It was my wife. "What are you guys up to?"
"Just doing a hunt upstairs," I said. "Paul thinks he heard Ida roaming around up there."
"Hey, do you want to go camping for a night at Little Pine this year? The weekend of the Fourth?"
"Sure, I guess," I said. "Check the availability."
"I just did. They have one site available."
"Go ahead and book it. We haven't been camping yet this year."
I hung up and turned to Paul. "You've been asking to camp at Little Pine this year instead of Kettle Creek, kiddo. You ready to go next weekend?"
"Yeah! Are there playgrounds at Little Pine?"
"I'm sure they have playgrounds. Yes."
Little Pine State Park is over in Lycoming County. Most summers, we took a trip up to Kettle Creek here in Clinton County, and I'd grown very used to the place. I knew every mystery, every path. This year, we'd been discussing trying out a new park. Little Pine had come up.
When I got to work, I started checking around. Paul has his playgrounds. I wanted the historic and paranormal information.
I began with the DCNR website. Cryptids---No. UFOs---No. Well, damn. I checked the maps; I'd been up to Little Pine before, but only to hike the Carsontown Trail a little. I wasn't intimately familiar with it. I checked the history over; Little Pine had been in sawmill territory. There were two communities in what is now the park area, Carsontown and English Mills. Also, I learned, a Native American burial ground someplace, which had potential.
I looked over the maps. We had Site 46 booked. It took me a moment, and then I found it in the camping area. It was very near a portion of the Mid-State Trail, which cuts across half of Pennsylvania. And I saw a notation that there was a cemetery.
Ah. Now we're getting somewhere.
I went into the PA Room and pulled the Lycoming County Cemetery books. When I got back to my desk there was a guy walking past, without a mask.
"Sorry, sir," I said. "We require masks to enter the building."
"I don't have one right now," he said. "Can I just look up an obit really quick?"
"It's a firm rule, sir," I said. "Not my rule. It's required by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries."
"I'll come back," he said, and left.
I'd been rapidly losing patience with mask-free morons lately. I opened the book and checked the Old English Cemetery, one of two inside Little Pine. It was very near our campsite. There were twenty-eight people buried there, including the first settler in the area and several people who had died young. Which meant that there was history there, and every reason to assume the place might be haunted.
This gave me something to work with. Gonna be a good camping trip.
I shot my editor for the PA Wilds an e-mail, pitching the idea of a Little Pine article. She'd go for that---My trips with my family had made good articles before. As long as Paul kept being cute, I was good.
Many of the burials had taken place in or near 1890. There's a little trick I've learned over the years. When I see a lot of graves with the same year in a cemetery, I go to Google. Then I type in that year and the word epidemic, and see what comes up.
It came up instantly---A worldwide flu outbreak. You can always tell. So, assuming the place was haunted, it was reasonable to want to check---Victims of a flu outbreak might just get active during another outbreak.
Paranormal investigation. When your life ends, my workday begins.
"Happy birthday, little man," I said. "You're six now. Hold on, I got a present for you."
We'd just finished dinner. For his birthday, I'd let Paul call the menu. So Tif, Michelle, Paul, and I had eaten hot dogs, broccoli, and macaroni and cheese. I handed Paul a small box.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Open it and see."
He carefully pried it open. Inside was a small pink pocketknife. He gasped.
"Daddy! Thank you! I love you!" He hugged me.
"You've earned it," I said.
Michelle looked at me. "I thought you said you wanted to wait until he was older."
"He deserves this," I said. "I was seven when I got my first knife." I didn't mention that I'd been about seven and one day when I got my first cut. Mothers didn't need to know that stuff. "The way he learned during the quarantine showed me that he's ready."
Paul hugged me again. He was actually crying. "Thank you, Daddy! I'm so happy! I love it!"
"After dinner, you and me can go out and I'll teach you safety," I said. "We'll cut up a stick for practice. And you can take it up to Little Pine this weekend and use it there."
"Which site are we in?" Michelle asked me as we pulled up along the road.
"Site Forty-Nine," I told her. You'd think she might recall the number, as she was the one who'd made the reservations, but no, that was my job. "Should be up ahead."
"There it is." We pulled in, to see a tent already there. I got out and stared at it as a method of solving the problem.
"Did someone not check out?" Michelle asked.
"They should have," I said. "It's almost three now." I turned and flagged down a passing DCNR ranger in his truck. "Just checking, sir....We had this one reserved, and someone seems to be here."
"Let me call it in and check," he said.
Meanwhile, Michelle was on her cell phone, checking the confirmation e-mail. "Site Forty-Six," she called out the window. "We're in Site Forty-Six."
"Ah. I got it wrong. Sorry, sir," I said to the ranger.
He laughed. "I recognize you. I'm not surprised."
I grinned. "Yeah, my writing skills are way better than my math."
It took a little while to get our campsite set up. Michelle and I had been using the same tent for about eighteen years, and I'm going to be a little sorry one day when it inevitably needs to be replaced. We'd bought it years ago, and I'd joked at the brand name "Fast And Simple E-Z Tent" before finding out that it was genuinely fast, simple, and easy. I had the tent up in four minutes, and the cooler out and ready soon after that.
"Can I go down to the playground?" Paul asked.
"If you want," I said. "I think I'd like to go find the abandoned cemetery. Want to come?"
He shook his head. "Later. I want to go to the playground."
"Okay, little man. See you in a bit."
Michelle was reading a book. She waited by the picnic table as I walked down the path. Checking the map, I turned right at the fork. And there it was, dammit.
The Old English Cemetery was right there---Practically across the street. I could still see the campsite from where I was. It was the first time I'd discovered a lost cemetery within sight of my wife.
I walked around the cemetery a bit. It was a pleasant place, a little overgrown. I snapped a few photos. I found the grave of James English, the man who had founded the village. I checked over all the stones---It wasn't hard; there couldn't have been twenty graves in the whole place.
After a while, I walked back. Michelle was still reading.
"I found it," I said.
"Yeah," she said,"I saw you."
The sun went down over the mountains in the evening, and the heat dropped. I didn't have much of a problem starting a fire for dinner, and we roasted some hot dogs. To my surprise, Paul ate four of them. It got dark a little after nine, and we put him to bed.
My son had yet to sleep with any cooperation when we're camping. He's not too hot on bedtime at home, either. Michelle and Paul lay down on their sleeping bags, and I sang him his usual songs, and then I went outside to the picnic table. I was wearing my Area 51 shirt. The campfire was still burning down. I turned on the lantern and scribbled a few notes for the PA Wilds article. Then I lit a cigar, and sat down to read a book I'd borrowed from the library.
Fifteen minutes later, the tent unzipped, and Paul came out.
"I can't sleep," he said.
"Did you actually try?"
"It's a long story."
I'd actually been sort of hoping for something like this.
"You want to go check the cemetery for ghosts?"
"Sure."
"Let me get my stuff."
I have a black satchel that I tend to carry investigative stuff in on trips. I pulled it out of the car and got out the leg rig, strapping it around my right leg. Hanging from my belt, it held most of what I'd need for smaller, less involved investigations.
"You want the laser thermometer or the EMF detector?" I asked him.
"Both," said Paul.
I handed them to him. I carry extras.
We walked down the path and around the corner, back to the old cemetery. As we entered through the fence, Paul looked things over. "I think those are footstones," he said.
He'd learned about footstones not long ago when we'd been to Youngwomanstown. "You're right. They are. Very good. Do we have a baseline temperature?"
"Eight-five. Now seven-nine."
Temperatures in the seventies up into the eighties. That was about right. I said,"Let me know if it drops to six something or lower."
We walked among the stones, looking them over. I said,"This place was once a village. It was founded by a man named James English. That's his gravestone here. He's buried here."
"Did he build it?"
"The village? Pretty much. But now it's a state park."
"Now it's Little Pine."
We walked around a bit, and I took some photos. I was sure I was going to get orbs, but they were certain to be dust or bugs. "Anything on the EMF?"
"Nope." I could hear the little blip noise as he pressed the button. This model made a little sound every time the button was pushed, and it happened all the time when the thing was packed. It had grown to drive me crazy, which was why I always kept it in my less frequently used leg rig.
No temperature drops, nothing with the EMF. I patted Paul on the shoulder.
"Bedtime, buddy. No ghosts tonight."
On every camping trip, there's a moment in the morning when I open my eyes for good---I know I'm not going back to sleep. This time, that happened around five AM. I crawled out of the bag wearing my chupacabra pajamas, walked across the road to the showers, and then came back and got a fire started. We had eggs and toast for breakfast.
Paul was up a little while later. He ate one of the remaining oranges.
"So, little man, which one is your favorite?" I asked. "Kettle Creek or Little Pine?"
"Uh....It's a tie," Paul declared. "Can we go look for the other playground before we go home?"
"Sure," I said. "Let's take a walk."
We walked around the camp for a while, checking the map, until we discovered the playground halfway up a hill near the entrance bridge.
"That's lame," said Paul. "It's just swings. There's no slide."
"We might as well check it out anyway."
Paul and I walked up to the swings, and he climbed on. I gave him a push, and then go on one myself.
It wasn't lame. It was amazing. The swings went out over the whole hillside, so you felt as if you were much higher than you really were. I felt like I was swinging between the mountains at a dizzying height like a Thunderbird, and I laughed. A slide would have been unnecessary---Any kid who slid on this slope would shoot four hundred feet clear down the hill.
"This is great!" shouted Paul.
I laughed again. "Yes it is! I love this!"
And that was how we spent the morning. We shot up into the air, swinging together, my son and I.
"Yeah! Are there playgrounds at Little Pine?"
"I'm sure they have playgrounds. Yes."
Little Pine State Park is over in Lycoming County. Most summers, we took a trip up to Kettle Creek here in Clinton County, and I'd grown very used to the place. I knew every mystery, every path. This year, we'd been discussing trying out a new park. Little Pine had come up.
When I got to work, I started checking around. Paul has his playgrounds. I wanted the historic and paranormal information.
I began with the DCNR website. Cryptids---No. UFOs---No. Well, damn. I checked the maps; I'd been up to Little Pine before, but only to hike the Carsontown Trail a little. I wasn't intimately familiar with it. I checked the history over; Little Pine had been in sawmill territory. There were two communities in what is now the park area, Carsontown and English Mills. Also, I learned, a Native American burial ground someplace, which had potential.
I looked over the maps. We had Site 46 booked. It took me a moment, and then I found it in the camping area. It was very near a portion of the Mid-State Trail, which cuts across half of Pennsylvania. And I saw a notation that there was a cemetery.
Ah. Now we're getting somewhere.
I went into the PA Room and pulled the Lycoming County Cemetery books. When I got back to my desk there was a guy walking past, without a mask.
"Sorry, sir," I said. "We require masks to enter the building."
"I don't have one right now," he said. "Can I just look up an obit really quick?"
"It's a firm rule, sir," I said. "Not my rule. It's required by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries."
"I'll come back," he said, and left.
I'd been rapidly losing patience with mask-free morons lately. I opened the book and checked the Old English Cemetery, one of two inside Little Pine. It was very near our campsite. There were twenty-eight people buried there, including the first settler in the area and several people who had died young. Which meant that there was history there, and every reason to assume the place might be haunted.
This gave me something to work with. Gonna be a good camping trip.
I shot my editor for the PA Wilds an e-mail, pitching the idea of a Little Pine article. She'd go for that---My trips with my family had made good articles before. As long as Paul kept being cute, I was good.
Many of the burials had taken place in or near 1890. There's a little trick I've learned over the years. When I see a lot of graves with the same year in a cemetery, I go to Google. Then I type in that year and the word epidemic, and see what comes up.
It came up instantly---A worldwide flu outbreak. You can always tell. So, assuming the place was haunted, it was reasonable to want to check---Victims of a flu outbreak might just get active during another outbreak.
Paranormal investigation. When your life ends, my workday begins.
"Happy birthday, little man," I said. "You're six now. Hold on, I got a present for you."
We'd just finished dinner. For his birthday, I'd let Paul call the menu. So Tif, Michelle, Paul, and I had eaten hot dogs, broccoli, and macaroni and cheese. I handed Paul a small box.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Open it and see."
He carefully pried it open. Inside was a small pink pocketknife. He gasped.
"Daddy! Thank you! I love you!" He hugged me.
"You've earned it," I said.
Michelle looked at me. "I thought you said you wanted to wait until he was older."
"He deserves this," I said. "I was seven when I got my first knife." I didn't mention that I'd been about seven and one day when I got my first cut. Mothers didn't need to know that stuff. "The way he learned during the quarantine showed me that he's ready."
Paul hugged me again. He was actually crying. "Thank you, Daddy! I'm so happy! I love it!"
"After dinner, you and me can go out and I'll teach you safety," I said. "We'll cut up a stick for practice. And you can take it up to Little Pine this weekend and use it there."
"Which site are we in?" Michelle asked me as we pulled up along the road.
"Site Forty-Nine," I told her. You'd think she might recall the number, as she was the one who'd made the reservations, but no, that was my job. "Should be up ahead."
"There it is." We pulled in, to see a tent already there. I got out and stared at it as a method of solving the problem.
"Did someone not check out?" Michelle asked.
"They should have," I said. "It's almost three now." I turned and flagged down a passing DCNR ranger in his truck. "Just checking, sir....We had this one reserved, and someone seems to be here."
"Let me call it in and check," he said.
Meanwhile, Michelle was on her cell phone, checking the confirmation e-mail. "Site Forty-Six," she called out the window. "We're in Site Forty-Six."
"Ah. I got it wrong. Sorry, sir," I said to the ranger.
He laughed. "I recognize you. I'm not surprised."
I grinned. "Yeah, my writing skills are way better than my math."
It took a little while to get our campsite set up. Michelle and I had been using the same tent for about eighteen years, and I'm going to be a little sorry one day when it inevitably needs to be replaced. We'd bought it years ago, and I'd joked at the brand name "Fast And Simple E-Z Tent" before finding out that it was genuinely fast, simple, and easy. I had the tent up in four minutes, and the cooler out and ready soon after that.
"Can I go down to the playground?" Paul asked.
"If you want," I said. "I think I'd like to go find the abandoned cemetery. Want to come?"
He shook his head. "Later. I want to go to the playground."
"Okay, little man. See you in a bit."
Michelle was reading a book. She waited by the picnic table as I walked down the path. Checking the map, I turned right at the fork. And there it was, dammit.
The Old English Cemetery was right there---Practically across the street. I could still see the campsite from where I was. It was the first time I'd discovered a lost cemetery within sight of my wife.
I walked around the cemetery a bit. It was a pleasant place, a little overgrown. I snapped a few photos. I found the grave of James English, the man who had founded the village. I checked over all the stones---It wasn't hard; there couldn't have been twenty graves in the whole place.
After a while, I walked back. Michelle was still reading.
"I found it," I said.
"Yeah," she said,"I saw you."
The sun went down over the mountains in the evening, and the heat dropped. I didn't have much of a problem starting a fire for dinner, and we roasted some hot dogs. To my surprise, Paul ate four of them. It got dark a little after nine, and we put him to bed.
My son had yet to sleep with any cooperation when we're camping. He's not too hot on bedtime at home, either. Michelle and Paul lay down on their sleeping bags, and I sang him his usual songs, and then I went outside to the picnic table. I was wearing my Area 51 shirt. The campfire was still burning down. I turned on the lantern and scribbled a few notes for the PA Wilds article. Then I lit a cigar, and sat down to read a book I'd borrowed from the library.
Fifteen minutes later, the tent unzipped, and Paul came out.
"I can't sleep," he said.
"Did you actually try?"
"It's a long story."
I'd actually been sort of hoping for something like this.
"You want to go check the cemetery for ghosts?"
"Sure."
"Let me get my stuff."
I have a black satchel that I tend to carry investigative stuff in on trips. I pulled it out of the car and got out the leg rig, strapping it around my right leg. Hanging from my belt, it held most of what I'd need for smaller, less involved investigations.
"You want the laser thermometer or the EMF detector?" I asked him.
"Both," said Paul.
I handed them to him. I carry extras.
We walked down the path and around the corner, back to the old cemetery. As we entered through the fence, Paul looked things over. "I think those are footstones," he said.
He'd learned about footstones not long ago when we'd been to Youngwomanstown. "You're right. They are. Very good. Do we have a baseline temperature?"
"Eight-five. Now seven-nine."
Temperatures in the seventies up into the eighties. That was about right. I said,"Let me know if it drops to six something or lower."
We walked among the stones, looking them over. I said,"This place was once a village. It was founded by a man named James English. That's his gravestone here. He's buried here."
"Did he build it?"
"The village? Pretty much. But now it's a state park."
"Now it's Little Pine."
We walked around a bit, and I took some photos. I was sure I was going to get orbs, but they were certain to be dust or bugs. "Anything on the EMF?"
"Nope." I could hear the little blip noise as he pressed the button. This model made a little sound every time the button was pushed, and it happened all the time when the thing was packed. It had grown to drive me crazy, which was why I always kept it in my less frequently used leg rig.
No temperature drops, nothing with the EMF. I patted Paul on the shoulder.
"Bedtime, buddy. No ghosts tonight."
On every camping trip, there's a moment in the morning when I open my eyes for good---I know I'm not going back to sleep. This time, that happened around five AM. I crawled out of the bag wearing my chupacabra pajamas, walked across the road to the showers, and then came back and got a fire started. We had eggs and toast for breakfast.
Paul was up a little while later. He ate one of the remaining oranges.
"So, little man, which one is your favorite?" I asked. "Kettle Creek or Little Pine?"
"Uh....It's a tie," Paul declared. "Can we go look for the other playground before we go home?"
"Sure," I said. "Let's take a walk."
We walked around the camp for a while, checking the map, until we discovered the playground halfway up a hill near the entrance bridge.
"That's lame," said Paul. "It's just swings. There's no slide."
"We might as well check it out anyway."
Paul and I walked up to the swings, and he climbed on. I gave him a push, and then go on one myself.
It wasn't lame. It was amazing. The swings went out over the whole hillside, so you felt as if you were much higher than you really were. I felt like I was swinging between the mountains at a dizzying height like a Thunderbird, and I laughed. A slide would have been unnecessary---Any kid who slid on this slope would shoot four hundred feet clear down the hill.
"This is great!" shouted Paul.
I laughed again. "Yes it is! I love this!"
And that was how we spent the morning. We shot up into the air, swinging together, my son and I.
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