Unidentified Fly-In Object

I've always thought that if I were to get a tattoo, I'd get the outline of Clinton County, right on my shoulder. Maybe with the shape of Pennsylvania. Then I remember---I'm forty-seven. I get a tattoo and it legally constitutes a midlife crisis.
But that wasn't preventing me from going into the tattoo place downtown. For work reasons. That's why my job is weirder than yours. (No matter what it is you do for a living, my job is weirder than yours.)
Jazmyn was there. "Hi, Lou! Want to see my new tattoo?"
Jazmyn is a sweet kid, one of my junior paranormal investigators. She was currently home after being away in basic training. I've grown very fond of her. I looked at her tattoo, which showed a design involving compass points.
"Nice," I said. "It gives me sort of a feeling of adventure."
"Does it? That's pretty cool!"
"I'm looking for the owner," I said. "If he's got a moment."
"Lou!" The owner looked up from the back of the room, where he was tattooing a guy. "What's up?"
"I actually wasn't aware you'd recognize me." I've been a local writer for about ten years now, but it's still a surprise when someone knows who I am. There's a significant part of me that feels six years old, scribbling two-sentence pencil articles for my grandmother, who will look at them distractedly and say That's nice.
"Oh, sure. You recently wrote that piece in the Record about the antique chair."
"Chair and Chair Alike. Yeah, that's me."
"So what can I do for you?" he asked.
"Well, I've been told by a couple of people that you think your place is haunted."
He laughed. "Well, I don't, but some of the guys do. They say they've had some stuff happen in the back."
"I wanted to offer a free investigation." I handed him the LHPS business card. "We'll be happy to come in anytime. We don't charge, and we'll keep it as confidential as you like. Of course, me saying this in a roomful of people wasn't the most brilliant plan...."
He laughed. The guy getting the tattoo said,"My lips are sealed, man."
"Cool. Anyway, think it over. We'd be happy to do an investigation for you."
"I'll consider it. Thanks."
I grinned at Jazmyn. "See you at the library, kid."
And that is how we do that.

First thing when I got into the museum, I checked my e-mail. Nothing new---Appointments at Piper, meeting notices, a comment on my latest column, and a UFO sighting. The usual.
As there was nothing pressing, it was a while before I got to reading them. I spun in my chair at the Piper Museum, and walked out onto the floor, where there had to be about fifty people.
Stacey, our office manager, was in the gift shop. I said,"How's it going? What can I do?"
"We have a tour at ten," Stacey said. "John will say a few words about the planes, and then you can take the tour. The Fly-In is always busy. Don't forget, you have a board meeting at one."
As a kid, I'd dreamed of an exciting life. Adventures, mysteries, and all sorts of excitement. And I've managed to achieve all that. And, in a supreme effort at balance, the universe also makes me sit through endless committee meetings.
"Got the agenda ready," I said.
Stacey nodded. "The annual Fly-In is always crazy."
The Fly-In is an annual event held on the airport grounds. It's a big deal, and the museum opens for it. Crissy, the office assistant, approached me with a note. "Lou, the airport just called. They want to move your eleven o'clock meeting to the Fly-In grounds; they'll have trouble getting over here."
"Not my problem," I said. "I did not request this meeting."
"We don't have anyone else to take over the tour," said Stacey. "Can you...."
'Yeah. I can handle the tour."
After the tour, I went down to the hangar. I almost always detour through the hangar on my way to board meetings, mostly because I love working in a hangar full of airplanes. Sometimes I go and sit in the Piper Cheyenne just to do paperwork. We'd just gotten a new plane in, a beautiful, bright red Piper Coupe. I admired it for a moment before going into the meeting.
"Okay, around the table," said President John, banging his gavel. "Lou? What do you have?"
"Just one thing," I said. "This week is the one year anniversary of when I first became your curator, and it's been wonderful. Thank you all."
John nodded, banged the gavel again. "Meeting adjourned."
I went out into the hangar, and sat down in the Cheyenne. The two back seats were barely visible from the outside, and I leaned back and closed my eyes. Took a deep breath for a moment.
Then I went upstairs to my office using the secret back staircase. I finally got a chance to check my e-mail.

"A red airplane!" Paul said, pointing up into the air.
I walked through the Fly-In with my family, my wife and son, Paul Matthew, and daughters Tif and Biz. There were planes all over the field, taking turns flying into the air. I love the Fly-In, and being with the museum, I can be right in the middle of it. My wife said,"I'm going to get him some ice cream. Do you want to sit down with the girls?"
I nodded. The girls and I found a spot at the picnic tables, and sat down.
I glanced up at the sky. "Got a UFO sighting on this end of town," I said.
"Where?" asked Tif.
"That's the problem, I can't narrow it down geographically much. I get e-mail notifications from a couple of sites, but as you can imagine, some of them aren't exactly professionally run. They lack details. What I know is that somewhere down around here, on a Tuesday night two weeks ago, about ten PM. A light in the sky that moved and stopped several times, heading northeast."
"Who saw it?" Tif asked.
Tif's been listening to me a long time; she asks all the right questions. "Again, don't know. The site's anonymous. But I figure I'll look into it. Drones have upped the UFO sightings by about eighty percent, and this is typical drone behavior they're describing. So I'll check into drones first. It'll give me something to do."
"Yeah, I noticed how you haven't been busy enough lately."
"Got to review a play out at Millbrook tomorrow night," I said. "You available to babysit the little guy?"
"Oh, sure," said Tif. "I'll bring some glow sticks, and he'll have a bath in the dark. He'll love that."

The Fly-In is crazy from start to finish. I walked in at nine AM and immediately got swept into a committee meeting with two other board members about the new kiosk. One of the board members was an old biology professor of mine at Lock Haven University, twenty years ago, and if you don't think it's weird to be serving on a board with your old teacher, you'd better think that one over again.
The meeting was in my office, so I got my computer on and surreptitiously searched for drone operators in the Lock Haven area.
I found one guy who ran drone lessons. His name was Doctor H. Shook, and he gave lessons right on the airport grounds. I scribbled the phone number on a post-it.
"Be right back," I said, and ducked into the secret staircase by my office, and disappeared into the hangar.
I sat down in the back of the Cheyenne. It was quiet in there.
I called City Hall first, for some property research for the museum, and then tried calling the drone guy on my cell.
I got his answering service. "Hi, this is Doctor Shook. I'm not available right now, but---"
I hung up. I could try to get him later. I climbed out of the Cheyenne and walked further into the hangar. President John was sitting near the L-4 Grasshopper.
"Hi, John. Hey, I was thinking yesterday---What if you and I teamed up for a guest speaking event? I do a little Piper history, and you talk about the good old days."
"Sure, we could do that," he said. "A lot of people love that story about how the fiberglass department guys used to use the modeling clay to make fake food." He laughed to himself. A lot of the time, when an old person starts talking about the past, it's time to run. But John is really entertaining. I've been known to get him started deliberately. "It looked realistic enough that people would try to eat it. Old Doc Shook used to get a laugh out of that. He was just telling me today before his program."
I stared at him. "Wait....What? Doctor Shook is here?"
"Oh, sure, he's giving a talk in the conference room."
And here I'd been sitting in the Cheyenne trying to call the guy, and he was right here at Piper, in the next room over.
I asked,"When's the program end?"

I was waiting in the hall outside the conference room when the program let out. Late. I slipped in as the guest speaker was cleaning up.
"Doctor Shook?" I asked. "You may have a call from me on your cell; I've been trying to call you. My name is Lou; I'm on the board here."
He shook my hand. "Yes, that's me."
"You're the drone guy."
"That's right, I am."
"If you have a moment, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your lessons."
"Too bad you weren't in yesterday. That was the topic of my talk."
"Well, this shouldn't take long. Is there any chance you'd have been flying a drone around here two weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening?"
He shook his head. "Not me, no. My class always ends at four. That sounds like a group from Williamsport who comes in on Tuesdays in the evening. They'd be the ones."
I smiled.
The UFO was a drone.
"That answers what I need to know, then. Thank you."

I stood in the small room near my office, where I had my secret UFO research station. I'd discovered it a few months ago---A small room, reachable only through my office. When considering what would be the best use of the space, I'd immediately decided on UFO research. Maybe the occasionaly flying monster; I'm not a one-trick wonder. But UFOs for sure. I had a dry erase board with the dates and locations of sightings scribbled on it. I looked at 6-6-2017: NE LH PA.
Then I erased it.
I took a file, wrote a label on it, and tucked the paperwork inside: A printout of the original notification, and a note with my conclusions. Then I put it in one of the file cabinets.
Case closed.

Bottle Episode

On Father's Day, my family decided to go out and look for some lost whiskey that was buried during Prohibition.
Hallmark doesn't really make a card for that.
We were in my wife's car, a white Prius, doing our exploration to celebrate Father's Day. My younger daughter Biz had suggested this, because it's something I enjoy doing. My wife was driving, with daughter Tif in the front seat. I was in the back, sharing space with Biz and Paul Matthew in his car seat.
I'd taken the kids out a few years ago, doing the same thing. We'd found a field where we'd dug up a bottle of high-quality bootleg whiskey, based on a lot of my research. It had been a great time, hiking into the wilderness and hunting for buried treasure.
Ever since, Biz had been on me to do it again.
The family that explores together, adores together.

"Prince Farrington was America's most notorious bootlegger," I explained from the back of the car. "He was from North Carolina, but he lived right here in Clinton County. He had a reputation for churning out a high quality, excellent whiskey, not that rotgut stuff that would blind you. A lot of his stills are still out there, and probably a lot of his whiskey, as well. He had a habit of burying some of it to be found later. Turn left up this road, Michelle."
You might think there's not enough room for us all in a Prius. You'd be correct. We were essentially wearing the car.
Why am I bothering to write all this down? Of course that's what you're thinking. People want to read about something interesting, not my plans for Father's Day. That's a valid point, except here you are reading this.
"How'd you figure it's in Farrandsville?" Biz asked me.
"I checked the documentation on Farrington," I said. "There are lists of every place people think he had stills. This one didn't look to be much of a drive. There used to be some farmland up here, plus a creek known as Whiskey Run. Farrington liked to set up in limestone country, so I checked a geological map."
"What was the deal with the limestone again?" asked Tif.
"It filtered the taste out," said my wife.
"But you'd want your whiskey to taste like whiskey," said Tif.
"Not the whiskey, the water," I said. "Bootleggers needed to set up by springs because they needed a steady supply of fresh water to distill whiskey. The feds figured out that the process left a faint whiskey taste in the water, so they'd taste the streams to find the stills. Farrington caught on, and discovered that limestone would filter out the taste. The man used geology to bootleg."
"This is fun," said Biz as we went over a bumpy road. "I love doing this."
"Keep your eyes open for water," I said. "The stream over there is actually called Whiskey Run, most likely after Farrington's work. Somewhere along there stood one of his stills."
We watched out the car windows as Michelle drove up the rocky road. Tif commented,"This is really pretty. It makes me wish I could get outside and hike more."
"There was a spring over there," said Biz.
"There was?" I asked.
"Yeah, one of those ones with a pipe stuck in the ground for fresh water."
"Stop the car, Michelle," I said.
My wife pulled to a stop along the deserted road. Biz said,"It wasn't a natural-looking spring; it had a pipe...."
"Yeah, the pipe's man-made, but the water isn't," I said. "That spring has always been there. Which would make it perfect for a Farrington still. Let's try it."

"Have to go potty, Daddy," said Paul.
We climbed out of the car. My wife said,"He needs to go. Can you show him?"
"Yeah. Come on, little man."
We walked off the trail, out of sight of the girls. I said,"Okay, little man. We're going to go potty right here."
"We go potty outside?"
"That's right." I tugged down his pants. "That's the great thing about the outdoors; it's all one big bathroom. In the forest, you can go outside, just like inside."
It's one of those unexpected parental moments. We'd adopted Paul three years ago. When you're getting a child somehow, you tend to anticipate the big stuff. You except sleepless nights and hospital visits. I was totally ready to save for college. But this kind of blindsided me. Nothing manages to prepare you for the moment you teach your son that he can whiz in the woods.
"Now listen, little man. Here we go, this is how we do it. Now, just for the record, I don't want you doing this in the backyard while the neighbors are watching."
"O-Kay."
There isn't going to be a photo added to this entry.
"Wow! I go outside!"
"That's right, buddy. You never forget your first time."
And on that note, I'm kind of relieved we got a boy.

"I want to explore too," said Paul
We walked up the road. Paul was staying near Tif. Michelle was guarding the car, which we could see from where we were. Paul stopped to pick up a few rocks. I asked,"Where did you see the spring, Biz?"
"Right up here," said Biz. She pointed. "There." There was a pipe with running water sticking out of the ground jsut off the road, in the woods.
"Okay, we'll look around here," I said. "This is perfect." I crossed the road and stopped at the edge, looking down at the run. Paul joined me.
"I find a rock, Daddy!"
"I see that. Okay, wait here---Stay with Sissy."
"We havin a adventure!"
I climbed down the bank and stood by the creek. There was a slat area---Most of the old stills are gone now, though a few still remain. I didn't figure I'd find any trace of this one, but the flat spot was basically perfect for a location.
Biz was climbing down the bank after me. She slipped and tumbled into the dirt, and then got up. Paul laughed at her.
I knelt by the stream, looking it over.
Shallow, cool water....Flat rocks....
I reached into the water with one hand, splashing around a bit. I felt the soft mud underneath, and then felt around the rocks. Finally, I grabbed the biggest flat rock, flipped it over, and stuck my hand underneath.
It was only later that I thought about the possibility of getting bitten by snakes, fish, or water monsters. At the time, I just felt around under there.
And I felt something flat and smooth.
Glass.
Gently, I pulled it out. I'd found a broad, flat bottle with a glass and cork topper. It was about two-thirds full of tan liquid.
I stood up.
"Hey, Biz!"
She looked up, still coming down the bank. "Yeah?"
I held up the bottle, and she grinned.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. It was hidden in the stream."
I carried it back up to the top, and handed the bottle to her. She carefully popped the glass plug out, and sniffed it.
"It's whiskey, allright," she said. She turned it over in her hands, examining it. "Uneven seam on the bottle, which makes it about the right age." I was ind of proud of her. You know those guys who brag that their kid made the winning home run or whatever? Yeah, the hell with those guys. My kids can find ancient artifacts.
"We found it!" Biz said.
I smiled.
"We did."

We walked back to the car. I held up the bottle to show my wife, and she raised her eyebrows and shook her head.
"How do you always get so lucky?" she asked.
"It's not luck, not really," I said. "I'm very good at what I do."
"We go home now?" asked Paul.
"Yep," I said. "We're going home now. I got some food to cook on the grill."
For Father's Day. Almost as if we were a normal family.

Paint Misbehaving

Henry Wharton Shoemaker never had to attend staff meetings.
Well, probably he did. But history doesn't make a big thing about that. He's better known for his explorations and his recording of paranormal legends. Like I am.
And yet, here I sit.
"....We received a grant to help us fix the windows after the recent storm," the library director said. "So our maintenance department will be working on that soon."
That's right. The storm. Forgot about that.
I sat in the back of the reference room, among all my co-workers. Zach and Adam were always in the back with me. Diane, the director, sat up front. My other co-workers around the table.
"That's about all I have," said the director. "Full-timers, I need you to stay. Part-timers can go."
I threw my hands in the air. "Woohoo!"
Outside the library, I got on my bike and rode southeast. I'm a part-time library staffer in Lock Haven. I could also be considered a part-time paranormal investigator, writer, historian, tour guide, museum curator, and urban explorer. I don't sleep much.
There are the ruins of an old railroad machine shop along Liberty Street. People walk by it all the time without really looking; they think it's just a flat concrete pad and some girders there for no discernible reason. But a few years ago, I'd looked it up on the 1925 Sanborn Map, and learned that it was a railroad shop, built sometime around 1915.
It had been built from local brick. Sometime around the 1950s, it had been demolished, but a lot of those bricks were still lying there underground, waiting to be found. Often, after a hard rain, they get partially uncovered.
I check every couple of months. It's a form of public service.
I parked my bike and walked in, along the tracks. I found one---An unbroken, good-sized brick with the writing carved in it. LH B&T CO, LOCK HAVEN, PA. At least a hundred years old.
It was too heavy to carry in my backpack. I biked across the church parking lot to the local grocery store and picked up four plastic bags along with my dinner.
I rode back to the ruins, I knelt down and pried the brick from the ground. It was heavy; I hefted it with some effort. I placed it in three bags, doubled up, slung it over my handlebars, and rode off toward home.
Shoemaker would have been proud.

So what's the quickest way to investigate a ghost on your lunch break?
Asking for a friend.
There was this seminar. Historic archiving and preservation. It was held at the Taber Museum in Williamsport, next county over from where I live. And my my boss and I decided we were going to attend it together.
These things are a lot like a train going uphill: They start off okay, but it doesn't take long before they get really slow.
"So, this seems like a good time to break for lunch," said the instructor. "We'll meet back here in an hour."
Everyone stood up, stretched, got in line.The director said,"I'm going to eat outside in the car. See if you can network a bit. I'll be back in an hour."
"Can do," I said.
 I wound up next to a woman named Carly, from Allentown. I was wearing my shirt that said Historian: You'd be more interesting if you were dead.
"I grew up not far from Allentown," I said. "In Slatington, on a small farm."
She brightened. "Oh, yes! I know Slatington."
"You know, one of my big heroes from this area visited out there," I said. "Henry Wharton Shoemaker. He wrote a book about his trip. A Week In The Appalachian Mountains."
"Really? That's so cool!"
"You can get it on Amazon," I said. "I got a copy."
Lunch was a sandwich and chips, pretty easily wolfable in five minutes or less. Which left me with almost an hour to go and explore the museum. I strolled out into the lobby, and found Gary, the director of the Taber Museum.
"Gary, I been dying to know," I said. "A couple years ago when you were on the ghost-hunting show The Dead Files, how badly did they edit you?"
Gary rolled his eyes. "It was awful. They kept trying to get me to say things that were untrue."
"I got that impression," I said. "My team was called in on that one before the TV people. Did you get to meet the homeowner?"
Gary shook his head. "I mostly met the boom guy."
"The homeowner was nuts. I mean, she claimed to have been assaulted by a ghost. She couldn't stick to a story. Later when I interviewed her neighbors, they told me she'd been seen in the backyard wearing a tinfoil hat."
Gary laughed. "I thought that was just an expression."
"Yeah, so did I, until that time."
I headed out into the gift shop, and picked up a couple of pretty rocks for Paul. My son has an interest in rocks lately. They don't have to be brightly colored and shiny, but it helps.
As I paid, I saw the postcard on the counter. Nellie Tallman. The haunted portrait.
That's right....I'd forgotten about that.
"So, tell me about the haunted painting," I said to the woman ringing me up.
She smiled. "Oh, yes. That little girl fell off the stool and died while her father was painting her. It hung in their house for years, but kept falling off the wall. Finally he gave up and stored it in the attic. The first night it was donated here, a car smashed through the museum and knocked it down. After that, we've had times when it won't stay on the wall---It's always found in the morning, propped on the sofa."
I nodded and picked up the postcard. "Add this in, please."

I walked through the museum, looking at all the neat stuff. Sketches by John Sloan. The cell door of William Hummel, who'd been hanged for killing his family---I'd gotten a four-part series of articles out of him a while back.
Got the whole museum to myself, more or less unsupervised---This is excellent. You'd think I'd be used to that by now, but this one is bigger and doesn't have as many airplanes.
Many of the displays were sectioned off to look like rooms---An old-style kitchen, a bedroom, a cabin. There were cavemen and Indians. I rounded a corner and saw the Victorian living room display, and there it was. Nellie's portrait.
So, Nellie. There you are.
I got a laser thermometer and an EMF detector out of my pocket. I usually have a little ghost-hunting equipment on me. I checked around with the thermometer---The place had an average temperature of about seventy-three in this wing, which dropped to seventy around the portrait. Notable---Not too significant.
I took a couple of photos, which I wasn't so sure was allowed, but nobody was watching.
I pressed the button on the EMF detector. Mine is a little thing shaped like a wand, about five inches long. They're for finding electricity. Mostly they're made for not drilling into a wire and killing yourself, but they've been adapted to ghost hunting, too.
I walked around the area a little, waving the detector. No readings. I checked the back side of the wall, in the hallway. Nothing. No electricity was leaking from the wall; there was no reason to suggest there was any there.
Then, cautiously, I sidled up to the exhibit, right beside the railing.
I leaned over the railing a little, which I was pretty sure I wasn't allowed to do, and reeeeeached in to the painting. Trying to look very, very casual, I held up the EMF detector, getting it to within a couple of inches.
And it beeped once, just for a second.
Got something!
My eyes widened, and I immediately withdrew it. I shoved it in my pocket and scampered back down the hall.

It was early in the evening when we got back to the library. Adam was on the desk. I walked in and dropped my pack, checking my mailbox.

"Hey!" Adam said. "How was the seminar?"

"Not bad," I said. "May have picked up a few new preservation tricks. And I got to explore the museum a bit."

"You learn anything good?"

I grinned.

"Yeah," I said. "I may have."