"We're going to play ghost hunting down at the park," said my son Paul. "I'm bringing my equipment."
"Remember, Izzie's not allowed anymore," said Tif. She looked up at me. "The other day, they all played ghost hunter in the park. It scared Izzie so bad she didn't sleep for two nights. Her mother won't let her play it anymore."
I laughed. "For Paul, this is just what his father does for a living. In the evening, Paul and I have been coming out to his tree house to look for aliens."
"See any?"
"We differ on that."
Tif laughed, watching Paul play on his backyard play set. "Let me guess. He says yes."
"He says he's spotted them. I think it may be the cell tower across the river."
"I don't see any right now," Paul called over.
"I'm getting some UFO reports lately," I said. "You know how every summer, the state library association inflicts a theme on us? This year, it's space. So I wrote a piece on UFOs in the PA Wilds. It's been shared a lot, and I've been getting a lot of people coming forward with incidents. So I have this upswing in UFO sightings."
"Really? No kidding?"
"Oh, yeah. People are really responding to the article."
Paul walked over. "Time to go to the park. We can play ghost hunting."
"No, remember, little guy?" Tif said. "Izzie's not allowed to play ghost hunting anymore. She got too scared."
"Okay," said Paul. "We'll hunt aliens."
Tif laughed. "Well, I suppose her mother didn't actually forbid that."
Some little kids, their father goes to work, and they have no idea what he does. My dad was a farmer. Some kids hear workplace stories about lawyers, or firemen, or postal workers, or god forbid, accountants.
My son gets paranormal investigation.
I research the paranormal in the public library where I work, and then write it up in freelance articles. I give tours and speeches. For most people, the paranormal is a fun thing to watch on TV. For me, it's a career.
I biked from my place down to the grocery store on the way to work. I walked in with a handful of quarters, and went straight to the gumball machine selling fifty-cent aliens. I fed it about three bucks, getting a handful of glow-in-the-dark plastic aliens in various poses.
"It's for work," I told the cashier who was giving me a funny look.
I get to say stuff like that. And I'm not even lying.
I biked downtown, the rest of the way to the library. It was summer in Lock Haven, which means it was alternately hot, and storming like hell. I parked my bike on the little porch right outside my office, and walked in.
My friend Ian was there, putting his posters up on the bulletin board. Ian is a ranger at Kettle Creek State Park. He grinned when he saw me.
"I was going to e-mail you, Lou," he said. "You up for doing your annual speech at Kettle Creek this summer?"
"My family had a great time last year," I said. "I'm in."
"How about Dorcie Calhoun, the oil driller? Can you talk about him?"
"Sure, I can do Dorcie. When?"
"Is July sixth okay?"
"Works for me. I'll pencil it in."
I went to my desk. My predecessor had once told me that she checked her e-mail first thing every morning. I have yet to have a day that organized. The general public won't let me.
As I was sitting down at the desk, a guy came in. He was tall and lanky, with a beard. dressed in plain white. He had what appeared to be white pajama pants and a white robe that came to his knees. I couldn't help but notice he had no belt or shoelaces. (I, in contrast, was wearing my new green shirt that said Aliens made me do it.)
"My brother stole money from me," he said with no context or introduction.
"Uh-huh," I said neutrally. It pays to not react until you find out if someone is normal, or a nut.
"You guys have a photocopier?" he asked.
I pointed. "Right there."
"Families blame people for stuff they didn't do."
"Umm."
Nut.
He walked away, turned around, and came back. "He's an atheist, can you imagine?! An atheist!"
"Umm." I'm an atheist, but I saw no good reason to get into that.
He walked away, turned around, and came back again. "There's going to be a civil war," he announced.
"I see."
"My brother should go to jail."
I nodded, making sure I was out of his reach.
"Did you hear that the state cops smuggled cocaine?"
I turned and tried to concentrate really, really hard on my e-mail.
It was a mishmash: A guy from Williamsport with a ghost sighting in a local hotel, a request for property research in an abandoned town, a note from New Boss, a UFO sighting. The usual.
I opened the one about the UFO sighting. A woman claimed to have seen a purple light in the sky on the north end of Lock Haven. She'd been driving, and suddenly, without knowing how, she wound up in Castanea Township.
"....And the government is trying to steal my blood," the guy was saying. "Hey. Are you listening?"
"Huh? Oh, sorry," I said. "Got distracted. There's been a UFO spotted nearby, a big bright one. So there's my weekend."
The guy stared at me.
"Never mind," he said, and left.
Sometimes that works.
"So....Your last day." I walked into Sue's office. She was packing up.
Sue nodded. "Yep. Gonna retire. Mel's been trained to work the ILL department, and I'm moving to North Carolina."
"Gonna miss you." I'd worked with Sue for six years. We'd become good friends. I said,"I got you something."
I handed her a copy of Lighthouse Mysteries Of The Atlantic. She smiled. "Oooh, thanks."
We hugged each other.
"It's lighthouses, so it says you, but it's also ghosts and mysteries, so it says me, too. Hey. I'll write to you, okay? Send you pictures of Paul."
"Yeah. That'd be good."
"Yeah. Yeah."
"Dinner's almost done," I said. "Marinated pork chops, baked potatoes, and corn on the cob. Make sure you don't touch this here potato."
"I'm going to run some food down to Biz at work after dinner," said Tif.
"I saved her this specific potato," I said,"Because it's shaped like a butt."
My wife grinned. "She will love that."
We sat down to eat. Except for Paul, who was playing. There are whole days Paul insists on going without eating anything significant. I often start to wonder if his birth father was part plant, and he's existing entirely on sunlight.
"I gotta get down to my tour after dinner," I said. "Summer tours are beginning tonight."
"Is this the outer space tour?" Tif asked.
I shook my head. "Nah, that one's in July. This is Water Street. I do have a bunch of programs coming up to comply with the summer reading theme, though. Every year, the state library association inflicts a theme on us. This year's is space, so I have a whole summer full of UFOs and stuff."
"Is that why you wrote the PA Wilds article?" Tif asked.
I nodded. "I've been getting a lot of feedback. One woman e-mailed me about a bright light she saw in Loganton a while back. I think I'm going to concentrate on UFOs for a while, clear out some backlog in response to that column."
"This mean we're gonna get marched out to all sorts of remote dark places all summer?" Tif asked.
"It's likely."
"Looking for aliens from outer space."
"Hell, I think some of the library patrons are aliens from outer space. You shoulda seen the guy I had to deal with yesterday; he was odd. All in white, like a robe. And, strikingly, no shoelaces or belt."
Tif grinned. "I'm pretty sure they give you those back when you leave."
"I'm not exactly sure he left with permission." I stood up and put my plate in the sink. "I'll get that later. Right now, gotta get down to the library for my tour."
"Have fun, Daddy," called Paul. "I'm glad you're my daddy. Any other daddy would be boring."
I hugged him. "I love you, too, little man." I turned to Tif. "Gotta run; I'll be home later. Tell Biz to enjoy her ass-potato."
I arrived at the library at about six-thirty, parking my bike on the sidewalk. I was locking it up when I saw him.
The guy in white, suddenly popping up from the small porch outside my office. I hadn't spotted him up there before. He hurried down the steps and down the path---Which nobody but me ever uses, by the way, since it leads nowhere but a locked door.
"You working tonight?" he asked.
"....Sort of," I said.
Carrying a couple of bags, he hurried off down Erie Alley, heading south. I stared at him as he went.
"...And that brings us back to the Ross Library," I said, turning and stopping on the sidewalk. "Originally the home of Mayor Robert Bridgens in 1887, it was sold to Annie Halenbake Ross is 1893. Annie died in 1907, leaving her house to the city on the condition it be made into the public library. We opened on Thanksgiving day of 1910, and have been in business ever since." I looked around at the gathered crowd. "I'd like to thank you all for coming, and remind you.....The stuff I talked about tonight was just barely scratching the surface. There's a whole city full of history out there....Some great stories. I encourage you all to get out and experience them."
The crowd began to disperse. A woman walked up to me.
"I have a question," she said. "There's a building on Water Street, right across from the YMCA. It has this weird door on the third floor that leads nowhere. I mean, if you stepped out of it, you'd fall three floors to the ground. Any idea what's up with that?"
"Not yet," I said,"But I'll check it out and let you know."
I unlocked my bike and rode down to the area. It was on the corner of Water and Grove Streets, not too far from the area where I'd gotten the UFO report. I looked at the building, and saw the weird third-floor exterior door she'd been talking about.
The outside part of it, I noticed, matched the windows below. It looked to me like a former window that had been boarded up, just boarded with an unused door---After a while, you get to kind of see these things. I did a circuit around the building, and on the opposite side, there was another one, exactly the same, only that had been boarded up with actual boards. Solved.
While I was here, I looked out over the river. The sun was going down, and it was beginning to get dark.
Then I saw it.
It was just like the e-mail had described---A purple light, wiggling and streaking through the sky. I grabbed in my pack for my camera, but the thing was moving too fast, and I couldn't get a photo. There's a reason there are so few reliable photos of these things. It sort of bobbled through the sky for a minute, and then was gone.
I sat in the living room with Millie, Lacy, Kris, and Kara. We met once a month, usually at Millie's place. It was almost like a book club or a social group, except with way more ghosts.
The Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers were the county's best ghost-hunting group. We'd been meeting once a month for almost twelve years, It was the closest actual thing I had to a social life.
"Still working on fixing the bank account problem," said Millie. "Anything else?"
"How would you guys like to do a fundraiser for Highland Cemetery?" I asked. "The association met the other night, and we badly need the money. We can do a seminar and a ghost hunt actually in the cemetery. What do you think?"
I saw Millie's eyes light up. Kara said,"We can do that. When?"
"I was thinking September."
"Sounds good."
"The Spiritual Seekers are still posting stupid stuff on Facebook," I said. "I've been thinking of a few ways to deal with that, prevent them from damaging our reputation."
"What do you got?" asked Kris.
"I think we need to branch out," I said. "We're the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers, not just ghost-hunters. I think we should start following up on reports of cryptids and UFOs, too. We have techniques and information they don't have, and we should use it."
"I don't know," said Millie. "I don't think people would go for that."
"It would make us look unreliable," said Kara.
"How so?" I said. "We'd be just as scientific and skeptical, no matter what we were investigating."
"People know we're good at looking for ghosts," said Kara. "They'll think we're flaky if we start talking about aliens...."
"I never said aliens."
"Yes, you did. I just heard you."
"I never said aliens. I said UFOs. UFO doesn't necessarily mean little green men. What, talking to dead people in a dark room is okay, but we refuse to glance at unexplained lights in the sky?"
"I think it would make us look too unreliable," said Kara.
I held up my hands.
"Okay. Okay. I pitched it, you guys don't like it. Forget it."
"If we suddenly start talking about Bigfoot----"
"I've dropped it. Forget it."
Millie nodded. "Anything else?"
I got the point. Ghosts were fine. But anything else, and I couldn't count on the team.
It was dark. I sat outside on my back porch, smoking a cigar. I was less of a smoker since Paul had been born, but I still kept a supply around the house. Every once in a while, I lit one up.
A hundred and fourteen years ago, a teenaged girl had killed herself on this porch. Her name was Ida Yost. She still haunted my house; I'd researched her years ago when we'd moved in.
I had a mystery. I'd seen something, and I didn't know what. I had a genuine UFO, and no explanation.
And I was on my own.
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