My son and I have this little tradition. When the weather is nice, we go out in the evening and take a walk around the neighborhood, looking at the sky for UFOs. Hey, what's your idea of quality time?
He's been discovering new routes lately, exploring a bit more. During the quarantine, we went down and explored around the local paper mill. Recently, he'd been turning our route to go up to Highland Street, moving across the four-hundred block.
We occasionally see people out while we're hunting for aliens, though fewer since the quarantine began. I saw a couple on their porch, and as we drew closer, I realized I knew one of them.
"Oh, hi, Danielle," I said, staying six feet away. It's amazing how fast I'd readjusted to that. "I didn't realize you were living in my neighborhood."
"Hi, Lou," she said. "Yep, moved here a couple months ago. You still doing paranormal investigations?"
"Of course. Paul," I called down the sidewalk,"Hold up. Don't get too far ahead." I saw the little red lights on Paul's scooter slow down and turn around in the dark.
Danielle turned to the guy she was with. "Lou did an investigation for us a couple of years ago. When we lived in the old hospital."
"Old Teah Hospital," I said. "I remember it well."
"We're having some activity here," she said. "You guys want to come?"
"Once it's safe again," I said. "In the meantime, I'll start the historic research and let you know. Now that I'm back in the library, I should be able to find out some stuff."
Paul and I walked on. He said,"See any aliens, Daddy?"
"Not yet, buddy. But maybe we'll get a ghost."
Our limited reopening coincided with my eight-year anniversary. Way back in 2012, I'd had my first day of work at the Ross Library. It was May 24, 2012, and I'd stood upstairs in the Sloan Room with my co-worker, Kendra.
"If ever there was a place to start over," I'd said,"This would be it."
Now, the library itself was starting over slowly. We'd managed to reopen the library for curbside service, by appointment, in the lobby. People could order books and pick them up. This had gone over less thrillingly than we'd expected; we'd been averaging two or three patrons a day. I'd have a hard time deliberately getting COVID-19.
Before I headed out for my lobby shift, I grabbed the city directories and a form off my desk. I'd created the form myself after I'd gotten tired of scribbling information on post-its. Filling that in, I was able to gather all of the details of a property on one place.
Adam was in the lobby when I got there. "I'm here," I said. "You're relieved."
He stood up. "Been slow, man," he said. "Hope you got something to keep you busy."
I grinned behind my mask. "I think I can manage."
I'd begun the week wearing my ghost shirt, but now had switched to Bigfoot: Social Distancing World Champion. I sat down and began to look up the address in the city directories. A city directory is kind of like a reverse phone book, with the addresses and the names of the people who lived there. A lot of people attempt to do property research but have no idea about the city directories.
Starting at about 1915, I began checking each one, and came up with a list of names. People who'd lived there throughout the years. It took twenty minutes. Then I slipped back inside and exchanged the city directories for the cemetery records.
"How's it going out there?" Barb asked as I walked past the desk.
"Slow day," I said.
I had seven volumes of cemetery indexes. Starting with the earliest residents of the house---A family named Campbell---I checked each index to find which cemetery they were in. Each check only took me a few seconds, but it adds up. I had like twenty names to go through.
An old guy without a mask opened the door. I said,"Sir, we're requesting everyone who comes in wear a mask."
"What?"
"Sir, you have to have a mask on to come in."
"Thought I heard you were open."
"In a limited way, sir. Not our rule."
"Then I'll just leave these here." He set a bag of books down on the floor and walked off.
I transferred the books to our quarantine table and sprayed disinfectant on everything he'd touched or been near. How bad is it when you get alarmed because someone came in not wearing a goddamn mask?
There's always something---If a house is truly haunted, I'll always find a tragic death someplace. I found this one buried in Cedar Hill; Christian Basinger had died at age thirty-eight.
That was interesting. Once I got done with the cemetery indexes, I ran back in and traded them for two of the index drawers, BA and PO. I checked one of the families that showed some promise---They'd been in the house for almost forty years---But no, all of them had lived long lives and died elsewhere. Christian Basinger, a butcher with a family, had died just after leaving the house, at age thirty-eight. He had no obit, which left the cause of death a bit of a mystery.
I ran down the other names just to be thorough, but Christian Basinger was it. He was the most likely.
I looked up as Adam came back. "Is my hour up already?"
"You're taillights, man. Been slow?"
"Actually," I admitted,"It got a little exciting there for a while."
The bear probably outweighed our Prius. And, hell, it was a small one. The bear, I mean. Also the Prius. My wife swerved around it as we drove up the Renovo Road.
"Whoa!" she said. "A bear!"
"You see that, Paul?" I asked. Paul was already leaning out of his seat to get a glimpse of the bear, which was darting off to the north side of the road.
"Yes!" Paul said, excitedly looking at the bear. It was a black one, probably a few months old.
"That's a cub," Michelle commented. "I hope the mother's not around."
"We can outrun a mother. Stay in the car."
We'd decided to take a little drive on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Paul had been somewhat enthusiastic about exploring old cemeteries recently, and abandoned cemeteries could reasonably be assumed to not be crowded. So I'd suggested a trip to a new one, the Youngwomanstown Cemetery in Chapman Township.
It only took us a few minutes to find it, once we got into North Bend. The small cemetery was down on a road beside the river. I got out and walked into the field.
The stones were all small, and arranged in neat rows. "This may be the oldest cemetery in Chapman Township," I commented. I glanced into the forest. "Hell, there's some stones piled in there, just left up against the trees. I'm gonna have to e-mail Justin. I wonder if CCGS knows about this."
"That's kind of sad," said Michelle.
"There are people with markers here who were moved," I said. "The Quigley family was moved to the New North Bend Cemetery, but their markers left behind."
I walked into the woods and examined the stones there. All broken, propped up against the trees. They hadn't been cared for. I debated internally for a moment.
Then I picked up one of the smaller footstones and slid it into my pack.
It's just been lost out here. If I take it, I can research and then preserve it, find out more. It's not doing anyone any good sitting in the woods.
Over the years, I've gotten used to the average weight of my pack. I can tell when I add something. Add a book, and it feels heavier. Take out my ghost-hunting stuff, I can feel the difference. Add a footstone, and it weighs a thousand pounds.
I walked back to the car. Paul and Michelle were waiting for me.
"Hi, Daddy," said Paul.
"Find what you wanted?" Michelle asked.
"We'll see," I said.
When Paul came into my office, he glanced at the stone. "Is that a gravestone?" he asked calmly.
It says something about my parenting that my five-year-old takes this sort of thing in stride.
"Yeah, it's a footstone," I said. "I brought it back from the cemetery. I'm going to check into it and figure out who it belonged to."
"Can I help?"
"Let's get to work."
The bathroom is conveniently right next to my office. I fetched the shaving cream.
"Remember how we did this at the old railroad station? It works with gravestones." I sprayed shaving cream on the stone, and we rubbed our fingers across it, taking off the excess and letting it fill the crevices. We wound up with two bright white letters.
"K," said Paul.
"I think it's an R. It's hard to tell with old ones. Is that a D?...."
"I think a B."
"It does look like a B. Let's wash this off."
When we'd hosed off our hands, and I'd cleaned the excess shaving cream off the stone, I picked up the index book for Chapman Township. I'd compiled a decent collection of usable books at home in my office---Not as good for research as the ones at the library, but still not bad. During the quarantine, I'd been really glad I'd had them.
"Rosannah Baird," I said. "She was a little girl, I think a year old. She died in 1833."
"How do you know that?" asked Paul.
"Daddy can find these things out. See, it says right here."
"Are you going to keep the gravestone?"
"I might hang onto it for a while," I admitted,"While I research."
"I think we should keep it," he said. "Is it time for Alien Patrol?"
I looked at the window. "Yeah, it's getting dark. And we have a message to deliver tonight."
"A message?" he asked.
"Yep. Remember the woman who was talking to me about ghosts the other night? I did the research on her house, and we're going to drop it off in her mailbox. So we have an extra mission tonight."
I walked out to the picnic table and sat down. In the parking lot, a car had pulled in. SaraLee got out, carrying two cups of coffee. She sat several feet away and slid one across the table to me.
"Thanks," I said. "Next time, it's my turn to buy."
"Taylor said you like it black," she said. "She said you used to order it saying things like 'Black as my soul.'"
I laughed. "I did, though that's been a while. How you doing?"
I was wearing my LHPS hoodie and my I'd rather be ghost hunting shirt. She was wearing her grey shirt with the black ghost on it.
"Doing okay," she said. "It's good to get out and talk to an adult for a change."
"I hear you. Thanks for dropping by. Once we're up and running, I may have another investigation for is. Got a report from Highland Street."
She smiled. "Sounds good."
"I'm here. Been slow?" I walked down the steps into the lobby.
Jim stood up. "Got one book waiting on a patron. Otherwise, I'm making real progress reading this novel."
"Yeah, I got some stuff to read, too. Been working my way through the Southern Reach Trilogy."
"Yell if you need anything," he said, and went off to his garage.
I'd also brought some other stuff to work on. With a little creativity, I'd discovered that I could get an amazing amount of research done while I was working the lobby. I sat down with the index drawer for BA, and checked for Rosannah Baird.
Nothing. According to the cemetery index, she seemed to have been one year old when she'd died, so it made sense that there was no obit. I found an entry for a Baird genealogy, and discovered that the family had a genealogy book someone had compiled.
It only took me a minute to go get it out of the Pennsylvania Room. It wasn't like we were swamped with customers anyway.
Okay. With the genealogy, I found that Rosannah had been the daughter of Benjamin and Ellen Baird, who were buried in a different cemetery over in Hyner. I checked on Benjamin in the index file, and I found out that he'd died in 1851, and was the son of William Baird, the earliest settler in Renovo.
Rosannah had been his granddaughter.
I'd rescued the marker from the first family to settle the area.
"So you had fun exploring the train station ruins, little man?" I asked as I rode our bike across the alley. Riding in the back trailer, Paul grinned.
"Yeah! That was fun!"
"When we get home, I'll show you where it was on the Sanborn Map. How about that?"
"Okay! Can I have a popsicle?"
"Sure. Got a color preference?"
"Surprise me."
A car pulled up, and it was Danielle driving. Paul commented,"Look, Daddy! It's your friend!"
Danielle smiled at me out her window. "Hi, Lou," she said. "Thanks for the history. We'll be glad to have you come investigate once it's safe."
"Great," I said. "I'll e-mail you."
"You gonna find a ghost, Daddy?" Paul asked.
"Sometime, little man," I said. "Right now, though, we got something to do."
I patted the dirt down and stood up, stepping back to view the little stone under the tree. Paul stood beside me, studying it critically. I'd buried it under our pine in the backyard, with his swing, within view of the porch Ida had died on.
"Looks good," I said. "I think we'll leave it a while."
"I like it," agreed Paul, and he held one thumb up.
"Yeah," I said. "It looks...right there."
"Yeah," said Paul. "It does."
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