The Scare Witch Project

Every October, I write a series of columns about ghosts and old legends for the local newspapers. Usually this means I have to come up with about a dozen different ideas on stories about the paranormal. The old murders, the haunted houses.
There's a reason they call it a deadline.
Generally, I wind up digging through a lot of old files and newspapers. It gets harder every year as I try not to repeat myself. It was a Tuesday afternoon when, in desperate need of another story, I found myself digging through a file cabinet just off the Sloan Museum wing on the second floor of the library.
I found a thick file labelled "Ghosts," and pulled it out. I flipped through it. A couple of stories were ones I already knew, but then I found the stack of handwritten pages at the end of the file.
"Oh, wow."

"Pat Tyson was the closest thing I had to a mentor in paranormal research," I said. "She used to call me up and tell me when she liked one of my columns. She and I worked together on a few projects, speeches and all."
"She sounds nice," said my daughter. Biz had come to visit me at the library. She drops by sometimes to make sure I haven't forgotten to eat.
"She was wonderful. She died back in 2013," I said. I picked up a manila file and opened it. "Upstairs, today, I was going through an old file cabinet. You know how this place is bigger on the inside? I found an old file from Pat. Handwritten notes that she compiled about all sorts of paranormal legends."
"Oh, wow," said Biz. She looked over the file.
"The Giantess, the K-Mart ghosts....She made connections I'd never discovered," I said. "She found the Giantess years before I did, and never told anyone about it. And she connected it with the two petrified bodies in Great Island Cemetery. She saw the Indian ghost at K-Mart."
Biz was flipping pages. "I wouldn't mind a copy of this myself."
"I'll get you a copy. She wrote about some stuff I've never stumbled onto yet. The Witch of Sugar Run. There was a witch known as Sal Kervine who lived up just outside the city limits, and was known for casting spells on people. I'm going to be months checking out all of this."
"That's awesome," said Biz. "When are you going to start?"
I smiled at her. "You coming up for dinner tomorrow?"

Dinner was ham, browned Brussels sprouts, and garlic potatoes. With Paul watching, I cooked it so it was ready when Michelle brought Biz to the house. I am not a one-trick wonder.
"Got another offer to be on a TV show," I commented. "A producer e-mailed me, asking if I'd be interested in doing a show about investigating with teenagers."
"Oh, cool," said Biz. "That sounds fun."
"Well, until you factor in that the first thing I teach the kids is that everything on TV is wrong," I said. "I get a couple of these offers every year. But they do crap investigation on television; they're really unprofessional. I wouldn't want to sell out like that."
"It would be cool to see you on TV, though," said Biz.
"You mind if we make a stop before we drop you off tonight?" I asked. "I want to check out the Flemington Cemetery."

I walked through the cemetery, looking out across the gravestones. Flemington Cemetery had been around for over a century and a half. I noted the stones, and the empty spaces in between them, and then walked back to the car.
"You find what you were looking for?" Biz asked from the back seat.
"Yeah, I think so. I can tell where the bodies I need are....Great Island Cemetery was moved in 1918. Some of the bodies were brought up here, and I'm pretty sure they're in the old empty space to the south. Two of them were female, and listed as petrified---The bodies had turned to stone. These may correlate with reports of two female ghosts, one wearing black and one wearing white, in Great Island Cemetery."
"This have to do with the file you found yesterday?"
"Yeah. Pat ties the Great Island ghosts in with the Giantess. She seems to have been working on this Grand Unified Theory of paranormal investigation in Clinton County. All of her stuff seems to connect. I'm going to look into it, and see what I can figure out. I'm making a start on the Witch of Sugar Run."
"There was really a witch?"
"There seems to have been someone, and this seems to have been some sort of family story. The witch's name, in the legend, is Sal Kervine. Pat got this story from a friend of hers named Curvan. Those are similar enough that I had to wonder if it was some sort of family connection, and I checked the 1862 map. Along Sugar Run, way back when, a property was owned by someone listed on the map as P. Crevin, which is also pretty close. Nobody had standardized spelling back then; they just wrote down whatever they thought they heard. So if I can find out about P. Crevin, I can find my witch."
"Didn't you write a column about something like this in Farrandsville, a while back? A witch casting spells on people. Your headline was Spell Check."
"Yeah, and it's a similar story, though this makes more sense. The story involves her cursing people who were riding past her house, and Farrandsville isn't on the way to anywhere. You go to Farrandsville, you have to turn around and go back; it's the end of the road. Sugar Run makes more sense."
"It does, actually."
"Millie lives up near Sugar Run. LHPS has meetings right where a witch was casting spells in the 1800s. So maybe I can interest the team in checking into this. "
"Well, you have looked into witches before."
"County's full of 'em."
"And what do you plan to do when you find her?"
"See if she weighs the same as a duck."
"I be a witch for Halloween," added Paul.
"I know, little man. I promised to make you a wand. So I'm going to see if I can figure out who the witch really was, check some obits and property records. I looked through some of the obits today at work, and found Curvans, but no connection yet. Nothing that resembles the witch."
"So what's your next step?" asked Biz.
"There's never only one way," I said. "If you can't raise the bridge, lower the river."

I began my morning with a committee meeting at the Piper Museum, and then I had to deal with a fuel issue with the new Comanche. I fielded a couple of ghost questions from visitors. I was wearing my Kraken t-shirt. Mondays.
I made a stop at the courthouse halfway between Piper and the library. I dropped my pack off at the radio station rather than put it through security. I have no idea how to describe what I do for a living.
"Lou! Your son's not with you today?" asked the Register and Recorder when I walked into the office.
"I'm flying solo today," I agreed. "But I'll have to bring him in here soon. He likes it. You guys all give him candy."
I hadn't found anything under obits yet that I could use, so I tried Wills. There's never only one way. I had to try as many different spellings as I could, so I checked Curvan, Cervin, Crevin, Kervine. People weren't all hysterical over spelling back in those days. I finally found a Patrick Craven, died in 1891 with no Will. I copied off his estate documents, and then checked deeds.
Patrick had owned a lot of property, all over the county. That explained the Farrandsville discrepancy---He'd owned property there, too, so the family had likely told the same story in different locations. I checked to see if he'd owned the Sugar Run property in Bald Eagle Township---At the time, anyway; these days it's part of Allison Township. I found a barely readable deed from 1859 where Patrick Craven had bought the property in Bald Eagle.
I knew where. Now I had to find out who.
I biked over to the library. It was getting cooler out---I love autumn, but so far it had been about as chilly as the 1862 town fire. Now it was beginning to cool down, and the leaves were starting to fall.
Our IT guy was in when I got to the library.
"I think I have the server fixed," he told me. "It's been down all week. We're having a bad week for the computers; I can't figure out what's wrong."
"You want me to look into curses?" I asked. "Check to see if maybe we're built on an Indian burial ground?"
He grinned. "Well, that won't hurt. I don't have better ideas."
"I do what I can."
I went to my desk, where I pulled the index file for the obits. There's a certain luxury in being able to work in the library before it actually opens. Now that I had a name, I could find out more.
"How's it going, Lou?" asked my co-worker Sue as she walked past.
"Tracking down a witch," I said.
"Because of course you are."
I found Patrick Craven's card. He had an obit in November of 1891 and he was listed as "buried in the Catholic Cemetery." There were at least three of those, but when I checked the cemetery records, I found him in Saint Mary's, buried not far from where he'd lived.
Several family members were buried with him. Including a wife, who'd outlived him. Mary.
"Any luck?" Sue asked as she walked by.
"Where there's a Will," I said,"There's a way."

"Where do I turn?" Kara was driving. I was with her, Ashlin, and Charlie---Most of the members of LHPS.
"The cemetery is on Hill Street."
"Nobody but you and the pizza guy knows where the hell Hill Street is."
"Next right. Up ahead."
"Okay. Where's the cemetery?"
"On the left, just up ahead. Right there."
"I didn't even know there was a cemetery here," commented Charlie. "How did you know?"
"I'm Lou," I said. "I know these things."
Kara turned into Saint Mary's Cemetery and parked near the path. LHPS often held our meetings at Millie's house, right near Sugar Run, and just around the corner from Saint Mary's. So I'd suggested to the team that we take a little field trip before the meeting, and go find a witch's grave.
We climbed out of the car.
"She's in this section, Section Three. Between these two paths." I pointed toward the section, the two grass paths on each side. "Shouldn't be too hard a find; she's with the family, someplace near that mausoleum."
We spread out and began walking north, through the cemetery.
"What was the name?" Charlie asked.
"Mary Craven," I said. "She's with her husband."
Kara looked around. "Teah, Over there. Is that...."
"Yeah, Teah Hospital. We investigated it a couple of years ago. And up in that corner is Luther Shaffer, the guy haunting the old jail we investigated. He was the only guy hung for his crime in Clinton County."
"I don't see---" Ashlin began.
I knelt by a stone. "Here. Over here."
They all ran over to join me. I took a couple of photos of the stone. It was a big one, a monument, with a cross broken off and lying on the top. I was kneeling beside it, running my fingers across the lettering the way I was used to, feeling the letters.
"Mary Craven," I said. "This is her."
"We could read that whole thing if we had some paper and chalk," Kara said.
"Or a mirror," I said. "Or shaving cream."
"Seriously? Shaving cream?"
"You put shaving cream on the thing, and then squeegee it off, and it leaves white letters. Or the mirror, which is better for preservation---You can reflect light and leave the letters in shadow." I looked at Mary's dates, and then her husband's, and then I crawled sideways to look at the dates on the daughters' stones. "Check out the dates. You notice anything, Ashlin?"
Ashlin look at the stones. "They all died first?"
"They did. Her husband and both daughters died before Mary. And that will tell you a lot about where the witch story came from. We tended to be very suspicious of women living alone back then, and Mary was a widow. She lived alone on a huge farm, probably telling people to get off it. The rumor spread that she was a witch."
"I'd probably be cranky, too," admitted Kara.
I stood up. "Thanks for the help, you guys. Let's get back to the meeting."
"Yeah," Ashlin said. "We got snacks.
"Found the witch's grave," I said. "Happy Halloween, you guys."

For Whom The School Bell Tolls

The cemetery didn't look haunted.
It was overcast and windy as I walked up the hill at Saint Agnes Cemetery. I was wearing my blue shirt that showed Bigfoot being abducted by a UFO, and I was looking for a grave.
Vincent Sesto had been shot to death along the railroad tracks in January of 1905. During his funeral, strange things had begun to happen. Items had begun to fall over for no reason near a specific pallbearer, and when they got to the cemetery, one of the straps had wound around the pallbearer's leg, almost pulling him into the grave.
The pallbearer had been Frank Dominick, friend of Sesto's. The ghostly events at the funeral had been enough for the cops to focus on Dominick as a suspect, and place him under arrest. He'd been released, however, when a local attorney tore the case apart in the courtroom.
I was looking for Sesto's grave. Part of the job.
There's not really a word for my job. I'm a paranormal investigator, historian, librarian, and writer in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. My name is Lou.
Saint Agnes is a mostly Italian cemetery, established by the Catholics. I looked at the map and the list I'd brought along, copied out of the records at the library.
Wow. Look at all the vowels. Let's see....Row nine, about here....Caprio, Scaglione....There. Sesto.
It was a small, unassuming headstone, set down into the ground under a tree. I knelt beside it and took a photo. Then I looked up.
Right over in the next row, about ten feet away, was another stone. It had the name of a man who had been murdered with an axe in 2007.
Two brutal murder victims, buried practically next to each other? No wonder I've been getting reports about this place.
I took photos and readings, then packed my stuff back into my pack. Right across the street was Beth Yehuda, the Jewish cemetery. But that was an adventure for another day.

I've always loved autumn.
It's my favorite time of year. My mother was a teacher, so I grew up around the school system. To some people, autumn seems like the last gasp of summer, the dying before winter, but I've never seen it that way. When the leaves turn colors and the air chills, it feels good, like new beginnings. The start of a new time, with endless possibilities.
I was just between the radio station and the Piper Museum. I handle the artifacts and archives at Piper, and I go on the radio every two weeks to promote local programs. I was walking toward my bike on Main Street when a guy caught up with me.
"You're Lou, aren't you?"
"Yeah, that's me." I get recognized as a local writer about once a day, which is usually positive. Not always. I'd recently had one guy insist I be held responsible for mistakes in a history book I hadn't written, and another guy insist that I'd made a mistake in my column because he personally had been in a building as a child, in 1901. People are weird.
"How come you haven't written about John Wilbanks?"
"Well. Who is John Wilbanks?"
"He was a bell maker from Philadelphia. He had a hand in dealing with the Liberty Bell when it was moved back in the 1800s," the guy said. "He made the bell that replaced the Liberty Bell in the tower, and was supposed to take away the Liberty Bell, but he refused."
"Well, I tend to deal mostly with Clinton County history, sir."
"Ah, that's where the local connection comes in," he said. "You know the bell sitting outside the Robb Elementary School? That one was made by Wilbanks. It has his name right on the side."
"Wait....Seriously? We have a bell in town made by the guy who helped with the Liberty Bell?"
He nodded. "There are only three known Wilbanks bells. As far as I know, nobody's aware of this one."
"I'll check that out, sir. Thanks. I'll see if I can find out more."
"Sorry to interrupt your morning, but...."
"No, it's okay," I said. "For something this good, you can interrupt me anytime you want."

On my way over to the Piper Museum, I deviated just a bit, taking Church Street instead of Bald Eagle Street. I passed in front of Robb Elementary School, and spotted the bell. It was sitting out front, right on display. I'd been past it a million times, and never really noticed it.
I got off my bike and approached it. I was being somewhat cautious; strolling right up to an elementary school isn't always the best plan. Nobody seemed to notice me, so I took out my camera and took photos of it.
I examined the bell. Right along the top, there it was: CAST BY J. WILBANKS. PHILA. 1840.
"Oh....my....god."

I rode my bike through some of the fallen leaves on my way to work at the library. I like to walk in the leaves, drink coffee and cider, wear heavier jackets, find ghosts and monsters. You know. Fall stuff.
My predecessor had told me that most days, she started by checking her e-mail. I have yet to have a day anywhere near that organized, but I got to the e-mail around nine-thirty over a cup of coffee. I was rolling my eyes and reaching for an event form when Zach came back to my desk.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Got an e-mail from an author who wants to promote his book at the library," I said. "The title of his book refers to a prank he played as a child. It's called Muddy Balls."
Zach laughed, and I started laughing, too. He said,"We should be more mature about this."
"We should, but we won't." I said. "I really don't want to have to promote Muddy Balls* on the morning radio."
We both laughed again. I said,"I just hope I don't get in trouble over my handling....of....Muddy Balls."
When we calmed down, which took a while, he said,"You working on anything else as good as that?"
"I'd rather be working on Teen Paranormal," I said. "I have a meeting coming up in a few days. Gonna teach the kids to ghost hunt. In other news, the bell in front of the Robb Elementary School may have a connection to the Liberty Bell. But I can't document that yet. I'm working on it."
I went to work in the Pennsylvania Room, looking in the index for information. Nothing under Wilbanks or Bell---That would be too easy. There were a few things under Robb School, but nothing helpful. Previously, it had been known as the First Ward School, and I checked on that, too.
Painstakingly, I began working up a timeline on that property. It had begun as the courthouse in 1840. A new courthouse had been built in 1867, and the old one turned into the First Ward School. In 1883, that building had been replaced with a newer one. I found an article in 1957 when the school had been entirely rebuilt, and it stated that the bell had been saved from the previous school.
So I could trace the bell back to 1883, so far. Chances are that the bell had been purchased for the new courthouse in 1840, but I couldn't prove that yet.
When I'd exhausted every source I could think of, I went back to planning my program. I began advertising for Muddy Balls.

*Title changed for legal reasons. Shockingly, the real one is even worse.

Monday was September 11. It's been a while since I had to explain to anyone why September 11 is important.
I was at the Piper Museum all day. Every year, I open up for a veterans' group that keeps a flag running through the community all day. Their base for the past couple of years had been the Piper Museum. I got some work done and made some phone calls. When you're in at six AM, you have plenty of time to get stuff done. I didn't even have to go sit in the Cheyenne for some privacy.
Around noon, I walked out to check on the runners. As I was in the parking lot in front of the museum, a guy arrived---Greying hair, dressed in a businesslike way, glasses.
"Joby!" I grinned. Joby is the director of the Lock Haven University library, and a friend of mine. It's always good to see the guy.
"Hi, Lou," said Joby. "I figured I'd stop by and see if I can help out."
"Well, glad you came in. I'm working on a neat one that you might be interested in."
"Tell me about it."
"The bell out in front of Robb Elementary School? It seems to be a Wilbanks bell. John Wilbanks was involved with the Liberty Bell, and I think the Robb bell goes back to the old courthouse. I'm working on proving that."
"That's really interesting. I've gone by that bell plenty of times, and never...."
"Yeah, I never really looked at it, either. But it does have his name on it; I checked."
"So we can assume the bell itself is accurate," mused Joby. "I wonder how you'd go about proving that?"
"I've got a call in to Maria, over at Voter Registration," I said. "She has a lot of the old county documents. I'll be looking through them later."
Joby nodded. "I've never doubted you."

I was in my office that evening when Katelynn and TJ walked in. Both of them are graduates of my Teen Paranormal program, a couple of the brightest kids I've ever taught to be ghost hunters.
"Hi, Lou," said Katelynn. Katelynn has purple hair; she and I had gotten close during the first year I'd run Teen Paranormal. TJ is her younger brother.
"Hey, guys," I said. "Grab a seat. We'll hang out."
"You doing Teen Paranormal again this year?" asked Katelynn.
"We have our first meeting of the season in Thursday," I said. "Hopefully we're getting a bunch of new kids. Feel free to come to a meeting and visit."
Katelynn looked over my shoulder at the computer screen. "What're you working on?"
"These are scans of old county records from the 1840s. Meetings and decisions from when the county was first founded. My friend Maria sent them to me. I'm trying to find mentions to buying a bell for the courthouse."
"Okay, that sounds fun. How come?"
"Work with me here. The courthouse started on Church Street, and then in 1867 a new one was built on Water Street. The old courthouse became the first Robb Elementary School. I'm trying to track down references to the bell out front, because it may have been made by John Wilbanks, a guy who had connections to the Liberty Bell."
"You know, my life's gotten a little more interesting since I met you," she said.
"My working theory is that the bell was purchased by the county commissioners in 1840, when the courthouse was built," I said. "Or maybe John Moorhead; he was the guy they hired to build it, and he may have bought a Wilbanks bell."
"I forget....Have you taught me about John Moorhead?"
"Maybe. Moorhead was, essentially, Clinton County's first big loser. He ran for office several times, and never got the votes. He built a courthouse when the county was founded, and offered it to the commissioners. They turned him down, saying they wanted to build a new courthouse on land donated by town founder Jerry Church. And then they hired Moorhead to design and build the new one. You find an 1833 dictionary, look up Loser, and there's Moorhead's lithograph beside it."
"You've been busy."
"I'm looking at these records, and I've even contacted the American Bell Association, which is apparently a thing."
"What are you going to do when you can prove it?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought that far ahead yet."
I looked at my e-mail. I had a message.
"Ah, here's a message from Joby. Seems he's looked into this a little since I talked to him today. He says to check the Lock Haven Express from April 30, 1960."
Katelynn nodded. "You gonna do it?"
"As soon as I can."

When I got back to the library in the morning, the first thing I did was have a cup of coffee. I sent in an article about a 1911 fight between neighbors to the Express, entitled The First Ward War. Then I printed up an event poster and hung it on the bulletin board.
Zach saw me hanging the poster in the lobby.
"Muddy balls?" he asked.
I nodded. "Muddy Balls."
With all that done, I went to the microfilm. The nice thing about what I do is that I can write pretty much anything off as work product. If I feel like looking at the old newspapers out of sheer personal curiosity, nobody ever thinks twice about it. I put in the roll for 1960 and ran through it.
I found it on the front page---A photo of the bell.The article detailed that the bell had been saved from the old courthouse, which proved my theory.
I got my cell phone out of my pack and called Katelynn. "Hey, kid. I think I found the proof on that bell. The Robb bell is from the old courthouse."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yep. Got a newspaper article documenting it. The going price for a Wilbanks bell seems to be four hundred dollars---That's what he was paid for the Liberty Bell job---And the old records show a courthouse construction payment to Moorhead for four hundred exactly. I can make a good case that was the bell."
"Well, cool," said Katelynn. "What're you going to do now? Write an article about it?"
"Probably. It'll make a good one."

My name is Lou. I live in Lock Haven, and I'm a historian, freelance writer, and paranormal investigator. I've gotten pretty lucky....Mainly, my career is being me.
I stood in front of the Sloan Room in the library, facing the kids. Five of them. Meridian, Seth, Skylar, Olivia, and Brayden. The newest formation of Teen Paranormal.
"Thanks for being here, guys," I said. "Welcome to Teen Paranormal. My name is Lou, and I'm the guy who will teach you how to investigate."
Seth raised his hand. "If we're good at this, do we get to join the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers?"
I smiled. "LHPS members have to be over eighteen, but when we need somebody new, we do draw from the graduates of Teen Paranormal, yes. I'll be teaching you how to investigate ghosts, monsters, and UFOs over the next year. For right now, we're going to start with property research---How to find the history of a haunted house."
I passed the kids their handouts. "I'm going to teach you how to find out who lived in the house, who died there, when it was built. And then, how to investigate it. And by the time I'm done, you'll be as good at this as I am." I looked around the room, and smiled. "Welcome to paranormal investigation."

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."