I knew it was going to be an interesting day when I found a stack of sixty-year-old documents sitting on my desk.
There was a note from the Director, now two days from retirement. Like all notes from the Director, it was hard to read and shed light on nothing. So I went looking for her in the stacks.
"I thought you might be interested," one of the patrons said as I passed. "I saw a UFO last night. It was about three in the morning, and it was out near the onramp to the bypass. It was a white light, no sounds, no trails. It flew for a moment and then disappeared."
"Out by Clinton Plaza? Walnut Street?" I asked.
"Yeah, that's right."
"I'll look into it."
The Director began explaining when she saw me coming, holding the note.
"Those marriage certificates that we brought down from the attic," she said. "I've found more of them. At first I thought they were from some of the books we already had done, but they seem to be from a partial book we didn't know we had. Book 40, form 1953."
"Hunh. I never even saw those up there."
"Go check the attic," she said. "See if there are any more up there that we missed."
"A quest!"
"If you find any, bring them down. And see about finding a way to preserve them."
"This gives me an excuse to go searching through the attic," I said. "That's always a good time."
The attic of the Ross Library had been built in 1887. A hundred and thirty years later, I was still discovering stuff in it.
Not what I was looking for, of course. There were no further marriage certificates that I could see. But there were shelves full of other things. I found old documents, Henry Shoemaker books I'd never seen before, maps, and old military artifacts. The attic was split into four rooms, and I went through the PA Room Annex, where we kept a lot of the old Pennsylvania-based books and artifacts. It's a great time, but I didn't turn up any more marriage records.
Just to be thorough, I moved on to the other rooms. Also because I like exploring the attic. I've been working for the library since 2012, and the thrill hasn't worn off. The next room was all old newspapers, and easy enough to search---I couldn't see anything that wasn't a newspaper. Beside it was a room of paintings and old books, and in that one, I found an old Bible.
It was thick, with an elaborate blue leather cover. The inside was decorative, with colorful artwork.
I found the Director down below, in the second floor hallway in the old part of the building. She looked at me, and said,"What's that?"
"You remember when I came to work here five years ago, and we lost a Bible?" I asked. "It was just a couple of months after I came here, and we had to tear the place apart looking for it."
"Tell me you found it."
"Maybe. I don't even remember if I saw the original, or just heard about it. But I found this one in the attic."
I gave her the Bible. She looked it over. "This could be the one. I don't remember it well, either. But it could be; maybe someone moved it up there without realizing."
"Maybe it's been in the attic all along. I'm glad I turned it up before you retired."
I opened my office at the Piper Museum in the morning, filed my paperwork, and put away the newest magazines. Then I went into the back storage room and visited my hidden UFO research base.
I'd discovered the small, empty space around a year ago, part of the old plane factory that had been sectioned off when it became a museum. I'd made it into a little private UFO investigative room, because what else are you going to do with a secret room? Actually I'd once stored some ghost-hunting equipment for LHPS there, too.
I had a dry erase board, and I made some notes about the UFO sighting. 3 AM. Over Clinton Plaza. White light---No trail---No sound. It was enough to get me started. Then I went down and sat in the Tri-Pacer for a while, blowing off steam by shouting,"There's....Something....On the wing!"
When I went out into the display floor, there was pizza. It was the museum's last day before the annual winter shutdown, so one of the board members had sprung for pizza and soda to celebrate. We all sat down at the tables; I ended up next to President John and his wife.
"I'd heard that after the 1972 flood, they buried a lot of the planes that had been damaged right here on the grounds," I asked him. "There any truth to that?"
"Oh, sure," he said. "They buried them over by the paint shop. Mostly Navajos."
I laughed. "Well, no wonder Lock Haven is so haunted!"
"Well, there weren't people in them!"
"Sure, but we're right by an actual Indian burial ground out here. Over at Memorial Park, there were tribes buried, and we built a park and a dike over them. Then. years later, we come along and bury planes named after Indian tribes, which has to be offensive."
I walked down the hall to the next room. We have a 3-D layout of the Piper plant in a display case. I found the paint shop. It was practically in the museum's back yard, an outbuilding to the south, beside the forest line. I smiled---This was going to provide me with one great expedition when the weather warmed up.
I ran past Clinton Plaza on the way home. I stopped and looked around---Nothing jumped out at me. No remains of fireworks, streetlights that may have reflected, spotlights in the distance. Nothing that looked like it might have caused a UFO sighting.
I got on my bike and headed home.
Sometimes, mysteries stay mysteries.
It was the next day when the ring came in the mail.
I got two packages that day, both addressed to me. I'd ordered some litmus paper for the next Teen Paranormal meeting, and I was expecting that. The other package was too small to be harmful, and addressed to me specifically.
There was a ring inside. Small and silver, with a round face and a cross on it. There were letters all over the thing: On the cross, in the spaces behind the cross, around the rim. It looked religious. I slipped it on---It came close to fitting. A note in the package said I thought you could use this. It belonged to Reverend Maucher.
I get historical donations all the time. People come to me with artifacts and clippings about ghosts; this was only mildly unusual. I looked the ring over for a minute, then went and found Adam at the desk.
"Adam, when you signed for the packages, was there anything unusual?"
"No, man. Business as usual. Everything allright?"
"Yeah, it's good. Just something unexpected."
I went to the Pennsylvania Room and checked the archives for Maucher. There were only a couple of entries---I found him almost immediately in a book. Reverend Louis Maucher had been a doctor from Germany who'd become a priest and moved to America. He'd run the Catholic Church in Lock Haven for several years, until 1914, when anti-German sentiment before World War I had gotten him transferred. He'd loved Lock Haven, however, and had been buried in Saint Agnes Cemetery when he'd died in 1947, the only priest in the city ever to be transferred and still be buried here. He'd been popular in the community, interested in the outdoors, and a good card player.
Once I knew all that, it took me about two minutes on Google to identify the symbol on the ring as belonging to Saint Benedict, generally used to protect against evil and demons. Someone had sent this to me in my capacity as a historic paranormal investigator. I didn't, as a general rule, buy into demons or exorcism, but plenty of people did.
You know the line,"Curiouser and curiouser"?
I had a distant cousin who, last I'd heard, was working for the Catholic Church. I sent her an e-mail, asking if the church had any information on Reverend Maucher. Maybe I could even get a column out of it.
In the meantime, I wore the ring.
It fell out of my pocket when I was getting dressed in the morning. My little boy, Paul, watched from the bed as I picked it up.
"What's dat?"
"It's a ring I got."
"Can I has it?"
"No, I'm going to hang onto it. I might use it for ghost hunting."
"But I want a ghost hunting ring," said Paul.
"Tell you what," I said. "Let me look around for you, okay? I'll see what I can do about that."
When I got to work, I started digging around. At first, I didn't find much. I had enough to start an article on Maucher, so I sat down and started typing. The tentative title was God As My Witness.
I found an old clipping about Maucher's move in the Altoona newspaper, and it took me a moment before I realized what that meant. And then I thought about the church he'd worked with, and the time frame, and I walked over and checked the old city directories. He'd been in the city as early as 1905.
And it all began to come together.
"You remember that package I got the other day?" I asked Adam at the desk.
"Yeah, man."
"This is getting interesting. It contained some evidence about a local reverend---Louis Maucher. It was some evidence that he was interested in the paranormal---Exorcisms and such. I've been looking into that, and it's gotten really cool."
"Oh, yeah? What's up?"
"Found an article about Maucher in the Altoona newspaper. Now, it took me a minute---There's no reason Altoona should be reporting on a Lock Haven priest. But I realized who owned the newspaper at the time---Henry Shoemaker."
Adam grinned. "Ah! Your hero."
"Yeah." Everyone who knows me knows that I love Henry Shoemaker. "Which means that Maucher would have known Shoemaker. And it's interesting that the local priest who might have been into the paranormal knew Lock Haven's expert paranormal guy, before I came along."
"It makes sense, man."
"Even better---You remember the Sesto murder?"
"I've heard you mention it...."
"Yeah, I've written about it and used it on tours. Vincent James Sesto, killed in 1905, was said to have appeared as a ghost at his own funeral to point the finger at his killer. Given the time frame, Maucher had to have been there. He was the priest performing that funeral. It might even have been what started him on the paranormal. Connect the dots."
"Pretty cool, man."
"Yeah." I smiled. "I can make a good case that the local priest was interested in the paranormal, and even have an idea of how he got that way."
I walked back to my desk. A moment later, I was back, looking at Adam at the reference desk.
"Adam, somebody left something on my desk....It looks like a Japanese scroll in a wooden box....?"
"Oh, yeah, that. A guy came in, left it for you. He wanted to know if you could use it somehow."
"Well, I know nothing about it, but I'll find a way."
Adam grinned. "Every time you get a delivery, man, it's a new adventure around here."
I walked through the grass, looking at the headstones. Saint Agnes Cemetery was on a slight hill, and I watched my footing as I moved. Falling and killing myself in a cemetery might save someone a trip, but I'd rather not.
I found the stone, in Section 1. Reverend Maucher and his sister were buried together under a small stone with crosses carved in it. Wearing the ring, I looked at the stone.
I could see Sesto's grave, just up the hill a bit. I'd hunted it down a couple of months before, and knew exactly where to look. Maucher had not only insisted his body be returned to Lock Haven for burial---He'd had it buried very near the haunted grave.
So Maucher trains as a doctor, then a priest. He wants to help people. He comes to Lock Haven, one seriously haunted city, and presides over a funeral where a ghost appeared. In response, he gets the ring, and seeks out Henry Shoemaker, the expert on local hauntings at the time. And Maucher tries to protect against evil spirits until he's transferred out in 1914. But after his death, he had his body returned, so he could continue to watch over the place he cared about.
Good guy.
I looked at the ring. I still didn't know who sent it to me---Sometimes, mysteries stay mysteries. I investigate the paranormal on a scientific level, looking for provable evidence. I'm not a big believer in exorcisms and demons.
But I could use the ring to maybe help people, as long as they believed.
Clearly, someone did.
"Daddy!" Paul raced into the kitchen to greet me as soon as I walked in, like he does every night. I knelt down and gave him a hug.
"How you doing, little man?"
"Good! I played wif Sissy today."
"Hey. God you something."
"What?"
"Do you remember what you asked for this morning?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"I don't know."
I dug into my pocket and handed him a ring, a little one with an alien head on it. "You remember when you said you wanted a ring? Here's one in just your size."
"A alien! Take me to your leader!"
"That's right, little guy. Don't lose it, okay?"
Paul beamed. "I just like Daddy!"
"You got it, little guy. You're just like Daddy."
