microphone and check if I can hear anything."
"How do you plan to get out there?"

"I don't know, maybe make a friend who can drive. I'll figure that out later. It's too cold to go out, so I think I need to do a little digging in the archives first."

The boss came through. "I'll be out for a while," he said. "I need to make a delivery down to Loganton."

"Drive careful," I said. "And keep your eyes open. There's supposed to be a ghost down there who froze to death in 1894."

He smiled, amused. Amusement seems to be his default position to my paranormal investigations. "I'll look for that."

He walked out the back door, and Emily said,"I can't believe I get to hear you say things like that."

Every now and again, Chris and I tried to get together for coffee, almost as if we were normal people. We sat at the same table in the local coffee shop and hung out, sometimes working on projects, sometimes just talking.

"I heard the Piper Museum is hiring for a general manager," I said. 

Chris looked at me, interested. "You going to apply?"

"Not gonna lie, I was thinking about it," I said. "I mean, nobody can say I'm not qualified. I was the curator over there for three years. I'm considering it. But I'm not sure how much I want to go back to working for a board of directors again."

"It would require working weekends," said Chris. "I know you've been enjoying spending time with your family on evenings and weekends."

"Yeah, that's another thing," I admitted. "I love the Piper Museum, I always have. But I do like working at the print shop, too. Everyone treats me good, and the place is haunted as hell."

Chris grinned. "Investigating it while it's too cold to go out?"

"Actually I'm currently working on the guy who froze to death on the Pine-Loganton Road while attempting to get to his girlfriend."

"This sounds like a Shoemaker."

"It is, in fact, a Shoemaker. It's from one of his articles in the 1950s."

"Shoemaker never lets you down."

It was morning, and Paul was off to school. I sat down at the table with my laptop. Coffee and a ghost; that classic way to start the day.

I began by checking the newspaper archives from December of 1894. I got on the website and checked every issue, one at a time. I learned that it had been a very bad winter that year, and people did in fact freeze to death while going out. I found a couple of cases of that actually happening, which was encouraging.

Then I took my coffee up to my office and pulled the cemetery records, Rosie and Butters trailing after me in case I had some available food up there. I began with Sugar Valley, because Harry had been from there and died on that end of the Pine-Loganton Road. I went through the records, one name at a time, and found it almost immediately.

There was a man named Harry who'd died "near Loganton" and been buried in very early 1895. He'd been about nineteen years old at the time. Bingo. That was my guy.

Okay, so I knew who he was now, and that it had actually happened. That was a good start. I'd backed it up historically; now I had to check into the paranormal side of things. That was a little harder.

"Right up here," I said as Michelle pulled the jeep up alongside the Pine-Loganton Road. 

"Should I pull in, or just anyplace?"

"We're in the right vicinity. Just anywhere along the road should be fine."

We'd gone around the long way, as opposed to starting in McElhattan and traveling the entire road. With the temperatures consistently below freezing, I hadn't wanted to chance any patches of ice, which were pretty likely. Michelle stopped the vehicle.

"You coming with me, or waiting here?" I asked Paul.

"It's twelve degrees," he said. "I'll wait here."

"Be right back."

I got out and walked along the road. It was cold as hell, and the wind was blowing. I got out my rifle microphone and slipped the headphones on, which actually helped warm my ears. I turned it on and raised it, moving at carefully around in an arc.

Howling. Oh my god, the entire forest was howling. I could hear it clearly through the headphones. The wind was drowning out everything else around for a mile. Probably happened every time winter hit.

Which would explain, to an extent, how the legend got started. Someone freezing to death along this road, which already had a reputation for being haunted, and the wind making noises that could be mistaken for human....Yeah, it made sense.

I walked back to the jeep and climbed in. Michelle said,"Anywhere else you need to go?"

"While we're in the neighborhood, one more stop."

I stood over the gravestone, looking down at the name "Harry." Paul roamed the cemetery somewhere behind me.

"Here he is, kiddo. The ghost who froze to death on the Pine-Loganton Road."

"Cool," said Paul. He was leaning over a couple of stones a few rows over. "This one just says 'Mother.'"

"Her name is on the big monument beside it. They did that sometimes, just labeled them like that."

Paul walked a little bit down the row. "These guys weren't very old. This one was only twelve."

"That happened, too. You see how these two died within a year? You see that sometimes, and it tells you something. In the future, people are going to be seeing a lot of graves from 2020 and 2021. What killed a lot of people in those years?"

Paul thought it over. "COVID?"
"Very good. Yes, COVID. When you see a lot of similar dates, it probably means there was an epidemic of some sort. Most cemeteries have them. Later on, if you like, we can check to see how these two died, and if there was some epidemic that year. I'll show you how to do that."

Paul nodded. "Did you get what you needed?"

"Yeah, I found the ghost grave," I said. "Let's get back where it's warm."

Monday morning, and sixteen degrees. When I got to work, as always, Emily was there.

"How was your weekend?" I asked.

"It was good. We took my sister back to college."

"Bloomsburg, right? Only town in Pennsylvania."
"That's right. How was your weekend?"

"It was good. Checked into that ghost who froze to death on the Pine-Loganton Road. Turns out, that actually happened to a guy. I found a guy with the right name who died about that time, and then when I checked the area, the wind was making a lot of noise through the trees."

"That would be hard to hear with the headphones."

"It kinda was. But I figure the noise, plus the death in a place already known for being haunted....That added up to the legend. I didn't get a whole lot of readings, but that's an investigation for another day. A warmer day."

'That makes a lot of sense." Emily grinned. "Don't know what I'd do without you here to tell me about this stuff."

I smiled.

"You won't have to find out," I said. "I'll be here."

Thin Ice: Wendigoing Gets Tough

The forest was deep, and dark. I was walking through it, having an adventure. I had my black vest on, and my Mothman shirt. 

Through the trees, someone came. A woman. A woman that I knew.

"I need help," she said. "I need a friend."

And I sat up, breathing, in bed. I was wearing my Yeti pajamas, and it was about two in the morning.

"We need to go to Wal-Mart," Paul said. "I want to buy my valentines early, so I can get something that nobody else has."

"You want unique valentines this year, huh?" I asked.

Paul nodded. "I want something that nobody else in my class is going to get."

Something occurred to me. "Wait a minute....Paul. I work in a print shop."

Paul looked up at me with some anticipation.

I said,"I can get you valentines that we create ourselves."

"Yeah!" said Paul. "I have the coolest dad ever!"

"Missed you the other day," I said to Emily. "You feeling better?"

She nodded. "I'm up and around more. Things are okay. I just wasn't too great earlier."

"Have a favor to ask you. Would you be willing to design Paul's valentines for this year? He wants something that nobody else has. Preferably incorporating his picture. He drew this design for you to work off." I handed Emily a page with hearts sketched on it in marker.

She grinned. "Love to. I'll design something for you."

"You can steal his photo from the school dance off my Facebook."

"Sounds good," she said. "So you guys were designing valentines last night, then? Slow night for you both?"

"Well, I'm looking into a Wendigo," I said.

"I miss one day of work...."

Another day at the print shop. I was working on envelopes, and wearing my rainbow alien sweatshirt. Speaking of cold weather, it was sixteen degrees out, with no end in sight.

"So the thing about Wendigos," I explained,"Is how they reflect the culture. The legend involves a monster that lives in the deep cold, and eat people. This comes from valid fears of the time---The legends always reflect the mindset of the culture. Wendigos are from northern Native American tribes, and they lived in very cold areas. The legend sprung up in an area and time when the fear of having to eat dead relatives so you could survive was very real."

Emily nodded. "I always learn something from you, Lou," she said.

"One of the Swartz Paranormal guys shared a podcast about Wendigos the other day," I said. "A guy was talking about an old book about Pennsylvania, written by a reverend. It mentioned a woman from Clearfield area who was traveling to Great Island back in the 1700s. He said that she was trapped in the snow and had to eat one of her children before she was rescued, and she became a Wendigo. So, you never know, we may have a Wendigo running around down on Great Island. Right across from there is Memorial Park, which was once a burial ground, so we may have her buried around there."

"That's really neat," she said.

Nineteen degrees out. Paul and I stood on the corner among a cluster of kids, waiting for the school bus. I was wearing my cold-weather vest, heavy coat, hood, and gloves. Paul was wearing a sweatshirt, and, at my insistence, the puffy vest I'd given him for Christmas.

"Don't forget, Dad, I have dance practice this weekend," Paul reminded me.

"I think your mother has it on the calendar," I said. "I forgot to tell you, I have a report of a wendigo down on Great Island. Want to run down and investigate it with me sometime soon?"

"Sure," said Paul.

One of his classmates, Willy or something, looked up. "I could go," he said. "I'd look for a wendigo. My mom knows who you are, she'd let me."

"Would she, now?" I said. 

"Yeah! That would be fun!"

"Well, we'll see," I said. "It's going to be cold out. We'll see."

Paul was in school. I wasn't going anywhere. I had the house to myself for a while, so I wrote an article. I checked the food supply---With the weather getting bad, I'd stocked up on canned and frozen foods; I now had enough to last for a month. If ancient people had had access to freezers and canned food, we'd have a lot fewer wendigo legends.

Then I got my cell phone out of my pack and dialed a number I'd had stored for a couple of years now. She picked up immediately.

"Hello, buddy," she said.

"Hi, SaraLee," I said. "How are you doing?"
SaraLee had been in LHPS for a while. I have a low tolerance for the psychic types, but I'd known her a long time, and she was a very good friend.

"Been a bit busy," she said. "How about you?"
"Doing okay. New job. I wanted to check in with you, see if you were okay. I had a dream about you that kind of made me wonder."

"Now, I'd be very interested in hearing about this dream." She was graceful enough to not try to claim she'd sent me a telepathic message, though the thought had crossed my mind.

"I was out in the forest on an adventure," I said. "Exploring around. You kept coming to me, saying you needed a friend."

"And that's about it?"
"That's about it."

She was quiet for a moment. "That's very interesting," she said. "I'm glad you called. I have had some difficulties lately with work and personal life."

"You need to talk?"

"A little. You and me don't talk enough lately."

"Yeah, we really should get together next time you're in Lock Haven. I have a wendigo sighting here."

"Now, that's cool," she said. "Tell me more."

It had dropped to sixteen degrees out, and Paul, unable to go outside and play, had taken to hitting a tennis ball around the house with a racket we'd found on the porch. I had some sympathy for the kid being stuck in the house for days, so I'd just cautioned him to not break anything too important.

"Mom's taking me to dance class, Dad," he said. "What are you doing?"

"Checking into the wendigo sighting. I'm sending an e-mail to my editor, who lives in Clearfield, and may have heard the story. I'm also going to see if I can find a copy of the book that this came from, and study it to see what else I can learn."

He set down the racket. Rosie immediately grabbed the tennis ball and ran from the room with it. He said,"Well, it's time for me to get to dance."

"Wear your coat," I said. "This cold is nothing to mess with."

He rolled his eyes. "Dad, I know."

Paul and Michelle left for dance class. I had the house to myself for a while. I checked on the oil supply downstairs. It was starting to snow out. Twenty-two degrees and dropping.

I was having essentially the same problem I'd had during COVID. There were adventures to be had, things to be explored, but I was basically stuck in the house. It's not easy being a stay-at-home adventurer.

I had a little time. Part of this had to be running down and checking out Great Island and Memorial Park, and I had nothing better to do for the next couple of hours. I looked at my watch.

I was tired of hanging around the house. What the hell.

In the snow, it took about twenty minutes to bike to Memorial Park on the east end. I left my bike in the empty lot, and walked around, taking a few readings. 

Great Island had been a big place for the Native American tribes along the Susquehanna River. What is now Memorial Park had been a burial ground; when they'd built the dike in the nineties, they'd found bodies and had to stop and do an archaeological dig. If the woman in the story had been buried locally, it was likely here.

I walked around a bit. The thermal imager showed nothing but blues and greens---I was the only source of heat in the park. Highs of  nineteen, lows of twelve. The Susquehanna was partially frozen.

I wanted to poke around and do some digging, but there was no way in hell that was going to happen with the ground frozen. So I made a mental note to come back when it was warmer, and walked back to my bike.

And I found that the chain was frozen. The bike was going nowhere.

I could call Michelle to pick me up. No, wait, I couldn't. She was off with Paul at dance. Chris was out of town. Tif didn't drive. I was on my own.

Okay. I was stuck in the snowstorm for a while. Don't panic. I'd been in bad situations before. I'd been trapped by a flood in a cursed park. Lost and almost dehydrated in a haunted forest. I'd even survived a pandemic. I could get through this, too, with minimum risk of hypothermia. It was going to come down to what I knew....And what I'd brought along with me.

I was wearing my heavy coat and my puffy vest, and underneath that, the Yeti sweatshirt. My heavy gloves and black hood. Okay. I'd dressed warmly enough. Now I had to see if I'd prepared my backpack for situations like this.

I had a small survival kit in there, which was a help. It had a foil emergency blanket. No, wait....I had two. I'd worked one into my coat pocket. I unfolded that one and slipped it into my coat, wrapping it around myself to trap in body heat.

There was a picnic pavilion in the park. I went underneath it and sat down at one of the picnic tables. Two rocks anchored the other emergency blanket on top of the picnic table, where it hung down and could form a bit of a windblock. I wheeled my bike underneath the pavilion. So far, so good.

Some searching around the edge of the park turned up a lot of loose sticks and brushy stuff, which I gathered into a pile. I found a beer can thrown away in the brush, and I gathered that up, too. Littering was about to save my life.

I got out my Swiss army knife and used the can opener to cut off the top of the can, leaving it open. I set down the beer can near the picnic table, underneath the cylinder of my bike. One pocket of my coat had a firestarting kit of my own devising---A pill bottle, probably from Rosie, with matches, lint, and a striker inside it. If I were going to quit society and go be a hermit, the one concession I'd make to civilization is a lighter or matches. I put the lint way down in the bottom of the can, and then started placing small sticks and twigs on top of that.

It took me four or five matches before I was able to get it to stay lit, but I got the sticks burning. As it burned, I added progressively bigger sticks until I had a small fire burning in the can. It worked---The heat rose, warming up the bicycle chain. and reflected off the emergency blanket, keeping me from freezing to death.

And then I waited for an hour. You'd think a survival situation would be more thrilling. I warmed myself as best I could with my small, can-contained fire, and waited while the heat hopefully thawed out my bike. I kept feeding sticks to the fire. I wished I'd brought a book to read.

If this didn't work, I was going to have to either walk back, or try to wait it out until morning. In which case I stood a reasonable chance of being in Highland Cemetery within the week. Lou, local paranormal investigator, died on January 19, 2025, pointlessly chasing a wendigo during a snowstorm....

Sixteen degrees. I fed some more sticks in the fire. The sun had gone down entirely, and I was basically sitting in the dark. The snow reflected what light there was, illuminating the park and relieving me of having to turn on a flashlight.

I reached out and touched the bike pedal, giving it a spin. It felt looser. I tried again, and it spun freely. The fire had heated up the chain enough that it could move now, and should get me most of the way home.

I piled a bunch of snow into the can, extinguishing the fire. Then I rolled my bike out to the road---I had to make this as quick as possible, before the thing could re-freeze. I got on and tried it.

The bike worked! I rode down the hill to Water Street. If I just kept it going, I should be okay. I headed down Water Street and got the hell out of there.

"...So I spent the rest of the night wrapped up in a blanket, researching on my laptop and drinking hot chocolate and ordering more emergency blankets," I said.

"God," Emily said. "I'd never know what to do in a situation like that. Probably call my dad."

"Well, that's an option," I agreed. "Actually I thought of calling Michelle, but she was out at Paul's dance class."

"So did you find your wendigo?"

"Kind of," I said. "I found a copy of the book online and studied it. There's a fair amount of racism to some of these books; this one is about Native American tribes and published in 1881. So the writer pretty much wrote it to make them sound uncivilized; he inserted this story in a chapter about food."

Emily made a face. "Oh my god."

"So the whole wendigo thing was a legend, but it came about mainly because the writer, a white missionary, was trying to cast the tribe in a bad light. Of course, that didn't stop me from nearly getting myself killed down at Memorial Park."
"Well, I'm glad you made it," said Emily. "I wouldn't even know how to start researching something like that."

"I can teach you sometime, if you'd like," I said. "Sometimes I'm not sure, either, so I just check everything."

"By the way," she said,"I have something for you."

I walked into the house and dropped my pack on the chair. Rosie and Butters came running into the kitchen, and a moment later, and marginally more calmly, Paul showed up.

"Hi, buddy," I said. "How was your day?"
"Good."

"By the way---Got something for you."

I handed him a stack of valentines, based on his own design, with his photo on them.

Paul grinned and giggled. "This is great! How many are there?"
"About a hundred. And now, you have valentines that nobody else is going to have."

"Yay!" said Paul.

Thin Ice: Ice Ice Maybe

LOCK HAVEN — Following a severe winter storm that paralyzed central Pennsylvania on Friday, forecasters say residents should prepare for up to three inches of snow Sunday night into Monday, which could make Monday morning travel hazardous.
AccuWeather’s latest projections indicate that the Lock Haven area should anticipate one to two inches of snow accumulating primarily between 4 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Jan. 6.
Fortunately, the storm is not expected to be accompanied by serious ice, sleet or freezing rain. However, the ongoing Arctic cold front is expected to keep temperatures below freezing throughout the week, with lows potentially dropping into the teens and wind chills pushing “real feel” temperatures into the single digits.

"Good morning, guys," I said as I walked in the door to work. "Twenty-four degrees out right now."

Kelli nodded. "We've been keeping an eye on it. We can see the temperature at the bank across the street. You have any trouble getting in on your bike?"

"The brakes froze again, but overall it was okay. I've learned to bundle up a lot."

"Damn, Lou," said Emily. "I'm impressed you can bike in this."

"Well, I gotta get to work," I said. "And much like yourself, the weather will be in the twenties for a while."

"Your Christmas present came," Emily said with a smile. "I hope you like it."

She handed me a package, and I opened it. It was a T-shirt, with four cryptids crossing the street like that Beatles album cover. Bigfoot, Mothman, a Wendigo, and Chupacabra. I grinned. 

"I love it! This is perfect!"

"We had trouble guessing your size," said Kelli. "We were waiting for you to take a break so we could run back and check your coat, but you've been busy lately."

I laughed. "I noticed you guys asking about my break a lot. I love this, Emily, and I'll be wearing it a lot as soon as it warms up again."

The phone rang, and Kelli picked up. She handed it to me. "It's your daughter."

I have two, but only one is likely to be calling me at work. I took the phone. "Hi, honey. What's up?"

"Hi, Daddy. Can you meet me after work and walk me home? I'm a little worried about the snow and ice with my wheelchair."

"Sure I can."

"What time do you leave work?"

"Four today. Will that work?"

"Yeah, that's fine. Meet you in Triangle Park?"

"I'll see you there."

"Tickets to cut." Emily brought a stack of brightly-colored theater tickets and set them on the cart behind me. "No rush, though."

"I'll get them done," I said. "Don't worry about that; I have the time."

"Okay, good. Thanks."

"With it so cold out, and not able to get out much, I thought I might start researching the Minnesota Iceman."

"Oh, that sounds interesting." Emily is generally appreciative of these things. Or maybe humoring me.

"The Minnesota Iceman is a bipedal hairy cryptid that is frozen in a block of ice, possibly a hoax," I said. "It was making the carnival rounds in 1967. The owner gave several different stories as to how he got it, and it may have been a real creature, a fake, or several fakes. Apparently it went up on Ebay in 2013, and was bought by a Texas museum."

"Oh my god, really? That's so cool! It would be neat to see that."

"I first learned all this in The Field Guide To North American Monsters, which I swear is a real thing. I figure since I can't go out much because of the cold, I might as well do some studying on the Iceman."

"That's really neat, Lou. You'll have to let me know what you find out."

"You'll be the first."

I got the tickets cut and boxed. Then I logged into the computer, and printed out a box of five hundred envelopes for an insurance agency. I packaged them up, too, and walked both to the front office, where I found Emily at her desk, doing a google search for "Minnesota Iceman."

"Ah, got you interested."

"Well, this stuff is pretty fascinating. Did you know there were some researchers who went to look at it?"

"Oh sure. One of them, Ivan Sanderson, actually visited Clinton County on another cryptid hunt."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he visited Hiram Cranmer up in Leidy Township. There's an old thunderbird photo that was said to be in Sanderson's possession, and he may have lost it here. Cranmer died in a house fire, and the thunderbird photo may have gone with him. So, in a way, the Minnesota Iceman has a tenuous Clinton County connection."

"That's so cool. How do you plan to research this?"
"Might give the museum a call, see what I can find out. It helps that I have no life."

The temperature was about nineteen and dropping. I was bundled up, walking along with Tif up Bellefonte Avenue. I was glad I'd worn my cold-weather outfit---Plus, appropriately, the Yeti sweatshirt.

"Gonna look into the Minnesota Iceman," I commented.

"Check under overpasses?" Tif asked. "Does he hang out under them all day like the Virginia Rabbitman?"
"It's....What? No, it's the Virginia Bunnyman, and the Minnesota Iceman doesn't spend time under overpasses. He doesn't do much of anything, having been frozen in a block of ice since 1967."

"Well, at least he's easy to catch."

"Well, the mystery is basically what his story is. If he's real or a hoax. The original owner claimed to have found this thing, essentially a Bigfoot frozen in a block of ice, and ran it around the carnival circuit. It's in a museum in Texas now, and I'm curious as to how real it might be."

"You know, some dads just sit in an office all day."

"Some dads are boring as hell."

We walked a little while, and I said,"Paul has his school dance Friday night. He's been excited about it for weeks."

"Oh my god. He's ten. Does he have a date?"

"He says he's going with two people. Apparently the rules on dating have changed since I was young, not that I ever got a lot of dates. He's getting all dressed up; he's been planning his outfit for a month now."

We hit Jones Street, and Tif said,"This looks okay. I can make it myself from here. Gonna have a cup of coffee."

"You have a good night, honey. See you Friday for family dinner."

"Spent last night staring at photos of the Minnesota Iceman," I said to Emily. "You know, there's remarkably few of them online, considering it's been around since 1967. I've seen more photos of Raystown Ray, and he's not even real."

Emily grinned. "I was wondering how that was going."

"You busy?" We were each standing at one of the big printers. "I don't want to interrupt...."

"Waiting for my file to convert. I got all day."
"Great, then I'll entertain you while my job prints."

"I noticed that there don't seem to be many photos of the Iceman."

"No, you can only find a couple of them. Which is weird. Normally cryptid photos are blurry but plentiful. So I found a couple of the good ones and compared them. I know some of this has to be a hoax, some sort of dummy---The position of the Iceman changes. He's a little different in different photos. Which means at least some of them are a hoax. The question is whether there was a real Iceman and a couple of fakes, or all fakes."

"That would make sense," admitted Emily.

"So I'm going to keep checking into this until I figure it out, and then hope it warms up enough I can get back to haunted cemeteries."

"There's a cemetery near my place," Emily commented. "I've always wondered about it. It's very small, and I wondered what the story is."

"I can find out for you in about five minutes," I said. "The genealogical society published books of every known grave in the county a few years ago. I'll pull the book and look it up, let you know."

"That'd be cool. Hey. Got something for you. Wait here." Emily ran to her desk, and reappeared with a jar of hard candies.

"Thanks, Emily! You brought me some of your mom's homemade candies!"

"Well, you liked them so much when you were picking them off my desk, I thought I'd bring you some. I told my mom you didn't need the big jar, but...." Emily shrugged.

"No, it's great. I love these. Thank your mom for me. I'll be eating these tonight while Paul is at his school desk and I'm looking up cemeteries."

I was thrilled when the genealogical society published books of the local cemeteries. They'd documented every known grave, and it eliminated the need for me to go racing around checking every single gravestone. That was in 2008. Since then I'd acquired all ten volumes.

I found the one Emily had asked about, and marked the page. Then I sent my friend Kevin a message; he's a Thunderbird expert from New Jersey. He had a lot of good Sanderson information, and sometimes it pays to consult.

Paul came into the room. The kid was looking good. He'd dressed in jeans and a black shirt, combed his hair, and probably taken a shower. I said,"You look good, buddy. Nice job."

"The doors open at seven," he said. "I'll need a little money for snacks."

"I'll give you money."

"Don't flirt with too many girls," said Michelle, coming into the room.

"Mom," Paul said. "They flirt with me."

On the weekend, I woke up to find that it had snowed overnight. I went out and shoveled the front walk, and helped my neighbor shovel. Then I went inside and had some coffee, looked up the number for the Austin Museum of the Weird, and called it.

Then I hung up and waited another hour, because I always forget about the time zones.

It's nice being a freelance writer---I can use that as an excuse to ask all sorts of insane questions, and nobody ever thinks twice about it.

"Hi, my name is Lou," I said. "I'm a freelance writer from Pennsylvania. I was hoping you could tell me about the Minnesota Iceman." I've reached a point in my career where I no longer feel stupid when I have to say things like that.

The girl laughed. "Oh, this is cool. We have had the Minnesota Iceman for quite a few years now. The owner of this museum saw it as a kid, and when he grew up, contacted the family who owned it."

"Do you have any kind of a provenance?"

"A what?"

"A provable chain of ownership, showing who owned it down the line."

"Oh, yes. He has all the papers from when he bought it from the family."

Which was not exactly the story I'd seen online; stories about the Minnesota Iceman seem to keep changing about monthly. "And he's been kept on ice ever since?"
"Yes, we have him in a specially frozen booth where people can view him."

"And he's been frozen ever since?"

"Oh, yes."

"Okay, thanks. If I have any other questions, I'll call back."

Flurries were coming down as I walked into work in the morning. I brushed the snow out of my hair before I leaned over Emily's desk and set the CCGS cemetery book down.

"Busy day already," said Emily. 

"Yeah, well, I got something that might excite you to start off," I said. I flipped the book to page forty. "Here's your cemetery. Garman Lutheran Cemetery. I looked it up a couple of nights ago. It was founded about 1846...."

"Wow," said Emily.

"Oh, this gets better. They didn't keep a lot of paperwork in the old days, so there weren't any maps or records. So the gravedigger would sometimes dig a grave, and find someone already there. This resulted in some double burials."

"Oh my god," said Emily. Across at the other desk, Kelli was listening to this with interest.

"And, in addition, Ida's great-grandfather is buried there. You've got a connection to the ghost in my house."

"That's so cool," said Emily. She looked at the photo of the cemetery, and pointed at a structure in the background. "Hey, this is our barn!"

I grinned. "You can hang onto the book and photocopy that part, if you like."

I walked to the back room and hung up my coat and pack. I started adjusting the printer, getting ready to print envelopes. A few minutes later, Emily came back with the book.

"I'm done. Thanks."

"Anytime. Researched the Minnesota Iceman over the weekend, too."

"Oh? Anything good?"

"I think it's probably a hoax, and has been from the start."

"So that's your conclusion, huh?" Emily grinned. "That makes sense, actually. What makes you think that?"

"Well, the story keeps changing, for one," I said. "I cannot pin down a consistent story about this thing, including the current owners. Because of that, and the fact that it made the carnival rounds from the start....I mean, the thing was traveling through state fairs and stuff for decades, and it's been consistently frozen for the past sixty years?"

"Yeah, I kind of wondered about that."

"Sanderson said it was real, but Sanderson was like me---A writer who got into cryptozoology. When the Smithsonian inspected it, they said it was a fake. If it ever comes down to a dispute between me and the Smithsonian, go with them unless I can make a really good case. They have more training and resources than I do."

Emily laughed. "I always learn something good from you, Lou."

"Well, I hope so. If it doesn't warm up, I'm gonna start looking into thunderbird sightings up toward Renovo. My friend Kevin e-mailed me about them when I checked things with him, so that gives me something new to do."

Temperatures dropped overnight, which led to Paul and I sitting up late on the couch, watching TV. The kid was wrapped in a quilt, and I was wearing one of my heavy fleeces.

"I hope it warms up," said Paul. "I want to have outside recess again."

"Well, we'll see," I said. "In the meantime, you can help me do some paranormal investigations. A few thunderbirds, maybe. What do you think?"

"Sure," said Paul. "Can I have a piece of candy?"

Drone For The Holidays: The 2024 Christmas Special

It's interesting to party with Human Resources. They don't care about any of the rules. My wife's company Christmas party was an annual event, and I was sitting at a table with the HR staff, on my fourth beer.

"What do I do with these?" her boss asked, holding up a string of tickets he'd been given.

"They're raffle tickets," said Michelle. "You put your name on them and drop them in the boxes over there. I'm hoping to win a deep fryer."
"Anyone have a pen?" he asked.

I handed mine over. "I'm a writer. Of course I have a pen."

"Are you really a writer?" asked the accounting person.

I nodded. "I really am. Freelance. I write for the Clinton County Record, PA Wilds, NCPA, a couple of other places."

"I stumbled on one of your articles a while ago," said Michelle's friend April. "I was like,'Hey, I know that guy!'"

"What do you write?" the accountant asked.

"Local history and paranormal stuff," I said. "It's about the only honest way you can make money as a paranormal investigator."

"Oh, that has to be interesting."

I thought back. Over the past couple of months, I'd already investigated my family's farm, my workplace, a hotel in the next county, and looked for Bigfoot in a forest.

"Sometimes," I said.

The weather outside was frightful. But inside, we had a team of people who weren't going to be scared off by anything---Me, Tim, Ashlin, and Millie sat around the table at our monthly meeting of the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers.

We had snacks on the table, and drinks. Gifts from one another. After the chaotic year I'd had, this was everything a holiday should be about.

"Tim, I got you something special," I said. I handed him a historic 1894 book about the railroads. "Bound it myself at work."

He grinned. "Thank you! I actually wanted this. I had plans to go and buy it. Got you something, too."

He passed over a little bag, and inside was a coffee mug from his team, Swartz Paranormal. I said,"Thank you! I can always use a mug."

"I considered ordering pizza," said Millie,"But I wanted to wait and make sure everyone was going to make it."

"This is fine, Millie," I assured her. "I love the snacks. But I wasn't going to miss out on this."

"I didn't care if I had to drive through the storm," agreed Ashlin. "I was going to make this meeting."

"I got you all something else," I said. I got in my bag and pulled out a shrink-wrapped pack of LHPS calendars, and handed them out. They had our little ghost symbol on top, with the year 2025 waiting underneath.

"I'm going to hang mine in my office at work," said Ashlin.

"I was debating what to get everyone, and then I remembered I work in a print shop," I said. "I had my friend Emily, who is brilliant and doesn't realize it, come up with the design for me."

"This is great," said Millie.

I smiled. "Happy holidays, you guys."

Paul and Tif made it a point to get together for dinner about once a week. This week, I'd been invited along, and we sat at McDonald's eating our food. I said,"You see the newspaper reported on the national drone sightings?"

"I've seen a little of that, but I haven't been following it much," said Tif. "What's going on with that?"

"People have been reporting drones, huge clusters of them. They've been spotted in New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. All the conspiracy theorists have been going nuts over it."

Tif nodded. "And what's your theory? Assuming you have an interest in this; it's a little outside your usual line."

"Well, drones get reported as UFOs a lot, so I pay attention. All sorts of things get reported as UFOs. Including, once, a goddamn gender reveal party. You remember back in 2016 when everyone was reporting clowns attacking them?"

Tif nodded. "Yeah, I remember."

"I think it's going to be like that. When you really dig into it, only the first clown sighting was actually real, and that probably was a couple of drunks screwing around. Everything after that was third-hand information, or people claiming they heard a noise and it was probably a clown, or something. There were no real hard sightings after the first one. Hell, the Bermuda Triangle pretty much is the same concept---No actual documented disappearances there, either."

"And these drones haven't been photographed?"

"One politician posted a photo. Republican, of course. He had a photo of lights in the sky, and demanded the government do something about them. But they were clearly the constellation Orion, so he was demanding that the government do something about the stars."

Tif  laughed. "Yeah, Republican, allright."

It was cold, but not snowing anymore. Paul and I walked along our street on the way home, singing choruses of "Silver Bells" together.

I stopped and frowned, looking at the sky to the northeast. "What the hell is that?"

Paul stopped and looked. "That bright light?"

"Yeah."

"Looks weird."

"It does," I agreed. "Too bright to be a star."

"No, that's not a star."

It was a very bright light, hanging in the sky. I said,"Helicopter?"

"That doesn't look like a helicopter. Is it a tower on the mountain?"

"Too high up."

"Santa?"

"Too early."

"I think it's a drone," commented Paul.

The light moved, rising and coming toward us, flying in roughly a southwest direction. As it came overhead, I could see a little better.

"It's triangle-shaped," I said. "We have an actual triangle-shaped UFO."
It disappeared over the horizon, and we reached our house and came in. Rosie and Butters, as they always do, ran to greet me at the door.

I sat down at the table and turned on my laptop. I scrolled through Facebook for a moment.

"Hey, kiddo," I said.

Paul looked up.

"My friend Charlie, from LHPS. She saw a whole bunch of drones over her place."

Paul grinned.

"We have a mystery," I said.

"Lawyer business cards," I announced, bringing the finished box out and setting it on the shelf. Emily pulled that post-it off her bulletin board and threw it away. I'd been at the new job for three months, and little by little, I was getting much better at it.

"By the way, Lou," said Emily,"I got you something for Christmas, but I'm not sure it'll be delivered by the actual day. But just so you know, you have a present coming."

I smiled. I'd come to like all my new co-workers, but Emily was fast becoming a contender for Best Work Pal.

"Thank you, Emily," I said. "That's sweet of you. I'm not picky about when my presents arrive---If I get it after the holiday, that's okay, too."

She smiled. "I'm the same way."

"Hey. You'll like this. Paul and I saw a UFO last night."

"You did?"

"Yeah. Probably a drone, but I'm going to look into it. It was behaving a little weirdly, and it may have been illegally modified. So I'm going to investigate. I'm designating this one LH-24."

"Lock Haven...."

'Right, we saw it in Lock Haven in 2024. It's my own system, but it's an easy way to keep track of them. The one I investigated a couple of years ago, in Renovo borough in 1975, was RB-75."

"So how do you investigate this one?"

"Think I'll start with a stakeout."

I started going out and checking at night. Hell, it was right down the street. In my black puffy vest, I walked down and checked at about seven PM every night, looking to see if the UFO made a reappearance. Except for one night when it was pouring rain, or one night when Paul had dance class all night. Hell, aliens rarely invade during dance class anyway.

I took my night vision binoculars. They shined a green laser light that illuminated everything I looked at, so I could see clear across town and into the mountains. No drones or UFOs, though. But at least it was down the street from my house.

During the day, I made a few phone calls. I checked with the airport and local drone clubs to see if there had been anything flying that night. I called the hospital and the military base to ask---Neither one will tell you anything, but you have to cover your bases. 

On the winter solstice, temperatures dropped down into the teens. 

"Okay, you know how to use this?" I asked Paul, handing him the comlink.

He looked it over. "Yes. No. Um....You better show me."

"You press the button on the side to talk."

"Big one or little one?"

"Big one. Hold it in while you talk. Let it go to let me talk. If you need to signal me, hit the call button." I pressed mine, and his comlink bleeped and vibrated in his hand. He grinned. "I'll only be a block or two away, so the reception should hold out fine. And it's freezing out, so I won't be long."

"Okay."

I pulled on my puffy vest, my coat, and my fleece hood, and slipped the night vision binoculars in my pocket. I told Paul,"Heading out now."
"Okay," said Paul.

I walked outside---It was eighteen degrees out. I walked down the sidewalk to the clear area by our neighbor's house. From the sidewalk, you can see clear down to the courthouse. I hit the button.

"Paul, I'm down at Bonnie's place. You read me?"

"Yeah. See anything?"

"No, nothing yet."

I pulled out the binoculars and scanned the horizon. Everything was dark. Then I spotted the blinking light, just hovering there.

"I see it, kid. Just like the other night; it's just hovering there."

"Yay!"
"I'm going down to the corner to get a better view."
I moved down to the corner at Linden. I could see the light there in the distance, hovering still.

"Yeah....It's a drone allright. Just hanging there....Wait. It's on the move."

"Like the other night?"
"Yeah, getting closer. I'm going to try to distract it; be going silent for a few minutes."

I pocketed the comlink and aimed the binoculars at the drone. I'd been studying drones a little---I didn't have the equipment or knowledge to set up a jammer, but I'd learned that I could interfere to some extent with a laser. And I had access to lasers.

I clicked on the green laser light, shining it at the drone. I kept it aimed as the drone bobbed a bit, hitting the camera on the drone dead center as much as I could.

The laser can block the view that the camera is getting. And even the best drone pilot....Has to see to fly it.

I watched as the drone tried to weave away from the laser, but I kept the laser on the camera lens.

There we go. Having some fun now.

It tried to drop out of the way, but I kept on it. The drone slewed wildly to the side, and I saw it crash into a tree and drop, somewhere in the vicinity of Hoberman Park.

My garage was down the alley. I shoved the binoculars in my pocket, ran and got my bike, and rode down in the direction I'd seen the drone fall.

I got down to Hoberman Park, and waited. I couldn't find the drone in the dark, but I didn't need to. A minute or two later, a car pulled up, and a young woman got out with a flashlight.
"Oh, now I get it," I said. "It's you. CT-19."

She looked up at me. She was young, with long brown hair. She said,"Oh god. You."
"Mmmhm. I remember you. About five years ago, you faked a UFO sighting in Castanea Township with a drone to get my attention. You wanted to partner with me."

"You turned me down for some reason."

"Because you faked a UFO sighting."

"So what are you doing out here now?" she asked.

"Following up on the drone sightings," I said. "I assume you saw the news reports, and decided to get involved."
She nodded. "Drones have been attacking places all over the east coast. I thought I'd stir up some excitement here, too."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," I said.

"Don't suppose you've reconsidered?"
"No, I'm still not working with you," I said. "But when you find your drone, go ahead and have your fun. I won't interfere; I just wanted to figure out what was going on. Merry Christmas."

Six AM. I saw the crack of light as Paul opened the door and came in. "It's Christmas! Can we wake up now?"

"Why the hell can't you do this on school days?" I said. "How about you lay down here with us for a while?"

He shook his head. "I think there's presents downstairs!"

"Okay, give me a minute."

I dragged myself out of bed and we want downstairs. I started the coffee and Michelle sat down on the couch as Paul started pulling presents out from under the tree.

"A pizza blanket! A Melanie Martinez coloring book! A Bigfoot backpack! A puffy vest just like Dad's! This is the best Christmas ever!"