After all this time, my co-workers know to keep an eye out for paranormal stuff for me. They bring me ghost stories, articles about the Yeti, and reports of UFOs. It's one of the reasons my shift was weirder than yours yesterday. (No matter when you are reading this, my shift was weirder than yours yesterday.)
"Before I process these, would you like to look at them?" Tracey asked me while I was on desk.
She was holding two books about the paranormal in Pennsylvania. That's another perk of my job; if you work at the public library, you get to see all the good books as they come in. I'd highly recommend being the paranormal investigator of the local library, except I think I'm the only one of those.
"Oh, sure, thanks!" I said. "These look good." I sat down and began paging through them.
Five minutes later, I was back by her desk, showing her a photo of the Van Sant covered bridge in New Hope. "This was my honeymoon."
I went back to the desk, and read some more. In one of the books, I found a few paragraphs about Jersey Devil sightings in 1909, which was something I was familiar with. I walked back to Tracey's desk.
"This book has some stuff about the Jersey Devil sightings of 1909."
"Didn't we used to be a library?"
"I was asked to look into the history of the Texas Restaurant, but I haven't been making any progress. It was started by two Greek guys in 1918, and originally called 'Texas Hot Wieners,' but I can't find the opening date. There's nothing in the newspapers that I can see. Sometimes when I get desperate I search online, but there's no way in hell I'm going to do a Google search for Texas Hot Wieners."
Tracey nodded, and made a gesture. Go on.
"The Jersey Devil has been around for like three hundred years, a flying creature from New Jersey. In 1909, there were some sightings, and this monster panic was everywhere. The thing was sighted in Lock Haven---I wrote a column on it a while ago. It was around this time of year; first a night watchman at the paper factory up in my neighborhood claimed to have seen the Jersey Devil. Then a few days later, a guy on Grove Street reported seeing the Jersey Devil on his roof. He propped a ladder up and let people look at the hoofprints in the snow. The house still stands; I've pointed it out on tours."
"So now you're looking after the Jersey Devil."
"I am."
"Well, good luck."
"This thing visited Lock Haven. This proves that even the Jersey Devil prefers Lock Haven to New Jersey every once in a while."
The next afternoon, I worked for a while on programs, just so I could say I'd been productive. Then I started in on the Jersey Devil.
I got on the microfilm and found the 1909 articles. I was printing them out as Sue walked by.
"Working on an article, Lou?"
"Chasing the Jersey Devil."
"Oh. You able to make a run to the post office for me later?"
"Sure."
On January 30, 1909, a night watchman at the paper mill named E.W. Rogers saw the Jersey Devil flying over the building. Two days later, Charles Poorman, a resident of the second floor of a Grove Street house, heard something on his roof and found hoof prints in the snow.
I took another look at the book Tracey had loaned me. It said that a man named Norman Jefferies confessed in 1929 to having faked some of the 1909 Jersey Devil sightings with a costume to build up interest in his museum.
Jefferies, huh?
There was a Jefferies family who'd been early settlers of Lock Haven. James Jefferies III was a retired pirate from Chester County who'd built a house that still stood Bald Eagle Street. His son had grown up to become the mayor. I pulled the 1909 city directory and looked up the name.
Former mayor James Jefferies IV had still been living in the house with his wife Elizabeth in 1909. There was no mention of a Norman.
But if he was just visiting....
I got out the 1906 Sanborn map, the closest I could get to 1909. Laying it out on the table in the PA Room, I traced the Jefferies house to the Grove Street House. They weren't too far apart, and in 1909, Henderson Street had run all the way through. It would have been a reasonably short walk from one to the other.
"It wouldn't have taken much time at all," I told Tracey at her desk. "Norman Jefferies could have walked to the house pretty quickly. Now, the other sighting was a night watchman who claimed to have seen it flying, but he bought his own business just two years later, so maybe there was a payoff there."
"Oh, really? That's interesting."
"Yeah, I really should probably get a hobby or something."
Tracey laughed. "No, it's kind of neat."
"Well, I wouldn't mind capturing the Jersey Devil, either. But I like figuring things out even if they turn out not to be paranormal."
Sue came out of her office. "Do you have time to go to the post office?"
"Get me the packages. I'm on it."
I got on my bike outside the post office, and rode east into Jordan's Alley. I wanted to take a little side trip and go look at the Grove Street House---The one where the Jersey Devil had been spotted on the roof.
I stood in the alley, looking at the house from behind. There was a wooden porch in the back that had pretty visibly been added on in recent years, and I could see the portion of the house that it was covering up. There had been a short, one-story storage space in the back, and a two-story wing attached to it. It wouldn't have taken much to get up on the roof in 1909; I could have climbed up in about a minute and a half. Except I wouldn't have been born for about another sixty years.
"You're that ghost hunter guy, aren't you?" The old guy with the gray hair looked me over at the desk.
I nodded. "I'm a paranormal investigator, yes."
"I thought so! I thought I recognized you from the newspapers! Hey, you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure, I'll answer if I can."
"Okay. This is something that happened to me, twenty, thirty years ago. I was living 'round here at the time, and I was married....Not married anymore, but...."
This happens occasionally. I'm very familiar with the process. Some people say "question," but they mean "tell their life story." It's happened enough that I know all the signs. He's not going to ask a question, just take the next half hour telling me a ghost story.
"....So then I got up....I was always waking up in those days....And...."
I get these people who assume I'm basically a captive audience---They can stand there and talk to me endlessly, and I have to stand and listen. I have a tendency to fade in and out of these monologues, as it doesn't matter to them if I'm actually listening, just as long as I smile and nod.
So I wind up having an experience like this:
"...So I says to the guy, I says, don't you include the power-wash for free? And he says...."
I drift off here. This is nothing I need to know. And when I come back, mentally, to the real world:
"....So the chemo was fine, but it made blood come out of his...."
Wait, WHAT? How did we get here? Guess I'd better fade out again. I was better off that way. Smile and nod.
Everything was quiet when I got off the desk half an hour later. Thursday nights tend to be slow, unless I'm meeting with Teen Paranormal. I pulled the microfilm from 1909, and put it in the reader.
To prove the Jersey Devil sightings were a hoax, I needed to place Norman Jefferies in Lock Haven during the time. Many of the old newspapers used to run entire columns dedicated to who was visiting who from out of town: Mister and Mrs. Abraham Lipez got a visit from their daughter on Thursday last. She was traveling from New York.... The Clinton County Times would have been best for this sort of thing, but we didn't have it from 1909. So I settled for the Clinton Democrat, also a decent paper. I started scrolling.
I didn't find any mention of the Jefferies family. But things got really interesting almost immediately. In that era, there were a lot of mentions of the Jersey Devil---More than I'd realized. I printed them all off, one at a time.
On January 28, 1909, it had been spotted in Williamsport. January 30, in Lock Haven over the paper mill. February 1 had been the night Charles Poorman saw it on his roof on Grove Street.
On February 4, a young man named Harry Bey had been walking to work and seen the thing on a roof on Vesper Street. I checked the old Sanborn map and located the building---It was an eyewear place now. The part that fascinated me was that he'd thought it was a Giwoggle.
The Giwoggle was an old legend from northern Clinton County. It was a sort of artificial werewolf conjured up by a witch. It had the body of a wolf, the feet of a horse, and the hands of a bird. In 2011, the Giwoggle had been declared Clinton County's official monster---I'd made sure of that.
The same night, a party in Dunnstown had been interrupted by a possible Giwoggle sighting, but that had been an old widow playing a prank.
The final sighting had been on February 11, when a train conductor had again seen the Jersey Devil over the paper mill, flying east. After that, everything had become quiet.
So this involved the Giwoggle, too.
This had just gotten a lot more interesting.
My Friday radio program ended ten minutes early the next morning, so I walked around the corner to the eyewear place. It's right by Willard's Alley, on Vesper Street. I walked around it a bit, looking it over, and then stepped inside.
"May I help you?" the receptionist asked. Two old ladies were talking in the waiting area.
"Maybe. This is going to sound weird," I said. "I'm a local newspaper columnist who writes about local history. There was an incident with this building in 1909. How long have there been rentals up above?"
"I actually don't know," she said. "I don't even know how old this building is."
"At least 1906. I saw it on a map." Was a time, I'd felt pretty stupid just walking in and asking questions like this, but I've long since gotten over that. "Is there any rooftop access from the inside?"
"I don't believe so. You'd have to get a ladder."
Another woman came out, I think a doctor. "What are you researching?"
"This is the weird part," I said. "In 1909 you had a monster spotted on your roof."
She laughed. I said,"Have you ever heard of the Jersey Devil?"
She shook her head.
I continued,"It's a monster from New Jersey, a legend going back about three hundred years. Back in 1909, a Jersey museum owner got publicity by faking sightings, and this thing wound up spotted all over three or four states. People were calling off work because of the Jersey Devil."
"This is all real?" the doctor asked. The old ladies had ceased talking completely, and were now just staring at me.
"Well, it's definitely real that it happened," I said. "Whether the monster exists or not is something else."
"Yeah, I noticed your shirt," she said.
"Oh, right. My sister gave me this for Christmas." I was wearing the shirt that said Jersey Devil Hunter. "This is what it looked like. But in 1909, there was a man walking to work in the morning, and he claimed to have seen it on your rooftop."
"Well, that's pretty interesting. No, I don't think anyone could have climbed up on our roof at the time."
"That's what I needed to know," I said. "Thanks."
So, you stop by the grocery store after work, and you wind up talking about cryptozoological monsters. You know how it is.
I was in line, buying some stuff for dinner, when Tracey appeared behind me. "Hello," she said.
"Oh, hi, Tracey," I said. "How you doing?"
"Pretty good, you?"
"Not bad. Been busy. Thanks for loaning me that book on the Jersey Devil---I've been making some progress there."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. From what I can figure out, it probably wasn't a hoax, or at least not a hoax perpetuated by Jefferies. Maybe not at all; some of those sightings would have been hard to fake. But while I was researching it, I found out that there's a lot more to the story than I realized. There were a lot of sightings about that time, all reported by the Clinton Democrat."
"Well, that's pretty interesting."
"The really neat part is that they mistook this thing for a Giwoggle. You remember the Giwoggle? I've written about it a couple of times."
"If I remember right, the headline was Here Today, Gone Giwoggle."
"That was one of them, yes. Clinton County's official monster. So there was a lot of discussion about whether it was the Jersey Devil, or a Giwoggle had come into town for a while."
Tracey smiled. "So you don't know for sure."
"No. It's gonna make a great column, but no. I don't know, and I don't have to. Some things are just as much fun if they stay a mystery."
"Hi, Adam," I said, walking into work. "How's things?"
"Doing good, man, doing good," said Adam at the desk. "How about you?"
"Good. You have a good weekend?"
"Yeah. You?'
"I did, but it's good to get back to work. I've got an article to write, and it's a good one."
"Cool, man."
I went back to my desk, threw my coat over my chair, and hung up my backpack on its hook. Then I sat down at my desk and started typing my column.
I wrote the headline. HERE THERE BE MONSTERS.
Tracey stopped by my desk. "I just got another book in. It's about ghosts in the Susquehanna Valley. Are you interested in taking a look?"
I smiled. Then I held out my hand, and took the book.
"Bring it on."
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