Dead Ends

There's adventure everywhere.
I got off my bike by the railroad tracks across Fourth Street. Stepping off the street, I walked into the brush between buildings, and pushed my way back along the tracks.
Tucked inside the overgrowth, between buildings, was a huge metal frame---The remains of an old railroad repair shop from 1862. An abandoned ruin literally a block away from the local fast food places, and nobody ever explored it.
Fortunately, that what I'm here for.
There was a heavy steel girder on concrete pillars about two feet above the ground, leading into the ruin. I stepped onto it, and balanced my way across. Years of idiots drinking there had covered the ground in broken shards of glass that could punch through a sneaker. Kind of like the sneakers I was wearing. Not that I was so concerned about my sneakers specifically, but there was also a very woundable foot inside it.
In addition to the flimsy purple sneakers, I was wearing my black jacket---The one with all my tools and adventure equipment in the pockets. And my shirt that said I'd rather be ghost hunting. And my blue bandanna around my right ankle. It's like a uniform, except I'm the only one who wears it.
When I got to the south end of the ruins, which were relatively clear of glass, I carefully stepped off. There was a metal fence, with the college's expensive walking path on the other side. I walked along the back of the ruin, looking down at the ground for artifacts.
On the northeast side, I found something big. Wood, half-buried. An old telephone pole, with the old wooden pegs. It had to be at least a hundred years old.
I grabbed one of the pegs and pulled. It came out easily enough in my hand, and I slid it into a jacket pocket.
Then I heard the train whistle, coming in from the east.
It wasn't exactly surprising. I mean, I was along railroad tracks, so it wasn't so much like the train was sneaking up on me. But I didn't want to be seen. Did I mention I was technically trespassing?
I ducked against the concrete wall, flattening myself behind a girder. I hid there, waiting until the train had gone by.
Then I walked out to my bike.
The exciting life of a historian.

"Daddy! Dere you are!"
I found my son and daughter on the playground, Paul climbing on the equipment while Tif watched. I parked my bike and walked over.
My name is Lou. I'm a paranormal investigator, historian, librarian, writer, and museum curator. I'm also a Star Wars fan, a dog person, and probably an alcoholic, with eyes the color of dirty Bigfoot hair.
I suppose only that first part is relevant.
I handed the peg to Tif. She turned it over, examining it. It was about six inches long, tapered, with a screw thread on one end.
"Whoa," she said. "What is it?"
"Part of Lock Haven's early phone system," I said.
"Which part would this be?"
"Picture those big old wooden posts, with the crossbeams like you crucify someone on. This was the peg that holds the line. It's over a hundred years old, part of Lock Haven's first telephone system."
"And where'd you find it?"
"Looked through the ruins just off Fourth Street."
She handed it back. "How is it you always know where to find all this stuff?"
"Mostly, I just know where to look. Several years ago I found a trap door to a secret attic in the oldest house in Lock Haven. When someone asked me how I found it, I said,'I looked up.' There's a lot to be said for just being the guy who thinks to check."
Tif nodded as we watched Paul climbing up the slide the wrong way. "You hear about the racist flyers posted up in the neighborhood?"
"Yeah. I tore one down yesterday morning. They're advertising for a white supremacy website."
"Bastards," she said. "Someone should do something."
"I'm working on it."

"Were you and the ghost hunters in the museum recently?" Stacy asked me when I arrived at the museum. "We had a water leak downstairs by the Navajo."
Mondays.
"We're in all the time," I said. "We're going to investigate again this weekend. I don't remember a water leak, though."
"I thought maybe you guys got slimed during an investigation."
"Don't I wish. No, we've had a few sounds on audio, that's about it."
"There's still a big puddle down there."
I went to my office, and dropped my pack and my jacket. I love being on the board of an airplane museum----I love being able to get directions like Downstairs by the Navajo. I walked down my secret staircase to the maintenance room, turned to the Piper Navajo fuselage, and found it.
There it was, a large water puddle. It didn't look paranormal to me, though you never do know. It was up against a wall, and the first thing you have to ask is what's on the other side of the wall.
I walked north, counting off sixteen paces to the side door. Then I went outside, turned south, and counted off sixteen paces back. This put me directly outside where the puddle was.
I knelt down by the wall. About eight inches from the ground was a hole---It looked like a pipe had been there at one point. Now it was open, and far from waterproof. We'd had a couple of storms recently---That was where the water had come from.
Wish they were all this easy to solve.

Secret staircases. Paranormal investigations. Airplanes on display. That's my life.
I was biking to work when I saw the flyer, put up on a telephone pole at the corner of Park and West Bald Eagle. A bright blue flyer, with a website on it. I tore it down and took it to work.
Work is the Ross Library, Lock Haven's public library. I got in early, which was noticed by the boss. The director said,"You're an hour early."
"Yeah, I had a little extra time today," I explained. "I figure it'll make up for the last dozen times I was five minutes late."
"You're not really allowed to work off the clock."
"I promise to be really, really unproductive."
I was sitting at my desk typing when one of my co-workers stopped over to read the newspaper. I was wearing my shirt with the aliens that said It's cool. We come in peace.
"Hi, Lou. How's it going?"
"Oh, hi, Joe. Yeah, okay I guess."
"You don't sound so certain of that."
"Yeah, well. There have been white supremacy flyers put up in my neighborhood. I'm not real happy about it."
"Seriously? Up where you live?"
"I think I found the last one," I said. "I tore it down on my way to work. I've been writing a column for the Record, standing up against it."
"Hey, good for you."
"Well, I don't see much moral complexity in taking the controversial viewpoint that Nazis are bad."
I sent in the column, then lost myself in writing a piece about the local Elks Club entitled Heard of Elks. I had some coffee, and then was surprised when the coffee ran out. I ordered some graphic novels. A while later, my phone rang.
"Hey, Lou? It's Kara."
"Hey, Kara. What's up?"
"I wanted to let you know, the Record posted your column immediately online." Kara's mother Jeannine is my editor on the Record. I usually make the print version, but being immediately rushed into the digital copy is new to me. "Mom and John really loved it, and thought it was powerful."
"I never expected that, but thank them for me. I wrote it in about forty minutes, in a seriously pissed off frame of mind."
"You had every reason to be. Would you like a ride to the meeting tomorrow night?"
"Nah, I'll bike it. But thanks, I appreciate that."

The Piper Museum is on the east end of Lock Haven, not far from the airport and the Susquehanna River. I have an office there, and an office at the library, which basically gives me an office on both ends of Lock Haven. I kind of like that.
I got in an hour early and turned on some of the lights and the air conditioning. I'd been with the Piper Museum for almost two years, and with the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers for nearly ten. Not for the first time, we were looking for ghosts in an airplane museum. I may be the first person ever to use those words in that order.
I walked around the museum for a while, checked my mail, and sat down at my desk. Since joining the board at Piper, I'd often had LHPS down to do practice investigations in the museum. It had once been part of the factory where they'd made Piper airplanes. It was genuinely haunted. With a factory that started in 1937, you couldn't necessarily rule out a few deaths on duty.
The Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers. When your life ends, our workday begins.

"I'm sitting in a dark airplane waiting for dead people," said Charlie. "So how did you spend Saturday night?"
I checked my recorder.
"We have a bad storm outside," said Kara. She was sitting on the floor of the hangar. We could hear the rain pounding on the hangar doors. Millie was sitting on a bench nearby, and Charlie and our trainee Kellie were sitting in the Piper Cheyenne, a plane fuselage on display in the museum. We were all wearing the black LHPS uniform with the ghost on the back.
"Yeah, it's like the new Ghostbusters movie," I said. "I actually liked that, but I felt a little bad for Chris Hemsworth. I mean, being the only male on an all-female ghost hunting team? That's gotta suck."
The women laughed. Charlie said,"Last time around, we got some evidence down here at the Cheyenne, and up in the Tomahawk. I want to see what else we can get."
"Want to split up?" I asked.
"Why not," said Charlie. She climbed out of the Cheyenne. "Let's you and me go over this way."
We walked across the hangar, past the Vagabond, the Cub, the new Comanche. All the time I've been at the Piper Museum, and I still get something of a thrill out of that.
"Good column," said Charlie.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm just like Indiana Jones, exploring things and fighting Nazis."
"You get any crap over it?"
"Not yet, but I kinda hope so. I figure if I'm pissing off the white supremacists, I'm probably doing something right."
"What's behind this garage door?" Charlie asked. "I've never seen it open before."
"That's our board president's workshop," I said. "He works on cars and planes back here. Come on."
We walked in through the big door and into the workshop area. Charlie had her flashlight out. I was used to moving around this place in the dark.
"This staircase here goes all the way upstairs," I said. "Nobody ever uses it, but it's possible to sneak up there and spy on people on the third floor. Except I never do it, because it's really boring."
"How about this one?"
"This goes nowhere," I said. I pulled open the other door and showed her. "This staircase was covered over from above when they made it into a museum. It's an empty staircase that dead ends. I use it to make stuff disappear."
"Cool."
We walked through the back room, past John's office, and through a door. Stepped out into the main hallway. With some surprise, Charlie said,"Oh! It comes out here."
I grinned. "Everything in here leads someplace."
"Except that covered stairway."
"Except that."
We walked back around the corner, and into the hangar, where the others were still waiting by the Cheyenne. Millie said,"The storm is getting worse."
"We have a temperature drop over here," said Kara.
"EMFs rising," said Millie. "We have a spike."
"Look at this," said Charlie. "I have goose bumps. What's that noise?"
"I see something," said Millie. "Dark shape, silhouetted against the windows in front!"
I stared at her. "Seriously? Those are eight feet off the ground!"
"I swear, I saw something."
"A tree, blowing in the wind?"
"It didn't look like that. More solid. Shadow figure?"
"I'll take a look," I said. "Keep those recorders running!"
I headed for the side door, and went outside. It was storming, and I could hear lightning in the distance, but the rain wasn't too bad. I looked out front, where the windows were, and there was nothing. I stood on a picnic table in front of the building, and still couldn't see in the windows.
I walked back in the side door.
"Nothing's out there, and there's no way any person could be standing in front of the windows. They're way too high."
"I saw something in front of them."
"Let's get the cameras."
Kara said,"Temperature at sixty-five."
"EMFs high," said Charlie. "We're hearing noises."
"I'll get photos," I said. "Keep the recorders running. We have something. We have something."
"Storm, haunted museum...." Millie smiled. "It's a perfect situation."
"Nobody else gets to investigate a haunted airplane museum," I said. "I love being a ghost hunter."

"....And I have to say, I'm just barely scratching the surface with what I told  you today," I said. "Lock Haven is a great place, full of fascinating adventure, and I want to welcome you all here."
I stood and faced the incoming class at Lock Haven University, giving my annual welcome talk about the local history. About fifty new students looked back.
"There are all sorts of great legends and stories," I said. "And I encourage you all to get out and explore, learn about them, and discover the city. Thanks for having me."
The students applauded. I was again wearing my LHPS uniform, which I sometimes do when I give a speech. I left the building afterward and went to my bike, riding down toward Spring Street. There was an abandoned building I wanted to take a look at.
On telephone poles along the way, I saw three more flyers. I stopped to look for a moment. Not only had the Record column run this morning, but a piece I'd written for the Express had been published, as well.
I tore the flyers down, and went to work.

"You got a call saying good things about one of your columns today, Lou," said Adam at the desk. "I wasn't sure which one, but...."
"The anti-Nazi piece in the Express, I'm sure," I said. "It ran this morning. I'm hearing a lot about it."
"Oh, yeah? The one about the hate flyers?"
"That's the one. Online today, it's been getting a lot of attention. Last I looked, about twenty people had shared it, including the mayor and a city councilman. No. My columns don't go viral, but sometimes they get sort of bacterial."
"Well, good."
"The city is on alert now, and most people are behind me on this. They've been ripping the flyers down as fast as they can go up."
"By the way, Joe had a question," said Adam. "He wanted to know if you could find the locations of some of the old brick factories. Any way you can do that?"
I smiled.
"I'm on it," I said, and got to work.

Wendigo, Wendigoing, Wendigone

I use The Field Guide To North American Monsters more than I use most of my college textbooks. I was at the library making copies out of it when my daughter rolled in on her wheelchair. I was photocopying monsters from Illinois and Wisconsin. As one does.
"When are you leaving, Dad?" asked Tif.
"Wednesday," I said. "Can you check the mail while we're gone?"
"I already said I'd be up to feed the dogs, watch your house," agreed Tif. "I'm going to put Paul's railroad tracks together, make him a big city while he's gone."
"That'll last five minutes after we get back," I said. "We'll be driving to Michelle's cousins in Chicago, and then heading up to Wisconsin to meet Paul's little brother."
The library director, passing the desk, shook her head. "Chicago," she said. "I was stuck there on a layover once. I hate it."
"My wife has relatives there," I said. "It's not as bad as when I go to Georgia to visit her parents, but I do have some backup plans. There's a haunted post office there. It's only a six-hour walk from where her cousins live, so if I can just slip away for....half a day, without her noticing...."
"I have to ask," said Tif. "Have you ever considered just having a normal, regular family vacation?"
"I can't investigate officially," I said. "In Chicago, that can only be done by Paranormal Investigators Union 7363."
The boss shook her head. "Have fun, Tif."
"Hey, this is not my problem," said Tif. "I'll be home in his haunted house with the dogs, eating his food and watching his Netflix."

My family isn't typical. I'm a paranormal investigator in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. I have a wife, two adopted daughters, and an adopted little boy who just turned three. For Father's Day, we'd gone out looking for some bootleg whiskey. The word traditional doesn't get used around me very much.
My son has two little brothers, born to the same birth mother and also adopted. One is right here in Pennsylvania, and we'd gone to meet him in Bellefonte in early July. Little Isaac is six months old, and Paul had lit up immediately upon meeting him, hugging and kissing his little brother.
The one we hadn't met yet was Sully. He'd been adopted by a nice family in Wisconsin. This summer, we were meeting little Sully and his family. And, just in case, I was brushing up on the paranormal in Wisconsin and Illinois. You know how it is, when you travel---You stop the mail, arrange for pet care, check for any pertinent paranormal sightings at your destination.
Or is that just me?

"I'm just saying," I said,"I don't understand how you never mentioned this."
Michelle sighed. "It never occurred to me you'd be interested, that's all."
"Seriously? Did you know who you married?" We were in the car, driving along Interstate 80. "In fifteen years of marriage, it never dawned on you that your historian husband might like to know that your cousins live near Jack Ruby's grave. And not in an hour's drive near, but within a five minute walk near!"
"So is my historian husband going to check it out?"
"Quietly. It's Chicago; that can only be done by Historians Union 1833."
"Well, we'll be there in an hour."
"Yeah, we made better time than we thought." I looked at the dark forest around the highway. "Prime Wendigo country up here."
"What the hell's a Wendigo?"
"You've seen them on some of those TV shows that you like. They're an old Indian legend; the Wendigoes are a weird sort of spirit monster that haunts the north. They're created when someone practiced cannibalism in the old days. Down south they have Chupacabra infestations, and up here it's Wendigoes."
We pulled up on the street in the evening, and Michelle's cousin Christine was waiting for us. We carried the luggage into the house, and she called her kids down to meet us.
There were three: Jacob, Emma, and Amy. We introduced them to Paul, and they started playing with him.
"Dese my cousins?" he asked Michelle.
"Yes, they're your cousins," she said.
"We have plenty of toys around here," said Jacob. "We probably have some of our old ones down in the haunted basement."
I looked over at him. "You have a haunted basement?"
"Well, it feels haunted," he said.
"It's a finished basement downstairs," said Emma. "It feels really creepy. We never go down there."
"How old is this place?" I asked.
"My mom bought it in 1987," said Christine. "She says it was built in 1935."
"So it's possible, then," I said. "Did you know I'm a paranormal investigator? We could check for ghosts down there. I usually have some basic equipment on me."
Amy grinned. "Yeah. That'd be fun."
"If it's haunted, I don't want to know," said Christine.
There's always someone.

"Lou!" My wife's cousin Laura gave me a hug as I walked into her house. "It's good to see you again. What's it been, ten years?"
"Eleven," I said. "Last time I was here was 2006."
"And this must be Paul." Laura smiled at my son. "Can I give you a hug?"
"Sure," said Paul.
There was a teenaged girl standing in the kitchen doorway. Laura said,"This is my daughter, Erin."
"Hi," said Erin.
"Hi," I said.
"I told Erin about you being a paranormal investigator," said Laura. "She's really interested in that sort of thing. I was hoping you could talk to her about it."
"Oh, sure," I said. "You're into ghost-hunting?"
Erin grinned. "Yeah. I'm really interested. I'd like to learn."
"Let's sit down; I'll teach you some stuff. The bottom line is always Prove it. What I do is scientific investigation---I'm looking for measurable, provable results. Photo, video. No matter what, we're trying to prove it."
She nodded. I continued,"I have some equipment in my pack, back at your aunt's place. While I'm here, we were talking about doing some testing in their basement. You want in?"
"Yes," she said. "I'd love that."
"Someone did die down there," said Laura. "Back when we were renting it out, a guy named Marty died of a drug overdose."
I nodded and made a mental note of that. I wasn't sure I'd share that information with the younger kids. "I look into all kinds of stuff. Ghosts, UFOs, Cryptozoology. You know the Wendigo?"
"Yeah! I know about the Wendigo."
"Interesting thing about the Wendigo is what the legend represents. You can tell a lot about a culture from what it fears. The Jersey Devil legend begins with a childbirth that went bad, which is about right for a location that was miles from any real medical care. The Wendigo comes from cannibalism, which suggests how scared they must have been when the winter came and they couldn't grow more crops."
"Do you mind if I put you on the phone with my friend Haley?" Erin asked. "She's got some questions about this stuff."
"Sure, go ahead."
"Okay. Haley? You're on speaker now. This is the guy I told you about, the ghost hunter."
"Hi," said Haley's voice from the phone. "I wanted to ask you about something. I had an experience at the John Wayne Gacy House, near here....My dad was turning around in the driveway, and I saw something weird on his backup camera. A sort of funny flashing light. Could that be a ghost?"
A storm was beginning outside. I said,"With a place like the Gacy House, it's entirely possible What I would do is go back to check some more---Not that I'm encouraging you to trespass, you understand. I'd go and try some photos and audio recordings, and see if anything comes up that will corroborate the sighting."
"Cool!"
I glanced out the window at the storm. Lightning was flashing. Erin said,"It's getting bad out there."
"Wendigo weather," I said.

The next morning, I walked out of the house at nine. Time to find the grave of a killer.
I'd brought along a small black pouch. It was my adventure travel kit---I had a spare jacket in there, concealable, waterproof. Loaded with all the stuff I needed for adventures: Tool, compass, signal mirror. I was wearing the jacket as I walked west through Norridge.
Norridge, Illinois is a suburb of Chicago that's not really a suburb. It exists as its own community, with independent government and services, but it is entirely surrounded by Chicago. So no matter which way you go, you can be in Chicago in a few minutes, but ti seems that all the Chicago traffic completely bypasses Norridge. And people tell me Renovo is weird.
I found the cemetery easily. It was pretty much in a straight line from the house. There was an entrance along the street, and I walked inside and turned right. I had something of a vague direction to the grave I wanted.
I followed along the path, parallel to Ozanam Avenue. I could tell I was getting close when I saw a whole field full of Rubensteins, and I looked for an elaborate brick house. About four rows in, I found the grave, twenty minutes after leaving the house.
It was a small stone, with the name and dates on it. It would have been easy to miss if I hadn't been specifically looking. I knelt by it a moment---The man who had killed JFK's assassin.
"Wow," I said softly in the empty cemetery.
Fifty years ago, this guys had made national history. And I was here.
I placed a small stone on his grave.

Everyone was in the pool. It was a cool, cloudy day, but Michelle's aunt has a pool, so everyone had gone and jumped in. The whole family would rather swim than go and see the grave of a killer, the weirdos. I'm not much of a swimmer, which has caused me some problems when I'm investigating water creatures. So I was left roaming around the kitchen.
I was a little lonely. I can only be out of Lock Haven for just so long before I begin to get homesick. I'm like Aquaman---I can't be out of my territory for very long.
I got out my cell phone and dialed Jazmyn.
"Hello?"
"Hi, kid. It's Lou. Did I call at a bad time?"
"Lou! No, I'm just hanging out on the couch. Nothing too dramatic here---No snakes downtown or Bigfoot sightings. How's your vacation?"
"It's good. I miss Lock Haven, though."
"What've you been up to?"
"Saw a historic grave today. Jack Ruby, the guy who killed JFK's killer. And I'm gonna do a little ghost-hunting---I have some teens out here who might be interested in that."
"That's cool. You do tend to attract them."
"Well, I'll let you get back to what you were doing. Thanks, hon. Miss you. I'll see you when I get back."
"I'll stop by," she said.

"We here now?" Paul asked from his car seat.
"We're here now," I said as we pulled into the driveway in Wisconsin.
"Yay! We here!"
We got out of the car as the gathered family waited. I didn't have a Wendigo shirt (yet), so I was wearing my black shirt that said It's a Chupacabra thing; you wouldn't understand. As we let Paul out of the car, a tiny little black boy walked up to see him.
"Who's this, Paul?" I asked.
Paul smiled.
"Dat my bruvver!" he said.
He reached out and hugged Sully. Both of them beamed. And everyone gathered around smiled.
And for just a little while, I forgot all about dead people.

I didn't know if the basement was haunted, but it was definitely creepy. It consisted mostly of a tight hallway, with a kitchen at one end and a small living room at the other. About half of the lights were out. The hallway floor was about half flooded due to the storm.
The kids led me down: Erin, Jacob, Emma, and Amy. I was letting them use some of my equipment; I'd handed out laser thermometers and EMF detectors to them before we'd come down. I had my I'd rather be ghost hunting shirt on.
"The first thing to do is a sweep of the property," I said. "Get photos everywhere; check temperature and electromagnetism. Cover as much space as you can. Get a sense of the place."
"About seventy," said Amy, holding the thermometer.
"This is really creepy," said Emma.
"This is awesome," said Erin.
"What we're looking for are things we can prove. Something we can test, record, and show to others." I was snapping photos. "We're as scientific as possible. That's what I teach my kids back home."
"I got a signal," said Emma. "It beeped."
She was holding the EMF detector. I looked it over. "Do a quick sweep, and check to see if there's any reason for it. An outlet or something. And then we'll do an EVP session."
We sat down in the living room together, and I got out my digital recorder. I said,"We'll start with the date and location, and then go around the room and say our names. Then we'll ask questions and listen for a response. Leave some space between questions, so we're not tripping over each other. And if there's an outside noise, like a car or a dog, we tag it. We say what it is, to make sure we can identify it later. Everyone with me?"
"Yeah," said Erin. "This is cool."
I started the recorder.
"We're recording; it is 11:39 August fourth, we are in Norridge, Illinois, doing an investigation. Lou."
"Emma."
"Jacob."
"Amy."
"Erin."
"Allright. Is anyone here? Can you tell us your name? Did you live here? You guys can jump in and ask questions, too, if you'd like." You usually feel kind of stupid doing an EVP session at first, though I'd long since outgrown that.
"When did you die?" Erin. I'd known she'd be the first.
"How did you die?" Emma.
"How old are you?" Me.
"Did you have any kids?" Amy.
Erin turned to me. "And you do this stuff all the time?"
"Back in Lock Haven, pretty much. I'm with a team, and I teach a class on it. I write about it a lot for the local papers. There's an old prison we've investigated, and the airplane museum I run. I get to investigate a lot of stuff like that." I looked at the recorder. "It's been about six minutes. Normally, we'd do about twenty, but for our purposes, this is good enough. I'm going to end it here."
I turned off the recorder and stood up. "I now declare you guys the official Chicago chapter of Teen Paranormal. I'll let you guys know what I find."
"We have to come visit you in Pennsylvania sometime," said Erin.
I grinned. "I'd like that."

Sunday morning.
Time to go.
I packed the car, and we said goodbye. I looked over the map, and we got on the road. Drove out of Norridge, out of Chicago, and south toward the border. It was time to go home, time for me to get back to the library and what passes for normal.
We got into Indiana,  and on Interstate 80.
Somewhere around Lake Michigan, I got curious and pulled out my recorder. I plugged the headphones in and played back the audio of our investigation.
Around three minutes in, in response to a question from one of the kids, there was a sound. A sort of faint groaning noise. I backed it up and replayed it a couple of times to make sure.
I smiled.
The kids are going to love this.
Pennsylvania was ahead.

Uproar To End All Wars

I ran past the desk at work with a military helmet.
"Over there," Sue and Zach sang as I dashed by with an armload of artifacts. "Over there! And we won't be back till it's over over there!"
I set down the Army helmet and the military portrait down, and opened the display case. A hundred years ago, local people fought World War I. Now for the anniversary, it was my job to commemorate it for the library.
I get exposed to chemical weapons a lot less. Otherwise, my job is about as interesting.
"We're going to have a great World War I Week," I said. "I've been planning this out for months. I got all sorts of events planned. A talk on chemical weapons, a paranormal event, food, music. It might be even better than Civil War Week a couple of years ago."
"Except with your tour of Beech Creek today, you have about an hour to do all the preparation for it," Sue pointed out.
"Yeah, I didn't think that through."
I put the helmet into the display case, an actual World War I helmet. Then I picked up the group portrait, showing the 305th Ambulance Company, local guys. I was about to set it in the case when I noticed something.
Wait....What's this?

"Is there any of that war coffee left upstairs?" Adam asked me as he walked past the PA Room.
I shook my head. "You don't want any, man. Trust me."
"That bad."
"Oh, yes. For the start of World War I Week, I thought I'd make an authentic battlefield breakfast---Fried mush and Mess Sergeant's coffee. It was truly godawful. We put eggshells in the coffee and boiled it, we made corn meal mush just like the soldiers did. It was terrible. Historically accurate, though."
Adam grinned. "You get much of a crowd?"
"A few people. They even tried the breakfast." I was flipping through some of the cards indexing the obituaries. "I have a quest."
"Oh, yeah? What's that?"
"For World War I Week, I'm looking into one of the units. The 305th Ambulance Corps was local, they were all Clinton County guys. Now, I've known for years that William Raymond was the first American integrated soldier. He was black, but such a good cook that the white 305th didn't want to let him go. So Major George Green, also a local guy, talked to the general and insisted that Raymond stay in the unit. America's first integrated soldier was from Lock Haven."
"Wow," said Adam.
"I have a photo of the unit on display," I said. "Looking at it last night, I realized that there were two of them---The photo shows two black men, Raymond and another guy. I'd heard there was another one, but nobody knows his name. So, for World War I Week, that's what I'm doing---I'm going to find out his name. Got no reason for doing this, other than I feel like it."
"That's the best reason of all."
"I found a newspaper article from 1953 where they had a reunion. They had a photo with names, and you can see this guy. But on the microfilm, it's not easy to see where in the line he was."
"So you can cross-check...."
"Yep, doing that. I have a list of seven names that might be him. I'm going to use the obits and marriage records to narrow it down."
Adam grinned. "If anyone can do it, man, you can."

I had a written list of the seven names I'd gotten from the group photo: M.L. Motter, A.D. Hendricks, A.W. Wise, F.E. Krotzer, William Dickey, E.R. Orsin, and R.H. Bernash. I ran through the index file, looking for obits on each one.
Two guys didn't have obits---Krotzer and Bernash. I scribbled down the dates of the other ones, then went to the marriage records.
Those same two guys didn't have marriage records. They'd be tough. Motter and Wise had marriage certificates, but we didn't have them at the library---We've got a couple of gaps in our collection. I'd have to visit the courthouse for them. Hendricks, Orsin, and Dickey had marriage records, and we had those at the library.
I took the big, thick marriage record books off the shelf and laid them out on the floor, sprawling across where I could page through them. I'm a library employee---I get to do that.
I pulled the record on Hendricks, and looked at where race was listed. White. I crossed him off the list. I found Orsin's record---White. Cross him off, too.
Finally, I found the marriage record for Dickey. White. Down to four. I looked up the obituary for Arthur W. Wise. This one was easy---He had a photo. And, yes, he was very definitely white.
And it was the same for all the other guys on my short list. White as the snowfall of 1995, every one of them.
I went back to the microfilm and put in the original photo. This time, I zoomed in really, really close and magnified it. You know how people say "I don't see color"? Turns out this is true---On a half-century old, black and white newspaper print, you don't see color. At least, not well. It turns out that the guy I'd thought was black was actually just standing in a shadow.
Back to John Sloan's drawing board.

"I was wrong," I said. "The guy I'm looking for wasn't the right guy in the reunion photo. My list of seven names were all white; they didn't contain the guy I want to find."
Adam nodded. "That's tough, man."
"Yeah. But I'm not giving up yet."
"What now?"
"I gotta check 'em all."

I got the 1919 article about the 305th coming home to Lock Haven, and printed it out. It listed the names of all the soldiers. I crossed off the ones I'd already checked out, or names I already knew. It was the eightieth anniversary of when Piper Aviation came to Lock Haven, so we were holding a big weekend where we offered tours for eighty cents. So I took the page down to my office at Piper, and sat down for the most intense day of research I'd ever had.
Around a hundred names. I'd found a website that had draft cards, so I checked each one throughout the day. One at a time, I crossed them off the list. Some didn't have draft cards on file; I left them for later. A couple had intriguing notes; I copied them down.
In the best of all possible worlds, there was no reason the black soldier couldn't have been the first or second guy I checked. So of course, that didn't happen.
Midway through the day, Zach stopped in to say hi. He looked over my shoulder as I worked.
"What's all this?"
"Trying to find out who the other black soldier was with the 305th Ambulance Corps," I said. "I started out with a list of seven possibilities, and now I'm running through the whole unit. I have to search them all one at a time until I find my guy, or rule out everyone else but one."
He shook his head. "You're more patient about this than I am."
"I'm not entirely sure it's a good quality."
Charles Caldwell. Earl Hartman. One at a time, I searched each name and found "Caucasian" or "White" on each card. I felt a little stupid checking to see if guys like Luigi Rubino were maybe black, but I checked each one all the same.
I started before noon, and I worked clear past three PM. At the end of it, I'd gone through them all, and found a record for most of them. A couple of the unfound ones I was able to put on a list of unlikely candidates, as they had ethnic names that were probably Italian or Irish. And at the end of it, I wound up with a list of twenty-one remaining names, with a couple of frontrunners.
Most people would be able to handle a week-long work project plus a weekend anniversary celebration without having to have some side quest, as well.
What can I say? I'm easily bored.

"So what's on the schedule next for World War I Week?" asked Sue at the desk, back at the library.
"Tonight, a guest speaker on chemical weapons. The ghost hunters coming in Thursday to talk about a war-related investigation we did a few years back. Friday night, my World War I tour of the city. And Saturday, I have the book club and a barbershop quartet."
"You're gonna be busy. You know the third floor still smells like fried mush?"
"Yeah, sorry about that. Keep an eye on that list, okay?" I pointed to the scribbled list of names I'd drawn up. "It's real important."
I'd written down a new list of names that were still up in the air. I'd been running back and forth to the marriage records at the library, crossing guys off the list. The library has most of the marriage records---I'd have to go down to the county courthouse for the rest.
Frank Knecht---White. Lee Hanna---White. One by one, I ruled out soldiers, bringing the list down.
Our index showed that two of them had photos.
Most of the library's photo collection were kept upstairs, in a small room just off the Sloan Museum Wing. I went up and let myself in between my desk shift and my guest speaker on chemical weapons. Both Dare Lawrence and Walter Grimm had photos. Knowing what I'd probably find, I pulled them out and checked anyway.
Lawrence's was a group picture of all the railroad employees. Grimm's was a photo of the local fire department.
Both showed a sea of white faces. Jesus, I hate inequality.
On the other hand, I was getting a lot closer.
I crossed them both off the list, and went upstairs to learn about chemical weapons.

Between Piper and the library, I have an office on each end of the city. This means that I tend to spend a lot of time on my bike, travelling between the two of them. Early in the afternoon, I was on Mill Street when I saw a young teenaged girl with magenta hair.
I stopped to talk to her.
"Katelynn! How you been?"
"Hi, Lou. I was just coming to visit you at the library!"
I gave her a hug. Katelynn had been one of the earliest kids I'd trained in Teen Paranormal. We'd been very close before she'd moved down to North Carolina for a while.
"You home now for good?" I asked.
She nodded. "Moved back with my mom."
"Well, that's great! We're gonna have to hang out."
"What're you working on?"
"We got World War I week at the library," I said. "I'm on a little mission here. There were two black soldiers who fought with the 305th---One of them, William Raymond, lived not far from you, actually. The other one is a mystery. I've been trying to figure out his name."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Just came from the courthouse," I said. "I was able to pull the marriage records and cross off three guys there. I'm down to like my last three."
"That's so cool," she said.
I grinned. "Stop by the library a lot more, now that you're home," I said. "We'll do some searching together, have a few adventures."

Obviously, when you plan a WWI Week, you have to include the local ghost hunters. At least, I do. It's possible that the paranormal is a little too mainstream in my life. I'm working on that.
Jazmyn came in while I was preparing. I smiled and gave her a hug. It's always good to see her. "Hey, kid! What's up?"
"Hi, Lou! Just on my way to the mall, and I thought I'd stop by. What're you working on?"
I gave her the recap, and she grinned. "That's so cool. Everybody else just does boring stuff. How's it coming?"
"Pretty good, actually. I had it narrowed down to three guys. I checked what records I could, and found that two of them have obits. They'd moved from the area by the time they died in 1944 and 1953, but the local papers ran obits all the same. The obituaries don't specify race, but the fact that they even had obits tells me a lot---They were more likely to run out of town obits for whites in those days. It was a different time."
"Yeah, it was."
"So I've got the list narrowed down to one guy. Maurice Davis. Tomorrow I'm going to take some time and find out what I can about him." I picked up my paperwork. "You want to come learn about World War I ghosts?"

The next morning was the doughnuts. Zach had baked me a couple of dozen doughnuts using a WWI-era recipe I'd found, and I'd set them up in the lobby with coffee and some hardtack I'd made. We were offering them free to any patron who wandered by. I like these sort of programs, because A- They're very educational; B- It's passive programming, requiring very little in the way of effort; and C- I get doughnuts.
I took a doughnut and a Bigfoot mug full of coffee. As I walked past Adam, he asked,"How are the doughnuts?"
"A damn sight better than the fried mush," I said, and retreated to my desk.
I looked at my list. I was down to one guy---From the original article listing all the members of the 305th, I'd crossed off every name but Maurice Davis.
I got online and brought up his draft card. I looked at the question of race.
Black.
That was him. Maurice Davis was the guy I'd been looking for all along. I hadn't initially found his record because I'd been filtering out soldiers not from Pennsylvania. Davis hadn't originally left from Lock Haven; he'd come up from Florida and been transferred into the 305th. That was why it had taken me so long.
Sometimes you can substitute obsession for skill.
I've had a pretty good week.
I'd found him.

That evening, I began my tour outside the library. A small group of people waited for me to begin.
"Everyone, thanks for coming," I said. "We've had a good World War I Week here at the Ross Library, and I'm grateful to all of you for being a part of it. Tonight's tour will talk about some of the World War I soldiers and their homes, and tell you some of the stories."
Everyone was listening.
"And I have a new one for you tonight, An African-American soldier who was unknown up until now. This tour is the first time I've ever talked about him."
Looking at the crowd, I smiled.
"His name was Maurice Davis. Anyone want some fried mush?"

Unidentified Fly-In Object

I've always thought that if I were to get a tattoo, I'd get the outline of Clinton County, right on my shoulder. Maybe with the shape of Pennsylvania. Then I remember---I'm forty-seven. I get a tattoo and it legally constitutes a midlife crisis.
But that wasn't preventing me from going into the tattoo place downtown. For work reasons. That's why my job is weirder than yours. (No matter what it is you do for a living, my job is weirder than yours.)
Jazmyn was there. "Hi, Lou! Want to see my new tattoo?"
Jazmyn is a sweet kid, one of my junior paranormal investigators. She was currently home after being away in basic training. I've grown very fond of her. I looked at her tattoo, which showed a design involving compass points.
"Nice," I said. "It gives me sort of a feeling of adventure."
"Does it? That's pretty cool!"
"I'm looking for the owner," I said. "If he's got a moment."
"Lou!" The owner looked up from the back of the room, where he was tattooing a guy. "What's up?"
"I actually wasn't aware you'd recognize me." I've been a local writer for about ten years now, but it's still a surprise when someone knows who I am. There's a significant part of me that feels six years old, scribbling two-sentence pencil articles for my grandmother, who will look at them distractedly and say That's nice.
"Oh, sure. You recently wrote that piece in the Record about the antique chair."
"Chair and Chair Alike. Yeah, that's me."
"So what can I do for you?" he asked.
"Well, I've been told by a couple of people that you think your place is haunted."
He laughed. "Well, I don't, but some of the guys do. They say they've had some stuff happen in the back."
"I wanted to offer a free investigation." I handed him the LHPS business card. "We'll be happy to come in anytime. We don't charge, and we'll keep it as confidential as you like. Of course, me saying this in a roomful of people wasn't the most brilliant plan...."
He laughed. The guy getting the tattoo said,"My lips are sealed, man."
"Cool. Anyway, think it over. We'd be happy to do an investigation for you."
"I'll consider it. Thanks."
I grinned at Jazmyn. "See you at the library, kid."
And that is how we do that.

First thing when I got into the museum, I checked my e-mail. Nothing new---Appointments at Piper, meeting notices, a comment on my latest column, and a UFO sighting. The usual.
As there was nothing pressing, it was a while before I got to reading them. I spun in my chair at the Piper Museum, and walked out onto the floor, where there had to be about fifty people.
Stacey, our office manager, was in the gift shop. I said,"How's it going? What can I do?"
"We have a tour at ten," Stacey said. "John will say a few words about the planes, and then you can take the tour. The Fly-In is always busy. Don't forget, you have a board meeting at one."
As a kid, I'd dreamed of an exciting life. Adventures, mysteries, and all sorts of excitement. And I've managed to achieve all that. And, in a supreme effort at balance, the universe also makes me sit through endless committee meetings.
"Got the agenda ready," I said.
Stacey nodded. "The annual Fly-In is always crazy."
The Fly-In is an annual event held on the airport grounds. It's a big deal, and the museum opens for it. Crissy, the office assistant, approached me with a note. "Lou, the airport just called. They want to move your eleven o'clock meeting to the Fly-In grounds; they'll have trouble getting over here."
"Not my problem," I said. "I did not request this meeting."
"We don't have anyone else to take over the tour," said Stacey. "Can you...."
'Yeah. I can handle the tour."
After the tour, I went down to the hangar. I almost always detour through the hangar on my way to board meetings, mostly because I love working in a hangar full of airplanes. Sometimes I go and sit in the Piper Cheyenne just to do paperwork. We'd just gotten a new plane in, a beautiful, bright red Piper Coupe. I admired it for a moment before going into the meeting.
"Okay, around the table," said President John, banging his gavel. "Lou? What do you have?"
"Just one thing," I said. "This week is the one year anniversary of when I first became your curator, and it's been wonderful. Thank you all."
John nodded, banged the gavel again. "Meeting adjourned."
I went out into the hangar, and sat down in the Cheyenne. The two back seats were barely visible from the outside, and I leaned back and closed my eyes. Took a deep breath for a moment.
Then I went upstairs to my office using the secret back staircase. I finally got a chance to check my e-mail.

"A red airplane!" Paul said, pointing up into the air.
I walked through the Fly-In with my family, my wife and son, Paul Matthew, and daughters Tif and Biz. There were planes all over the field, taking turns flying into the air. I love the Fly-In, and being with the museum, I can be right in the middle of it. My wife said,"I'm going to get him some ice cream. Do you want to sit down with the girls?"
I nodded. The girls and I found a spot at the picnic tables, and sat down.
I glanced up at the sky. "Got a UFO sighting on this end of town," I said.
"Where?" asked Tif.
"That's the problem, I can't narrow it down geographically much. I get e-mail notifications from a couple of sites, but as you can imagine, some of them aren't exactly professionally run. They lack details. What I know is that somewhere down around here, on a Tuesday night two weeks ago, about ten PM. A light in the sky that moved and stopped several times, heading northeast."
"Who saw it?" Tif asked.
Tif's been listening to me a long time; she asks all the right questions. "Again, don't know. The site's anonymous. But I figure I'll look into it. Drones have upped the UFO sightings by about eighty percent, and this is typical drone behavior they're describing. So I'll check into drones first. It'll give me something to do."
"Yeah, I noticed how you haven't been busy enough lately."
"Got to review a play out at Millbrook tomorrow night," I said. "You available to babysit the little guy?"
"Oh, sure," said Tif. "I'll bring some glow sticks, and he'll have a bath in the dark. He'll love that."

The Fly-In is crazy from start to finish. I walked in at nine AM and immediately got swept into a committee meeting with two other board members about the new kiosk. One of the board members was an old biology professor of mine at Lock Haven University, twenty years ago, and if you don't think it's weird to be serving on a board with your old teacher, you'd better think that one over again.
The meeting was in my office, so I got my computer on and surreptitiously searched for drone operators in the Lock Haven area.
I found one guy who ran drone lessons. His name was Doctor H. Shook, and he gave lessons right on the airport grounds. I scribbled the phone number on a post-it.
"Be right back," I said, and ducked into the secret staircase by my office, and disappeared into the hangar.
I sat down in the back of the Cheyenne. It was quiet in there.
I called City Hall first, for some property research for the museum, and then tried calling the drone guy on my cell.
I got his answering service. "Hi, this is Doctor Shook. I'm not available right now, but---"
I hung up. I could try to get him later. I climbed out of the Cheyenne and walked further into the hangar. President John was sitting near the L-4 Grasshopper.
"Hi, John. Hey, I was thinking yesterday---What if you and I teamed up for a guest speaking event? I do a little Piper history, and you talk about the good old days."
"Sure, we could do that," he said. "A lot of people love that story about how the fiberglass department guys used to use the modeling clay to make fake food." He laughed to himself. A lot of the time, when an old person starts talking about the past, it's time to run. But John is really entertaining. I've been known to get him started deliberately. "It looked realistic enough that people would try to eat it. Old Doc Shook used to get a laugh out of that. He was just telling me today before his program."
I stared at him. "Wait....What? Doctor Shook is here?"
"Oh, sure, he's giving a talk in the conference room."
And here I'd been sitting in the Cheyenne trying to call the guy, and he was right here at Piper, in the next room over.
I asked,"When's the program end?"

I was waiting in the hall outside the conference room when the program let out. Late. I slipped in as the guest speaker was cleaning up.
"Doctor Shook?" I asked. "You may have a call from me on your cell; I've been trying to call you. My name is Lou; I'm on the board here."
He shook my hand. "Yes, that's me."
"You're the drone guy."
"That's right, I am."
"If you have a moment, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your lessons."
"Too bad you weren't in yesterday. That was the topic of my talk."
"Well, this shouldn't take long. Is there any chance you'd have been flying a drone around here two weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening?"
He shook his head. "Not me, no. My class always ends at four. That sounds like a group from Williamsport who comes in on Tuesdays in the evening. They'd be the ones."
I smiled.
The UFO was a drone.
"That answers what I need to know, then. Thank you."

I stood in the small room near my office, where I had my secret UFO research station. I'd discovered it a few months ago---A small room, reachable only through my office. When considering what would be the best use of the space, I'd immediately decided on UFO research. Maybe the occasionaly flying monster; I'm not a one-trick wonder. But UFOs for sure. I had a dry erase board with the dates and locations of sightings scribbled on it. I looked at 6-6-2017: NE LH PA.
Then I erased it.
I took a file, wrote a label on it, and tucked the paperwork inside: A printout of the original notification, and a note with my conclusions. Then I put it in one of the file cabinets.
Case closed.

Bottle Episode

On Father's Day, my family decided to go out and look for some lost whiskey that was buried during Prohibition.
Hallmark doesn't really make a card for that.
We were in my wife's car, a white Prius, doing our exploration to celebrate Father's Day. My younger daughter Biz had suggested this, because it's something I enjoy doing. My wife was driving, with daughter Tif in the front seat. I was in the back, sharing space with Biz and Paul Matthew in his car seat.
I'd taken the kids out a few years ago, doing the same thing. We'd found a field where we'd dug up a bottle of high-quality bootleg whiskey, based on a lot of my research. It had been a great time, hiking into the wilderness and hunting for buried treasure.
Ever since, Biz had been on me to do it again.
The family that explores together, adores together.

"Prince Farrington was America's most notorious bootlegger," I explained from the back of the car. "He was from North Carolina, but he lived right here in Clinton County. He had a reputation for churning out a high quality, excellent whiskey, not that rotgut stuff that would blind you. A lot of his stills are still out there, and probably a lot of his whiskey, as well. He had a habit of burying some of it to be found later. Turn left up this road, Michelle."
You might think there's not enough room for us all in a Prius. You'd be correct. We were essentially wearing the car.
Why am I bothering to write all this down? Of course that's what you're thinking. People want to read about something interesting, not my plans for Father's Day. That's a valid point, except here you are reading this.
"How'd you figure it's in Farrandsville?" Biz asked me.
"I checked the documentation on Farrington," I said. "There are lists of every place people think he had stills. This one didn't look to be much of a drive. There used to be some farmland up here, plus a creek known as Whiskey Run. Farrington liked to set up in limestone country, so I checked a geological map."
"What was the deal with the limestone again?" asked Tif.
"It filtered the taste out," said my wife.
"But you'd want your whiskey to taste like whiskey," said Tif.
"Not the whiskey, the water," I said. "Bootleggers needed to set up by springs because they needed a steady supply of fresh water to distill whiskey. The feds figured out that the process left a faint whiskey taste in the water, so they'd taste the streams to find the stills. Farrington caught on, and discovered that limestone would filter out the taste. The man used geology to bootleg."
"This is fun," said Biz as we went over a bumpy road. "I love doing this."
"Keep your eyes open for water," I said. "The stream over there is actually called Whiskey Run, most likely after Farrington's work. Somewhere along there stood one of his stills."
We watched out the car windows as Michelle drove up the rocky road. Tif commented,"This is really pretty. It makes me wish I could get outside and hike more."
"There was a spring over there," said Biz.
"There was?" I asked.
"Yeah, one of those ones with a pipe stuck in the ground for fresh water."
"Stop the car, Michelle," I said.
My wife pulled to a stop along the deserted road. Biz said,"It wasn't a natural-looking spring; it had a pipe...."
"Yeah, the pipe's man-made, but the water isn't," I said. "That spring has always been there. Which would make it perfect for a Farrington still. Let's try it."

"Have to go potty, Daddy," said Paul.
We climbed out of the car. My wife said,"He needs to go. Can you show him?"
"Yeah. Come on, little man."
We walked off the trail, out of sight of the girls. I said,"Okay, little man. We're going to go potty right here."
"We go potty outside?"
"That's right." I tugged down his pants. "That's the great thing about the outdoors; it's all one big bathroom. In the forest, you can go outside, just like inside."
It's one of those unexpected parental moments. We'd adopted Paul three years ago. When you're getting a child somehow, you tend to anticipate the big stuff. You except sleepless nights and hospital visits. I was totally ready to save for college. But this kind of blindsided me. Nothing manages to prepare you for the moment you teach your son that he can whiz in the woods.
"Now listen, little man. Here we go, this is how we do it. Now, just for the record, I don't want you doing this in the backyard while the neighbors are watching."
"O-Kay."
There isn't going to be a photo added to this entry.
"Wow! I go outside!"
"That's right, buddy. You never forget your first time."
And on that note, I'm kind of relieved we got a boy.

"I want to explore too," said Paul
We walked up the road. Paul was staying near Tif. Michelle was guarding the car, which we could see from where we were. Paul stopped to pick up a few rocks. I asked,"Where did you see the spring, Biz?"
"Right up here," said Biz. She pointed. "There." There was a pipe with running water sticking out of the ground jsut off the road, in the woods.
"Okay, we'll look around here," I said. "This is perfect." I crossed the road and stopped at the edge, looking down at the run. Paul joined me.
"I find a rock, Daddy!"
"I see that. Okay, wait here---Stay with Sissy."
"We havin a adventure!"
I climbed down the bank and stood by the creek. There was a slat area---Most of the old stills are gone now, though a few still remain. I didn't figure I'd find any trace of this one, but the flat spot was basically perfect for a location.
Biz was climbing down the bank after me. She slipped and tumbled into the dirt, and then got up. Paul laughed at her.
I knelt by the stream, looking it over.
Shallow, cool water....Flat rocks....
I reached into the water with one hand, splashing around a bit. I felt the soft mud underneath, and then felt around the rocks. Finally, I grabbed the biggest flat rock, flipped it over, and stuck my hand underneath.
It was only later that I thought about the possibility of getting bitten by snakes, fish, or water monsters. At the time, I just felt around under there.
And I felt something flat and smooth.
Glass.
Gently, I pulled it out. I'd found a broad, flat bottle with a glass and cork topper. It was about two-thirds full of tan liquid.
I stood up.
"Hey, Biz!"
She looked up, still coming down the bank. "Yeah?"
I held up the bottle, and she grinned.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. It was hidden in the stream."
I carried it back up to the top, and handed the bottle to her. She carefully popped the glass plug out, and sniffed it.
"It's whiskey, allright," she said. She turned it over in her hands, examining it. "Uneven seam on the bottle, which makes it about the right age." I was ind of proud of her. You know those guys who brag that their kid made the winning home run or whatever? Yeah, the hell with those guys. My kids can find ancient artifacts.
"We found it!" Biz said.
I smiled.
"We did."

We walked back to the car. I held up the bottle to show my wife, and she raised her eyebrows and shook her head.
"How do you always get so lucky?" she asked.
"It's not luck, not really," I said. "I'm very good at what I do."
"We go home now?" asked Paul.
"Yep," I said. "We're going home now. I got some food to cook on the grill."
For Father's Day. Almost as if we were a normal family.

Paint Misbehaving

Henry Wharton Shoemaker never had to attend staff meetings.
Well, probably he did. But history doesn't make a big thing about that. He's better known for his explorations and his recording of paranormal legends. Like I am.
And yet, here I sit.
"....We received a grant to help us fix the windows after the recent storm," the library director said. "So our maintenance department will be working on that soon."
That's right. The storm. Forgot about that.
I sat in the back of the reference room, among all my co-workers. Zach and Adam were always in the back with me. Diane, the director, sat up front. My other co-workers around the table.
"That's about all I have," said the director. "Full-timers, I need you to stay. Part-timers can go."
I threw my hands in the air. "Woohoo!"
Outside the library, I got on my bike and rode southeast. I'm a part-time library staffer in Lock Haven. I could also be considered a part-time paranormal investigator, writer, historian, tour guide, museum curator, and urban explorer. I don't sleep much.
There are the ruins of an old railroad machine shop along Liberty Street. People walk by it all the time without really looking; they think it's just a flat concrete pad and some girders there for no discernible reason. But a few years ago, I'd looked it up on the 1925 Sanborn Map, and learned that it was a railroad shop, built sometime around 1915.
It had been built from local brick. Sometime around the 1950s, it had been demolished, but a lot of those bricks were still lying there underground, waiting to be found. Often, after a hard rain, they get partially uncovered.
I check every couple of months. It's a form of public service.
I parked my bike and walked in, along the tracks. I found one---An unbroken, good-sized brick with the writing carved in it. LH B&T CO, LOCK HAVEN, PA. At least a hundred years old.
It was too heavy to carry in my backpack. I biked across the church parking lot to the local grocery store and picked up four plastic bags along with my dinner.
I rode back to the ruins, I knelt down and pried the brick from the ground. It was heavy; I hefted it with some effort. I placed it in three bags, doubled up, slung it over my handlebars, and rode off toward home.
Shoemaker would have been proud.

So what's the quickest way to investigate a ghost on your lunch break?
Asking for a friend.
There was this seminar. Historic archiving and preservation. It was held at the Taber Museum in Williamsport, next county over from where I live. And my my boss and I decided we were going to attend it together.
These things are a lot like a train going uphill: They start off okay, but it doesn't take long before they get really slow.
"So, this seems like a good time to break for lunch," said the instructor. "We'll meet back here in an hour."
Everyone stood up, stretched, got in line.The director said,"I'm going to eat outside in the car. See if you can network a bit. I'll be back in an hour."
"Can do," I said.
 I wound up next to a woman named Carly, from Allentown. I was wearing my shirt that said Historian: You'd be more interesting if you were dead.
"I grew up not far from Allentown," I said. "In Slatington, on a small farm."
She brightened. "Oh, yes! I know Slatington."
"You know, one of my big heroes from this area visited out there," I said. "Henry Wharton Shoemaker. He wrote a book about his trip. A Week In The Appalachian Mountains."
"Really? That's so cool!"
"You can get it on Amazon," I said. "I got a copy."
Lunch was a sandwich and chips, pretty easily wolfable in five minutes or less. Which left me with almost an hour to go and explore the museum. I strolled out into the lobby, and found Gary, the director of the Taber Museum.
"Gary, I been dying to know," I said. "A couple years ago when you were on the ghost-hunting show The Dead Files, how badly did they edit you?"
Gary rolled his eyes. "It was awful. They kept trying to get me to say things that were untrue."
"I got that impression," I said. "My team was called in on that one before the TV people. Did you get to meet the homeowner?"
Gary shook his head. "I mostly met the boom guy."
"The homeowner was nuts. I mean, she claimed to have been assaulted by a ghost. She couldn't stick to a story. Later when I interviewed her neighbors, they told me she'd been seen in the backyard wearing a tinfoil hat."
Gary laughed. "I thought that was just an expression."
"Yeah, so did I, until that time."
I headed out into the gift shop, and picked up a couple of pretty rocks for Paul. My son has an interest in rocks lately. They don't have to be brightly colored and shiny, but it helps.
As I paid, I saw the postcard on the counter. Nellie Tallman. The haunted portrait.
That's right....I'd forgotten about that.
"So, tell me about the haunted painting," I said to the woman ringing me up.
She smiled. "Oh, yes. That little girl fell off the stool and died while her father was painting her. It hung in their house for years, but kept falling off the wall. Finally he gave up and stored it in the attic. The first night it was donated here, a car smashed through the museum and knocked it down. After that, we've had times when it won't stay on the wall---It's always found in the morning, propped on the sofa."
I nodded and picked up the postcard. "Add this in, please."

I walked through the museum, looking at all the neat stuff. Sketches by John Sloan. The cell door of William Hummel, who'd been hanged for killing his family---I'd gotten a four-part series of articles out of him a while back.
Got the whole museum to myself, more or less unsupervised---This is excellent. You'd think I'd be used to that by now, but this one is bigger and doesn't have as many airplanes.
Many of the displays were sectioned off to look like rooms---An old-style kitchen, a bedroom, a cabin. There were cavemen and Indians. I rounded a corner and saw the Victorian living room display, and there it was. Nellie's portrait.
So, Nellie. There you are.
I got a laser thermometer and an EMF detector out of my pocket. I usually have a little ghost-hunting equipment on me. I checked around with the thermometer---The place had an average temperature of about seventy-three in this wing, which dropped to seventy around the portrait. Notable---Not too significant.
I took a couple of photos, which I wasn't so sure was allowed, but nobody was watching.
I pressed the button on the EMF detector. Mine is a little thing shaped like a wand, about five inches long. They're for finding electricity. Mostly they're made for not drilling into a wire and killing yourself, but they've been adapted to ghost hunting, too.
I walked around the area a little, waving the detector. No readings. I checked the back side of the wall, in the hallway. Nothing. No electricity was leaking from the wall; there was no reason to suggest there was any there.
Then, cautiously, I sidled up to the exhibit, right beside the railing.
I leaned over the railing a little, which I was pretty sure I wasn't allowed to do, and reeeeeached in to the painting. Trying to look very, very casual, I held up the EMF detector, getting it to within a couple of inches.
And it beeped once, just for a second.
Got something!
My eyes widened, and I immediately withdrew it. I shoved it in my pocket and scampered back down the hall.

It was early in the evening when we got back to the library. Adam was on the desk. I walked in and dropped my pack, checking my mailbox.

"Hey!" Adam said. "How was the seminar?"

"Not bad," I said. "May have picked up a few new preservation tricks. And I got to explore the museum a bit."

"You learn anything good?"

I grinned.

"Yeah," I said. "I may have."

Profiled In Courage

It was a slow day at work, so I decided to go through the old newspaper archives. You can do this when you're a sort of paranormal historian, which most people aren't. I essentially created my own career; there are no rules. I was wearing a T-shirt with aliens on it, captioned It's cool. We come in peace.
I got into the library's microfilm and began looking through, hoping for some idea for a newspaper column or tour. There's always something---The library where I work has several different newspapers, and they go all the way back to 1813. I don't worry about running out of ideas much.
A few minutes later, I was at the desk, showing an 1877 article to my co-worker Barb.
"Check this out," I said. "I got a neat one here."
The article, from the Clinton Democrat, was headlined What To Do With The Indians.
Barb skimmed through it. "Oh, my god."
"Yeah. A man named Isaac Packer had a farm in Woodward Township, and he found out that it was built on an Indian burial ground. So he ground the bones up and used them to fertilize his corn."
"You're not actually going to write about this, are you?"
"Well, I'm about fifty percent on that. I'd have to be sensitive. I don't even know where this is yet. Maybe I'll save it for a Halloween column. No way there's not a whole bunch of pissed-off Indian ghosts over there."
I looked up the name Isaac Packer in the index file. He was listed---There was an obit, and a Historic Resource Survey Form. with properties, that's helpful. I pulled the form and looked it over.
Oh....I know this place.
It was in Woodward Township, midway up the Farrandsville Road. I'd biked past it a bunch of times; there was a barn and an old farmhouse, with an ancient lime kiln by the road.
And, apparently, the remains of ground-up Native Americans all over the fields.
Just another day at the office.

"Sissy very upset," Paul Matthew said, sitting at the table.
"Sissy was very upset?" I said. "Why?"
"Bad man made Sissy upset."
I looked at my daughter, who was getting Paul some milk from the refrigerator. She shrugged. "I wasn't going to tell you," she said. "A guy yelled at me while we were down at Hoberman Park today."
Paul can't keep a secret. "What happened?"
"We were on the ball field, and there were some tracks from bikes. I was letting Pip run. A guy in a truck came, and he started shouting at me. Told me to get a job and pay taxes like everyone else, that it was obvious I don't work. He said that he has to work all day, and then he has to come and fix the field because of people like me. We weren't even doing anything!"
She sat down at the table.
"You got profiled, hon."
"What?"
"He took one look at a woman in a wheelchair and a little black child, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that you were unemployed vandals." I was feeling myself get angrier as I said it. "I'm calling City Hall."
"Dad, no. You don't need to do anything."
"This is wrong," I said. "I do need to do something."
I walked into the other room and picked up the phone. I dialed City Hall and got the Parks Department.I said,"I'd like to report something. This is Lou; you may know my work with the Express and the Record. My children were at the ball field in Hoberman Park today and a man came and harassed them. He said he was working, doing maintenance, and he told me daughter to get a job and stop being a drain on society."
"Okay," said the parks director.
"My daughter is in a wheelchair, and my son is black. I'm angry about this, and I'd like something done. Because right now, what I'm tempted to do is write a scathing newspaper column about how my children were treated by a maintenance guy." I don't bring out that routine much, but I'm not above it.
"Well, sir, I agree that they shouldn't have been treated that way," said the park director. "That was out of line. Our ball fields are maintained by the Little League, with volunteers. I'm going to get in touch with the Little League right now. We will get to the bottom of this, and reprimand the person responsible."
"Thank you, sir," I said. "I appreciate your taking this seriously."
I don't pull strings a lot, but I do have them to pull.

At the library, the next day, I sat down at my desk and wrote an editorial about the incident. Being able to write can be like a super-power. It's nothing I ever dreamed of as a kid, and it's not exactly X-ray vision, but it has an impact. The trick is in knowing how to use it effectively. When it comes down to it, talking to fish isn't anything special, either.

Everyone is aware that I love Lock Haven. I talk about it, I’ve written about Lock Haven many times. I’m proud of this community, and flattered to have become such a well-known part of it. It’s my home, and I feel happy and safe here.

Except for those rare occasions when I don’t.

Clinton County has wonderful people. The majority of them are lovely, great people that I’m pleased to live with. But, like everywhere else, we do have the occasional unpleasant person.

My children encountered one of those recently.

On May 12, my daughter took my son out to Hoberman Park. They were running around in the baseball field beside Prospect Street. Now, for context, my daughter is in her thirties and in a wheelchair. She babysits my son while I’m at work. He’s almost three, and he’s African-American; my wife and I adopted him when he was less than a day old.

The field was a bit wet from the heavy rains recently. There were some tracks on the field, because some of the local children like to ride their bikes there. So my daughter and my son were having a good time, just playing outside.

Then a man showed up. He was talking to someone on his cell phone as he approached. He said,”I have to go, there’s a b**ch on the field.”

Then he began to shout at them and berate them. He told my daughter that she should get a job and pay taxes like everyone else. “Get off your a** and get a job, because it’s obvious you don’t work,” he said. He said that he works all day and then has to come and get the field ready for the children to play on, and blamed them for the tracks on the field. He was rude and cruel to them both.

They both came home crying.

“Sissy very upset,” my son told me later.

I called to make a complaint with the city, and spoke with Jack Bailey, the director of the parks. He informed me that the fields are maintained by the Little League, and he called the person in charge of that. Both the city government and the Little League have been very supportive and helpful, taking the incident seriously. They’ve assured me that they’re going to look into what happened and reprimand the person responsible.

And the person, whoever he is….I’m ashamed to share a community with him. This was bigotry. It was subtle, but it was bigotry. He took one look at a handicapped woman and a black child, and jumped to the incorrect conclusion that they are vandals leeching off society.

I am angry. I love my city, but I am angry at this person. Days later, my son is still afraid to go back to the park, and he’s still talking to me about the “bad man who upset Sissy.” Both the city of Lock Haven and the Little League have been very helpful about this whole thing, and as I write this, they’re still looking into it.

Most of the people in this area are wonderful people, very warm and supportive. But somewhere out there, there’s a man who hurt my children and made them cry.

I hope that, eventually, he learns the decency to feel ashamed.

Bigots will come to fear my journalism powers.
I typed it up, and looked it over. Then I sent it in to the Express, the Record, the Sun-Gazette, and every other local paper I could think of.

The piece ran the next morning. I read it over while I was drinking my coffee, Paul playing at the table. "Need bagel please, Daddy."
"Okay, little man, I'll make you a bagel. You want cream cheese on that?"
"Yah. I like cream cheese."
The phone rang. It was the parks director.
"Hello, Lou," he said. "I saw your column this morning. I'd like to thank you for giving credit to the city and the Little League."
"Well, my problem's not with them," I said. "You guys have been very good about this whole thing, and I appreciate that."
"I was calling to tell you that we know who this was," he said. "After seeing the newspaper today, he called and confessed. The head of the Little League says he's going to be dealt with pretty severely. I could have him call and apologize to your daughter, if you'd like."
"I'll ask her," I said,"But I know my daughter, and I think she'll say that's not necessary. You guys have been square with me, and I'm content to let you handle it."
"The head of the Little League isn't happy about this," he said. "He's going to be pretty harsh; he told me this guy will get worse than a talking-to. He doesn't like how this makes the Little League look."
"I don't really blame him."
"Well, I'll keep you updated. If there's anything else we can help you with, feel free to call."
"Thank you. I will."
I hung up and set the phone down. "Guess what, little guy? Daddy got the mean man from the park."
"Good," said Paul. "We play now?"
"Yeah, we can play, little man," I said. "You want to hear about an Indian burial ground?"

Here There Be Monsters

Wayne Township, Pennsylvania, was founded over two hundred years ago. I had about fifteen minutes to research it.
As soon as I got back from lunch, Zach had handed me a phone message. Looking it over, I recognized the number. It was one of the people from Wayne Township, a committee that had hired me to write a history book. I nodded. I'd been having a day slow enough to make corpse races look fun; I'd gone out specifically in an effort to make the phone ring.
I called back on my cell, not wanting to tie up the library's line. "Doris? It's Lou. What can I do for you?"
"Lou! I'm so glad you're there. We need a document. Any document that goes back to the 1800s, and shows that Wayne Township was named that then. Something that specifically says Wayne Township, as old as you can find. And we need it tonight." Then she said the four words that tend to explain everything, always: "It's for the lawyers."
"So you just need some document, any document, that says the date and Wayne Township?"
"That's about right."
"Let me see what I can find," I said. "There has to be something. I'll dig around and call you back in an hour."
I disconnected my cell and set it on my desk. You'd think a township that's been around since 1795 could give me a little more notice, but I'm used to that. You know how it is, at work: Ancient documents, hidden mysteries, and ridiculous deadlines.
Or maybe that's just me.

Index. Right near my desk. I pulled the W drawer and checked under "Wayne Township." I found a mention of an 1855 tax journal in the PA Pamphlet file. I checked the file. Nothing. God is my co-pilot.
I checked the photos upstairs, and found one that was form the 1889 flood, labelled "Wayne Camp Meeting." Possible.
I ran up to the attic, mainly because I love going into the attic. The Ross Library's attic was built in 1887 and looks like something from an out-take of Harry Potter. I checked around and I found an 1876 copy of a Pennsylvania history book. I checked the index. There was a mention of Wayne as one of Clinton County's original townships. Even better.
I want to bitch about this. But mostly I deal with people who have been dead for a hundred years. I don't get too many of these "stop the presses" moments.
Then I checked in the Pennsylvania Room. I love the Pennsylvania Room. It contained unbelievable volumes of information on Pennsylvania in general and Clinton County specifically. To be safe, I photocopied the Wayne Township chapter from Linn's History. Then I re-checked the index, and found a reference to documents in the file on the Sour family.
Genealogy section. I grabbed the bound file. Paging through, I found a six-page document, an act to establish the West Branch Ferry. Wayne Township, right on the first page. Notarized. Signed by the governor. And dated May 22, 1867.
No more calls. We have a winner.

I was working the desk in the library. When I say "working the desk," I actually mean I had a map of southern Pennsylvania stuck to the bulletin board, and I had yellow and green pushpins stuck into it to figure out the locations of triangle-shaped UFO sightings in relation to local Army bases. I was coming to the conclusion that the triangle UFOs I'd been hearing so much about lately were actually tests of some sort of secret Army drone. It had been a slow shift.
Two of the regular patrons came in, two local newspaper carriers. One of them asked me,"Hey, Lou, are there any recordings of the Giwoggle that might tell us what it sounds like?"
"Not that I know of," I said. The Giwoggle is a local monster legends from the late 1800s, a sort of artificial werewolf created by a witch. A few years ago, I'd had it declared Clinton County's official monster. "Why, you hear something?"
"Yeah, this morning around five AM. Around the river, down near Dunnstown. Sort of a howling sound. And I thought, you're into this....You wrote that article about the UFO sighting...."
"'Roswell That Ends Well.' Yeah, that was me."
I get this sometimes, people coming to me to tell me about hauntings monster sightings. You get in the newspaper a few times for paranormal investigation, and nobody ever lets you forget it.
"I'll check it out," I said. "Down that way, it might not even be the Giwoggle. There's another option there. I've written a couple of times about the Susquehanna Seal."

I'd gotten a couple of good columns about the Susquehanna Seal. In the 1890s, there had been articles in the Clinton Democrat about a big, snaky creature living in the Susquehanna River. It had overturned lumber rafts, no trace of it had ever been found, and yes, it had made a howling noise at night.
Little Paul was playing on the floor when my daughter arrived. He said,"Hi, Sissy!"
"Hi, Pip," said Tif.
"We can play outside in the rain!"
"I'll be down at Piper," I told Tif. "Got a busy day coming."
"Yeah? What's up?"
"Meeting with the Piper Foundation. I have to start the paperwork on the J-4 Cub that's being donated, and work on some signage for a display. Also I'm investigating a sea monster. The usual."

I had my blue shirt with an alien mowing a crop circle on, and my black satchel as I walked through the third floor of the Piper Museum. Once, long ago, I'd worked up there when it had been a market research firm. Now it was cleared out, a big, open space. It's for rent, if you know anyone who's interested.
I took a pair of binoculars from my satchel---Small folding things. I unfolded them and stood by the window, which faced north toward the river.
I couldn't see anything helpful from where I was, and I hadn't really expected to. You have to check out the site, even if there's going to be nothing to see. It's part of the process.
Even in paranormal investigation, there are rules. There are good ways and bad ways to handle it. If you skip looking because you think there's nothing to see, that's the bad way.

Downstairs, I found Stacey in her office. Stacey is the office manager at Piper, and pretty much runs the place. Messages basically went through her to me, and then back the other way around.
"We need to call the donor for the J-4," Stacey said,"And arrange for the appraisal and documentation."
"Did that this morning," I said. "I got your e-mail. I'll have the paperwork ready, and he doesn't sound too hysterical about using this for tax purposes. He said he'd think about the appraisal. I think he jsut wants somewhere safe to keep it."
"Well, we can promise that. Unless the bear gets into the hangar somehow."
I looked up. "Bear?"
Stacey laughed. "You hadn't heard? We have a bear out back, getting into the dumpster. He seems to eat everything he can find over in the Gardens, and then come over here to find more. Maintenance found trash scattered all over the other morning."
"Really? This may answer a question for me. A patron reported hearing a howling sound down this way, thought it might be a monster of some kind."
"Well, maybe you're on to something," said Stacey.
I walked back to my office, a huge room with archives going back to 1937, and a small alien on the desk going back to 2016. I hate finding answers online, but sometimes the question is so obscure....I sat down and googled "Do bears howl?"
Several videos showed me that they do, or can. I listened for a while, letting my office fill with bear noises, and then turned it off and picked up the satchel.
Check out the site.
I walked down the catwalk stairs and through the hangar, past all the airplanes. The Cub, the Comanche, the Vagabond, the Aztec. I've never yet lost the thrill of being in that place. Outside the back door, I looked around the dumpster on the southwest side of the building.
The back corner was covered with bear prints. I knelt down to get some photos. There were a few raccoon prints, as well, but mainly bears. I had a semi-CSI moment where I figured out where he'd put his paws, and how he'd been reaching for the bags inside.
Not the Susquehanna Seal, after all. Just a random bear, which was honestly alarming enough.
I like finding answers, even if they're not the answers I wanted.

John, the board president, was in the office when I got back upstairs. I said,"Yeah, there's a bear out there, allright. I got a couple photos of paw prints."
John laughed. "I put a game camera out there. I'm going to have video of you taking photos."
"If you get any of the bear, I wouldn't mind seeing that."
"It'll probably be over the weekend," said Stacey. "That's when the garbage gets full."
"That looks like the answer to my sea monster question," I said. "They heard a bear making some noise. Probably in competition with raccoons, who are also out there."
"Bears don't usually make much noise," John pointed out.
"No, but it's more likely than a sea monster," I said.
John laughed.
"I'll be in my office," I said. "I solved the sea monster mystery faster than I thought. So I even still have time to get some actual paperwork done."

Clubbed Dead

It started as a normal day. I went into work, made coffee, and started solving a murder from over a hundred years ago.
That hadn't been the plan. Initially, I'd intended to find out about women's voting rights. But then I got sidetracked into a murder from 1903.
Like that's never happened to you.
"What's up?" my co-worker Barb asked at the front desk. "You're not wearing your ghost-hunting uniform. Didn't you have to investigate a demon tonight?"
I looked at my T-shirt. It had an alien on it, and said Roswell, New Mexico: Green since 1947. "Yeah, they called. My demon cancelled out on me."
"I hate it when that happens."
'Barb," I said,"You still looking through the archive index? Let me know if you find out anything about suffrage. I'm looking for just about anything on women voters in the early 1900s."
"Okay," said Barb. "You working on an article?"
"If I can find out anything, yeah," I said. "It's been a bit lacking."
"I'll let you know if I find anything."
"Thanks. Meanwhile, I'm going to go through the microfilm at random, and hope to stumble on something by accident. It's worked for me before."

I sat down at the microfilm machine and began scrolling through the Clinton Democrat. I started in January of 1910 more or less at random, and began looking at front pages. I did find something by accident, which often happens, but not what I'd meant to find.
On March 10, 1910, there was a front-page story about a railroad robbery that delved into an old murder. One of the local police officers had made the statement that he'd known who committed a 1903 murder, but the killer was dead, so there was no point revealing it. It was a murder I'd written about before, but I hadn't heard this part, with the big clue seven years later.
There's luck and there's skill. Luck is when you stumble on something like this. Skill is knowing what to do with it.

That afternoon, Chris stopped by to do some research. Chris is a friend of mine who had interned under me several years ago. He was working on some research into Northumberland County, and I was describing to him what I'd found.
"The Clendennin murder," I said. "It happened in 1903. Telegraph operator in Wayne Township. He was found bludgeoned to death with a spike maul."
"A spike maul?" Chris asked.
"Yeah, it's a kind of sharp hammer that they used to----"
"Oh my god."
"Clubbed to death with the thing. They never solved it. Arrested one guy twice, but never found the actual killer. But I found a clue."
"I love when this happens to you. What's your clue?"
"In 1910, seven years after the murder, there was a similar crime. That one turned out to be faked, but it led to one of the cops discussing Clendennin. He said that an informant had told him about the guy who committed the murder, and he believed it to be true, but they never arrested him because there wasn't enough evidence. He said the killer died tragically."
"So how would you find out?"
I didn't even have to think about it. "I'd start by going through the Wayne Township cemetery index and finding people who died between 1903 and 1910. Have to be an adult, and probably male---Woman don't tend to beat people to death with spike mauls. When I had a list of people that fit, I'd check their obits---See which ones died young and tragically. Find all the people who fit the profile."
"That makes sense," said Chris.
I took a drink of coffee, and he laughed. "Nice mug." It was my mug that said Bigfoot saw me, but nobody believes him. "I've been trying to explain to my girlfriend how you do this stuff."
"Hell, I don't even know how I do it most of the time. I mean, I get what I do and why I'm good at it, but if I had to write out step-by-step instructions, I couldn't really do it. It's sort of internal, you know? Like Aquaman." I shrugged. "I mean, it's not like I'll be bringing anyone to justice, this whole thing having happened in 1903. But maybe I can get some answers."

Thursday night was slow. Sometimes I have programs and meetings on Thursdays, and sometimes nothing. I fill in by writing my columns, but I currently have them done up until mid-June. So there was no point in speculating on news-column futures. I dug into the 1903 murder, which, as a time-killer, is better than Solitaire.
A few years ago, the Clinton County Genealogical Society had compiled listings of every grave in the county. They'd worked hard at it, and published it in book form. This was crap for anyone who'd died after 2008, but for my purposes, it was really helpful. I got the Wayne Township book and looked through.
There were fewer than I'd thought, and by ruling out all the children, I could narrow it down considerably. I wound up with one guy who'd died in 1909.
His named was Arthur Mitcheltree.
I pulled his obit. He'd been forty-six, and died of tuberculosis. That fit. During the investigation, he'd actually been suspected, and had sued two different newspapers for mentioning him in connection with the murder. That fit, too. I found the articles in a 1904 Clinton County Times.
Slow, average Thursday night. I got a Facebook message from Jazmyn, and took a moment to reply. I missed the kid.
On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store and bumped in Ashlin, one of my friends from LHPS. She works over there. "Hey, Lou," she said. "How's it going?"
"Pretty good," I said. "Slow night. I just worked a couple hours trying to find a murderer form 1903."
"I wish I could find a murderer from 1903," she said. "I just spent a couple of hours trying to decide what kind of Triscuits to buy. You want a ride to the next meeting?"

"You do come up with some good ones," Savanah said. We were in my office at Piper, looking through the files. "A murder from 1903."
"Yeah, I've put in some time on that one," I agreed. "I didn't actually mean to spend that much time solving it; I just got real interested."
"But you think you've solved it?" Savanah is a rainbow-haired pixie who is one of my junior paranormal investigators. She was doing her senior project with me at Piper.
"I think maybe. Arthur Mitcheltree fits the description. He may have been the actual killer. He is almost definitely the guy the cop was talking about. Mitcheltree died at the right time, and more or less tragically. He was even connected with the murder at the time. He sued two newspapers for mentioning him in connection with the murder."
"Why would he have done it? Do you know?"
"It was always suspected that it had to do with a woman. Clendennin was known as a ladies' man. Mitcheltree was married at the time, but....He had daughters."
"Aaahhh."
"Yeah, it makes sense. They were even single at the time; I checked the marriage records. So there's motive."
"Wow," said Savanah, looking through the file drawers. "I hate people who say this city is boring."

"That's due on April tenth," I said, scanning the book. "Thanks a lot, and have a nice day."
Monday. It was busy at the library, and the weather was basically miserable. But the museum had gotten a new plane, so there's that. As I checked people out at the library, an older man approached the desk. "I liked the article you wrote about the bear that you saw during one of your tours."
"Grin And Bear It? Yeah, I got some comments on that one."
"Have you ever heard anything about a peddler that disappeared? It would have been over a hundred years ago, and there was a man named Hurwitz who may have been involved...."
"It rings a faint bell, but I can't place it."
"You may want to look into it. It sounds like something you might be interested in."
"I have to admit, it does."
I went to the index and checked the name Hurwitz. There was an obit, and I brought it up on the microfilm machine. The obit did, in fact, mention the disappearance of a peddler, and noted that horses wouldn't go past the spot where he was thought to be killed.
Another mysterious death from the past.
Well, huh.
Business as usual, then.