December 7, 2007

For Friends, Whenever I May Find Them

What a dream I had ...

We walk into a large, very fancy library. The kind of library which is supposed to look old and formal, but comes off looking new and pretentious ... complete with marble lions standing guard outside and a long, panoramic array of steps leading up to the library ... those very shallow steps that you could take four or five at time, except they're wide ... you could almost put two feet heel to toe before you reach the next step. And, of course, there's no visible wheelchair ramp.

I have a purpose for being at this library but since I am simply relating a dream, all I know is that there is a dream-logic to that purpose which fades away very quickly once we're inside. We have walked inside the library and around a center area whose floor is lower than the rest of this narthex. As we come in, we walk on the right side, past the area for checking out books. Before us are the large and ornate wooden doors which lead to the library proper. Before we can enter, I turn around and look down in that little "pit" in the center of all this marble tile. People are busily working on honestly old wooden tables, some with piles of books around them, some still beating on the keyboards of the computers to find the sources they need.

I stop dead in my tracks. It can't be. After all this time, some twenty years ... constantly wondering whatever happened ... why did she never get back in contact with me ... I'm seeing things, it can't possibly be her.

I'm down the steps in a heartbeat, rushing up to this person I haven't seen since the summer after high school. "Janet?" Another step. "Kyungah?"

She turns around and it's true. My illustrious locker partner, as I used to call her back in school.

She's a bit standoffish and tries to quickly direct my attention to other Lamar people I know who are also here. They are certainly people I know, but not as well as KK. I'm puzzled and hurt. All I can think is, "but you and I were friends ... I only know of these people." The wall remains despite having found Janet at last.

Most people I know can't wait to forget about high school. They stay connected with a few friends, but seem to try to put everything else completely behind them and move on. Except of course for those few who prefer to live in their "glory days" and constantly rehash all the wonderful moments.

I don't seem to fall into either category.

And yet I would love to still be friends with some of those folks, I regret losing contact with so many.

I suppose that because I often felt more at home at school than at home, I came to think of some of these people almost as siblings and favourite cousins than friends. I didn't expect that I would completely lose contact with them for so long ... and when I have caught up with them, we've had (for the most part) a single good conversation ... which fades into politeness. We don't really know each other anymore and apparently it's too much effort ... or it's too much a reminder of another time others would prefer remain forgotten ... and the effort at renewing friendship seems to fade clean away to a dream-state of a million yesterdays ago.

And yet, I can't quite let go of those old friendships.

I want to know what life has thrown them. I want to know that they are okay, they are happy, they are loved, they are content. I want them to know that there are those folks from "back in the day" who are rooting them on to meet their dreams, whatever they may be and however they may have changed over the years.

So this song has been running through my head today ... really, only the first line of the real song has anything to do with this at all ... but I've done what I used to do in high school all the time ... re-written it into something else. It's mushier than I would like, but not as mushy as the original song, so I suppose that's an improvement. (For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her - Simon & Garfunkel)

What a dream I had
dressed in fogginess
clothed in adrenaline
and wistful happiness
sweeter than the rain

I've wandered empty malls and
past the shop displays
I heard distant murmurs
floating through the hallways
as I walked on

and when we met again
your dreams changed as the night
you've walked on frozen streets and fields of daffodils
I remember then

And now look what you've become
(silence)
I wish you happiness
With my grateful memories
Oh I miss you all
Oh I miss you

(I told you it was mushy. Bah)

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:17 AM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

November 21, 2007

Who Are You? Who, who, who who

Incinq from BlogCatalog asked a great question about ethnicity/heritage. I started to reply over there and then realized that my own answer is so odd and lengthy, it'd simply make a better blog post.

By the time I was about five, I began to understand that there were other countries than the U.S. in a very visceral and real way. I would pore over the atlas and pull out all of the ancient encyclopedias just to look at maps. Using the encyclopedias as my maps, however, caused some interesting glitches. Think about this list for a minute:
island, England, Ireland, Greenland, Poland.

Yeah. I thought Poland must be an island. I got into a very heated argument with my mother over this about the age of five. I was utterly convinced that she was wrong and I was right. It all made perfect sense. To me, anyway.

The long and short of that, though, is that my parents were highly uninterested in our cultural heritage. I was searching for roots that they had long since dug up and tossed aside. When I asked ethnicity we were, I was told American. Okay, that's great, but that's only a part of the story. Where did we come from? And I don't mean the stork.

Unfortunately, I was not quite savvy enough to say it like that then. So, predictably, I got a book on where babies come from instead of an answer. This was a recurring theme of misdirection in our family when someone didn't like the questions being asked.

Eventually I got Mom to say that her mother's mother had emigrated from Lithuania. Excited, I asked where that was. Mom's reply was that Lithuania wasn't there any more. It had been swallowed up by Russia.

Now, you have to understand that I was about five at this time. And to my mind ... which worked in oddly logical and literal ways (as most five year old's minds do) ... this meant Lithuania didn't really count because it didn't really exist.

Frustrated that we were apparently not "anything," I began to search for a good heritage. I decided that I was Irish.

To this day I have no idea what made me choose Ireland. I recall my mother being irritated with me and telling me that we were NOT Irish. I would calmly smile and tell her, "I am." It was as if, for whatever reason, I needed roots that my parents did not. I know that both of my parents had moved some when they were kids. But I don't think they had the tumbleweed childhood I'd had by the time I started kindergarten. Six towns and seven homes by the time I was in kindergarten. Perhaps I just wanted something consistent in my life.

I know that when I was a little bit older, and I would ask again (this was a constant question throughout my childhood), Mom would sometimes recite a little ditty that her father used to say, "We're Irish and Dutch and don't amount to much." This simply fueled my Irish flame. I researched the country periodically. I aligned myself with the IRA (without any real realization of what that meant ... to my mind they were simply freedom fighters). I often growled about "the bloody English" and especially that fool, Cromwell.

I begged to be allowed to do the foreign exchange program and go to Ireland for a year of high school. My mother, ever paranoid about everything, refused on the grounds that Ireland was a land of war. I argued eloquently that the fighting was primarily in the northern six counties. I pointed out that Ireland was Catholic, so I would never miss mass. All in vain.

In the course of growing up, besides deciding I was Irish, I became very very invested in being a Texan as well. These two "ethnicities," if you will, gave me a certain grounding and identity. I adored teasing my sister about being an Okie and pointing out that Dad and I were true Texans ... whilst my sister was "just" an Okie. {Why does Texas not fall in the Gulf of Mexico? ... ... ... cuz Oklahoma sucks ... ... ... MWAhahahahaha} I periodically teased my mother for being a damyankee.

In retrospect, the reason that I constantly looked for some kind of national identity was because I wanted to belong ... and I never did feel like I belonged to my family. We always seemed like a foursome of random people who happened to share the same home. I was close to my sister and I tried to help her deal with our odd little family ... but somehow ... I always felt like an outsider ... biding my time until I could escape into my real life.

Looking for a heritage was simply looking to belong to something bigger than my life; something which with I had an affinity, something in common.

There was a third component to my search for heritage.

We lived in Albuquerque for three months when I was three years old. Dad had already been there for a while on what was to have been a temporary assignment. It dragged out for quite some time. The last time I talked with Mom about this, she had thought he'd only been there for three months before we joined him. But on thinking about the timing of it all, she thought he'd actually been out there much, much longer than that.

I was two when he left for Albuquerque on this temporary assignment and when I was a teenager, my mother would bitterly tell me how hard it had been for her to deal with me. Not because I was acting up whilst Dad was gone. But because I was depressed that Daddy wasn't there.

To understand her bitterness, you have to understand that my father was not a particularly nice man most of the time. As an adult, my mom had figured this out after about 8 years of marriage. As a two year old, of course, I had not yet figured that out. She was hurt that I was upset at Dad's absence when she was still there to hold me and play with me. I suppose it's simply a complicated thing and I don't know if you, Gentle Reader, will really understand it without having lived it.

At any rate, this was about 1971. Mom and I finally moved to Albuquerque to join Dad since it looked like this temporary gig was going to be a bit longer than that.

In 1969, a group of American Indians took over Alcatraz Island.
In 1970, a group from the American Indian Movement seized the Mayflower replica on Thanksgiving day.
In 1971, the American Indian Movement also had a group occupy Mount Rushmore.

Remember how my mother would not let me go to Ireland for school when I was a junior in high school? Because she feared it was a country of war?

New Mexico has a large native American population. Tensions were running quite high in the 70s. My mother was utterly terrified of anyone different from her ... so Albuquerque was a city of dirt and fear to her.

I, on the other hand, thought I'd gone to heaven. I was back with Daddy, I could run outside, there were mountains. And, I'm sure that given my asthma, I was feeling far better in the dry Albuquerque than the humid, wet armpit of Houston.

Mom and Grandma and I made a trip up to Santa Fe one day to see the fabled "The Mall." This trip has become legend in my mind ... I don't know how much of it I have embellished over the years, but this is my story and I'm sticking to it:

Mom was surprised that "The Mall" was actually an outdoor collection of handicrafts, jewelry and such. We wandered from booth to booth, Mom becoming more and more scared by the collection of "dirty indians" around us.

I, of course, was utterly fascinated. I can just picture myself poised over a blanket of pottery and sand paintings, all cautious and curious three-year-old style. Hands to myself, eyes sharp and darting from storied item to storied item.

And then the questions started. "What's that?" "What does that mean?" "A Thunderbird? like the planes?" "What's a yei?" "What does it guard?"

Thirty six years later, I see this poor shopkeep as a patient man. Chuckling at the bilagaana child. I like to think that I was polite and curious, waiting for his answers ... but that may simply be because I know Navajo speech can be considered slow and pondering by anglos.

During my informal schooling in the symbols used by this Navajo artist, my mother thought I was still with her. She'd gone off to look at other booths. She was always like that once she got into shopping ... focused on the next booth or store or rack. Naturally, she eventually realized that I had not placidly followed her like a duckling straggling after its mother. Naturally, she panicked and began retracing her steps. Just in time to hear me tell the patient shopkeep:

"When I grow up, I'm gonna be an Indian, too!"

Whether it's clear memory or my vivid imagination, I can see him chuckling and then swallowing all emotion quickly ... a flash of fear before the mask of nothingness settles ... and my mother grabbing my arm and yanking me away.

We argued for years after that. I was going to grow up to be a Navajo. I was quite certain of it. Mom was appalled. She finally got it through to me that I would not be Navajo when she pointed to a picture of some native Americans and asked me what colour their skin was and what colour my skin was.

"You'll never be an Indian. Look at you."

Now that I think about it, that may be why I decided I was Irish. Pale as can be ... Mom's hair was auburn and mine was beginning to carry some nice red highlights.

So, my ethnicity and heritage is really a lie, in a way. I know far more about Ireland and about the Dineh than I do about Lithuania.

And yet, somehow it seems fitting to me that my heritage is something that I've chosen rather than what I was born into. So much of my life has been about abandoning that which I found dysfunctional and unhealthy and trying to align myself with carefully chosen healthy connections.

And yet, when it comes to the holidays, I find myself craving Koogali, a family recipe passed down from Mom's side of the family ... from Lithuania.

My heritage? I think the simplest answer is that my heritage is one of contradictions and obstinance.

Which then reminds me of a line from my second novel: Coyote is a trickster.
I have a certain affinity for this trickster figure. Unfortunately, it comes from the bilagaana's incomplete understanding of the type of trickster that Coyote actually is. He's not just a benign teacher of lessons. There's a darker underside to him ... and apparently these darker stories are not really much shared with the bilagaana.

So my heritage is chosen, incomplete, contradictory and in some cases, just flat out wrong.

But it is certainly unique to me. And despite the fact that I started my quest for a heritage in order to belong, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:36 AM | Comments (4) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

November 1, 2007

Yet Another Rowling Post

So, back on the 22nd of October I listed a few things that I intended to blog about after I recovered from the exhausting trip to Texas. I think I covered most of them, but was reminded that I had not yet discussed J. K. Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore was gay.

First, let me say that this is not going to be some emotional, reactionary piece. In fact, whilst it uses Rowling as an example, it's a post about children's literature ... how we treat kids ... and how we treat people who are different.

The Discussions:
Timing of the announcement.
The series is over. Why announce now that Dumbledore is gay?

The "controversy" of having a gay character in a kids' series. Is Rowling making it up now for attention now that the series is over? Were there signs? Why bring sex into a children's series?

First, why announce it now? Well I would think that the fact that the series is over and done with is certainly a major factor. The mad rush for the Potter books is somewhat over. It is, in one sense, relatively "safe" to make such declarations now. Had this been announced with, say book 3, there would have been much uproar which over-shadowed the excellent story telling and character development. Rowling is a business woman and has been quite canny about protecting her story and characters. Why open herself up to more criticism for something which was, ultimately, a behind-the-scenes bit of plot and characterization?
Dumbledore's love life, ultimately, is a non-issue in the series ... with the exception of the fact that there was a history/connection between Albus and Grindelwald. In other words, it didn't matter to the core of the series what ANY of the teachers' sexuality was. It is, after all, a children's series and about the children who grow up during the series.

Which leads me to two: why include this at all, were there clues, why bring sex into a children's series?

Rowling NEVER brought sex into the series.
EVER
Let's just get that out of the way. To those reactionaries who claim that to announce Dumbledore is gay is to bring SEX into a child's series, I say, bullshit. I know there are those who claim that if a person says "I'm gay" or they say "That person is gay," that they have brought sex ... or "who they sleep with" ... into the public arena. HomoSEXuality. Why broadcast it for all to know?

What Rowling did was simply to honestly answer a child's question: Did Dumbledore every find his true love? The adult answer is: not really. He fell completely enarmoured of the young Grindelwald. No one who has read the books would deny that there was a definite connection between the two young men.

From an adult perspective of the text, I think it's easy to see what happened. They fell madly in love. Infatuated with each other. Perhaps over their intellectual ideas as Aberforth certainly believed. But it became clear that through the course of their interactions, a very deep connection was made. One in which Albus was not thinking normally. He was blinded. When his eyes cleared and he could see ... well, obviously his first "big" love had not gone well.

Dumbledore states that he knew he should never have power. That he became too easily engulfed in power and therefore he could not be trusted with it. When I first read the Deadly Hallows book, I took this at face value. When Rowling said, Dumbledore is gay ... it fell into place. He knew he could not be trusted to have power, true. But he also feared something else. He feared that his falling in love caused him to be too easily influenced to do things he shouldn't. That to keep and enjoy that love, he would lose a piece of himself. Despite his telling Harry over and over and over that love was the answer, Albus always meant philia, the love between friends, rather than a romantic eros love. (I don't think he discouraged eros, just that he focused on philia or agape.) One of the great tensions and complexities of the books, and probably one of the reasons that the child asked about Albus finding his one true love: despite his great love for all people ... he held himself aloof from a great love of one partner.

At least, that's my interpretation of the sum of his life that we get in the books.

Rowling's books do not say that Albus and Grindelwald dated. What possible plot point could that really convey in a series whose books were often called "too long" by adults? We did not hear about Minerva McGonagall's dating life. Nor Professor Sprout's.

We knew that the Weasleys were married. And now I have a question for those people who think that saying "I'm gay" is declaring "who you have sex with." Isn't being married the same announcement? An even more specific declaration? Isn't announcing "I'm not gay" the same thing?

At any rate we see only the burgeoning relationships of the children discussed. And it's all age appropriate stuff. Harry and Ron being confused and scared. The girls' being disgusted with the boys awkward attempts and their painful misunderstandings. Hermione straining to be noticed.

And we see just one adult relationship begin and grow ... and end. We see how isolated and how much of an outcast Lupin is. We see that Tonks is really something of the same. She's young, she has unusual talents, she's clumsy. So even though she is more a part of society than Lupin the Outcast can be, she is still, like many of Rowling's characters, an outsider.

Dumbledore is a power unto himself in the series. He is apart from much of the society, but it is apparently because he is a private man who keeps close counsel. He holds himself apart.

Lupin is an outcast because of something he cannot help. He is not "normal" according to society. He is ill. He is defective. He is Not To Be Trusted.
Lupin is an outsider, a leper, a symbol of all of those who are cast out because of their differentness. He is the AIDS patient, the cancer patient (bald and wan and fading), the racial outcast, the one below the poverty line.

And yet, Lupin and Tonks together, despite being outsider and outcast, are ultimately greater together than they are apart. They accomplish more. Their sum is greater than their parts.

Just as Hermione, Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville and Luna have a sum which is greater than their parts.

And it bears repeating now: Dumbledore is a power unto himself. Why discuss his relationships? They are not a part of the plot.

Why announce that Albus Dumbledore was gay? Because Rowling does not sugar-coat the truth in her books. She came under fire when the series became increasingly dark. Despite the fact that she said repeatedly from the beginning ... this is a story of war and it will be honest. Rowling likely knew from the beginning, or at least fairly early on, about the relationship between Albus and Grindelwald. Her books are too well thought out ... too coherent ... to suddenly spring this revelation after the fact. Besides, the clues are in the final book at the very least.

A child asked, Did Dumbledore ever find his true love?
A lesser writer would have said, no, he never did. Or perhaps, yes, he did, but it went badly and so he decided to always be alone.

But Rowling has some fervent beliefs. One is that people should be accepted for who they are ... and their differences should be looked upon as good things. Neville could so easily have been dismissed as a buffoon. She didn't let that happen. Draco could have easily been dismissed as "the bad kid" ... but things got more complicated than that. She did not want one-dimensional cardboard children, which leads to her second fervent belief: children are not stupid.

Given those two beliefs, how else could she answer that question, knowing the truth of that character? It was time to acknowledge the "missing piece" of the Albus/Grindelwald subplot. And, it might also have helped to explain Aberforth's turmoil with his brother as well.

To those gay rights activists who have lost their freaking brains and have been raving that "Rowling didn't do enough" ... that "Lupin was really the gay character and she caved and made him marry a girl" ... to those people I say: STFU.

Rowling had a story to tell. An important one. There were LOTS of little side paths.

But there was no place in the storyline for which sex Dumbledore preferred. There was a place for his story with Grindelwald ... but there was no place for their bedroom life, whatever that may have been. This is a children's series. The plot does not call for saying Albus slept over on many occasions and shyly stuttered or lost his voice when around Grindelwald. Why add a subplot which serves no purpose? Rowling is not Stephen King ... and the Harry Potter books are not It. (sidenote: that's one of my favourite books of all time ... I'm not knocking it ... just acknowledging differences)

There was no place in the storyline for the bedroom life of Arthur and Molly. Or for Lupin and Tonks. The difference is that we know it did exist because there was the issue of that activity.

I am sure there are some gay rights activists who might even scream, "Rowling is homophobic" because the relationship between Albus and Grindelwald turned into this Hitler-esque nightmare of ethnic cleansing.

Again, I say pish and tosh. Being straight did not make the Dursleys good people. And, honestly, we don't know that Albus never loved again ... only that he did not seem to ever settle down with a "one great love." And that answer does not belong in a children's series, so of course, it's not in the books.

Were the plot hints there? I think they were. And I think there were all the way through the series, and as age-appropriate and plot-appropriate as they could be in the final book.

And, ultimately, what does all of this mean? That Dumbledore was gay?
Not a darn thing ... except that it furthers Rowling's agenda of tolerance and celebration of differences.

I thought about simply naming this post YARP for Rowling's honesty in answering this child's question.
To paraphrase Whitman, "I sound a mighty, barbaric YAWP"
Well, YARP is darn close, anyway.

Rowling sounded a call to children and adults alike. That good can triumph over evil; that not every "bad guy" is clear cut (look at Draco); that differences among people can lead to a stronger group; that difference is not bad; that love for each other, that listening honestly to each other are good things.

That even our heroes are flawed ... Albus, the great man that he was ... sometimes didn't listen. How often did he tell Harry all the mistakes he had made? The stupid things that he had done? That he was human and only doing the best that he could, the same as Harry. The fact that Harry is heterosexual and Albus homosexual did not matter to the series.

I applaud Rowling for her honesty in the books. For her knowing what details to put in a children's series and what was not important. For saying what needed to be said, despite knowing that she would once again rile people up.

Who cares that Dumbledore was gay? I don't. Instead, it makes me sad that he never truly found a one, great love with whom he could share his life, that he was so traumatized and even frightened with what had transpired the first time, that he could not allow himself to risk it again.

Bravo, once again, to J. K. Rowling for honesty and a storytelling skill that surpasses most adult fiction published today. For knowing what to say, how much to say ... and when to say it.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:28 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 31, 2007

A Halloween Ghost Story

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

This is the third in the series, "Haunted" being the first. And "The Haunted House" being the second.
And the third being The Graveyard (and there's a second part to that one ... you'll see the link to it at the top of the post).

Enjoy!

And now for your Halloween ghost story ....

In the Haunted story, I talked about a ghost that haunted the sub shop I worked in during college. As John and I discussed the possibility of a ghost running the juke box and occasionally making things fly around, he eventually told me that these things just tended to happen to him. If you're into the paranormal, you might call John a sensitive or a medium. Ghosts just tend to like him.

His first experience with a ghost was at seven.

John went to spend the night at a friend's house. His family lived waaay out in the country at a small gentleman's farm and they had just moved in about a month before. John met Kyle at school and the two fast became inseperable.

The two boys ran around the farm and played for hours and when it was time to come in, they played board games. Including ... well, what Halloween story would be complete without the Ouija board?

At first the boys played with it like most kids play with the Ouija board, making it say things and being silly. Then, for whatever reason, the little plastic piece begins moving on its own. John gave Kyle a look and Kyle snatched his hand off the toy. It was still moving. Half-convinced that John was just messing with him, Kyle began asking questions.

"Who are you?"

The board spelled out J - O - N.

Kyle laughed. "You can't even spell your own name right."

"I didn't do it," John told him.

Kyle laughed and put his hand back on the toy. "Right, John, right." He looked back at the Ouija board. "Where are you?"

R-I-G-H-T H-E-R-E

"No, I mean where do you live?"

H-E-R-E

M-Y B-R-O-T-H-E-R I-S S-C-A-R-E-D

"Why?"

D-A-D

"This is dumb, John, make it say something good."

"I told you, I'm not doing anything."

"I wanna talk to something good and scary."

"I don't wanna play this anymore, Kyle. I don't like it." John took his hand off the plastic toy.

With both boys' hands off the toy, it began flying across the board.

"What's doing that?"

I A-M J-A-M-E-S
Y-O-U A-R-E B-A-D

"Kyle? Make it stop. How are you doing that?"

Y-O-U-V-E G-O-T T-O B-E

John picked up the board and tossed it across the room. Kyle was white as a ghost.

At seven, of course, they did what any sane seven-year-olds would do -- they ran out to the living room for Kyle's mom.

Of course, Kyle's mom figured the boys had been telling scary stories and had just frightened each other. She gave them a snack and sent them back to Kyle's room and told them to go to sleep and not tell anymore scary stories.

After kicking the game under one of the beds, the boys wrestled and played until Kyle's dad came in and told them to knock it off and go to bed. So they did.

A few hours later, Kyle's mom woke up to all sorts of noise coming from Kyle's room. Convinced the boys were playing, she opened the door only to find everything in Kyle's room flying around in a circle. His clothes, his toys, everything. Completely unable to believe what she was seeing, she was convinced that she was merely dreaming and walked back to bed.

The next morning, Kyle's dad went out to the barn to muck out the horses' stalls and finally stormed back into the house. "Were those boys out in the barn yesterday?" he asked his wife.

"Of course, they were playing out in the loose hay."

"I have told Kyle a million times that pitchfork is not a toy." And his dad stormed off for the boys' room.

Every toy and piece of clothing Kyle owned was scattered around the room.

"KYLE!"

Neither boy moved. His dad, completely disgusted, turned around, surveying the "damage" of Kyle's playtime the night before. The door to Kyle's closet was open, the light was on and there was nothing in the closet. Every piece of clothing, every toy, jigsaw puzzle, everything was in the middle of Kyle's room.

Except the pitchfork, leaning against the back wall of the closet.

Kyle's dad snapped. He'd had it with his irresponsible son who just didn't seem to understand that the farm tools were not toys. This was the first time he'd found one of the tools in the house, but not the first time that Kyle had wandered off with one hand tool or another. Furious, he grabbed the pitchfork from the closet and began hollering at his son.

The two boys woke up to Kyle's furious father screaming and coming toward them, pitchfork in hand.

His mom walked into the room and screamed - partly at the total mess in the room (and remembering her "dream" of the night before) and partly at the sight of her husband wielding the pitchfork at the boys. Surely it was just to emphasize his anger, but still ....

Kyle's parents left the room and calmed down, got rid of the pitchfork and then came back in to talk to the now terrified young boys. They explained that the boys shouldn't have trashed the bedroom or taken the pitchfork into the house -- shouldn't have played with the pitchfork at all.

Of course, they both protested and insisted they had done no such thing. And of course, Kyle's parents assumed the boys were lying. His mom was somewhat disturbed by the odd dream she'd had the night before, but it had to have been a dream.

So, the boys' first sleepover was a bit of a disaster and John was in trouble again when he got home for not behaving properly as a guest.

But, a few weeks later, John's parents called and asked to come over with Kyle. Not sure what was going on, but responding to the tense voice of Kyle's mother, they agreed.

They sat around the kitchen table ... both sets of parents and both boys.

"I know this is going to sound strange, but I need to ask John a very serious question," Kyle's mom started. "What happened when you and Kyle were playing with the Ouija board?"

John blinked a few times and then told them. "At first me and Kyle were just making it move around and being silly. But then it started to move on its own."

"John!" his mother was shocked at this bald-faced lie.

"Vivian, wait, please. John, what did it say?"

He told them that it said its name was Jon, it lived "here" and that his brother was scared. Kyle's parents blanched.

"I told you!" Kyle said. "I told you!"

"Then what happened, John?"

"Well, Kyle thought I was doing it and he thought I was being stupid so he said he umm, that he wanted something scary."

"And then? This is really important, John. What did the board say next?"

"This is ridiculous," John's father said. "What are you getting at? The boys were playing silly games and they acted up."

"It's more than that. We've done a little research." Kyle's dad turned back to John. "What did the board say next?"

"It said we were bad. And it was gonna do something, but we stopped playing."

"Anything else?"

John thought for a moment. "James. It said its name was James."

Kyle's mother blanched.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Boys, you go on up to John's room and play," Kyle's father said.

The boys, of course, scurried around the corner and eavesdropped on the adults.

As it turned out, John and Kyle discovered that about 20-30 years before, James and Madeline Winchester and their two sons, Kyle and Jonathon had lived in the farmhouse. Not more than a few months after moving in, however, James had completely lost his mind and murdered the two boys in their bed with his pitchfork.

After the third time the pitchfork found its way into Kyle's closet, his mother couldn't stop thinking about the "dream" that she'd had when John had stayed over and began asking around the town about the house. The local librarian helped her research the house and discovered the story of the Wincehester family.

Of course, John's parents took far more convincing than the boys did, but as it turns out, Kyle's folks just wanted to confirm with John what Kyle had already told them. The final straw for John's parents was the news that they had already talked to the local priest and scheduled a cleansing of the house which was to be followed up by something resembling an exorcism for the house itself.

At the very least, John's parents realized that Kyle's folks were taking this seriously. They went on to explain what Kyle's mother had seen that night and other things that the boys had not yet heard.

Of course, John's parents didn't want John spending any more time at Kyle's house ... and he was fine with that. He'd had the crap scared out of him waking up to Kyle's father and the pitchfork. Particularly when Kyle told him why his parents had begun researching the house. Kyle was now terrified to go to sleep in the house, and had, in fact, been sleeping with his mother in a motel for the past week.

His father had been caught sleepwalking several times, each time found either in Kyle's room or on his way down the hall to Kyle's room, pitchfork in hand.

A few weeks later, the "exorcism" of the house was ... well, not particularly successful. The priest insisted that the entire family needed to be present at the home. Kyle refused to tell John what had happened, but the family moved into a motel immediately thereafter and quickly moved to another town. John never saw him again.

And, of course, in the true tradition of all haunted houses like that, no one ever bought the farmhouse. By the time John left home and moved away to college, he said the farmhouse had begun falling down. The town had talked about having the house bulldozed in an effort to make the property saleable ... but it hadn't happened by the time John left.

Happy Halloween!!

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:58 AM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 26, 2007

The Graveyard, Continued

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

This is the third in the series, "Haunted" being the first. And "The Haunted House" being the second.

Enjoy!

This is a continuation of yesterday's post, The Graveyard.

A few years after my trip out to witch mountain, I'm still kind of fussing at myself for getting worked up enough that I kept imagining hands trying to grab my feet from below ... and not even a cheesy imagining zombies reaching up from their grave -- I kept imagining it from the "clean" area at the front of the cemetery. The area that hadn't yet been used for graves. What a weird little imagination I have.

So, again, near Halloween, I'm talking with some friends and I share the story of going to witch mountain.

Candice goes absolutely as white as possible. I'm talking no blood left in her face at all.

"You went WHERE?"

"Some witch mountain place out near Duncanville. It's way out in the country. It's this funky graveyard."

She just blinks at me and doesn't say anything for a minute, so I continue telling the story that I wrote here yesterday.

"You were damn lucky to get out of there," Candice says.

"What do you mean? It was the middle of the afternoon."

"Promise me you won't ever, ever go out there again."

"What is the deal?"

As it turns out, Candice's folks were highly religious and expected her to be as well. As part of her teenage rebellion stage, she did what every teenager does - went as far opposite her folks as she could think of. She joined up with ... you guessed it, a satanic cult. The very cult that used that graveyard I'd visited.

According to Candice (whose name and details I've changed here for her protection), the things that my classmate had told me about the graveyard were just the tip of the iceberg.

First, the cult did rule the graveyard after five. They'd show up (I didn't ask if they drove and made the cops let them in) at the graveyard, practice some random vandalism and then ...

... then they'd crawl into their tunnel system for the real rituals.

Evidently the most recently dug up grave was always the entrance to their tunnel system.

And, evidently, that weird thought I kept getting about having a hand reach up for me was not so weird after all. Or, depending on your point of view, it was even weirder than it had been before. The tunnel system honeycombed that whole front area.

Then Candice tells all the stuff this group was into.

Now, here's the deal before I go any further. It is a known fact that there are satanic cult groups all over the U.S. (and other countries, to be honest). Many of these groups are completely harmless and only "play" at being evil. That is, they get together and read the Satanic Bible and hold their masses that are a perversion of the Catholic mass and that's all there is to them. Other than offending a lot of people, they don't really do any harm.

Then you have groups of teenagers who get together and do things they think that satanists would do and at the same time, try to scare the crap out of each other. This often involves heavy drinking or sometimes drugs. These groups are mostly harmless.

Then there are groups that take things a step further. They look up old books, they attempt to follow old patterns from mostly forgotten ancient cults. They generally find at least a few victims to terrorize. They may go as far as to sacrifice animals. (Some Santeria practitioners, for example, will do this to chickens and perhaps goats.) Those groups can get more than a little frightening just on a personal safety level.

Then there are groups who do worse things.

The group Candice had been involved in was one of those.

Now, again, there are two types of these nasty groups. One type simply stages scenes. They'll go to elaborate lengths to make new initiates believe that they have supernatural powers -- perhaps by breaking a thick marble gravestone into pieces. There are also groups that appear to actually be able to do things they shouldn't be able to do. The problem is, most of the time you can't tell the difference between these two groups. They're both dangerous.

I can't tell you if Candice's group was one that was simply staging events or if some of the folks involved could really do some things they shouldn't be able to do. I wasn't there and no one was running scientific equipment to try to verify any of the events. So, you'll have to make up your own mind.

Evidently this group had built a series of tunnels under the "blank" part of the graveyard up near the gate. The tunnels were actually a maze. Some of the tunnels led to deadfall traps. Others took a funny turn and dumped you out on the dropoff -- and if you weren't careful, you'd end up in the river below pretty easily.

Some members of the group stayed in the tunnels during the day. They were supposed to guard the ... well, for lack of a better word ... the secret hideout from anyone not in the group as well as from the newer members who might be trying to discover secrets they shouldn't.

Candice told of bonfires in the fields (and I accidentally typo'd that as bonefires which is a much scarier image). She told me about the time one of the head guys in the group slaughtered a German Shepherd as part of some insane ritual.

She also told me that I was damn lucky, broad daylight or not, to have made it out of there without any confrontation at all. Evidently they'd leave a large group of people alone during the day, but groups of two were fair game to attack ... either a mundane fight or scare or actually try to drag you down into the tunnels.

She claimed they'd killed more than one person.

Now that's a lot of hearsay. I don't know how much of it was true, but I do know that Candice was honestly scared out of her gourd. She stopped a couple of times and had to mutter to herself that they wouldn't hurt her now. That they couldn't know if she revealed some of their secrets.

The fact that I announced I wanted to go back there to check all of this out terrified her beyond words.

Then she told me about some of the supernatural things she'd seen: simple levitations, curses, the standard scary stuff.

But then, stumbling and almost stuttering her husband told us about finding a severed goat's head in the middle of the living room, floating. Obviously still shaken, he told of how Candice had freaked when they came home and discovered it. Oh, sure, he freaked too. No one likes to see a floating goat head in their living room.

Candice said it was a sign that they had found her and had not forgotten her. It was a sign that they were coming for her. She was practically hysterical. The head fell to the floor and her husband called the police. The police recognized it for a cult calling card and said they'd keep an eye out. No one mentioned the floating part, though. Who would believe that?

In fact, over the years, they've called her repeatedly, left other pleasant calling cards. She did finally escape them ... but it took moving to Saudi Arabia for a few years before the group finally quit contacting her.

I never did get back out to that graveyard. I still want to.

And I'm curious now. Duncanville was starting to really build up in that area. Candice told me when she first joined that cult, you couldn't see anything but trees or prairie grass anywhere around. But when I saw the place, there were some condos within sight of the graveyard and signs out along the road claiming that more would be coming soon. Not that they'd even broken ground yet, but still .... If this group was really such bad news, how would they react to a residential development? Would they wreak so much havoc the developers abandon their plans? Or would they be forced to leave their secret hidey-tunnels and find a new graveyard in a more isolated area?

I don't know. But I'm still awfully curious about it.

And I never did actually promise Candice that I wouldn't go back.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:01 AM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 25, 2007

The Graveyard, Part One

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

This is the third in the series, "Haunted" being the first. And "The Haunted House" being the second.

Enjoy!

Here's one of the spooky, but slightly less ghost-infested stories.

My first year in college, I was going to my voice and diction class (I started out as a drama major, go figure) and talking to one of the kids in my class. It was probably about this time of year, weather barely turning cool -- it's Texas, remember -- and she tells me about this place near where she grew up -- maybe half an hour or so away from school. The kids called it witch mountain or ghost mountain or something. She told me that it was this awesome old, old graveyard out in Duncanville. It's one of those perfect old graveyards, way out in the country, trees all around.

And, she says, she doesn't know about haunted, but the satanists "own" this graveyard.

My interest is now beyond piqued. "Let's go out there after class," I enthuse. She's a little less sure about that, but I finally talk her into it.

As we're driving out there, she tells me that there's only one road that goes up to witch mountain. And there's a gate on that road. And every evening, there's two cops in a patrol car stationed at the gate. They'll open up the gate if you absolutely insist on going up there, she says, but they also warn you that if you break down even ten feet inside that gated area, they won't go in there to help you. No one goes in there after dark unless they're part of it or stupid.

Now, personally, I wondered why the cops didn't just start taking everyone who wanted up there after dusk in for questioning on the vandalism at the graveyard, but whatever.

She tells me about all sorts of horror stories about this graveyard. Mostly the standard types of scary stories -- these satan worshippers kill people there, hold all sorts of scary rituals. They're so bad even the cops are scared of them.

So, when we get into Duncanville and out into the hinterlands, sure enough, I see the gates open on the side of this road. They're the basic kinda triangular metal tube gates that often block off parking lots at universities and high schools. Stephanie (the girl from my class) is now visibly nervous. It's maybe noon on a Thursday and she's actually already scared to be driving up to this cemetery.

We get to the cemetery and park just across the little street. There's an open field on the side of the street where we park, all blowing prairie grass. The cemetery is bounded by trees on two sides. The other two sides, near the road (the road makes a right turn here), are bounded by an old-fashioned wrought iron fence. There's a great big wrought iron archway and gate at the entrance to the graveyard and a large expanse of grass in the front before you get to the modern graves. There's maybe four or five rows of modern graves before we start getting into folks who died in the 40s, 30s, 20s and a whole bunch from the 1800s. The cemetery is maybe about 75 yards long and about half that wide. As we walk closer to the entrance I can see why they didn't even bother to bound the north end and the east end with a fence. There's a dropoff there. A little kid might say there's a cliff on those two sides, but really, it's not quite high enough or steep enough to truly be called a cliff. Nonetheless, I can't imagine too many people would want to make that climb.

The leaves had already fallen on many of the trees, leaving some at the top level looking dead and barren -- while some whose roots were deeper and a little further down the incline still with a full "head" of green "hair."

The weirdest thing that I noticed as we approached the front gate is that some of the trees appeared to be wearing decorations. I couldn't quite see what they were but it wasn't some kid's lost kite.

The gate to the cemetery was open and I noticed a set of heavy chains and a really heavy duty lock that was used to lock the place up. All shiny new, they really stood out against the black matte and rust of the wrought iron fencing. There was a sign just outside the cemetery listing the hours it was open. It closed at five p.m. Now that seemed really weird to me. Why would you close a cemetery that early? Most of the ones I knew of were open until at least nine or ten p.m.

We walked in across the "front yard" of the cemetery -- all that blank expanse of grass just waiting to be filled with more graves. We walked quickly past the modern graves, but I admit, I got creeped out almost immediately. In addition to the multiple modern gravestones that had been broken, there was a grave that had been dug up.

Now this was not a freshly dug grave. This was not something where the coffin had just been buried. No, there were bits of flower arrangements, bits of plastic wreath frames, and a vase or two sticking out of the dirt. Also, a freshly dug grave doesn't generally stand about three feet higher than the ground level.

And there's generally not a hole big enough for a human to actually disappear into left there.

Despite my very overactive curiosity, I was seriously creeped out by that grave. I walked quickly past it after a very cursory look and went on to look at the old graves instead.

On the way to the back of the graveyard, I could see where someone had tossed plastic wreaths out into the trees, leaving them trapped there. I'd thought it was some kind of weird frisbee before.

I was fascinated by the old graves and appalled by the vandalism. But I'd really seen nothing that said satanists used this place.

Except for the dug up grave.

Oh and the really weird thing ... you know that wind whistling through the trees that you hear in horror movies? I always assumed that this was some goofy sound that Hollywood had made up and was just a stupid contrivance to signal that something scary was going to hapen.

I heard it repeatedly that day. Now if that's not enough to get an overactive imagination running wild.

Well, as we were leaving, I got seriously creeped out going across that expanse of lawn. I kept imagining someone reaching up through the ground and grabbing my feet.

Silliness right?

Tomorrow I'll tell you want happened a couple of years later, as I was telling one of my friends about my trip to witch mountain.

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:56 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble