"This potato tastes like Lake Erie," announced Biz.
Sometimes she competes with me for Oddest Random Comment. I said,"Well, I was wearing the shirt I bought in Erie when I grilled it."
"When I was little, I spent a lot of time swimming in Lake Erie," she explained. "I don't know why, maybe these potatoes were grown nearby. But it kind of tastes like I remember the water tasting."
"Anyone want my potato?" Michelle asked.
I glanced at the calendar. "So, you guys remember a couple of months ago, when we chased down that Shoemaker story about the Fairy Grave? Back when the pandemic started? I'm thinking that soon, we go out and make another attempt."
"Why not?" said Biz. "You know where we're looking?"
"I have a better sense of it than I did last time," I said. "In the story, the grave with the fairies was Lotte Schwartz, and they came out and danced around her grave on a full moon. I did some checking after the last trip, and found a Lena Weise from Germany who died around the right time. Shoemaker sometimes changed the names, but left clues behind."
"So what are you thinking?" asked Tif.
"Both begin with L. In German, Schwartz is the word for black. Weiss is the word for white."
Biz grinned. "So when are we going out?"
"Well, the next Friday family dinner night in June 5. And it's also the next full moon. Anyone want another lake potato?"
When I walked into the staff meeting, the New Boss was talking. I'd managed to arrive late, but I couldn't believe it mattered---The staff meetings had always been notoriously unhelpful, for the most part.
"Clinton County goes green on Friday," she said. "We're waiting on guidance from the state library, so not much will change for us immediately. We'll continue as we are for the moment. Once we do open up, we'll still have to take precautions."
"It's green," I said,"Which means the woods, as in we're not out of them yet. We'll have to put some new signs up with the expectations."
"We'll have them," she said. "Also limiting access to the building. Some people aren't going to be happy about that."
Lightning flashed outside my window. Lock Haven was having one hell of a thunderstorm, part of a series lasting several days. In the middle of the Bald Eagle Mountains, rain seems to get trapped along the mountain range and just keeps going for days until it burns itself out. So, the Coronavirus wasn't enough, we had week-long storms, too.
I picked up my coffee and walked around my desk, to the Henry Shoemaker books directly across. I pulled Indian Steps and flipped to the fairy story. Might as well brush up on it.
I read through the story again, and it was about the way I remembered it. Lotte Schwartz---In real life, probably Lena Weise---Had come from Germany with her fiance and a bag full of twelve fairies. She'd released them into the forests of Swissdale area---Shoemaker doesn't usually give precise locations, but he leaves clues---And the have supposedly lived there ever since. On a full moon, they danced around her grave.
I found a detail I'd missed the first time----The fairies were said to come out specifically in June. Which made Friday the perfect time.
I pulled the cemetery index for Woodward Township. I love the CCGS cemetery indexes. Used to be I had to go through the cemeteries physically, one grave at a time. In 2003, I'd had to hike through every single one in the Lock Haven city limits, a feat I hope never to repeat. The indexes made it easier.
I found it on page 116. Lena Weise, buried under a monument with her family. She'd died in 1908, which also checked out; it was only a few years before Indian Steps had been published. Section Fifteen, Row Two, Plot Five.
I checked it on the map---Along with the helpful listings, the CCGS had included maps of each cemetery. Section Fifteen was a tiny little spot, down beside the road. Last time around, we'd probably wandered uphill of it some, and not really gotten down that far. Also, Paul had been scared off by a random glove.
I walked back to the back room to see if there were any books to process. Tracey was sitting at her desk, looking as elegant as she always did. I said,"Did you match your mask to your sweater? Jesus, Tracey....I always think I look pretty okay, and then I come in here, and you dress so nice I feel homeless."
Tracey laughed. "It's nothing."
"I matched my mask to my shirt today," I said. "Both have aliens on them."
"Wow, way to go," said Tracey.
I studied her. "I think you're being sarcastic, but it's hard to tell with you."
I sat back in my chair. I was wearing my shirt with the coordinates for Area 51 on it. I could go for a good UFO sighting right now. For a couple of months, I'd been just working on whatever ghosts and history I could do without going anyplace. I'd love a UFO. I'd love a good Bigfoot sighting. I'd be thrilled with a water monster. Hell, I'd even be happy with a random gravity hill.
Jim stepped in. "In the rain, my roof began leaking. Is it considered irony that the only thing that got wet was the 1972 flood newspaper edition?"
I laughed. "I'm sure I have several spares. Everyone donates that edition, and thinks it's unique. Maybe it's the ghosts trying to tell us something."
"So, the county went green today," commented Tif at dinner.
"Yep," I said. "I wore my green Aliens made me do it shirt to celebrate."
"How was work?" Michelle asked.
"Busier than usual today. I had to explain to several people that no, green doesn't mean we just reopen again. Whole bunch of people called in for books, though."
"Biz said she couldn't make it tonight," said Tif. "She got called in to work."
I nodded. "I know. We're gonna have to take photos for her, and I told her I'll think of another adventure to take her on soon."
"We went out before, and couldn't find the grave," said Tif. "What makes you think you can this time?"
"I've done some digging," I said. "Last time, I was just searching for one that fit the general description. This time, I know which specific one I'm looking for."
"Fairies aren't real," Paul informed me.
"That's true," I said. "It's what you call folklore. Those are old stories that sometimes have a bit of truth to them. I've been looking into this one....Lena Weise has to be the right person. The names match, she was from Germany, lived and died about the right time."
We drove out after dinner, and pulled into the Swissdale Cemetery. There was a lawn care truck blocking the way. I climbed out of the car.
The driver recognized me. "Oh, hi," he said. "You're that guy in the newspapers, aren't you? Let me just pull this up ahead."
I got out of the car and waited while Michelle pulled the Prius up onto the turnoff. I was looking down at the cemetery. The others came walking down toward me.
"It really is pretty out here," commented Tif.
"The early settlers were from Switzerland, with Germany following soon after," I said. "They chose this area because it bore a resemblance to their native land."
"What grave are we looking for?" asked Michelle.
"The name is Weise," I said. "I'll also settle for Ramser as a nearby stone."
"There's a Weise down there," she said.
I'd seen it, but I wanted to let someone else have a little fun. We walked toward the monument.
"There," I said. "I see it. Right behind the monument.....Lena Weise."
I walked over and knelt down beside the grave. Lena Weise, 1833 to 1908. The others caught up with me after a moment.
"This is the one," I said. "The grave where fairies dance."
"According to the story," said Tif.
"Well, I been thinking about that," I said. "Sometimes, folklore has some truth to it. There are mentions in the story of the fairies taking over the forest, bothering panthers and eating trees. And it occurred to me that some kind of bugs could account for that. An invasive species, something along those lines...."
"Fairies are an invasive species?" asked Tif.
"That theory could even account for the full-moon-dancing thing," I continued. "With an infestation of bugs, people could have seen them around the grave, and the stories about fairies started to spring up."
"Like fireflies," suggested Michelle.
"Like fireflies," I agreed. "Folklore often has some truth to it, if you do a little digging."
"We could come back tonight, when the full moon is out," Michelle suggested.
"We could," I said. "We could, at that."
June 5. Nine PM. Full moon.
We pulled into the cemetery in the dark, and I climbed out of the car. "Moon should be coming up right over there," I said. "Probably still behind the clouds at the moment."
We walked over to the Weise grave. Easier to find the second time around---If I'd tried it in the dark the first time, I never would have found it. Paul was following along with Michelle's cell phone, recording a pretend YouTube video.
"Okay. So. We're here at the fairy cemetery. There's fairies that come out and dance in the full moon, and we're looking for the fairy grave...."
Every time he did this, he sounded a little like me. I knelt beside the grave and pulled out a large sheet of paper and a crayon.
"Let's get you a rubbing, little man," I said.
"I want to do it!" said Paul.
"Okay. I'll hold the paper."
I held the sheet down while he rubbed purple crayon across it, coming up with a neat little rubbing of the name and dates. I rolled it up, and said,"I'll take it to the car."
As I walked across the cemetery, something hit me in the head. I glanced up, and saw a bug flitting past. I was about an inch long, dark colored. A nearby monument was covered with dozens of them.
I ran back to the car and traded the rubbing for my backpack. I was fishing out my camera and flashlight as I went back across the cemetery. I stopped and took a photo, holding the flashlight beside the camera and using the beam as a guide, the way I do for ghost-hunting.
"What are you doing?" asked Michelle.
"Think I found our fairies," I said.
"Those ugly bugs?"
"There's a lot of them out here. They look like some kind of roach. A hundred years ago, by torchlight on the full moon, it's real easy to see how a bunch of these things flying around could have started stories of fairies in this cemetery."
"Hunh," Michelle said. "You're right."
"Found them. After all this time, I found my fairy grave."
"Can we have some ice cream?" Paul asked.
"Yep," I said. "We can have ice cream."
As we walked back toward the car, Michelle said,"Now you have to find something to do when Biz can come."
I thought about it.
"Well," I said,"There's a story of a haunted grave outside Lock Haven...."
Friday, June 5, 2020
Monday, June 1, 2020
Yellow County: Baird Necessities
My son and I have this little tradition. When the weather is nice, we go out in the evening and take a walk around the neighborhood, looking at the sky for UFOs. Hey, what's your idea of quality time?
He's been discovering new routes lately, exploring a bit more. During the quarantine, we went down and explored around the local paper mill. Recently, he'd been turning our route to go up to Highland Street, moving across the four-hundred block.
We occasionally see people out while we're hunting for aliens, though fewer since the quarantine began. I saw a couple on their porch, and as we drew closer, I realized I knew one of them.
"Oh, hi, Danielle," I said, staying six feet away. It's amazing how fast I'd readjusted to that. "I didn't realize you were living in my neighborhood."
"Hi, Lou," she said. "Yep, moved here a couple months ago. You still doing paranormal investigations?"
"Of course. Paul," I called down the sidewalk,"Hold up. Don't get too far ahead." I saw the little red lights on Paul's scooter slow down and turn around in the dark.
Danielle turned to the guy she was with. "Lou did an investigation for us a couple of years ago. When we lived in the old hospital."
"Old Teah Hospital," I said. "I remember it well."
"We're having some activity here," she said. "You guys want to come?"
"Once it's safe again," I said. "In the meantime, I'll start the historic research and let you know. Now that I'm back in the library, I should be able to find out some stuff."
Paul and I walked on. He said,"See any aliens, Daddy?"
"Not yet, buddy. But maybe we'll get a ghost."
Our limited reopening coincided with my eight-year anniversary. Way back in 2012, I'd had my first day of work at the Ross Library. It was May 24, 2012, and I'd stood upstairs in the Sloan Room with my co-worker, Kendra.
"If ever there was a place to start over," I'd said,"This would be it."
Now, the library itself was starting over slowly. We'd managed to reopen the library for curbside service, by appointment, in the lobby. People could order books and pick them up. This had gone over less thrillingly than we'd expected; we'd been averaging two or three patrons a day. I'd have a hard time deliberately getting COVID-19.
Before I headed out for my lobby shift, I grabbed the city directories and a form off my desk. I'd created the form myself after I'd gotten tired of scribbling information on post-its. Filling that in, I was able to gather all of the details of a property on one place.
Adam was in the lobby when I got there. "I'm here," I said. "You're relieved."
He stood up. "Been slow, man," he said. "Hope you got something to keep you busy."
I grinned behind my mask. "I think I can manage."
I'd begun the week wearing my ghost shirt, but now had switched to Bigfoot: Social Distancing World Champion. I sat down and began to look up the address in the city directories. A city directory is kind of like a reverse phone book, with the addresses and the names of the people who lived there. A lot of people attempt to do property research but have no idea about the city directories.
Starting at about 1915, I began checking each one, and came up with a list of names. People who'd lived there throughout the years. It took twenty minutes. Then I slipped back inside and exchanged the city directories for the cemetery records.
"How's it going out there?" Barb asked as I walked past the desk.
"Slow day," I said.
I had seven volumes of cemetery indexes. Starting with the earliest residents of the house---A family named Campbell---I checked each index to find which cemetery they were in. Each check only took me a few seconds, but it adds up. I had like twenty names to go through.
An old guy without a mask opened the door. I said,"Sir, we're requesting everyone who comes in wear a mask."
"What?"
"Sir, you have to have a mask on to come in."
"Thought I heard you were open."
"In a limited way, sir. Not our rule."
"Then I'll just leave these here." He set a bag of books down on the floor and walked off.
I transferred the books to our quarantine table and sprayed disinfectant on everything he'd touched or been near. How bad is it when you get alarmed because someone came in not wearing a goddamn mask?
There's always something---If a house is truly haunted, I'll always find a tragic death someplace. I found this one buried in Cedar Hill; Christian Basinger had died at age thirty-eight.
That was interesting. Once I got done with the cemetery indexes, I ran back in and traded them for two of the index drawers, BA and PO. I checked one of the families that showed some promise---They'd been in the house for almost forty years---But no, all of them had lived long lives and died elsewhere. Christian Basinger, a butcher with a family, had died just after leaving the house, at age thirty-eight. He had no obit, which left the cause of death a bit of a mystery.
I ran down the other names just to be thorough, but Christian Basinger was it. He was the most likely.
I looked up as Adam came back. "Is my hour up already?"
"You're taillights, man. Been slow?"
"Actually," I admitted,"It got a little exciting there for a while."
The bear probably outweighed our Prius. And, hell, it was a small one. The bear, I mean. Also the Prius. My wife swerved around it as we drove up the Renovo Road.
"Whoa!" she said. "A bear!"
"You see that, Paul?" I asked. Paul was already leaning out of his seat to get a glimpse of the bear, which was darting off to the north side of the road.
"Yes!" Paul said, excitedly looking at the bear. It was a black one, probably a few months old.
"That's a cub," Michelle commented. "I hope the mother's not around."
"We can outrun a mother. Stay in the car."
We'd decided to take a little drive on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Paul had been somewhat enthusiastic about exploring old cemeteries recently, and abandoned cemeteries could reasonably be assumed to not be crowded. So I'd suggested a trip to a new one, the Youngwomanstown Cemetery in Chapman Township.
It only took us a few minutes to find it, once we got into North Bend. The small cemetery was down on a road beside the river. I got out and walked into the field.
The stones were all small, and arranged in neat rows. "This may be the oldest cemetery in Chapman Township," I commented. I glanced into the forest. "Hell, there's some stones piled in there, just left up against the trees. I'm gonna have to e-mail Justin. I wonder if CCGS knows about this."
"That's kind of sad," said Michelle.
"There are people with markers here who were moved," I said. "The Quigley family was moved to the New North Bend Cemetery, but their markers left behind."
I walked into the woods and examined the stones there. All broken, propped up against the trees. They hadn't been cared for. I debated internally for a moment.
Then I picked up one of the smaller footstones and slid it into my pack.
It's just been lost out here. If I take it, I can research and then preserve it, find out more. It's not doing anyone any good sitting in the woods.
Over the years, I've gotten used to the average weight of my pack. I can tell when I add something. Add a book, and it feels heavier. Take out my ghost-hunting stuff, I can feel the difference. Add a footstone, and it weighs a thousand pounds.
I walked back to the car. Paul and Michelle were waiting for me.
"Hi, Daddy," said Paul.
"Find what you wanted?" Michelle asked.
"We'll see," I said.
When Paul came into my office, he glanced at the stone. "Is that a gravestone?" he asked calmly.
It says something about my parenting that my five-year-old takes this sort of thing in stride.
"Yeah, it's a footstone," I said. "I brought it back from the cemetery. I'm going to check into it and figure out who it belonged to."
"Can I help?"
"Let's get to work."
The bathroom is conveniently right next to my office. I fetched the shaving cream.
"Remember how we did this at the old railroad station? It works with gravestones." I sprayed shaving cream on the stone, and we rubbed our fingers across it, taking off the excess and letting it fill the crevices. We wound up with two bright white letters.
"K," said Paul.
"I think it's an R. It's hard to tell with old ones. Is that a D?...."
"I think a B."
"It does look like a B. Let's wash this off."
When we'd hosed off our hands, and I'd cleaned the excess shaving cream off the stone, I picked up the index book for Chapman Township. I'd compiled a decent collection of usable books at home in my office---Not as good for research as the ones at the library, but still not bad. During the quarantine, I'd been really glad I'd had them.
"Rosannah Baird," I said. "She was a little girl, I think a year old. She died in 1833."
"How do you know that?" asked Paul.
"Daddy can find these things out. See, it says right here."
"Are you going to keep the gravestone?"
"I might hang onto it for a while," I admitted,"While I research."
"I think we should keep it," he said. "Is it time for Alien Patrol?"
I looked at the window. "Yeah, it's getting dark. And we have a message to deliver tonight."
"A message?" he asked.
"Yep. Remember the woman who was talking to me about ghosts the other night? I did the research on her house, and we're going to drop it off in her mailbox. So we have an extra mission tonight."
I walked out to the picnic table and sat down. In the parking lot, a car had pulled in. SaraLee got out, carrying two cups of coffee. She sat several feet away and slid one across the table to me.
"Thanks," I said. "Next time, it's my turn to buy."
"Taylor said you like it black," she said. "She said you used to order it saying things like 'Black as my soul.'"
I laughed. "I did, though that's been a while. How you doing?"
I was wearing my LHPS hoodie and my I'd rather be ghost hunting shirt. She was wearing her grey shirt with the black ghost on it.
"Doing okay," she said. "It's good to get out and talk to an adult for a change."
"I hear you. Thanks for dropping by. Once we're up and running, I may have another investigation for is. Got a report from Highland Street."
She smiled. "Sounds good."
"I'm here. Been slow?" I walked down the steps into the lobby.
Jim stood up. "Got one book waiting on a patron. Otherwise, I'm making real progress reading this novel."
"Yeah, I got some stuff to read, too. Been working my way through the Southern Reach Trilogy."
"Yell if you need anything," he said, and went off to his garage.
I'd also brought some other stuff to work on. With a little creativity, I'd discovered that I could get an amazing amount of research done while I was working the lobby. I sat down with the index drawer for BA, and checked for Rosannah Baird.
Nothing. According to the cemetery index, she seemed to have been one year old when she'd died, so it made sense that there was no obit. I found an entry for a Baird genealogy, and discovered that the family had a genealogy book someone had compiled.
It only took me a minute to go get it out of the Pennsylvania Room. It wasn't like we were swamped with customers anyway.
Okay. With the genealogy, I found that Rosannah had been the daughter of Benjamin and Ellen Baird, who were buried in a different cemetery over in Hyner. I checked on Benjamin in the index file, and I found out that he'd died in 1851, and was the son of William Baird, the earliest settler in Renovo.
Rosannah had been his granddaughter.
I'd rescued the marker from the first family to settle the area.
"So you had fun exploring the train station ruins, little man?" I asked as I rode our bike across the alley. Riding in the back trailer, Paul grinned.
"Yeah! That was fun!"
"When we get home, I'll show you where it was on the Sanborn Map. How about that?"
"Okay! Can I have a popsicle?"
"Sure. Got a color preference?"
"Surprise me."
A car pulled up, and it was Danielle driving. Paul commented,"Look, Daddy! It's your friend!"
Danielle smiled at me out her window. "Hi, Lou," she said. "Thanks for the history. We'll be glad to have you come investigate once it's safe."
"Great," I said. "I'll e-mail you."
"You gonna find a ghost, Daddy?" Paul asked.
"Sometime, little man," I said. "Right now, though, we got something to do."
I patted the dirt down and stood up, stepping back to view the little stone under the tree. Paul stood beside me, studying it critically. I'd buried it under our pine in the backyard, with his swing, within view of the porch Ida had died on.
"Looks good," I said. "I think we'll leave it a while."
"I like it," agreed Paul, and he held one thumb up.
"Yeah," I said. "It looks...right there."
"Yeah," said Paul. "It does."
He's been discovering new routes lately, exploring a bit more. During the quarantine, we went down and explored around the local paper mill. Recently, he'd been turning our route to go up to Highland Street, moving across the four-hundred block.
We occasionally see people out while we're hunting for aliens, though fewer since the quarantine began. I saw a couple on their porch, and as we drew closer, I realized I knew one of them.
"Oh, hi, Danielle," I said, staying six feet away. It's amazing how fast I'd readjusted to that. "I didn't realize you were living in my neighborhood."
"Hi, Lou," she said. "Yep, moved here a couple months ago. You still doing paranormal investigations?"
"Of course. Paul," I called down the sidewalk,"Hold up. Don't get too far ahead." I saw the little red lights on Paul's scooter slow down and turn around in the dark.
Danielle turned to the guy she was with. "Lou did an investigation for us a couple of years ago. When we lived in the old hospital."
"Old Teah Hospital," I said. "I remember it well."
"We're having some activity here," she said. "You guys want to come?"
"Once it's safe again," I said. "In the meantime, I'll start the historic research and let you know. Now that I'm back in the library, I should be able to find out some stuff."
Paul and I walked on. He said,"See any aliens, Daddy?"
"Not yet, buddy. But maybe we'll get a ghost."
Our limited reopening coincided with my eight-year anniversary. Way back in 2012, I'd had my first day of work at the Ross Library. It was May 24, 2012, and I'd stood upstairs in the Sloan Room with my co-worker, Kendra.
"If ever there was a place to start over," I'd said,"This would be it."
Now, the library itself was starting over slowly. We'd managed to reopen the library for curbside service, by appointment, in the lobby. People could order books and pick them up. This had gone over less thrillingly than we'd expected; we'd been averaging two or three patrons a day. I'd have a hard time deliberately getting COVID-19.
Before I headed out for my lobby shift, I grabbed the city directories and a form off my desk. I'd created the form myself after I'd gotten tired of scribbling information on post-its. Filling that in, I was able to gather all of the details of a property on one place.
Adam was in the lobby when I got there. "I'm here," I said. "You're relieved."
He stood up. "Been slow, man," he said. "Hope you got something to keep you busy."
I grinned behind my mask. "I think I can manage."
I'd begun the week wearing my ghost shirt, but now had switched to Bigfoot: Social Distancing World Champion. I sat down and began to look up the address in the city directories. A city directory is kind of like a reverse phone book, with the addresses and the names of the people who lived there. A lot of people attempt to do property research but have no idea about the city directories.
Starting at about 1915, I began checking each one, and came up with a list of names. People who'd lived there throughout the years. It took twenty minutes. Then I slipped back inside and exchanged the city directories for the cemetery records.
"How's it going out there?" Barb asked as I walked past the desk.
"Slow day," I said.
I had seven volumes of cemetery indexes. Starting with the earliest residents of the house---A family named Campbell---I checked each index to find which cemetery they were in. Each check only took me a few seconds, but it adds up. I had like twenty names to go through.
An old guy without a mask opened the door. I said,"Sir, we're requesting everyone who comes in wear a mask."
"What?"
"Sir, you have to have a mask on to come in."
"Thought I heard you were open."
"In a limited way, sir. Not our rule."
"Then I'll just leave these here." He set a bag of books down on the floor and walked off.
I transferred the books to our quarantine table and sprayed disinfectant on everything he'd touched or been near. How bad is it when you get alarmed because someone came in not wearing a goddamn mask?
There's always something---If a house is truly haunted, I'll always find a tragic death someplace. I found this one buried in Cedar Hill; Christian Basinger had died at age thirty-eight.
That was interesting. Once I got done with the cemetery indexes, I ran back in and traded them for two of the index drawers, BA and PO. I checked one of the families that showed some promise---They'd been in the house for almost forty years---But no, all of them had lived long lives and died elsewhere. Christian Basinger, a butcher with a family, had died just after leaving the house, at age thirty-eight. He had no obit, which left the cause of death a bit of a mystery.
I ran down the other names just to be thorough, but Christian Basinger was it. He was the most likely.
I looked up as Adam came back. "Is my hour up already?"
"You're taillights, man. Been slow?"
"Actually," I admitted,"It got a little exciting there for a while."
The bear probably outweighed our Prius. And, hell, it was a small one. The bear, I mean. Also the Prius. My wife swerved around it as we drove up the Renovo Road.
"Whoa!" she said. "A bear!"
"You see that, Paul?" I asked. Paul was already leaning out of his seat to get a glimpse of the bear, which was darting off to the north side of the road.
"Yes!" Paul said, excitedly looking at the bear. It was a black one, probably a few months old.
"That's a cub," Michelle commented. "I hope the mother's not around."
"We can outrun a mother. Stay in the car."
We'd decided to take a little drive on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Paul had been somewhat enthusiastic about exploring old cemeteries recently, and abandoned cemeteries could reasonably be assumed to not be crowded. So I'd suggested a trip to a new one, the Youngwomanstown Cemetery in Chapman Township.
It only took us a few minutes to find it, once we got into North Bend. The small cemetery was down on a road beside the river. I got out and walked into the field.
The stones were all small, and arranged in neat rows. "This may be the oldest cemetery in Chapman Township," I commented. I glanced into the forest. "Hell, there's some stones piled in there, just left up against the trees. I'm gonna have to e-mail Justin. I wonder if CCGS knows about this."
"That's kind of sad," said Michelle.
"There are people with markers here who were moved," I said. "The Quigley family was moved to the New North Bend Cemetery, but their markers left behind."
I walked into the woods and examined the stones there. All broken, propped up against the trees. They hadn't been cared for. I debated internally for a moment.
Then I picked up one of the smaller footstones and slid it into my pack.
It's just been lost out here. If I take it, I can research and then preserve it, find out more. It's not doing anyone any good sitting in the woods.
Over the years, I've gotten used to the average weight of my pack. I can tell when I add something. Add a book, and it feels heavier. Take out my ghost-hunting stuff, I can feel the difference. Add a footstone, and it weighs a thousand pounds.
I walked back to the car. Paul and Michelle were waiting for me.
"Hi, Daddy," said Paul.
"Find what you wanted?" Michelle asked.
"We'll see," I said.
When Paul came into my office, he glanced at the stone. "Is that a gravestone?" he asked calmly.
It says something about my parenting that my five-year-old takes this sort of thing in stride.
"Yeah, it's a footstone," I said. "I brought it back from the cemetery. I'm going to check into it and figure out who it belonged to."
"Can I help?"
"Let's get to work."
The bathroom is conveniently right next to my office. I fetched the shaving cream.
"Remember how we did this at the old railroad station? It works with gravestones." I sprayed shaving cream on the stone, and we rubbed our fingers across it, taking off the excess and letting it fill the crevices. We wound up with two bright white letters.
"K," said Paul.
"I think it's an R. It's hard to tell with old ones. Is that a D?...."
"I think a B."
"It does look like a B. Let's wash this off."
When we'd hosed off our hands, and I'd cleaned the excess shaving cream off the stone, I picked up the index book for Chapman Township. I'd compiled a decent collection of usable books at home in my office---Not as good for research as the ones at the library, but still not bad. During the quarantine, I'd been really glad I'd had them.
"Rosannah Baird," I said. "She was a little girl, I think a year old. She died in 1833."
"How do you know that?" asked Paul.
"Daddy can find these things out. See, it says right here."
"Are you going to keep the gravestone?"
"I might hang onto it for a while," I admitted,"While I research."
"I think we should keep it," he said. "Is it time for Alien Patrol?"
I looked at the window. "Yeah, it's getting dark. And we have a message to deliver tonight."
"A message?" he asked.
"Yep. Remember the woman who was talking to me about ghosts the other night? I did the research on her house, and we're going to drop it off in her mailbox. So we have an extra mission tonight."
I walked out to the picnic table and sat down. In the parking lot, a car had pulled in. SaraLee got out, carrying two cups of coffee. She sat several feet away and slid one across the table to me.
"Thanks," I said. "Next time, it's my turn to buy."
"Taylor said you like it black," she said. "She said you used to order it saying things like 'Black as my soul.'"
I laughed. "I did, though that's been a while. How you doing?"
I was wearing my LHPS hoodie and my I'd rather be ghost hunting shirt. She was wearing her grey shirt with the black ghost on it.
"Doing okay," she said. "It's good to get out and talk to an adult for a change."
"I hear you. Thanks for dropping by. Once we're up and running, I may have another investigation for is. Got a report from Highland Street."
She smiled. "Sounds good."
"I'm here. Been slow?" I walked down the steps into the lobby.
Jim stood up. "Got one book waiting on a patron. Otherwise, I'm making real progress reading this novel."
"Yeah, I got some stuff to read, too. Been working my way through the Southern Reach Trilogy."
"Yell if you need anything," he said, and went off to his garage.
I'd also brought some other stuff to work on. With a little creativity, I'd discovered that I could get an amazing amount of research done while I was working the lobby. I sat down with the index drawer for BA, and checked for Rosannah Baird.
Nothing. According to the cemetery index, she seemed to have been one year old when she'd died, so it made sense that there was no obit. I found an entry for a Baird genealogy, and discovered that the family had a genealogy book someone had compiled.
It only took me a minute to go get it out of the Pennsylvania Room. It wasn't like we were swamped with customers anyway.
Okay. With the genealogy, I found that Rosannah had been the daughter of Benjamin and Ellen Baird, who were buried in a different cemetery over in Hyner. I checked on Benjamin in the index file, and I found out that he'd died in 1851, and was the son of William Baird, the earliest settler in Renovo.
Rosannah had been his granddaughter.
I'd rescued the marker from the first family to settle the area.
"So you had fun exploring the train station ruins, little man?" I asked as I rode our bike across the alley. Riding in the back trailer, Paul grinned.
"Yeah! That was fun!"
"When we get home, I'll show you where it was on the Sanborn Map. How about that?"
"Okay! Can I have a popsicle?"
"Sure. Got a color preference?"
"Surprise me."
A car pulled up, and it was Danielle driving. Paul commented,"Look, Daddy! It's your friend!"
Danielle smiled at me out her window. "Hi, Lou," she said. "Thanks for the history. We'll be glad to have you come investigate once it's safe."
"Great," I said. "I'll e-mail you."
"You gonna find a ghost, Daddy?" Paul asked.
"Sometime, little man," I said. "Right now, though, we got something to do."
I patted the dirt down and stood up, stepping back to view the little stone under the tree. Paul stood beside me, studying it critically. I'd buried it under our pine in the backyard, with his swing, within view of the porch Ida had died on.
"Looks good," I said. "I think we'll leave it a while."
"I like it," agreed Paul, and he held one thumb up.
"Yeah," I said. "It looks...right there."
"Yeah," said Paul. "It does."
Monday, May 18, 2020
Yellow County: The New Paranormal
My new coffee mug said "Mothman believes in you." I finished off the coffee as I pulled on my jacket. Paul was standing on his scooter in the kitchen, watching me.
"Bye, Daddy," he said.
"I'll be home at four, little man," I said. "You be good for Mommy until then."
I felt a little down. I was going back to work, but it was the first time I'd been away from Paul in almost two months, and I was almost ready to cry. It was almost the first day of school all over again, except this time, it was me who was leaving.
"I love you," he said.
I gave him a hug.
"I love you, too."
It felt weird, entering the library again for a workday. My shirt was the black one with the ghost on it, and my mask had little Christmas trees and an alien patch sewn on. I could hear my co-workers at their desks as I walked to mine.
The toy alien I'd left so long ago as a trigger object had moved about an inch. I picked him up and dropped him in my pocket, then tore two consecutive calendar months off the desk calendar. I heard something behind me, some kind of loud tapping. After about the fifth tap, I glanced back. There was a bird whapping consistently against the window, trying to fly through it.
I printed out a couple of paper silhouettes of hawks, and taped them up on the windows. Then I went back to the back room.
"I know we weren't supposed to," said Mel,"But I made coffee." She had a smiley-face mask.
"I'll help you drink the evidence," I promised. "Hey, Zach? Good to see most of your face again."
Zach grinned behind his bright red mask. "You, too."
"If anyone asks, I just taped a couple of hawk outlines on the front windows. There's a robin trying to bust in, and I'm hoping to save the little dumbass's life. I'll be out at the temporary library for a bit."
I walked outside and checked the outdoor shelves. With help from the general public, our collection had grown, but gotten really, really disorganized. I spent about half an hour adjusting everything---Fiction, nonfiction, paperback, children.
Without knowing what to expect from the general public, I'd come in packing like Troop K in 1917. I had my big heavy Swiss Army Rangergrip Knife, my titanium tactical self-defense pen, and my whip in my backpack. I didn't really expect trouble, but there had been headlines about shootings when people were denied entry without masks.
I got the books organized. That was going to last an hour maybe. I went back in, grabbed a cup of coffee, and retreated to my desk to answer some e-mails. The goddamn robin was still trying to blow through the window. He'd taken one look at my hawk, and decided he could take it.
First day back.
I walked around my office, through the oldest part of the building. A home, built to be the mayor's mansion in 1887, later the home of Annie Halenbake Ross. I was back. Back with the 1857 map, the Clinton County Times, the Sanborn maps, the Shoemaker books. I walked around, looking with some wonder at all of it, and then sat back down at my desk.
There was plastic sheeting hanging over the door to the reference room.I looked up as it rippled and blew.
I stood up. There was no draft, no reason the plastic should have moved. I'd noticed an upswing in ghost activity at my own home; maybe during a crisis, it had been happening here, too. It occurred to me that I should probably check out a few other haunted locations in the area.
I pulled the little toy alien out of my pocket and put it back on my desk calendar, tracing around it. Might as well keep checking for ghosts while I was here.
When I walked in the door after work, my family was around the table playing Sorry, Paul's new favorite game. He looked up as I came in. "Daddy!"
"Hey, guys. Hi, Biz." I hadn't seen Biz since the quarantine began. "Don't hug me yet. I'm gonna change clothes and get a shower first."
"Pizza's on the way," said Michelle.
I threw my clothes in the laundry and took a quick shower. When I got back downstairs, Tif said,"How was your first day back?"
"Not bad. A little weird, and if I never hear the phrase The new normal again, it'll be too soon. There was a robin that kept trying to bust its way in through the windows."
"They get territorial," she said. "They see their reflections and try to fight."
"We're all spread out, mostly. The boss is up on the second floor, and we have to stay away from each other. We're pretty much outrageously unsupervised."
"Anyone try to get in?"
I shook my head. "Just the robin."
"Any ghosts?" asked Biz.
"Possibly. Some activity---It seems to be up since the quarantine began."
"Yeah? What're you gonna do?"
"You know, the usual."
"We haven't had a patron in this building for two frickin' months, and I'm still finding books out of order."
I reshelved books newly out of quarantine as I walked through the stacks. Some of my co-workers were reshelving, too, standing yards away in a different part of the room. All of us, wearing our masks. My new shirt said "Bigfoot: Social Distancing World Champion."
"Maybe it's the ghosts," suggested Barb.
"Hell, they've moved other stuff around," I said. "Maybe it's Annie and Mary."
I stopped for a moment, waiting for Barb to pass, and then Holly moved past me. She said,"It's like a game of chess."
"Actually," I commented,"It feels like one of those little plastic games they hand out at the bank, where you have to slide the numbers around to get them in order."
She laughed. "Well, I want to get off this game."
I went back to my desk. Pulling off my mask---The one with the alien on it---I drank some coffee out of my Bigfoot travel mug. I glanced over my shoulder to see my phone cord swinging. There was no breeze, nobody had touched it. If there was some physical reason for it swaying back and forth, I couldn't think of it.
I put my mask back on and stood up. As a general rule I usually keep some ghost-hunting stuff nearby, so I dug my laser thermometer and my EMF detector out and walked for the back door.
"Gonna go check the backup library," I called to Tracey and Mel as I walked past.
I walked out the back, into the alley, and decided to take a walk around some of the closest haunted spots, because it beat actually working.
I walked down the alley and around onto Third Street. On the corner of Church and Third, I was standing between the Sydney Furst House and the Wilson Kistler House, both known to be haunted. I held up my EMF detector and got a short beep.
I saw the owner of the Kistler House coming down the sidewalk. We'd done an investigation for her a couple of years ago. I said,"Hi. How you doing?"
"Oh, not so bad," she said. We were both wearing masks and standing twenty feet apart.
"Seen any upswing in paranormal activity since the pandemic?"
"Yeah, a little," she said airily. "You can't always hear them, but you know, they're there." I remembered suddenly that she'd never once looked at the historic report I'd written up for her.
Down and around in Erie Alley was another combo---The Reuben Brawn House and the John Brown House, again both known to be haunted. As I aimed my thermometer at the Brawn House, I had a moment of hesitation---The thermometer looked a little like a gun, and I'd gotten some comments in the past. Then I laughed. Everyone had this type of thermometer during the pandemic; they were selling them at the local drugstore. For a change, I basically blended in.
The temperature had a steady baseline of sixty-seven, which felt about right. I moved the laser around the exterior of the house, and saw it drop to fifty-two and then go back up again. That was an interesting drop.
In front of the Brawn House, I found Juli, a friend of mine who lived there. She was walking her dog, a cute little Chihuahua. I said,"Hi, Juli. I'd come pet him, but, you know....pandemic."
"Yeah, I get it," she said.
"Weird question, but you know me. Any upswing in ghost activity recently?"
She shook her head. "Nah, not that I've seen. They're usually pretty quiet."
"Hunh. I've been having some more activity up at my place; I been wondering if it's due to the stress everyone's under."
"That's really neat."
"Some fascinating stuff out there," I said.
I walked down the alley, and back into the library. I missed doing stuff; I missed the monthly LHPS meetings and the investigations. I missed going out to look for Bigfoot, doing a serious UFO search. I missed giving tours.
While I'd been out, the toy alien had moved a couple of inches.
It felt good to actually be able to pop downtown for lunch again. During the pandemic, some of the local businesses had stayed open, but it had been advisable to stay home as much as possible. I'd been kind of getting used to leftovers and spam. I biked downtown, and then had a sandwich at my desk.
I hadn't been up to the attic in over two months. With possible ghost activity all over the building, it was worth checking. I got my keys and walked upstairs.
The Ross Library's attic is an old space consisting mostly of wood and dust. The stairs end up in a small, round central room with doors leading every direction. I chose the northeast door, into the Newspaper Room.
I walked around in there for a while. The Newspaper Room was where most of our old documents were stored. Shelves along every wall contained old newspapers, old issues of the Clinton Democrat and the Express. There were also Native American artifacts and a stuffed bobcat, too. I'd worked at the library since 2012, and exploring the attic hadn't really lost its thrill for me yet.
I walked among the old newspapers, not seeing anything paranormal. There was a window that faced Erie Alley, and I stood and looked out a bit. Below me, pink buds were blowing around the lawn.
I looked out at the roof, and standing like that, I realized something. The roof outside extended a few feet further than the wall I was facing. The conjunction of spaces didn't quite fit together. There was too much extra space in between them.
It meant that there was some sort of crawlspace I'd never been aware of before.
I wonder if there's a door?....
I got down and crawled along the floor, for the first time ever looking past the shelf of newspapers and at the wall behind it. And about halfway down, hidden behind the shelf, yes, there was a small door to the crawlspace.
It was about three feet tall, wooden, with a shiny latch. I was wearing my watch that doubled as a little flashlight, and I clicked it on, shining it in there. The latch was on the south end of the door, which meant I'd have to start from the front of the room if I ever wanted to get in there. I gave the shelf an experimental pull---Though it was free-standing, all the paper made it too heavy to move.
I went downstairs and found Zach at his desk, which is basically standard operating procedure in these situations.
"I just found a crawlspace we never knew about before," I said.
He jumped up immediately.
"Well, you got me curious," he said.
We walked up to the attic, staying six feet apart.
"The boss know you're running around exploring the attic?" he asked.
"Boss thinks I'm in a webinar learning public relations."
I stood back and pointed him at the small door behind the shelf.
"There," I said. "I never saw that before, and I've worked here eight years this month."
He knelt down, shining his cell phone into it.
"I never noticed that, either," he said. "That crawlspace has to be pretty decent-sized, considering."
"Yeah, I tried to move the shelf, but the paper is pretty heavy. Don't think I'm not gonna try getting in there, though."
"Hell, I'll help if I can." He peered through the shelf. "That's in pretty good condition, for how old it's gotta be." He reached through and rattled the door a little. "Nope, not nailed shut. Wow."
"I know. I thought we'd discovered every little crevice in this place years ago. But now, here's a new one."
"It'll take some effort to get into, though."
"That doesn't mean I'm not gonna try."
When I walked into the library in the morning, I had my coffee. The damn robin was still trying to bust his way in through the window. My alien toy had moved, and the ghosts seemed to be active.
I mean, Mondays, huh?
"How was your weekend?" asked Zach.
"Not bad. Paul and I went looking for UFOs. Wrote a couple of articles."
"Anything good?"
"Did one on a theft from a butcher's place in Salona. I called it Meat The Thieves."
I checked on the backup library, sat down at my desk and dashed off a couple of drafts for the Boss, and drank some coffee. Then I went up into the library and began moving heavy stuff.
Small bits, that was going to be the key. One newspaper isn't very heavy. Fifty is. So if I just moved stuff around in little bits at a time, I should be okay.
I began unloading old copies of the Clinton Republican, and shifting them to other shelves. The papers were from the late 1800s, and could reasonably be assumed to be free of COVID-19. I got one area done, and wiggled the wooden shelf. Still too heavy. It would move eventually, though; I could feel it. I began moving down the line.
I had a system. I'd carry papers off one section of shelf, then test it to see if it would drag. I'll do hard work when it's something important. I found a brick down at one end, oddly wrapped in some sort of heavy paper. It had writing on it. I set that one aside to investigate later. I didn't disturb any of the old Native American artifacts on the other shelves. What with the Coronavirus, I didn't need to go unleashing an old Indian curse again.
When I got most of the newspapers off the shelves, I gave the far end a pull, and it shifted. I dragged it as far as I could, up against the other shelf. I twisted my wrist doing it, and it began to ache. Worth it.
I tried to squidge my way in behind the shelf. There wasn't much space; I'd have to be built like Plastic Man. I pushed a little harder, got dust all over my Sasquatch Research Team shirt, and popped through.
I crawled over to the door and gave it a yank, and it was swollen shut. God is my co-pilot. I pulled harder, and finally it popped free.
I activated the little flashlight on my watch. I love having little extra tools with me at all times. I crawled inside, shining the light around.
There was nothing inside. Some dust. That was it. Otherwise, it was just a crawlspace. Maybe eight feet long and dark.
I worked my way out and went back downstairs, pulling my mask back on. Zach looked up from his desk. "Where have you been hiding?" he asked.
"Oh, around," I said airily. "In unrelated news, there's nothing in that little hidden door upstairs."
He grinned behind his mask. "I knew you were going to try that, sooner or later. So, nothing's in there, huh?"
"Nope. So the next question is, what can we put there?"
"Yeah," he said. "I was thinking that."
So, you're finished with your first week back," Tif commented as I cooked dinner.
"Yep," I agreed. "Got some stuff done. A little at a time, we're getting ready to reopen. You remember that door I found? Turns out there was nothing inside."
"Aww," said Tif. "That's too bad."
"Well, hell, it worked for Geraldo."
"I was hoping for a mummy."
"That'd be cool, but no," I said. "On the other hand, now I get to stash something inside, I suppose."
"I wondered about that. What're you thinking?"
"Ghost activity monitoring station maybe," I said. "Let's eat."
"Bye, Daddy," he said.
"I'll be home at four, little man," I said. "You be good for Mommy until then."
I felt a little down. I was going back to work, but it was the first time I'd been away from Paul in almost two months, and I was almost ready to cry. It was almost the first day of school all over again, except this time, it was me who was leaving.
"I love you," he said.
I gave him a hug.
"I love you, too."
It felt weird, entering the library again for a workday. My shirt was the black one with the ghost on it, and my mask had little Christmas trees and an alien patch sewn on. I could hear my co-workers at their desks as I walked to mine.
The toy alien I'd left so long ago as a trigger object had moved about an inch. I picked him up and dropped him in my pocket, then tore two consecutive calendar months off the desk calendar. I heard something behind me, some kind of loud tapping. After about the fifth tap, I glanced back. There was a bird whapping consistently against the window, trying to fly through it.
I printed out a couple of paper silhouettes of hawks, and taped them up on the windows. Then I went back to the back room.
"I know we weren't supposed to," said Mel,"But I made coffee." She had a smiley-face mask.
"I'll help you drink the evidence," I promised. "Hey, Zach? Good to see most of your face again."
Zach grinned behind his bright red mask. "You, too."
"If anyone asks, I just taped a couple of hawk outlines on the front windows. There's a robin trying to bust in, and I'm hoping to save the little dumbass's life. I'll be out at the temporary library for a bit."
I walked outside and checked the outdoor shelves. With help from the general public, our collection had grown, but gotten really, really disorganized. I spent about half an hour adjusting everything---Fiction, nonfiction, paperback, children.
Without knowing what to expect from the general public, I'd come in packing like Troop K in 1917. I had my big heavy Swiss Army Rangergrip Knife, my titanium tactical self-defense pen, and my whip in my backpack. I didn't really expect trouble, but there had been headlines about shootings when people were denied entry without masks.
I got the books organized. That was going to last an hour maybe. I went back in, grabbed a cup of coffee, and retreated to my desk to answer some e-mails. The goddamn robin was still trying to blow through the window. He'd taken one look at my hawk, and decided he could take it.
First day back.
I walked around my office, through the oldest part of the building. A home, built to be the mayor's mansion in 1887, later the home of Annie Halenbake Ross. I was back. Back with the 1857 map, the Clinton County Times, the Sanborn maps, the Shoemaker books. I walked around, looking with some wonder at all of it, and then sat back down at my desk.
There was plastic sheeting hanging over the door to the reference room.I looked up as it rippled and blew.
I stood up. There was no draft, no reason the plastic should have moved. I'd noticed an upswing in ghost activity at my own home; maybe during a crisis, it had been happening here, too. It occurred to me that I should probably check out a few other haunted locations in the area.
I pulled the little toy alien out of my pocket and put it back on my desk calendar, tracing around it. Might as well keep checking for ghosts while I was here.
When I walked in the door after work, my family was around the table playing Sorry, Paul's new favorite game. He looked up as I came in. "Daddy!"
"Hey, guys. Hi, Biz." I hadn't seen Biz since the quarantine began. "Don't hug me yet. I'm gonna change clothes and get a shower first."
"Pizza's on the way," said Michelle.
I threw my clothes in the laundry and took a quick shower. When I got back downstairs, Tif said,"How was your first day back?"
"Not bad. A little weird, and if I never hear the phrase The new normal again, it'll be too soon. There was a robin that kept trying to bust its way in through the windows."
"They get territorial," she said. "They see their reflections and try to fight."
"We're all spread out, mostly. The boss is up on the second floor, and we have to stay away from each other. We're pretty much outrageously unsupervised."
"Anyone try to get in?"
I shook my head. "Just the robin."
"Any ghosts?" asked Biz.
"Possibly. Some activity---It seems to be up since the quarantine began."
"Yeah? What're you gonna do?"
"You know, the usual."
"We haven't had a patron in this building for two frickin' months, and I'm still finding books out of order."
I reshelved books newly out of quarantine as I walked through the stacks. Some of my co-workers were reshelving, too, standing yards away in a different part of the room. All of us, wearing our masks. My new shirt said "Bigfoot: Social Distancing World Champion."
"Maybe it's the ghosts," suggested Barb.
"Hell, they've moved other stuff around," I said. "Maybe it's Annie and Mary."
I stopped for a moment, waiting for Barb to pass, and then Holly moved past me. She said,"It's like a game of chess."
"Actually," I commented,"It feels like one of those little plastic games they hand out at the bank, where you have to slide the numbers around to get them in order."
She laughed. "Well, I want to get off this game."
I went back to my desk. Pulling off my mask---The one with the alien on it---I drank some coffee out of my Bigfoot travel mug. I glanced over my shoulder to see my phone cord swinging. There was no breeze, nobody had touched it. If there was some physical reason for it swaying back and forth, I couldn't think of it.
I put my mask back on and stood up. As a general rule I usually keep some ghost-hunting stuff nearby, so I dug my laser thermometer and my EMF detector out and walked for the back door.
"Gonna go check the backup library," I called to Tracey and Mel as I walked past.
I walked out the back, into the alley, and decided to take a walk around some of the closest haunted spots, because it beat actually working.
I walked down the alley and around onto Third Street. On the corner of Church and Third, I was standing between the Sydney Furst House and the Wilson Kistler House, both known to be haunted. I held up my EMF detector and got a short beep.
I saw the owner of the Kistler House coming down the sidewalk. We'd done an investigation for her a couple of years ago. I said,"Hi. How you doing?"
"Oh, not so bad," she said. We were both wearing masks and standing twenty feet apart.
"Seen any upswing in paranormal activity since the pandemic?"
"Yeah, a little," she said airily. "You can't always hear them, but you know, they're there." I remembered suddenly that she'd never once looked at the historic report I'd written up for her.
Down and around in Erie Alley was another combo---The Reuben Brawn House and the John Brown House, again both known to be haunted. As I aimed my thermometer at the Brawn House, I had a moment of hesitation---The thermometer looked a little like a gun, and I'd gotten some comments in the past. Then I laughed. Everyone had this type of thermometer during the pandemic; they were selling them at the local drugstore. For a change, I basically blended in.
The temperature had a steady baseline of sixty-seven, which felt about right. I moved the laser around the exterior of the house, and saw it drop to fifty-two and then go back up again. That was an interesting drop.
In front of the Brawn House, I found Juli, a friend of mine who lived there. She was walking her dog, a cute little Chihuahua. I said,"Hi, Juli. I'd come pet him, but, you know....pandemic."
"Yeah, I get it," she said.
"Weird question, but you know me. Any upswing in ghost activity recently?"
She shook her head. "Nah, not that I've seen. They're usually pretty quiet."
"Hunh. I've been having some more activity up at my place; I been wondering if it's due to the stress everyone's under."
"That's really neat."
"Some fascinating stuff out there," I said.
I walked down the alley, and back into the library. I missed doing stuff; I missed the monthly LHPS meetings and the investigations. I missed going out to look for Bigfoot, doing a serious UFO search. I missed giving tours.
While I'd been out, the toy alien had moved a couple of inches.
It felt good to actually be able to pop downtown for lunch again. During the pandemic, some of the local businesses had stayed open, but it had been advisable to stay home as much as possible. I'd been kind of getting used to leftovers and spam. I biked downtown, and then had a sandwich at my desk.
I hadn't been up to the attic in over two months. With possible ghost activity all over the building, it was worth checking. I got my keys and walked upstairs.
The Ross Library's attic is an old space consisting mostly of wood and dust. The stairs end up in a small, round central room with doors leading every direction. I chose the northeast door, into the Newspaper Room.
I walked around in there for a while. The Newspaper Room was where most of our old documents were stored. Shelves along every wall contained old newspapers, old issues of the Clinton Democrat and the Express. There were also Native American artifacts and a stuffed bobcat, too. I'd worked at the library since 2012, and exploring the attic hadn't really lost its thrill for me yet.
I walked among the old newspapers, not seeing anything paranormal. There was a window that faced Erie Alley, and I stood and looked out a bit. Below me, pink buds were blowing around the lawn.
I looked out at the roof, and standing like that, I realized something. The roof outside extended a few feet further than the wall I was facing. The conjunction of spaces didn't quite fit together. There was too much extra space in between them.
It meant that there was some sort of crawlspace I'd never been aware of before.
I wonder if there's a door?....
I got down and crawled along the floor, for the first time ever looking past the shelf of newspapers and at the wall behind it. And about halfway down, hidden behind the shelf, yes, there was a small door to the crawlspace.
It was about three feet tall, wooden, with a shiny latch. I was wearing my watch that doubled as a little flashlight, and I clicked it on, shining it in there. The latch was on the south end of the door, which meant I'd have to start from the front of the room if I ever wanted to get in there. I gave the shelf an experimental pull---Though it was free-standing, all the paper made it too heavy to move.
I went downstairs and found Zach at his desk, which is basically standard operating procedure in these situations.
"I just found a crawlspace we never knew about before," I said.
He jumped up immediately.
"Well, you got me curious," he said.
We walked up to the attic, staying six feet apart.
"The boss know you're running around exploring the attic?" he asked.
"Boss thinks I'm in a webinar learning public relations."
I stood back and pointed him at the small door behind the shelf.
"There," I said. "I never saw that before, and I've worked here eight years this month."
He knelt down, shining his cell phone into it.
"I never noticed that, either," he said. "That crawlspace has to be pretty decent-sized, considering."
"Yeah, I tried to move the shelf, but the paper is pretty heavy. Don't think I'm not gonna try getting in there, though."
"Hell, I'll help if I can." He peered through the shelf. "That's in pretty good condition, for how old it's gotta be." He reached through and rattled the door a little. "Nope, not nailed shut. Wow."
"I know. I thought we'd discovered every little crevice in this place years ago. But now, here's a new one."
"It'll take some effort to get into, though."
"That doesn't mean I'm not gonna try."
When I walked into the library in the morning, I had my coffee. The damn robin was still trying to bust his way in through the window. My alien toy had moved, and the ghosts seemed to be active.
I mean, Mondays, huh?
"How was your weekend?" asked Zach.
"Not bad. Paul and I went looking for UFOs. Wrote a couple of articles."
"Anything good?"
"Did one on a theft from a butcher's place in Salona. I called it Meat The Thieves."
I checked on the backup library, sat down at my desk and dashed off a couple of drafts for the Boss, and drank some coffee. Then I went up into the library and began moving heavy stuff.
Small bits, that was going to be the key. One newspaper isn't very heavy. Fifty is. So if I just moved stuff around in little bits at a time, I should be okay.
I began unloading old copies of the Clinton Republican, and shifting them to other shelves. The papers were from the late 1800s, and could reasonably be assumed to be free of COVID-19. I got one area done, and wiggled the wooden shelf. Still too heavy. It would move eventually, though; I could feel it. I began moving down the line.
I had a system. I'd carry papers off one section of shelf, then test it to see if it would drag. I'll do hard work when it's something important. I found a brick down at one end, oddly wrapped in some sort of heavy paper. It had writing on it. I set that one aside to investigate later. I didn't disturb any of the old Native American artifacts on the other shelves. What with the Coronavirus, I didn't need to go unleashing an old Indian curse again.
When I got most of the newspapers off the shelves, I gave the far end a pull, and it shifted. I dragged it as far as I could, up against the other shelf. I twisted my wrist doing it, and it began to ache. Worth it.
I tried to squidge my way in behind the shelf. There wasn't much space; I'd have to be built like Plastic Man. I pushed a little harder, got dust all over my Sasquatch Research Team shirt, and popped through.
I crawled over to the door and gave it a yank, and it was swollen shut. God is my co-pilot. I pulled harder, and finally it popped free.
I activated the little flashlight on my watch. I love having little extra tools with me at all times. I crawled inside, shining the light around.
There was nothing inside. Some dust. That was it. Otherwise, it was just a crawlspace. Maybe eight feet long and dark.
I worked my way out and went back downstairs, pulling my mask back on. Zach looked up from his desk. "Where have you been hiding?" he asked.
"Oh, around," I said airily. "In unrelated news, there's nothing in that little hidden door upstairs."
He grinned behind his mask. "I knew you were going to try that, sooner or later. So, nothing's in there, huh?"
"Nope. So the next question is, what can we put there?"
"Yeah," he said. "I was thinking that."
So, you're finished with your first week back," Tif commented as I cooked dinner.
"Yep," I agreed. "Got some stuff done. A little at a time, we're getting ready to reopen. You remember that door I found? Turns out there was nothing inside."
"Aww," said Tif. "That's too bad."
"Well, hell, it worked for Geraldo."
"I was hoping for a mummy."
"That'd be cool, but no," I said. "On the other hand, now I get to stash something inside, I suppose."
"I wondered about that. What're you thinking?"
"Ghost activity monitoring station maybe," I said. "Let's eat."
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Pandemic: Sounds Like Teen Spirit
"Daddy, I'm full," said Paul.
This happens a lot. Paul reaches his limit pretty quickly, especially when he realizes he didn't feel like eating what he asked for, after all. The main difference was this time, we were eating bologna slices outside in his play tower.
"Okay, go ahead and throw the rest of that to the animals," I said.
He climbed down the ladder and began tearing the bologna up, laying pieces down. "I'm making a trail for the animals. Maybe they'll come in my tree house."
I climbed down after him. "One of these days, I need to teach you to make a deadfall trap."
"Can we do it now?"
"You want to learn now? Okay."
I gathered up a couple of sticks and a log, and knelt down near the pine tree. I drove one stick down into the dirt, and carefully propped the log up in the Y-split. Then I picked up one of Paul's plastic dinosaurs. A Triceratops.
"Okay, we need bait. What do you think the dinosaur will eat?"
He handed me a shard of baloney.
I speared it on one of the protruding sticks, and said,"Okay. See, we prop the big log up here. Then we wait. Let a trap do your waiting; it's more efficient. When the dinosaur comes along and tries to get the baloney...." I moved the dinosaur forward, jostling the stick. The log immediately wiggled loose, and came slamming down. I just barely managed to get my hand out of there.
"Cool!"
"That's how you can catch animals if you need to," I said. I put the log back where I'd found it---The last thing I wanted was to come out and find an actual squirrel under it or something. "So remember that."
"Can I have a banana now?"
"I suppose, sure."
I led my family along the outer edge of the soybean field in Wayne Township. I was wearing my grey ghost shirt, and carrying my backpack. Michelle was behind me, and Paul followed up, carrying a bottle of bubbles and a wand and leaving bubbles behind us.
"Should be right up here," I said. "See that place where the trees kind of stick out of the forest? That's it. The Stech-Simcox Cemetery. Long abandoned, created in 1815."
"That's further than you said," Michelle pointed out.
"I didn't remember exactly. It's been about ten years since I've been out here. Mentioned it in the book, though." I walked ahead. Paul had his shirt off and was soaking in the sun.
I saw the fence as I approached. An old metal fence, rusted and damaged. I could see some of the gravestones. The biggest one, which had once been an obelisk, had been knocked over.
"That wasn't like that last time I was here," I commented.
I walked around the outside, and found the way in on the far side. I had no idea how they'd gotten into it in the old days, but now I could get in through a section of fence that had fallen over. I walked among the stones, which were all overgrown and falling down.
"What do you think, little man? Check this place out."
"Boring," said Paul.
"Oh, I don't know, kid." I walked through the small, sad cemetery. "I think it's pretty cool."
"Can we go to McDonald's on the way home?"
"Sure." I took a couple of photos. "We'll get you some food."
I opened my e-mail, and my co-workers popped up. Zoom meetings. Christ, I hate doing everything digitally. On the bright side, I did get to drink a beer in a staff meeting for the first time ever, as long as I kept it in an opaque travel mug.
"We have our guidelines from the State Library," said New Boss on the screen. "We won't be opening to the public for a while, but staff will be coming in on Monday."
Monday. Next week.
She continued,"We'll have to have some desk reassignments, and wear masks. We won't be open to the public for a while yet, and we'll have to prepare for that. Once we do, we'll only be doing book pick-ups in the lobby. Some people aren't going to like that, and we'll have to deal with them. It's going to be difficult with the public for a while. People are still scared. Statistics show that alcohol use is up."
"Interesting," I said, taking a drink of my Corona.
"We'll work out hours and shifts. We're going to have a lot to do. We'll be taking temperatures at the door. I have a non-contact thermometer ordered."
"I already have two of those," I commented. "Ghost-hunting equipment."
Paul came in and climbed up on my lap. He was carrying his chocolate milk.
"Does anyone need a mask?" asked New Boss.
"I could use one," said Holly.
"My wife made me two," I said. "One's got Batman on it. Because nothing symbolizes the pandemic like the guy who wears a mask over everything but his mouth."
"E-mail me with any requests," she said.
Monday.
"Alien patrol!" Paul took off down the sidewalk ahead of me. He was carrying his Green Lantern flashlight. I'd wanted the Green Lantern flashlight, but he'd commandeered it, leaving me with the plain black one.
It was nine PM. Over the summer, Paul and I had gotten into the habit of going out on "Alien Patrol"---A walk along our street to check the skies for UFOs. With school out due to Coronavirus, we'd started taking up the practice again; there was no reason not to.
"What's that sound?" Paul asked.
"Oh, that's the paper factory. They make paper products there."
"Ida says she knows that factory." Paul had lately taken an interest in Ida, the ghost haunting our house. He'd had quite a few conversations with her, and they seemed to have become buddies. Ida was taking the rap for a lot of things lately---Paul had accused her of things like getting into the candy without asking.
"Yeah, this factory was around when Ida lived here. She'd remember it. You want to walk down there?"
"Okay."
I looked up at the sky as we walked. There weren't any UFOs. There weren't even any airplanes, not so much as a Tri-Pacer. Or cars on the street. Aside from the sounds of the factory, I couldn't hear anything. I'd never seen Lock Haven so quiet.
On the up side, if there were any UFOs, they'd be easy to pick out. But it looked like the aliens might be social distancing, which was probably wise.
"The Jersey Devil was seen at this paper factory back in 1909, little man," I commented. "A night watchman saw him."
"Maybe we'll see the Jersey Devil!"
"Maybe."
"Is that him?"
"I think that's just a stray cat."
We walked peacefully down Shamrock Street, and then turned back up onto South Fairview. Paul and I headed back up to the house.
He handed me his flashlight and darted for the TV. I put the flashlights on the counter where they belonged, and heard a noise---A sound like something being knocked over, but nothing was moving.
I did what I always do when this happens.
"Ida? That you?"
You get used to it.
I don't know what possessed me to check my cell phone. I almost never do. Like most other electronics, I hate cell phones---I'd refused to upgrade from the basic phone I'd been using for the past decade. But the next afternoon, while Paul took a nap, I remembered that I might need to renew my service soon.
So I dug it out of my pack and turned it on, and found a two-day-old message. Resurrection Casey. I stepped out on the porch and gave her a call back.
"Hey!" Casey said on the other end. "How's it going? You know you sent me bus fare during a stay-at-home order, right?"
"Use it for anything. Buy lunch. I don't care. How you been?"
"Pretty good. All my classes are online at the moment. I hate it."
"I don't blame you."
"Been keeping busy a little. Looking into a UFO sighting near Walnutport. Hoping for a dogman, but, you know, they're rare."
"Yeah, I get you. I haven't even seen any UFOs. Been doing some stay-at-home ghost hunting. We've had a lot of Ida activity recently."
"No kidding?" Casey knew the story of my house; she sounded interested.
"Yeah, been hearing some noises and stuff. I don't know if it's the pandemic....I been trying to develop a candlelight vigil plan with some of city council....Been doing some video tours for the library, and I did one of my place and talked about Ida's story. Maybe it's that."
"I guess that could do it," Casey mused.
"Hey. I better get going. Kid's gonna wake up any minute."
"Good talking to you," said Casey. "You stay safe."
"You, too."
I'd taken to making weekly grocery store trips, not necessarily easy when you're on a bike. Also not easy to stay six feet away from people when everyone recognizes you as the ghost hunter from the newspapers, and wants to come up to you and chat. The mask helped some.
I carried the bags into the house and dropped them on the table. Paul came into the room as I was unpacking.
"Did you get more gumballs for my gumball machine?" he asked.
"Bad news, little man," I said. "I couldn't find any gumballs. For a while, your machine is gonna have to run on...." I held up the package. "M&Ms!"
His eyes lit up. "I love M&Ms!"
"I know. Let's fill it up."
We took the M&M package into the middle room, and I poured them into the coin-operated gumball machine that he'd gotten for Christmas. I heard a noise near the top of the stairs, a board creaking. I saw Paul turn and look.
"Yeah," I said. "I heard it, too."
"It could be Ida!" Paul said.
I checked the floor; all three dogs were downstairs with us, presumably waiting for an M&M to drop. Paul said,"Let's go check!"
We walked upstairs. There was nothing there that we could see; it's often that way with ghosts. Paul said,"I think she's in my room. Let's check!"
"Just a second." I walked into my office. On the back of the door hung my LHPS vest, and I got my laser thermometer and my EMF detector out of the pockets. I turned to Paul. "Which one do you want?"
He snatched up the thermometer.
We entered his room, looking around. I'd taught Paul a couple of years ago how to use the thermometer, and now that he was in kindergarten, he could even read the numbers. "Sixty-four," he told me, moving the laser around the room.
"That's about right." I ran the EMF wand around the walls, checking for fluctuations. On the north side of his window, it went off, flashing the red light and beeping erratically.
"Did you do that?" Paul asked me.
"No. And there's no reason it should be going off. There shouldn't be any wires in this wall." I ran it around the rest of the window, up and down the wall, and it stopped dead. "Hunh."
"I think we found her!"
"Well, I did just release a video tour of this house, and I talked about her a lot. Maybe she likes that."
"I think she wants M&Ms," said Paul.
"Do not go leaving M&Ms around your room for the ghost."
"Dad." Paul, age five, rolled his eyes at me. "Everybody loves M&Ms."
"Back in just a second." I hit the car door as my wife parked the Prius by the side of the cemetery lane. In back, Paul was climbing out the door.
Together, we walked up the hill. The stones of Highland Cemetery towered above us. As it got steeper, I took his hand.
"Right there, little man," I said. "Under that tree."
We walked to the tree, the family plot of the Yosts. I stood with Paul over the small stone that I'd paid to put there.
"Can you read it, buddy?" I asked.
Paul sounded out the letters.
"I...da. Ida."
"That's right, buddy." We looked down at the grave. "This is where Ida's buried. This is her stone."
This happens a lot. Paul reaches his limit pretty quickly, especially when he realizes he didn't feel like eating what he asked for, after all. The main difference was this time, we were eating bologna slices outside in his play tower.
"Okay, go ahead and throw the rest of that to the animals," I said.
He climbed down the ladder and began tearing the bologna up, laying pieces down. "I'm making a trail for the animals. Maybe they'll come in my tree house."
I climbed down after him. "One of these days, I need to teach you to make a deadfall trap."
"Can we do it now?"
"You want to learn now? Okay."
I gathered up a couple of sticks and a log, and knelt down near the pine tree. I drove one stick down into the dirt, and carefully propped the log up in the Y-split. Then I picked up one of Paul's plastic dinosaurs. A Triceratops.
"Okay, we need bait. What do you think the dinosaur will eat?"
He handed me a shard of baloney.
I speared it on one of the protruding sticks, and said,"Okay. See, we prop the big log up here. Then we wait. Let a trap do your waiting; it's more efficient. When the dinosaur comes along and tries to get the baloney...." I moved the dinosaur forward, jostling the stick. The log immediately wiggled loose, and came slamming down. I just barely managed to get my hand out of there.
"Cool!"
"That's how you can catch animals if you need to," I said. I put the log back where I'd found it---The last thing I wanted was to come out and find an actual squirrel under it or something. "So remember that."
"Can I have a banana now?"
"I suppose, sure."
I led my family along the outer edge of the soybean field in Wayne Township. I was wearing my grey ghost shirt, and carrying my backpack. Michelle was behind me, and Paul followed up, carrying a bottle of bubbles and a wand and leaving bubbles behind us.
"Should be right up here," I said. "See that place where the trees kind of stick out of the forest? That's it. The Stech-Simcox Cemetery. Long abandoned, created in 1815."
"That's further than you said," Michelle pointed out.
"I didn't remember exactly. It's been about ten years since I've been out here. Mentioned it in the book, though." I walked ahead. Paul had his shirt off and was soaking in the sun.
I saw the fence as I approached. An old metal fence, rusted and damaged. I could see some of the gravestones. The biggest one, which had once been an obelisk, had been knocked over.
"That wasn't like that last time I was here," I commented.
I walked around the outside, and found the way in on the far side. I had no idea how they'd gotten into it in the old days, but now I could get in through a section of fence that had fallen over. I walked among the stones, which were all overgrown and falling down.
"What do you think, little man? Check this place out."
"Boring," said Paul.
"Oh, I don't know, kid." I walked through the small, sad cemetery. "I think it's pretty cool."
"Can we go to McDonald's on the way home?"
"Sure." I took a couple of photos. "We'll get you some food."
I opened my e-mail, and my co-workers popped up. Zoom meetings. Christ, I hate doing everything digitally. On the bright side, I did get to drink a beer in a staff meeting for the first time ever, as long as I kept it in an opaque travel mug.
"We have our guidelines from the State Library," said New Boss on the screen. "We won't be opening to the public for a while, but staff will be coming in on Monday."
Monday. Next week.
She continued,"We'll have to have some desk reassignments, and wear masks. We won't be open to the public for a while yet, and we'll have to prepare for that. Once we do, we'll only be doing book pick-ups in the lobby. Some people aren't going to like that, and we'll have to deal with them. It's going to be difficult with the public for a while. People are still scared. Statistics show that alcohol use is up."
"Interesting," I said, taking a drink of my Corona.
"We'll work out hours and shifts. We're going to have a lot to do. We'll be taking temperatures at the door. I have a non-contact thermometer ordered."
"I already have two of those," I commented. "Ghost-hunting equipment."
Paul came in and climbed up on my lap. He was carrying his chocolate milk.
"Does anyone need a mask?" asked New Boss.
"I could use one," said Holly.
"My wife made me two," I said. "One's got Batman on it. Because nothing symbolizes the pandemic like the guy who wears a mask over everything but his mouth."
"E-mail me with any requests," she said.
Monday.
"Alien patrol!" Paul took off down the sidewalk ahead of me. He was carrying his Green Lantern flashlight. I'd wanted the Green Lantern flashlight, but he'd commandeered it, leaving me with the plain black one.
It was nine PM. Over the summer, Paul and I had gotten into the habit of going out on "Alien Patrol"---A walk along our street to check the skies for UFOs. With school out due to Coronavirus, we'd started taking up the practice again; there was no reason not to.
"What's that sound?" Paul asked.
"Oh, that's the paper factory. They make paper products there."
"Ida says she knows that factory." Paul had lately taken an interest in Ida, the ghost haunting our house. He'd had quite a few conversations with her, and they seemed to have become buddies. Ida was taking the rap for a lot of things lately---Paul had accused her of things like getting into the candy without asking.
"Yeah, this factory was around when Ida lived here. She'd remember it. You want to walk down there?"
"Okay."
I looked up at the sky as we walked. There weren't any UFOs. There weren't even any airplanes, not so much as a Tri-Pacer. Or cars on the street. Aside from the sounds of the factory, I couldn't hear anything. I'd never seen Lock Haven so quiet.
On the up side, if there were any UFOs, they'd be easy to pick out. But it looked like the aliens might be social distancing, which was probably wise.
"The Jersey Devil was seen at this paper factory back in 1909, little man," I commented. "A night watchman saw him."
"Maybe we'll see the Jersey Devil!"
"Maybe."
"Is that him?"
"I think that's just a stray cat."
We walked peacefully down Shamrock Street, and then turned back up onto South Fairview. Paul and I headed back up to the house.
He handed me his flashlight and darted for the TV. I put the flashlights on the counter where they belonged, and heard a noise---A sound like something being knocked over, but nothing was moving.
I did what I always do when this happens.
"Ida? That you?"
You get used to it.
I don't know what possessed me to check my cell phone. I almost never do. Like most other electronics, I hate cell phones---I'd refused to upgrade from the basic phone I'd been using for the past decade. But the next afternoon, while Paul took a nap, I remembered that I might need to renew my service soon.
So I dug it out of my pack and turned it on, and found a two-day-old message. Resurrection Casey. I stepped out on the porch and gave her a call back.
"Hey!" Casey said on the other end. "How's it going? You know you sent me bus fare during a stay-at-home order, right?"
"Use it for anything. Buy lunch. I don't care. How you been?"
"Pretty good. All my classes are online at the moment. I hate it."
"I don't blame you."
"Been keeping busy a little. Looking into a UFO sighting near Walnutport. Hoping for a dogman, but, you know, they're rare."
"Yeah, I get you. I haven't even seen any UFOs. Been doing some stay-at-home ghost hunting. We've had a lot of Ida activity recently."
"No kidding?" Casey knew the story of my house; she sounded interested.
"Yeah, been hearing some noises and stuff. I don't know if it's the pandemic....I been trying to develop a candlelight vigil plan with some of city council....Been doing some video tours for the library, and I did one of my place and talked about Ida's story. Maybe it's that."
"I guess that could do it," Casey mused.
"Hey. I better get going. Kid's gonna wake up any minute."
"Good talking to you," said Casey. "You stay safe."
"You, too."
I'd taken to making weekly grocery store trips, not necessarily easy when you're on a bike. Also not easy to stay six feet away from people when everyone recognizes you as the ghost hunter from the newspapers, and wants to come up to you and chat. The mask helped some.
I carried the bags into the house and dropped them on the table. Paul came into the room as I was unpacking.
"Did you get more gumballs for my gumball machine?" he asked.
"Bad news, little man," I said. "I couldn't find any gumballs. For a while, your machine is gonna have to run on...." I held up the package. "M&Ms!"
His eyes lit up. "I love M&Ms!"
"I know. Let's fill it up."
We took the M&M package into the middle room, and I poured them into the coin-operated gumball machine that he'd gotten for Christmas. I heard a noise near the top of the stairs, a board creaking. I saw Paul turn and look.
"Yeah," I said. "I heard it, too."
"It could be Ida!" Paul said.
I checked the floor; all three dogs were downstairs with us, presumably waiting for an M&M to drop. Paul said,"Let's go check!"
We walked upstairs. There was nothing there that we could see; it's often that way with ghosts. Paul said,"I think she's in my room. Let's check!"
"Just a second." I walked into my office. On the back of the door hung my LHPS vest, and I got my laser thermometer and my EMF detector out of the pockets. I turned to Paul. "Which one do you want?"
He snatched up the thermometer.
We entered his room, looking around. I'd taught Paul a couple of years ago how to use the thermometer, and now that he was in kindergarten, he could even read the numbers. "Sixty-four," he told me, moving the laser around the room.
"That's about right." I ran the EMF wand around the walls, checking for fluctuations. On the north side of his window, it went off, flashing the red light and beeping erratically.
"Did you do that?" Paul asked me.
"No. And there's no reason it should be going off. There shouldn't be any wires in this wall." I ran it around the rest of the window, up and down the wall, and it stopped dead. "Hunh."
"I think we found her!"
"Well, I did just release a video tour of this house, and I talked about her a lot. Maybe she likes that."
"I think she wants M&Ms," said Paul.
"Do not go leaving M&Ms around your room for the ghost."
"Dad." Paul, age five, rolled his eyes at me. "Everybody loves M&Ms."
"Back in just a second." I hit the car door as my wife parked the Prius by the side of the cemetery lane. In back, Paul was climbing out the door.
Together, we walked up the hill. The stones of Highland Cemetery towered above us. As it got steeper, I took his hand.
"Right there, little man," I said. "Under that tree."
We walked to the tree, the family plot of the Yosts. I stood with Paul over the small stone that I'd paid to put there.
"Can you read it, buddy?" I asked.
Paul sounded out the letters.
"I...da. Ida."
"That's right, buddy." We looked down at the grave. "This is where Ida's buried. This is her stone."
At nine PM, I got a candle out of the junk drawer. You know the junk drawer; every household has one in my experience. I'd personally picked up the habit from my grandmother, who'd taken the Great Depression a little too much as inspiration, and never thrown away anything that might become useful. I'd been slowly passing the concept on to Paul as we made fishhooks out of can tabs, fish traps out of bottles, and camp stoves out of cans.
I walked out onto the sidewalk. The sun was going down to the west. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, and then lit my candle and held it high.
Down the block, I saw another candle light up. And further down, a few others.
I watched as the lights went up on my street. All across Lock Haven, others were doing the same thing. I held my candle, connected with my city.
There was hope.
There's always hope.
Friday, April 24, 2020
Pandemic: Letters Of Intent
Paul came in while I was in the shower, not an uncommon occurrence. "Daddy, there's a blanket monster in the kitchen," he said.
"A blanket monster?" I asked.
"Yeah! I set a trap for it!"
It's possible that Paul has been spending too much time with me during the quarantine. I said,"Let me know if you trap him. Do you think he wants any coffee?"
"Dad! You don't know how rude the blanket monster is! It just comes in and makes noise!"
"Okay. Let me know if you catch him."
"Can we take a ride on the bike?" Paul asked.
"You mean, the bike with the trailer attached?"
"Yeah. Your bike, where I can ride in the trailer behind."
Looking up from the couch, I glanced out the window. It was sunny and pleasant. I said,"Sure, I suppose so. Good day for this. Let's do it. After I finish my coffee."
"Where are we going?"
"How about an abandoned cemetery?"
I turned off of Fourth Street and rolled up the hill, Paul's trailer behind me. He was making pleased, excited noises in the back: "Wheeee!" I pulled up in Fairview Cemetery.
"Here we are, pal."
Paul climbed out of the trailer, looking around with some wonder. "The abandoned cemetery," he said with some reverence.
Paul has inherited my interest in abandoned places. While not precisely ancient, Fairview Cemetery is a little-known cemetery within the city limits that was created, and then out of business, about 1926. It's not the coolest or the remotest, but for a little outing with the kid, it'll work.
"Come on, little guy," I said. "Let's walk through."
We took the path through the cemetery, looking at a few of the stones. Paul pointed at some hid back in the trees. "I see some!"
"Yeah. the place is getting a little overgrown."
"Is Ida buried here?"
"No, Ida's over the hill, in Highland."
I let him run ahead a little, darting along the path. He'd been cooped up on our property for so long, and he'd been so good about it. It was good to get him out a little.
For me, too.
Even in a pandemic, there's exploration to be had, to some extent. There's the remains of an old toxic incinerator from the nineties a couple of blocks from our house. When Paul wanted to go on a bike ride the next day, I thought of taking him down there.
It's not exactly Indian ruins, but it'll do.
We pulled up and Paul got out of the bike trailer. "Is that abandoned?" he asked.
I nodded. "It's abandoned."
Paul looked impressed. We looked at the skeletal girders and remaining roof area that stood in the field behind the wire fence. I remember when this thing was operational, back in my twenties, but it was way before Paul was born. To him, this was ancient.
"Look," he said. "A milk container."
There were a couple of empty gallon jugs blowing around in the wind. I said,"Got an idea, little man. Remember when we said skin color doesn't matter, as long as you help people? Let's help Lock Haven a little and pick them up."
"Okay."
"You get that one, and I'll get those two. And we'll put them in the recycling center."
"Can we go for another bike ride?" Paul asked me.
"Sure. We have time. You know what? Let me show you where we're going on a really old map. Would you like that?"
"No. Wait, I mean yes."
I got out the 1925 Sanborn Map and took it down to the kitchen table. It had been almost fourteen years since I'd gotten started in local history, and I'd managed to acquire a decent collection of resources at home. It had served me pretty well during the quarantine. Flipping to plate 25, I found the building.
"Here, kiddo. See this? This is the building we're gonna see. It's an old railroad storage shop. It's not there anymore, but we can see ruins/"
"Cool," said Paul. "Can we go now?"
"It's forty-seven degrees out. I think you're gonna need shoes first."
"Okay," said Paul, grabbing for shoes.
"Not high heels. Wear your sneakers."
Down Myrtle Street, and around the corner onto Park. Then we bore off onto Liberty Street, past the church, and stopped near the railroad tracks.
There are ruins everywhere, little bits and pieces of the past. Sometimes you have to be me to see them, though. The average person walks right by these old things, and never gives it a thought. I've basically built a career on stopping to wonder what the story behind them was.
"Here it is, little man. The ruins of the old storage building."
Paul got out of the trailer, looking around. I'll grant there's not a lot to look at---Along Liberty Street, it's a large, flat concrete floor, with the bases of a couple of pillars embedded into it. No wonder people don't notice it. We walked across it, looking around.
"Look, here's a piece of the wall," I commented. "This place was a hundred years ago."
Paul was strolling around on the concrete flooring. I knelt down. "Hunh."
"What?"
"Check it out---There's writing here." All of the times I'd walked around down here, and I'd never noticed writing carved into the concrete. Paul looked down beside me.
"What does it say?"
"I can't tell---It's pretty old and worn."
"I think that's a P."
I stood up. "Tell you what we're gonna do, little man. We're gonna come back soon with chalk. I'll show you how to chalk this up, and we'll see what it says."
"Okay. Can we use blue chalk?'
"The color doesn't matter. You can do this with gravestones, too, if they're all old and worn out."
"Blue, then," said Paul.
"I brought coffee," Tif said, coming in the door. She handed me a tray with coffee cups on it---Two frozen concoctions, and one the right way, black and hot. "Figured I'd support local business."
"Looks good. Thanks." I took my coffee, and handed one of the frozen ones to Paul.
"Can we go yet?" Paul asked.
"Finish your drink first. We got time." I turned to Tif. "You ready to go chalk up some mystery letters with us?"
"That's why I'm here."
With Paul in the trailer and Tif behind us in her wheelchair, we rode down Liberty Street to the ruins. I pulled up with the bike, and we climbed out. I was wearing my gray ghost sweatshirt.
"Let's draw with chalk!" Paul said happily.
"Hold up, don't touch anything yet. I'll tell you how to do this." I knelt down and blew some dust off the letters. "You run the chalk over it sideways, like this...." I brushed the chalk over the letters. "Makes them pop a bit." Paul helped, and we colored it up. "These are pretty worn down, though. I'll have to come back with some shaving cream."
"Shaving cream?" asked Tif.
"Yeah, you spray it on and then squeegee it back off. Leaves you with shiny white letters. You can also reflect light with a signal mirror and it leaves the letters in shadow, but that requires a sunny day, and when's the last time we could count on one of those?"
I knelt back down and looked at the letters. Paul had taken the chalk and was drawing a doll on the concrete nearby. "I'm thinking some variation on Pennsylvania. This was the Pennsylvania Railroad at one time, so it makes some sense."
"Can we go have dinner now?" Paul asked.
I smiled.
"Get in the trailer, little man. Let's go."
"Dad? Are you real busy?"
I glanced over at Paul. "Not really, why?"
"Can we go do the shaving cream?"
I dropped the dishes I was washing and said,"Yeah, sure. Let's get the bike."
For the third time, we rode down to the old ruins. I had the shaving cream and a roll of paper towels in my pack, and I picked up the vehicle ice scraper we'd filched from the garage to use as a squeegee. "Come on, little man," I said. "Let's get to work."
I knelt down and sprayed a line of shaving cream over the letters. Setting the can down, I spread it around with my fingers, then reached for the paper towels and realized that Paul already had sprayed a six-inch heap of shaving cream onto the ground.
"Paul, dammit, don't waste the shaving cream. Here." I wiped off my hands, and he gave me the squeegee. I ran it over the letters, pushing off the excess shaving cream and leaving the rest embedded in the lettering, leaving a white set of letters.
It was clearer. However, "clearer" doesn't necessarily mean "clear." I looked them over, squinting at them, and said,"Hunh. What do you think, Paul?"
Paul looked it over. "Maybe it's in cursive."
"I think it's some variation of Pennsylvania or Philadelphia. This was, at one time, both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, so it figures. Did you learn anything, little man?"
"I learned how to shave a sidewalk!"
"Close enough. Come on, let's ride."
I was in my office that night, working on writing, when Paul popped in. As he does.
"Dad? Can we go wrestle?"
"I suppose."
"It scares away the blanket monsters when we wrestle."
"Does it, now?" I don't know where he gets these things.
Paul nodded. "Yes! The blanket monsters don't like it when people wrestle. So if we do it, they'll run away forever."
I stood up.
"Okay, little man. Let's go wrestle."
"A blanket monster?" I asked.
"Yeah! I set a trap for it!"
It's possible that Paul has been spending too much time with me during the quarantine. I said,"Let me know if you trap him. Do you think he wants any coffee?"
"Dad! You don't know how rude the blanket monster is! It just comes in and makes noise!"
"Okay. Let me know if you catch him."
"Can we take a ride on the bike?" Paul asked.
"You mean, the bike with the trailer attached?"
"Yeah. Your bike, where I can ride in the trailer behind."
Looking up from the couch, I glanced out the window. It was sunny and pleasant. I said,"Sure, I suppose so. Good day for this. Let's do it. After I finish my coffee."
"Where are we going?"
"How about an abandoned cemetery?"
I turned off of Fourth Street and rolled up the hill, Paul's trailer behind me. He was making pleased, excited noises in the back: "Wheeee!" I pulled up in Fairview Cemetery.
"Here we are, pal."
Paul climbed out of the trailer, looking around with some wonder. "The abandoned cemetery," he said with some reverence.
Paul has inherited my interest in abandoned places. While not precisely ancient, Fairview Cemetery is a little-known cemetery within the city limits that was created, and then out of business, about 1926. It's not the coolest or the remotest, but for a little outing with the kid, it'll work.
"Come on, little guy," I said. "Let's walk through."
We took the path through the cemetery, looking at a few of the stones. Paul pointed at some hid back in the trees. "I see some!"
"Yeah. the place is getting a little overgrown."
"Is Ida buried here?"
"No, Ida's over the hill, in Highland."
I let him run ahead a little, darting along the path. He'd been cooped up on our property for so long, and he'd been so good about it. It was good to get him out a little.
For me, too.
Even in a pandemic, there's exploration to be had, to some extent. There's the remains of an old toxic incinerator from the nineties a couple of blocks from our house. When Paul wanted to go on a bike ride the next day, I thought of taking him down there.
It's not exactly Indian ruins, but it'll do.
We pulled up and Paul got out of the bike trailer. "Is that abandoned?" he asked.
I nodded. "It's abandoned."
Paul looked impressed. We looked at the skeletal girders and remaining roof area that stood in the field behind the wire fence. I remember when this thing was operational, back in my twenties, but it was way before Paul was born. To him, this was ancient.
"Look," he said. "A milk container."
There were a couple of empty gallon jugs blowing around in the wind. I said,"Got an idea, little man. Remember when we said skin color doesn't matter, as long as you help people? Let's help Lock Haven a little and pick them up."
"Okay."
"You get that one, and I'll get those two. And we'll put them in the recycling center."
"Can we go for another bike ride?" Paul asked me.
"Sure. We have time. You know what? Let me show you where we're going on a really old map. Would you like that?"
"No. Wait, I mean yes."
I got out the 1925 Sanborn Map and took it down to the kitchen table. It had been almost fourteen years since I'd gotten started in local history, and I'd managed to acquire a decent collection of resources at home. It had served me pretty well during the quarantine. Flipping to plate 25, I found the building.
"Here, kiddo. See this? This is the building we're gonna see. It's an old railroad storage shop. It's not there anymore, but we can see ruins/"
"Cool," said Paul. "Can we go now?"
"It's forty-seven degrees out. I think you're gonna need shoes first."
"Okay," said Paul, grabbing for shoes.
"Not high heels. Wear your sneakers."
Down Myrtle Street, and around the corner onto Park. Then we bore off onto Liberty Street, past the church, and stopped near the railroad tracks.
There are ruins everywhere, little bits and pieces of the past. Sometimes you have to be me to see them, though. The average person walks right by these old things, and never gives it a thought. I've basically built a career on stopping to wonder what the story behind them was.
"Here it is, little man. The ruins of the old storage building."
Paul got out of the trailer, looking around. I'll grant there's not a lot to look at---Along Liberty Street, it's a large, flat concrete floor, with the bases of a couple of pillars embedded into it. No wonder people don't notice it. We walked across it, looking around.
"Look, here's a piece of the wall," I commented. "This place was a hundred years ago."
Paul was strolling around on the concrete flooring. I knelt down. "Hunh."
"What?"
"Check it out---There's writing here." All of the times I'd walked around down here, and I'd never noticed writing carved into the concrete. Paul looked down beside me.
"What does it say?"
"I can't tell---It's pretty old and worn."
"I think that's a P."
I stood up. "Tell you what we're gonna do, little man. We're gonna come back soon with chalk. I'll show you how to chalk this up, and we'll see what it says."
"Okay. Can we use blue chalk?'
"The color doesn't matter. You can do this with gravestones, too, if they're all old and worn out."
"Blue, then," said Paul.
"I brought coffee," Tif said, coming in the door. She handed me a tray with coffee cups on it---Two frozen concoctions, and one the right way, black and hot. "Figured I'd support local business."
"Looks good. Thanks." I took my coffee, and handed one of the frozen ones to Paul.
"Can we go yet?" Paul asked.
"Finish your drink first. We got time." I turned to Tif. "You ready to go chalk up some mystery letters with us?"
"That's why I'm here."
With Paul in the trailer and Tif behind us in her wheelchair, we rode down Liberty Street to the ruins. I pulled up with the bike, and we climbed out. I was wearing my gray ghost sweatshirt.
"Let's draw with chalk!" Paul said happily.
"Hold up, don't touch anything yet. I'll tell you how to do this." I knelt down and blew some dust off the letters. "You run the chalk over it sideways, like this...." I brushed the chalk over the letters. "Makes them pop a bit." Paul helped, and we colored it up. "These are pretty worn down, though. I'll have to come back with some shaving cream."
"Shaving cream?" asked Tif.
"Yeah, you spray it on and then squeegee it back off. Leaves you with shiny white letters. You can also reflect light with a signal mirror and it leaves the letters in shadow, but that requires a sunny day, and when's the last time we could count on one of those?"
I knelt back down and looked at the letters. Paul had taken the chalk and was drawing a doll on the concrete nearby. "I'm thinking some variation on Pennsylvania. This was the Pennsylvania Railroad at one time, so it makes some sense."
"Can we go have dinner now?" Paul asked.
I smiled.
"Get in the trailer, little man. Let's go."
"Dad? Are you real busy?"
I glanced over at Paul. "Not really, why?"
"Can we go do the shaving cream?"
I dropped the dishes I was washing and said,"Yeah, sure. Let's get the bike."
For the third time, we rode down to the old ruins. I had the shaving cream and a roll of paper towels in my pack, and I picked up the vehicle ice scraper we'd filched from the garage to use as a squeegee. "Come on, little man," I said. "Let's get to work."
I knelt down and sprayed a line of shaving cream over the letters. Setting the can down, I spread it around with my fingers, then reached for the paper towels and realized that Paul already had sprayed a six-inch heap of shaving cream onto the ground.
"Paul, dammit, don't waste the shaving cream. Here." I wiped off my hands, and he gave me the squeegee. I ran it over the letters, pushing off the excess shaving cream and leaving the rest embedded in the lettering, leaving a white set of letters.
It was clearer. However, "clearer" doesn't necessarily mean "clear." I looked them over, squinting at them, and said,"Hunh. What do you think, Paul?"
Paul looked it over. "Maybe it's in cursive."
"I think it's some variation of Pennsylvania or Philadelphia. This was, at one time, both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, so it figures. Did you learn anything, little man?"
"I learned how to shave a sidewalk!"
"Close enough. Come on, let's ride."
I was in my office that night, working on writing, when Paul popped in. As he does.
"Dad? Can we go wrestle?"
"I suppose."
"It scares away the blanket monsters when we wrestle."
"Does it, now?" I don't know where he gets these things.
Paul nodded. "Yes! The blanket monsters don't like it when people wrestle. So if we do it, they'll run away forever."
I stood up.
"Okay, little man. Let's go wrestle."
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Pandemic: Digging In
"Recording. We are investigating Paul's room, noon, April 11, 2020. Lou."
"Paul."
I watched as my digital recorder counted up the seconds. I had my LHPS vest on, but hadn't bothered zipping it up. Next to me, Paul sat with his tie-dyed shirt and black tights.
"Is there anyone here?" I asked.
"Is Ida here?" Paul asked.
We waited as the recorder counted off three seconds. Paul had been interested in doing an EVP session today---For some reason, he'd begun to take an interest in Ida, our ghost.
"Where did you drink the poison?" Paul asked.
We heard a small noise. Could have been anything, but his face lit up. "Did you hear that? That was Ida!"
"Should we play it back?" I asked, reaching for the recorder.
"Yeah. And then let's do another."
"We're going to dig up the backyard," I announced to my wife. I've learned the best way to reveal these plans is to just rip off the Band-Aid.
"Uh-huh," she said. "Instead of that, you could always try cutting back some of that brush while we're on lockdown."
"Yeah, you know all those times I said I was going to do home maintenance when I had the time?" I asked her. "Turns out that wasn't the issue. During the week, I figure we'll do an archaeological dig in the backyard."
"You're going to fill it in eventually, though, right?"
"What do you care? You never go back there. A few years ago, Barb found an article about a homeowner on our street who found a secret root cellar for bootleg whiskey under his property. That was George Yost, Ida's father. This whole area was big for stills, because before it was settled, there were a lot of springs up here. It's why everyone's basement always floods immediately."
"You and Paul?"
"And Tif. I know there's something under there---A few years ago, when some guys came to install a new pipe next door, they dug up traces of an old wall or foundation---I can see where it runs under there. We're gonna spend the week digging it up."
"You've gotten sort of more interesting since you've been so bored," said Tif. "Which is really saying something."
"Not my fault I live in a fascinating area," I said.
We were out in the backyard, digging. I'd marked off a grid area about eight feet long, about where I thought the old wall was. I was working in my Zombie Response Team T-shirt. Tif was digging more or less randomly in holes, and I was working slowly in the precise squares I'd learned to do. Paul was popping in and out, in between playing in his sand pit and swinging.
"So far, I found two rusty nails and a razor blade," I said. "Not bad for surface area."
"Does Mom know we're doing this?" Tif asked.
"I told her," I said. "I'm not above just doing it without informing her, but I had the time, so...."
"I found an old pocketknife," she said.
"We'll clean it off and put it in the can." I was keeping the finds in a coffee can I'd filched from my own recycling. Stuck at home, with the local recycling services cancelled, I'd found ways to put a lot of that stuff to use. I was beginning to understand my grandmother's love for reusing junk after the Great Depression.
"How far down are we going?" Tif asked.
"Until we hit the wall I think is there. Or until we get bored. Worst case, it keeps me busy a while. Best case, it'll give me some aged whiskey and a new Batcave."
"You're wearing a ghost shirt on Easter," Tif said.
I looked down at my grey sweatshirt with the ghost on it. "You're right. Totally inappropriate. Easter is no time for things that come back from the dead."
She was sitting on the porch steps. I was putting in a couple of hours working on the dig. Paul was flitting back and forth between us, mostly playing on his swing. I held a piece of glass up to the light. "Bottle. Definitely. Looks like probably medicine."
"How can you tell?"
"Got this ridge here. Rules out windows and lenses. Could have been the bottle Ida drank acid from."
"You had to get macabre, didn't you?"
"I mean, I doubt it. Not old enough." I pulled a large, rusty nail out of the sifter. "Old nail. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm down to about 1945 now."
"That's weirdly specific. You know this how?"
"Well, sort of an educated wild guess. The house was refurbished in 1942, after Ida's family sold it. They collapsed the back wall right over into this yard---Because of the war, they couldn't tear it down and rebuild, so they built another house inside the first and tore the old one down around it. This is an old nail, but not square-nail old. I'd guess this in the forties, maybe from the new construction."
I was somewhere around eight inches down, where the good stuff was beginning to show up. "What's this? Ceramic?" I tapped the piece against my teeth.
"Hey! Does Mom know you do that?! We're trying to avoid a virus here and you're sticking things in your mouth?"
"It's an old trick. You can't identify the substance, you tap it on your front teeth. A little practice, you can feel the difference between wood, stone, glass. Yep. It's ceramic."
"So what are you hoping to find?"
"Well, whatever's there. I know there's the stone foundation down there, and I'm hoping to get down to that. It's not like I don't have the time. Before Ida's grandfather built the house, the property belonged to a woman named Ellen Curts and her husband George. He built the plain-looking house on the corner of Water and Vesper. If there were old hiding places for alcohol up here, woulda been during their time. We'll see."
"Can you put an alien patch on my mask?" I asked Michelle.
Sitting at her sewing machine, she said,"If you have an alien patch available, sure."
"I usually keep a ten-pack around."
"Once I'm done making yours, I'll make one for Paul, and then Biz," she said. "We can drive it up to her."
I walked into the TV room, where Tif and Paul were getting rowdy. I said,"Paul, I have a question for you, and I'm not sure I want a straight answer. A lie will be fine. How did toothpaste get all over the wall of the bathroom?"
Paul looked at me, and very seriously said,"I don't know, Daddy."
He's getting better.
"I'm gonna go outside for a while," I said.
I walked outside and lit a cigar. I'd cut way back on cigars since Paul was born, mainly because I didn't have the time anymore. I didn't usually smoke around him, but he was in the TV room, playing with Tif. I walked out to the garage.
Months ago, when I'd begun cleaning the garage, I'd built myself a little concealed space. I had a couple of chairs, a small shelf, and the walls were made of boxed-up crap. I sat down on a chair that had once belonged to my grandmother, smoking my cigar, surrounded by my camping equipment. Fortress of Solitude. I could use a little solitude right now.
I've lived here a long time. I've always tried to help my city....Protect it where I could. But I never envisioned anything like this.
It took me maybe a minute and a half to begin getting bored. How the hell did Superman ever do this at the North Pole? I walked back out and pulled the tarp off the dig.
Long ago, I'd gotten good at digging and smoking a cigar at the same time. I did some work on it, digging out a few more squares, going down a few more inches. I let myself get lost in the sifting and digging---There's something oddly relaxing about archaeology, for me, at least.
Two rusty nails. I like rusty nails. I found a white ceramic bead, from before they were all plastic---Paul would love that. And in the sifter, I pulled a stone, but one that had obviously been worked.
It was jagged, chipped into the shape of a rough lightning bolt. About two inches long. When I washed it off, I realized that it was slightly sparkling---Sandstone, maybe. I took it inside.
Tif and Paul were playing some game that seemed to require Paul leaping off the couch in his underwear. I held up my find. "What's this look like to you?"
"I mean, a rock," said Tif.
"Harry Potter's lightning bolt," Paul said immediately.
"That's it," I said. "A lightning bolt. Pretty sure this was worked; it didn't form like this by accident. This looks Native American to me. And it seems to be sandstone, I think, which means it's not original to this exact property."
"What do you think it is?" Tif asked.
"Something Native American. An amulet, an effigy. Without falling into the religious fallacy, I'd guess at some sort of decorative amulet. This far from the river, I'm a little surprised. It's a find."
Paul was looking in the mirror, smearing makeup on his face. He announced,"I'm trying to make myself all white, like a ghost."
"Wait here a minute," I said. I walked upstairs to the bathroom, where I remembered a long-unused tube of white makeup. I went downstairs with it. "Here, little man. Sit down."
Paul sat on my lap, and in a few minutes I had him made up pale white, with black circles around his eyes. He looked in the mirror and squealed.
"I'm a ghost now! Oooooh!"
"Yeah, little guy, you're a ghost." I walked into the kitchen. Paul followed me, and put on my alien hat, then picked up my whip.
"Now I'm Daddy!" he declared. "I have a whip and I'm white!"
Also he had dark circles under his eyes. I laughed. "Yes, little man. You're just like Daddy. What are you going to do?"
Paul looked at the back door.
"I'm gonna go outside and dig."
"Paul."
I watched as my digital recorder counted up the seconds. I had my LHPS vest on, but hadn't bothered zipping it up. Next to me, Paul sat with his tie-dyed shirt and black tights.
"Is there anyone here?" I asked.
"Is Ida here?" Paul asked.
We waited as the recorder counted off three seconds. Paul had been interested in doing an EVP session today---For some reason, he'd begun to take an interest in Ida, our ghost.
"Where did you drink the poison?" Paul asked.
We heard a small noise. Could have been anything, but his face lit up. "Did you hear that? That was Ida!"
"Should we play it back?" I asked, reaching for the recorder.
"Yeah. And then let's do another."
"We're going to dig up the backyard," I announced to my wife. I've learned the best way to reveal these plans is to just rip off the Band-Aid.
"Uh-huh," she said. "Instead of that, you could always try cutting back some of that brush while we're on lockdown."
"Yeah, you know all those times I said I was going to do home maintenance when I had the time?" I asked her. "Turns out that wasn't the issue. During the week, I figure we'll do an archaeological dig in the backyard."
"You're going to fill it in eventually, though, right?"
"What do you care? You never go back there. A few years ago, Barb found an article about a homeowner on our street who found a secret root cellar for bootleg whiskey under his property. That was George Yost, Ida's father. This whole area was big for stills, because before it was settled, there were a lot of springs up here. It's why everyone's basement always floods immediately."
"You and Paul?"
"And Tif. I know there's something under there---A few years ago, when some guys came to install a new pipe next door, they dug up traces of an old wall or foundation---I can see where it runs under there. We're gonna spend the week digging it up."
"You've gotten sort of more interesting since you've been so bored," said Tif. "Which is really saying something."
"Not my fault I live in a fascinating area," I said.
We were out in the backyard, digging. I'd marked off a grid area about eight feet long, about where I thought the old wall was. I was working in my Zombie Response Team T-shirt. Tif was digging more or less randomly in holes, and I was working slowly in the precise squares I'd learned to do. Paul was popping in and out, in between playing in his sand pit and swinging.
"So far, I found two rusty nails and a razor blade," I said. "Not bad for surface area."
"Does Mom know we're doing this?" Tif asked.
"I told her," I said. "I'm not above just doing it without informing her, but I had the time, so...."
"I found an old pocketknife," she said.
"We'll clean it off and put it in the can." I was keeping the finds in a coffee can I'd filched from my own recycling. Stuck at home, with the local recycling services cancelled, I'd found ways to put a lot of that stuff to use. I was beginning to understand my grandmother's love for reusing junk after the Great Depression.
"How far down are we going?" Tif asked.
"Until we hit the wall I think is there. Or until we get bored. Worst case, it keeps me busy a while. Best case, it'll give me some aged whiskey and a new Batcave."
"You're wearing a ghost shirt on Easter," Tif said.
I looked down at my grey sweatshirt with the ghost on it. "You're right. Totally inappropriate. Easter is no time for things that come back from the dead."
She was sitting on the porch steps. I was putting in a couple of hours working on the dig. Paul was flitting back and forth between us, mostly playing on his swing. I held a piece of glass up to the light. "Bottle. Definitely. Looks like probably medicine."
"How can you tell?"
"Got this ridge here. Rules out windows and lenses. Could have been the bottle Ida drank acid from."
"You had to get macabre, didn't you?"
"I mean, I doubt it. Not old enough." I pulled a large, rusty nail out of the sifter. "Old nail. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm down to about 1945 now."
"That's weirdly specific. You know this how?"
"Well, sort of an educated wild guess. The house was refurbished in 1942, after Ida's family sold it. They collapsed the back wall right over into this yard---Because of the war, they couldn't tear it down and rebuild, so they built another house inside the first and tore the old one down around it. This is an old nail, but not square-nail old. I'd guess this in the forties, maybe from the new construction."
I was somewhere around eight inches down, where the good stuff was beginning to show up. "What's this? Ceramic?" I tapped the piece against my teeth.
"Hey! Does Mom know you do that?! We're trying to avoid a virus here and you're sticking things in your mouth?"
"It's an old trick. You can't identify the substance, you tap it on your front teeth. A little practice, you can feel the difference between wood, stone, glass. Yep. It's ceramic."
"So what are you hoping to find?"
"Well, whatever's there. I know there's the stone foundation down there, and I'm hoping to get down to that. It's not like I don't have the time. Before Ida's grandfather built the house, the property belonged to a woman named Ellen Curts and her husband George. He built the plain-looking house on the corner of Water and Vesper. If there were old hiding places for alcohol up here, woulda been during their time. We'll see."
"Can you put an alien patch on my mask?" I asked Michelle.
Sitting at her sewing machine, she said,"If you have an alien patch available, sure."
"I usually keep a ten-pack around."
"Once I'm done making yours, I'll make one for Paul, and then Biz," she said. "We can drive it up to her."
I walked into the TV room, where Tif and Paul were getting rowdy. I said,"Paul, I have a question for you, and I'm not sure I want a straight answer. A lie will be fine. How did toothpaste get all over the wall of the bathroom?"
Paul looked at me, and very seriously said,"I don't know, Daddy."
He's getting better.
"I'm gonna go outside for a while," I said.
I walked outside and lit a cigar. I'd cut way back on cigars since Paul was born, mainly because I didn't have the time anymore. I didn't usually smoke around him, but he was in the TV room, playing with Tif. I walked out to the garage.
Months ago, when I'd begun cleaning the garage, I'd built myself a little concealed space. I had a couple of chairs, a small shelf, and the walls were made of boxed-up crap. I sat down on a chair that had once belonged to my grandmother, smoking my cigar, surrounded by my camping equipment. Fortress of Solitude. I could use a little solitude right now.
I've lived here a long time. I've always tried to help my city....Protect it where I could. But I never envisioned anything like this.
It took me maybe a minute and a half to begin getting bored. How the hell did Superman ever do this at the North Pole? I walked back out and pulled the tarp off the dig.
Long ago, I'd gotten good at digging and smoking a cigar at the same time. I did some work on it, digging out a few more squares, going down a few more inches. I let myself get lost in the sifting and digging---There's something oddly relaxing about archaeology, for me, at least.
Two rusty nails. I like rusty nails. I found a white ceramic bead, from before they were all plastic---Paul would love that. And in the sifter, I pulled a stone, but one that had obviously been worked.
It was jagged, chipped into the shape of a rough lightning bolt. About two inches long. When I washed it off, I realized that it was slightly sparkling---Sandstone, maybe. I took it inside.
Tif and Paul were playing some game that seemed to require Paul leaping off the couch in his underwear. I held up my find. "What's this look like to you?"
"I mean, a rock," said Tif.
"Harry Potter's lightning bolt," Paul said immediately.
"That's it," I said. "A lightning bolt. Pretty sure this was worked; it didn't form like this by accident. This looks Native American to me. And it seems to be sandstone, I think, which means it's not original to this exact property."
"What do you think it is?" Tif asked.
"Something Native American. An amulet, an effigy. Without falling into the religious fallacy, I'd guess at some sort of decorative amulet. This far from the river, I'm a little surprised. It's a find."
Paul was looking in the mirror, smearing makeup on his face. He announced,"I'm trying to make myself all white, like a ghost."
"Wait here a minute," I said. I walked upstairs to the bathroom, where I remembered a long-unused tube of white makeup. I went downstairs with it. "Here, little man. Sit down."
Paul sat on my lap, and in a few minutes I had him made up pale white, with black circles around his eyes. He looked in the mirror and squealed.
"I'm a ghost now! Oooooh!"
"Yeah, little guy, you're a ghost." I walked into the kitchen. Paul followed me, and put on my alien hat, then picked up my whip.
"Now I'm Daddy!" he declared. "I have a whip and I'm white!"
Also he had dark circles under his eyes. I laughed. "Yes, little man. You're just like Daddy. What are you going to do?"
Paul looked at the back door.
"I'm gonna go outside and dig."
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Pandemic: Dead Ahead
"Bagel's done, little man," I said. "Looks toasted to me."
"Can I have it?" Paul asked.
I handed it to him. "Might still be a little hot."
He bit into it as I placed the lid back on the can of Sterno. We were sitting out on the porch, working on cold weather training. Paul ate his bagel with an emergency blanket wrapped around himself, one of those thin foil deals.
"Mmmm."
"How's the emergency blanket working, buddy?"
"Good. It's snuggly."
"In an emergency, you can use that to warm up. You can use it as a signal mirror for help. You can make a fire reflector or a shelter out of it. About the only thing you can't do is fold it back up."
Paul finished his bagel.
"Can we go draw with chalk?"
"Sure."
We walked around to the sidewalk out front. I knelt down and scrawled a message on the sidewalk, with an arrow pointing at my house. Paul sounded it out."
"Send....beer."
"You never know."
I pulled the meal out of the oven. "Pork chops with garden stuffing. Here you go, guys."
"Any word on when the library reopens?" Tif asked.
"Right now, it's completely up in the air. I've had someone e-mailing me almost daily to ask. The state library association has closed libraries indefinitely. I got an e-mail today from the boss, telling me to find some ways to do adult programming online."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. We talked about it; I had her guarantee me that this wasn't going to be permanent. I don't want to be pressured to keep everything online once we're back up and running."
"It's all we have right now, though," said Tif.
"I know that. I also know that our dependence on technology has made everyone much stupider and less capable. We have people who can't read maps and do math, because they're dependent on machines to think for them. I don't want to participate in my own obsolescence."
"I always did think you overstated that. It's the future."
"So was thalidomide."
"There's no changing things, though."
"Which is why we're all sipping New Coke in our Edsels. Of course it's possible to change things. All you have to do is refuse. Which is what I prefer to do."
"She just wants to keep the library in the forefront of everyone's minds."
"I know. And I know it's all we have. That's why I'm going along with it, to some extent. I have a couple of ideas."
"Like what?"
"I thought I'd start with a tour."
After dinner, I rode my bike down behind the library and parked. There was a homeless guy on the patio who left when he spotted me. I looked over the backup library shelves, which had gotten somewhat disorganized. Leaving the general public to mess with your stuff will do that.
I spent the next fifteen minutes clearing it up some. Hardbacks, paperbacks, fiction, nonfiction, childrens, comic books. Once I had it looking pretty good, I got my bike and rode around to the side door.
For the first time in four weeks, I entered the Ross Library. It was a record even from before I'd worked there. The place looked like hell.
Someone had been stopping by the pick up the outside book drop, but the books hadn't been scanned in. A note at the desk said they needed to be quarantined first. Huge stacks of books were piled all over at the desk. Mail was dumped. It was depressing as hell.
I pulled my mail out of my mailbox, and found the Ipad there. New Boss had left it so I could use it to do some programs from home. I slipped it into my pack.
The tiny alien I'd left on my desk was unmoved. The ghosts, apparently, had calmed down. I sat down at my desk---I'd expected it to feel somewhat foreign to me after all that time, but it felt good, a relief....Not like coming home, precisely, but maybe like coming to the home of a relative who made you feel safe.
I turned on my computer and checked all my messages. There was a nice note from the mayor, thanking my for the series of columns I'd been writing and attempting to keep people upbeat. There was a note from a woman named Linny, whom I'd met through the crisis contact webpage I'd been running, updating me on how things were going. Linny and I had begun to become friends over the past week, though we'd never met.
The phone rang on my line. I picked up. "Ross Library."
"You're not supposed to be there. We're closed."
"Oh, hi, Boss," I said. "Just picking up the tablet."
"Good. Now go home."
"You sure? I could---"
"Lou. You're like a crack addict. We're closed. Go home and spend time with your family."
"I come to this job so I don't have to spend time with my family."
"Look. I miss work, too. What's your shirt say?"
I looked down at myself. "Aliens made me do it."
"Appropriate. Now go home."
She hung up.
I turned on the tablet and tried the passwords, which the Boss had left me on a post-it. I was in. I was going to have to play around with the thing some, and I'd hate every minute of it. But it was all I had right at the moment.
I tried to think of anything else I might need. Historic files, documents. I had no idea when I might be back. That wasn't a normal thought.
But it wasn't a normal time.
My wife was asleep on the couch when I walked in the door. Paul was walking around in the living room. He ran into the kitchen and handed me a piece of paper with some writing on it.
DO CUM BAK DAD SUN.
Do come back, Dad, soon.
"I was worried about you," he said.
I gave him a hug. "It's okay, little man. You know who's been teaching you all the survival stuff lately? I know how to survive. Nothing's gonna hurt your daddy."
I stood at the end of the street, holding the tablet. I held it up, facing me, and took a deep breath.
And then took another deep breath.
And then lowered the tablet.
I turned around and looked at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home from a tobacco family in Lock Haven. It was still there. I lifted the table again, and lowered it again.
No matter how you cut it, I felt stupid.
I give tours to people, goddammit. Not machines. No matter how you phrase it, there's nobody here. I feel like I'm giving a tour to my fucking microwave.
Finally I raised the tablet, bit down hard on my back teeth, and hit the button.
"We're here at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home of the tobacco industry in Lock Haven. Young had tobacco fields and ran a cigar shop down the street. His company created the popular Vest Pocket Cigar, back when tobacco was still a big industry in town."
I hit the button again, turning it off. It hadn't killed me. It sucked, but it hadn't killed me.
I moved off down the street.
I stopped and did the Gardner House and the Gross House, and then stopped in front of the Harvey House. When I raised the tablet, a guy came out the front door at me.
"Hey! What're you doing?"
"Little historic research, sir," I called back. "Your house was built in 1906."
"1898, actually," he said. "Someone told me that. They just didn't have deeds before 1904."
Where do people get this shit? I said,"That's simply not true, sir. Deeds have been around since the country was founded. In Clinton County, they go back as far as 1839."
"What're you, some kind of smart-ass?"
"I'm the county historian."
"Well, what if I don't want my house researched?"
"I mean, legally I can research anyplace I want."
"Oh yeah, mister smart-ass historian?" He advanced toward me, coughing menacingly. (If you don't think it's possible to cough menacingly, you haven't lived in Lock Haven during a pandemic.) I leaped back, putting about another fifteen feet between us.
"Hey!"
"Yeah? You want some of this?" He moved forward, spitting in my direction.
Coronavirus or no, this guy was nuts. I bolted around the corner and down into the alley. Then I cut up into someone's yard. When I felt I'd lost the guy, I walked back to the corner and filmed myself with the Harvey House visible behind me.
"This is the William Harvey House, built in 1906. It's the only house of its type in Lock Haven. You might know it as a Jacobethan Revival style, or you might know it as sort of Spanish-looking, but not really." And I turned off the tablet and took off down the street.
I watched as my friends all appeared on my computer screen---Zach, Barb, Mel and Jim, Tracey, New Boss. A Zoom meeting. A goddamned Zoom meeting. I sat and tried not to visibly give off too much attitude about doing things online.
"Hey, guys," said Zach.
"Hey, man," I said. "Got your Easter card. I miss you, too."
"Wait a minute," said Mel. "did he write that he missed everyone? I no longer feel special."
"I do miss everyone," said Zach.
"The board wants us to do what we can from home," said New Boss. "Part of that is programming. Lou has a blog for the library where he'll upload his programs. If anyone has any ideas, you can participate."
Paul came in quietly, hugged me, and walked out. I was sitting in my office, my camping equipment behind me---You could see one of my whips on the webcam. I wondered if that counted as bringing a weapon to work. I wondered if I could drink a beer during this meeting. Two of the dogs, Duke and Gwen, were sitting contentedly on the chair in the background.
"We're allowed to enter the library just for retrieving work-related items," said New Boss. "Nobody is to be doing actual work in the library. But you're allowed to go in and out quickly, to pick things up."
I tuned out. That made it feel more like a regular staff meeting.
Paul came in and hugged me at one point. Gwen jumped on my lap and licked my face. I looked up as I realized New Boss was saying my name.
"What else did you have in mind?" she asked/
"Thought I'd do a haunted tour."
"Lock Haven, Pennsylvania," I said. "Some say it's a very haunted place. The Native Americans used to call it Otzinachson, which according to some sources meant 'The Demon's Den.' It's a place where anything paranormal might happen. Tonight I'm going to tell you about some of this. Follow me."
I lowered the tablet, which had been focused on me, with the downhill part of Lock Haven in the distance. I was adjusting to this, learning to make it sound a bit more like a normal tour. I still hated it, understand. But I was adjusting.
I walked downhill and filmed in front of the Shoemaker house, and then uphill to where Great Island Cemetery had once been. The sun was going down; the light was perfect for this. I raised the tablet and began talking, but then turned it off as someone came around the corner.
"Mind if I ask what you're doing?" he said.
Goddamn it. Not again.
"I'm recording a historic tour for the library," I told him.
"Oh, yeah? This house historic?"
I'd been aiming the camera at myself, getting the view over my shoulder behind me. He thought I'd been filming his house. "Well, I was filming that direction, see...."
"Yeah, but is the house historic?"
"No, I was filming over there. It used to be a cemetery."
"Oh, yeah? I didn't know that! I'm gonna have to look into that!"
"Once this is all over," I said,"Come see me at the library. I'll give you the information."
"Okay, I'll do that."
It was nice to not have been spit at. The bar had been set real low lately.
I lifted the tablet and gave it another take. "The area behind me was once the Great Island Cemetery, founded in the 1700s. It was moved in 1918. At the time, there was said to be two ghosts, a woman in white, and a woman in black."
I heard something from my pack, and recognized the sound of my EMF detector. Something had set it off.
I was giving my haunted tour, and the ghosts approved.
I sat down on my back porch and filmed a quick clip....The porch where Ida had died. I gathered up my stuff and went upstairs to upload the videos.
There was a message on my computer from the mayor, telling me to check my front porch. I walked downstairs.
"What're you doing?" asked Michelle.
"Joel sent me a message telling me to check the porch."
A small box was sitting on our porch. I brought it inside and laughed.
"What is it?" asked Paul.
"You remember what we wrote on the sidewalk yesterday?" I said.
Paul thought about it a moment, then lit up. "Send beer!"
"Yeah." I pulled a bottle of lager out of the box, and smiled. "Joel and Mitzi sent beer."
"Can I have it?" Paul asked.
I handed it to him. "Might still be a little hot."
He bit into it as I placed the lid back on the can of Sterno. We were sitting out on the porch, working on cold weather training. Paul ate his bagel with an emergency blanket wrapped around himself, one of those thin foil deals.
"Mmmm."
"How's the emergency blanket working, buddy?"
"Good. It's snuggly."
"In an emergency, you can use that to warm up. You can use it as a signal mirror for help. You can make a fire reflector or a shelter out of it. About the only thing you can't do is fold it back up."
Paul finished his bagel.
"Can we go draw with chalk?"
"Sure."
We walked around to the sidewalk out front. I knelt down and scrawled a message on the sidewalk, with an arrow pointing at my house. Paul sounded it out."
"Send....beer."
"You never know."
I pulled the meal out of the oven. "Pork chops with garden stuffing. Here you go, guys."
"Any word on when the library reopens?" Tif asked.
"Right now, it's completely up in the air. I've had someone e-mailing me almost daily to ask. The state library association has closed libraries indefinitely. I got an e-mail today from the boss, telling me to find some ways to do adult programming online."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. We talked about it; I had her guarantee me that this wasn't going to be permanent. I don't want to be pressured to keep everything online once we're back up and running."
"It's all we have right now, though," said Tif.
"I know that. I also know that our dependence on technology has made everyone much stupider and less capable. We have people who can't read maps and do math, because they're dependent on machines to think for them. I don't want to participate in my own obsolescence."
"I always did think you overstated that. It's the future."
"So was thalidomide."
"There's no changing things, though."
"Which is why we're all sipping New Coke in our Edsels. Of course it's possible to change things. All you have to do is refuse. Which is what I prefer to do."
"She just wants to keep the library in the forefront of everyone's minds."
"I know. And I know it's all we have. That's why I'm going along with it, to some extent. I have a couple of ideas."
"Like what?"
"I thought I'd start with a tour."
After dinner, I rode my bike down behind the library and parked. There was a homeless guy on the patio who left when he spotted me. I looked over the backup library shelves, which had gotten somewhat disorganized. Leaving the general public to mess with your stuff will do that.
I spent the next fifteen minutes clearing it up some. Hardbacks, paperbacks, fiction, nonfiction, childrens, comic books. Once I had it looking pretty good, I got my bike and rode around to the side door.
For the first time in four weeks, I entered the Ross Library. It was a record even from before I'd worked there. The place looked like hell.
Someone had been stopping by the pick up the outside book drop, but the books hadn't been scanned in. A note at the desk said they needed to be quarantined first. Huge stacks of books were piled all over at the desk. Mail was dumped. It was depressing as hell.
I pulled my mail out of my mailbox, and found the Ipad there. New Boss had left it so I could use it to do some programs from home. I slipped it into my pack.
The tiny alien I'd left on my desk was unmoved. The ghosts, apparently, had calmed down. I sat down at my desk---I'd expected it to feel somewhat foreign to me after all that time, but it felt good, a relief....Not like coming home, precisely, but maybe like coming to the home of a relative who made you feel safe.
I turned on my computer and checked all my messages. There was a nice note from the mayor, thanking my for the series of columns I'd been writing and attempting to keep people upbeat. There was a note from a woman named Linny, whom I'd met through the crisis contact webpage I'd been running, updating me on how things were going. Linny and I had begun to become friends over the past week, though we'd never met.
The phone rang on my line. I picked up. "Ross Library."
"You're not supposed to be there. We're closed."
"Oh, hi, Boss," I said. "Just picking up the tablet."
"Good. Now go home."
"You sure? I could---"
"Lou. You're like a crack addict. We're closed. Go home and spend time with your family."
"I come to this job so I don't have to spend time with my family."
"Look. I miss work, too. What's your shirt say?"
I looked down at myself. "Aliens made me do it."
"Appropriate. Now go home."
She hung up.
I turned on the tablet and tried the passwords, which the Boss had left me on a post-it. I was in. I was going to have to play around with the thing some, and I'd hate every minute of it. But it was all I had right at the moment.
I tried to think of anything else I might need. Historic files, documents. I had no idea when I might be back. That wasn't a normal thought.
But it wasn't a normal time.
My wife was asleep on the couch when I walked in the door. Paul was walking around in the living room. He ran into the kitchen and handed me a piece of paper with some writing on it.
DO CUM BAK DAD SUN.
Do come back, Dad, soon.
"I was worried about you," he said.
I gave him a hug. "It's okay, little man. You know who's been teaching you all the survival stuff lately? I know how to survive. Nothing's gonna hurt your daddy."
I stood at the end of the street, holding the tablet. I held it up, facing me, and took a deep breath.
And then took another deep breath.
And then lowered the tablet.
I turned around and looked at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home from a tobacco family in Lock Haven. It was still there. I lifted the table again, and lowered it again.
No matter how you cut it, I felt stupid.
I give tours to people, goddammit. Not machines. No matter how you phrase it, there's nobody here. I feel like I'm giving a tour to my fucking microwave.
Finally I raised the tablet, bit down hard on my back teeth, and hit the button.
"We're here at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home of the tobacco industry in Lock Haven. Young had tobacco fields and ran a cigar shop down the street. His company created the popular Vest Pocket Cigar, back when tobacco was still a big industry in town."
I hit the button again, turning it off. It hadn't killed me. It sucked, but it hadn't killed me.
I moved off down the street.
I stopped and did the Gardner House and the Gross House, and then stopped in front of the Harvey House. When I raised the tablet, a guy came out the front door at me.
"Hey! What're you doing?"
"Little historic research, sir," I called back. "Your house was built in 1906."
"1898, actually," he said. "Someone told me that. They just didn't have deeds before 1904."
Where do people get this shit? I said,"That's simply not true, sir. Deeds have been around since the country was founded. In Clinton County, they go back as far as 1839."
"What're you, some kind of smart-ass?"
"I'm the county historian."
"Well, what if I don't want my house researched?"
"I mean, legally I can research anyplace I want."
"Oh yeah, mister smart-ass historian?" He advanced toward me, coughing menacingly. (If you don't think it's possible to cough menacingly, you haven't lived in Lock Haven during a pandemic.) I leaped back, putting about another fifteen feet between us.
"Hey!"
"Yeah? You want some of this?" He moved forward, spitting in my direction.
Coronavirus or no, this guy was nuts. I bolted around the corner and down into the alley. Then I cut up into someone's yard. When I felt I'd lost the guy, I walked back to the corner and filmed myself with the Harvey House visible behind me.
"This is the William Harvey House, built in 1906. It's the only house of its type in Lock Haven. You might know it as a Jacobethan Revival style, or you might know it as sort of Spanish-looking, but not really." And I turned off the tablet and took off down the street.
I watched as my friends all appeared on my computer screen---Zach, Barb, Mel and Jim, Tracey, New Boss. A Zoom meeting. A goddamned Zoom meeting. I sat and tried not to visibly give off too much attitude about doing things online.
"Hey, guys," said Zach.
"Hey, man," I said. "Got your Easter card. I miss you, too."
"Wait a minute," said Mel. "did he write that he missed everyone? I no longer feel special."
"I do miss everyone," said Zach.
"The board wants us to do what we can from home," said New Boss. "Part of that is programming. Lou has a blog for the library where he'll upload his programs. If anyone has any ideas, you can participate."
Paul came in quietly, hugged me, and walked out. I was sitting in my office, my camping equipment behind me---You could see one of my whips on the webcam. I wondered if that counted as bringing a weapon to work. I wondered if I could drink a beer during this meeting. Two of the dogs, Duke and Gwen, were sitting contentedly on the chair in the background.
"We're allowed to enter the library just for retrieving work-related items," said New Boss. "Nobody is to be doing actual work in the library. But you're allowed to go in and out quickly, to pick things up."
I tuned out. That made it feel more like a regular staff meeting.
Paul came in and hugged me at one point. Gwen jumped on my lap and licked my face. I looked up as I realized New Boss was saying my name.
"What else did you have in mind?" she asked/
"Thought I'd do a haunted tour."
"Lock Haven, Pennsylvania," I said. "Some say it's a very haunted place. The Native Americans used to call it Otzinachson, which according to some sources meant 'The Demon's Den.' It's a place where anything paranormal might happen. Tonight I'm going to tell you about some of this. Follow me."
I lowered the tablet, which had been focused on me, with the downhill part of Lock Haven in the distance. I was adjusting to this, learning to make it sound a bit more like a normal tour. I still hated it, understand. But I was adjusting.
I walked downhill and filmed in front of the Shoemaker house, and then uphill to where Great Island Cemetery had once been. The sun was going down; the light was perfect for this. I raised the tablet and began talking, but then turned it off as someone came around the corner.
"Mind if I ask what you're doing?" he said.
Goddamn it. Not again.
"I'm recording a historic tour for the library," I told him.
"Oh, yeah? This house historic?"
I'd been aiming the camera at myself, getting the view over my shoulder behind me. He thought I'd been filming his house. "Well, I was filming that direction, see...."
"Yeah, but is the house historic?"
"No, I was filming over there. It used to be a cemetery."
"Oh, yeah? I didn't know that! I'm gonna have to look into that!"
"Once this is all over," I said,"Come see me at the library. I'll give you the information."
"Okay, I'll do that."
It was nice to not have been spit at. The bar had been set real low lately.
I lifted the tablet and gave it another take. "The area behind me was once the Great Island Cemetery, founded in the 1700s. It was moved in 1918. At the time, there was said to be two ghosts, a woman in white, and a woman in black."
I heard something from my pack, and recognized the sound of my EMF detector. Something had set it off.
I was giving my haunted tour, and the ghosts approved.
I sat down on my back porch and filmed a quick clip....The porch where Ida had died. I gathered up my stuff and went upstairs to upload the videos.
There was a message on my computer from the mayor, telling me to check my front porch. I walked downstairs.
"What're you doing?" asked Michelle.
"Joel sent me a message telling me to check the porch."
A small box was sitting on our porch. I brought it inside and laughed.
"What is it?" asked Paul.
"You remember what we wrote on the sidewalk yesterday?" I said.
Paul thought about it a moment, then lit up. "Send beer!"
"Yeah." I pulled a bottle of lager out of the box, and smiled. "Joel and Mitzi sent beer."
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Pandemic: Gorilla Warfare
I lit the little votive candle. Very seriously, Paul watched me.
Then I blew it out, took a match, and dipped it into the melted wax.
"See, little man?" I said. "Let that dry, and the match is waterproof. We can take that out in the woods, get rained on all night, and still start a fire."
"I want to try," said Paul.
I handed him the matches. He dipped one in and rolled it around.
"Good," I said. "Once they dry, we'll keep them in this pill container. It's from Kasper's pills."
We both did a couple more. I said,"We can also do this with dryer lint. Put wax on it, and it's waterproof. It gets wet, it doesn't matter. Still start a fire."
"We'll take it camping," said Paul.
"You want to take a little ride?"
"Yes! Can we take our scooters?"
"Of course."
We got our razor scooters and headed east down Grouse Alley. I was wearing my black jacket tricked out with all the equipment in the pockets, and Paul was wearing a sleeveless shirt and black vest with his boots. We looked like Mad Max in Lock Haven. During the pandemic, we'd been riding around a lot on the scooters. Perfect transportation, given the situation. Months ago, I'd been trying to think of some way to get around when I was travelling without my bike. In this crisis, I'd found it.
We went down South Jones Street and past Mount Vernon. Pulling off to the side of the road, I looked over the industrial pond and the stream that led out to Bald Eagle Creek.
"I'm scared, Daddy," said Paul.
"What's scaring you?"
"The train tracks are scary."
"It's okay, little man. Nothing's gonna happen if we're careful. There's not a train coming right now. You remember what the most important thing is if you're lost in the forest?"
"Water."
"Right. You can only live a couple of days without water. I'm trying to plan out a way to get some if everything goes down."
"Can we get water?"
"Pretty sure. I can get under that fence to the pond and get some, or hike along the tracks until I reach Bald Eagle Creek. And since they're not taking recycling at the moment, we have plenty of containers. I'm sure it won't come to that, but it pays to be prepared."
"Can we go back home now?" Paul asked.
"Sure, little man. We can go back home."
"Race you," he said. "Last one home is a dirty rotten egg."
"So the Express has me writing a series on disasters from the past," I said at the dinner table. "It's giving me something to do from home." I took a sip of iced tea.
"Are you day drinking?" Tif asked.
"It's iced tea. I'm not above that at the moment. But it's iced tea."
"Not handling the quarantine too well?"
"It's not easy being a stay-at-home paranormal investigator," I said. "How many times can you search your own house for ghosts?"
"You already know your house is haunted."
"Yeah, so there's not even any suspense to it."
"Come up with anything good for your articles?" asked Tif.
"The 1847 flood was interesting; I never looked into that one before. It seems to have hit hardest up around Keating area. Amusingly, I found a story of a lost treasure up there."
"What kind of treasure?" asked Michelle.
"The cabin of Robert Lusk was washed away. He'd been storing gold in one of the hollowed-out logs. He chased it down river, but couldn't catch it. It broke apart, and he never did find the log."
Tif laughed.
"We should go and look," suggested Michelle. "If you found lost alcohol, you can find a log full of gold."
"It crossed my mind," I admitted. "We could even take a drive up there during the pandemic. At the best of times, Keating is not exactly overpopulated with people."
I walked into the backyard carrying three bandannas, three jackets, two mops, and a giant stuffed gorilla. As one does. Dumping the whole thing onto the ground, I laid the gorilla in the grass and cut a stick from a nearby branch. "Okay, little man," I said. "Which leg did the gorilla break?"
Paul considered it a moment, and then pointed at the gorilla's left leg. "This one."
"Okay. Now, what do we do for a broken bone?"
"A splint!"
"Right. Let me show you." I tied the stick along the gorilla's leg with the bandannas, holding it in place. "Now, he can't walk out of here with a broken leg, right? He's gonna need help?"
"Right."
"Right. So we're gonna make a stretcher. You ever see that on TV, where they carry someone who's hurt like that?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. In an emergency, you can make a stretcher out of poles and some jackets."
I laid the mops parallel to each other, and slid the jackets onto them, putting the mop handles through the sleeves. Then I zipped up the jackets. I laid the whole thing beside the gorilla, who was being remarkably calm about all this, and said,"Okay, see? We gently roll him this way, and slide the stretcher under. Then we lay him back down. Grab those ends."
Paul picked up his end, and I lifted, and we picked up the gorilla. I said,"See how this works? We can carry him until we get help." It's not exactly complete selflessness with which I am teaching him these things. During the pandemic, I have been trapped in the house eating canned food with a five-year-old, and my blood pressure is already alarmingly high. I might need this kid to know how to provide medical care.
"Let's carry him to the hospital!" The hospital, in Paul's estimation, turned out to be on the concrete sidewalk a few steps away. We gently lowered the gorilla to the ground. Paul knelt beside him.
"He needs surgery," Paul declared,"But he's gonna be okay."
"Good night, little man," I said, and kissed Paul on the head. "We'll do more stuff tomorrow."
"Daddy? I'm scared of ghosts."
I sat down on the edge of his bed. "How come?"
"They float around and go woooooo."
I smiled. "Well, buddy, the only ghost we have here is Ida. And she doesn't do any of that. She just watches quietly, She was a kid, too. She's kind of like a big sister to you; I bet she loves you."
"Okay/"
"Love you. See you in the morning."
"Good night, Daddy," he said. "I love you."
I closed his bedroom door and stepped out into the hall. Walking down to my office, I sat down at the computer. I was working on an article for the Pennsylvania Wilds---I'd thought of writing an article about the survival skills I was teaching Paul, in the hopes it might give parents a way to keep their kids busy. It's not easy writing articles to promote tourism during a quarantine.
I was a few paragraphs in when I heard something downstairs. I walked on down, and found the gorilla knocked over. We'd left him sitting at the bottom of the steps, and he was lying on his side a couple of feet away.
Could have fallen over. But I live in a haunted house. Besides, I'd been a little bored lately.
I walked into the kitchen and picked up my backpack---The first time I'd touched it in days. I usually have a few pieces of investigative equipment somewhere near. I got out the small pouch and emptied it onto the table.
Camera, laser thermometer, EMF detector. I scanned around the room and found no temperature readings. Walking through the downstairs, I took several photos. I was saving the EMF detector for last. Our house, for some reason, had metal beams, which made the EMFs go absolutely nuts.
In 1905, my house had been owned by the Yost family. Ida Yost had been abused, and killed herself on my back porch by drinking an ounce of acid on August 19, 1905. Ever since we'd moved in, we'd thought her to be haunting the place. Unexplainable things had happened almost since the beginning.
I went upstairs and shot a message to SaraLee.
She was online, and she and I had a quick discussion. She'd come to visit s few years back, and had some psychic insight. I don't trust a lot of psychics, but I trust SaraLee.
L: Sara, a few years ago, you visited and commented that you got a feeling in my house. Can you give me some information on that? I'm having some nighttime experiences.
Psychics drive me crazy. But I'd become quite fond of SaraLee.
I walked back downstairs and picked up my equipment. I sat down at the table and pulled out the file I had on Ida---Research I'd done years ago. I had her obit, the court and cemetery records, a listing of who had owned the house. It didn't tell me much that I didn't previously know; I can't remember everything, but I'd had Ida's story memorized for over a decade.
The kitchen lights began to flicker---Flashing on and off rapidly. It was the most dramatic thing I'd seen in this house for a while. I pressed the button on my EMF detector, and it lit right up, registering high EMFs.
Then it all stopped, and things went back to normal.
I did another sweep of the house with the equipment, but it had all died down.
"It's all gonna be okay, Ida," I said, and went back upstairs to finish my article.
"Okay, little man," I said. "Daddy's had his morning coffee. Let's go outside and learn a few things. You remember how to fix a broken leg?"
"You get a stick, and tie it like...." Paul made tying motions around his leg.
"Right. Do you remember what it's called?"
"A splinter!"
"Close enough. Come on, let's do some learning."
"What are we learning today?" Paul asked.
"Let's give the gorilla a break," I said. "Today we're gonna learn how to do CPR on your duck."
We picked up the stuffed duck and walked outside with it. I set him down, and Paul climbed onto his swing set. He began to push himself back and forth.
"Hey, Daddy! Ida wants you to push her on the swing!"
Then I blew it out, took a match, and dipped it into the melted wax.
"See, little man?" I said. "Let that dry, and the match is waterproof. We can take that out in the woods, get rained on all night, and still start a fire."
"I want to try," said Paul.
I handed him the matches. He dipped one in and rolled it around.
"Good," I said. "Once they dry, we'll keep them in this pill container. It's from Kasper's pills."
We both did a couple more. I said,"We can also do this with dryer lint. Put wax on it, and it's waterproof. It gets wet, it doesn't matter. Still start a fire."
"We'll take it camping," said Paul.
"You want to take a little ride?"
"Yes! Can we take our scooters?"
"Of course."
We got our razor scooters and headed east down Grouse Alley. I was wearing my black jacket tricked out with all the equipment in the pockets, and Paul was wearing a sleeveless shirt and black vest with his boots. We looked like Mad Max in Lock Haven. During the pandemic, we'd been riding around a lot on the scooters. Perfect transportation, given the situation. Months ago, I'd been trying to think of some way to get around when I was travelling without my bike. In this crisis, I'd found it.
We went down South Jones Street and past Mount Vernon. Pulling off to the side of the road, I looked over the industrial pond and the stream that led out to Bald Eagle Creek.
"I'm scared, Daddy," said Paul.
"What's scaring you?"
"The train tracks are scary."
"It's okay, little man. Nothing's gonna happen if we're careful. There's not a train coming right now. You remember what the most important thing is if you're lost in the forest?"
"Water."
"Right. You can only live a couple of days without water. I'm trying to plan out a way to get some if everything goes down."
"Can we get water?"
"Pretty sure. I can get under that fence to the pond and get some, or hike along the tracks until I reach Bald Eagle Creek. And since they're not taking recycling at the moment, we have plenty of containers. I'm sure it won't come to that, but it pays to be prepared."
"Can we go back home now?" Paul asked.
"Sure, little man. We can go back home."
"Race you," he said. "Last one home is a dirty rotten egg."
"So the Express has me writing a series on disasters from the past," I said at the dinner table. "It's giving me something to do from home." I took a sip of iced tea.
"Are you day drinking?" Tif asked.
"It's iced tea. I'm not above that at the moment. But it's iced tea."
"Not handling the quarantine too well?"
"It's not easy being a stay-at-home paranormal investigator," I said. "How many times can you search your own house for ghosts?"
"You already know your house is haunted."
"Yeah, so there's not even any suspense to it."
"Come up with anything good for your articles?" asked Tif.
"The 1847 flood was interesting; I never looked into that one before. It seems to have hit hardest up around Keating area. Amusingly, I found a story of a lost treasure up there."
"What kind of treasure?" asked Michelle.
"The cabin of Robert Lusk was washed away. He'd been storing gold in one of the hollowed-out logs. He chased it down river, but couldn't catch it. It broke apart, and he never did find the log."
Tif laughed.
"We should go and look," suggested Michelle. "If you found lost alcohol, you can find a log full of gold."
"It crossed my mind," I admitted. "We could even take a drive up there during the pandemic. At the best of times, Keating is not exactly overpopulated with people."
I walked into the backyard carrying three bandannas, three jackets, two mops, and a giant stuffed gorilla. As one does. Dumping the whole thing onto the ground, I laid the gorilla in the grass and cut a stick from a nearby branch. "Okay, little man," I said. "Which leg did the gorilla break?"
Paul considered it a moment, and then pointed at the gorilla's left leg. "This one."
"Okay. Now, what do we do for a broken bone?"
"A splint!"
"Right. Let me show you." I tied the stick along the gorilla's leg with the bandannas, holding it in place. "Now, he can't walk out of here with a broken leg, right? He's gonna need help?"
"Right."
"Right. So we're gonna make a stretcher. You ever see that on TV, where they carry someone who's hurt like that?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. In an emergency, you can make a stretcher out of poles and some jackets."
I laid the mops parallel to each other, and slid the jackets onto them, putting the mop handles through the sleeves. Then I zipped up the jackets. I laid the whole thing beside the gorilla, who was being remarkably calm about all this, and said,"Okay, see? We gently roll him this way, and slide the stretcher under. Then we lay him back down. Grab those ends."
Paul picked up his end, and I lifted, and we picked up the gorilla. I said,"See how this works? We can carry him until we get help." It's not exactly complete selflessness with which I am teaching him these things. During the pandemic, I have been trapped in the house eating canned food with a five-year-old, and my blood pressure is already alarmingly high. I might need this kid to know how to provide medical care.
"Let's carry him to the hospital!" The hospital, in Paul's estimation, turned out to be on the concrete sidewalk a few steps away. We gently lowered the gorilla to the ground. Paul knelt beside him.
"He needs surgery," Paul declared,"But he's gonna be okay."
"Good night, little man," I said, and kissed Paul on the head. "We'll do more stuff tomorrow."
"Daddy? I'm scared of ghosts."
I sat down on the edge of his bed. "How come?"
"They float around and go woooooo."
I smiled. "Well, buddy, the only ghost we have here is Ida. And she doesn't do any of that. She just watches quietly, She was a kid, too. She's kind of like a big sister to you; I bet she loves you."
"Okay/"
"Love you. See you in the morning."
"Good night, Daddy," he said. "I love you."
I closed his bedroom door and stepped out into the hall. Walking down to my office, I sat down at the computer. I was working on an article for the Pennsylvania Wilds---I'd thought of writing an article about the survival skills I was teaching Paul, in the hopes it might give parents a way to keep their kids busy. It's not easy writing articles to promote tourism during a quarantine.
I was a few paragraphs in when I heard something downstairs. I walked on down, and found the gorilla knocked over. We'd left him sitting at the bottom of the steps, and he was lying on his side a couple of feet away.
Could have fallen over. But I live in a haunted house. Besides, I'd been a little bored lately.
I walked into the kitchen and picked up my backpack---The first time I'd touched it in days. I usually have a few pieces of investigative equipment somewhere near. I got out the small pouch and emptied it onto the table.
Camera, laser thermometer, EMF detector. I scanned around the room and found no temperature readings. Walking through the downstairs, I took several photos. I was saving the EMF detector for last. Our house, for some reason, had metal beams, which made the EMFs go absolutely nuts.
In 1905, my house had been owned by the Yost family. Ida Yost had been abused, and killed herself on my back porch by drinking an ounce of acid on August 19, 1905. Ever since we'd moved in, we'd thought her to be haunting the place. Unexplainable things had happened almost since the beginning.
I went upstairs and shot a message to SaraLee.
She was online, and she and I had a quick discussion. She'd come to visit s few years back, and had some psychic insight. I don't trust a lot of psychics, but I trust SaraLee.
L: Sara, a few years ago, you visited and commented that you got a feeling in my house. Can you give me some information on that? I'm having some nighttime experiences.
S: I felt sick with a vomiting bug in the upstairs bedroom. She would always manifest in the room second door on the right.
L: Well, your descriptions of the layout fit. And you getting sick like that, when she drank acid.
S: I never knew the poisoning thing. She did not like her dad. There was some abuse there.
L: Yeah, I found court records once. Her father was charged about two weeks after her death.
S: Love the validation!
L: I'm gonna go poke around with some equipment. I'll keep you posted. Thanks, Sara.Psychics drive me crazy. But I'd become quite fond of SaraLee.
I walked back downstairs and picked up my equipment. I sat down at the table and pulled out the file I had on Ida---Research I'd done years ago. I had her obit, the court and cemetery records, a listing of who had owned the house. It didn't tell me much that I didn't previously know; I can't remember everything, but I'd had Ida's story memorized for over a decade.
The kitchen lights began to flicker---Flashing on and off rapidly. It was the most dramatic thing I'd seen in this house for a while. I pressed the button on my EMF detector, and it lit right up, registering high EMFs.
Then it all stopped, and things went back to normal.
I did another sweep of the house with the equipment, but it had all died down.
"It's all gonna be okay, Ida," I said, and went back upstairs to finish my article.
"Okay, little man," I said. "Daddy's had his morning coffee. Let's go outside and learn a few things. You remember how to fix a broken leg?"
"You get a stick, and tie it like...." Paul made tying motions around his leg.
"Right. Do you remember what it's called?"
"A splinter!"
"Close enough. Come on, let's do some learning."
"What are we learning today?" Paul asked.
"Let's give the gorilla a break," I said. "Today we're gonna learn how to do CPR on your duck."
We picked up the stuffed duck and walked outside with it. I set him down, and Paul climbed onto his swing set. He began to push himself back and forth.
"Hey, Daddy! Ida wants you to push her on the swing!"
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