October 18, 2007

The Haunted House

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 second in the series, "Haunted" being the first.

Enjoy!

Since I was a tiny, little thing, I've been determined to meet a ghost. Well, actually, I misspoke: I wanted to see a ghost. That still hasn't happened, but I have met a few.

As a kid, I did not understand AT ALL, how people could be afraid of ghosts. What's the big deal, I thought way back then. They're not physical beings, so they can't possibly hurt you.

I was misinformed.

Okay, I would STILL love to see a ghost. But I don't ever ever ever ever want to live in the same house as one any more.

1144 E. Corby Blvd. is a haunted house.

I lived there from 1994 until 2001. And at first, I didn't notice anything at all odd about the place, other than the fact that South Bend has some of the tiniest homes with the most oddly teeny-tiny little rooms that I've ever seen.

Between my various roommates and I during this time, we had anywhere from four to six cats in the house. Cats notice odd things, right?

It was ultimately the way the cats would act when one of us was already noticing something odd that finally let us start talking about the possibility of ghosts. I mean, no one actually ever saw anything odd happen. But you would be sitting alone in the house and you could hear people talking. Get up, look out the windows, nope, no one was near the house. Stand in the doorway to the basement -- bingo! The conversation stopped. Hmm.

The corner of the living room where I sat when I heard those conversations was the one corner every cat who ever entered the house would try very hard to avoid. Double-hmm.

Again, sitting upstairs, I would hear a kid giggling. Now, as I've said before, I collect old Fisher Price Little People. And at the time, I had a bookcase in the far corner of the basement which was filled with all the old playsets: Sesame Street, the old garage, the children's hospital, a couple of houses and so on. Well, I would hear a kid giggling and that distictive clink/thunk of a little Fisher Price car rolling off the bookshelf and hitting the astroturf floor. (I don't know, this house was the landlord's "party house" back in his college days. I guess astroturf is easy to clean up after wild parties.)

I'd look around upstairs. Every one of the cats was up here with me. Go down to the basement: sure enough, some of the pieces had been moved around and there was a car on the floor.

Well, okay, so what. The floor's not perfectly level down here and, as it turns out, we live close to a fault line which occasionally rumbles a little bit. Just a little fault line, the North/South continental divide. (Who would believe there's a fault line that close to Notre Dame? I keep waiting for the earth to just up and swallow that place!) Anyhow, things fall over. But what's with the giggling?

If this had been all there was to it, I would have totally ignored it. Maybe a ghostie, but probably just the house settling and those little earth rumbles. (But what about that giggle?)

But there was also a really nasty, nasty bad ghost living in that house. Got the distinct impression it was a 'he,' but who knows.

If you heard a serious thud from the basement, you could freaking feel the bad ghost at the same time. It was one of the creepiest times of my whole life. And the weirdest thing was that I would go downstairs and look through the whole basement -- and I couldn't find anything that had been knocked over. But the whole time I was downstairs, I could just feel that malevolence issuing from the basement. Feeling a bit stupid, I'd just head back upstairs (a little hurriedly, of course!). Again, the cats were NEVER in the basement when this would happen and they'd stay out of the basement for quite a while after.

But the worst of it, even worse than just the weird feeling -- wait. You know when you watch a really scary movie late at night, alone and you get that feeling that the serial killer is just on the other side of the door? or waiting in the next room? And you know you're being silly and stupid and it's just because of the movie that you feel all paranoid, but you can still feel it?

Well try getting that feeling at random times while walking around your family room (the basement) for no apparent reason at all. It's even creepier when you can't blame it on a scary movie. And it's even creepier when there's this bit of personality attached to the feeling. It felt male. It hated any nudity at all. (Occasionally you could feel him in other areas of the house, too.)

So anyhow, even worse than the weird feelings were the nightmares that everyone who stayed more than a couple of nights had. You know how in most dreams you have dream logic? You know it's your house, for instance, but in real life you've never lived anywhere even remotely like that?

These dreams weren't like that.

These dreams always took place in that house and if you were really lucky, you could make yourself wake up before the obvious conclusions happened.

Some examples:
I would walk into a room in the house and reach for the lightswitch. Nothing. Horror movie feeling. Overwhelming fear. Lights across the house go off. I've got to go down to the basement and mess with the circuit box. Flip at the basement stairs lightswitch, just in case I'm lucky.

I'm not.

Flashlight on, I head back into that corner of the basement where he lives. If I'm lucky, I wake up now. If I'm not, I go back into the room that used to be the landlord's darkroom. Just a flashlight. The feeling is becoming unbearable. I know he's there, in the back-most part of the basement, by the furnace, water heater, crappy toolbench and the circuit box. Under the stairs. I know he's there.

On occasion the dream goes far enough that I turn and see him briefly with the hunting knife. But I always wake up before he can strike.

The feeling lasts for a couple of days -- not just a few hours like with most nightmares. And no one after having one of those, will actually go into that back part of the basement -- especially not when one of the breakers trip. And they trip all the time in that house. I'm not saying the ghost actually tripped the breakers, but going back to the circuit box usually involved figuring out who had had the nightmares last.

The worst nightmare that I had involved me waking up in the morning and walking out of the bedroom. The house was not air conditioned, so I'd put a little window unit in the bedroom because I canNOT sleep if I get too hot. So the bedroom door was always closed during the summertime to keep that cool air in.

So in this nightmare, I walk out of the bedroom and into the living room. And into one of the worst things I've ever seen in dream, reality or movie.

Not so graphic version: my cats had been killed. Stop reading now if you're the squeamish type. Skip down until you see
*****HEY IT'S OKAY NOW*****

*

Seriously, you don't want to read this if you're easily grossed out.

*

Okay, I double-warned you. I walk out into the living room and each of the four cats I had at the time has been mutilated. Each one has a frickin' railroad spike through the chest/tummy area and is nailed to a wall. One cat to one wall. There's writing on the wall, using of course, the cats' blood. I don't remember what it said, I'm not sure I even remembered once I woke up for real. They were further bloodied, but I won't go into it.

*

*****HEY IT'S OKAY NOW*****

And we all knew that those weird nightmares that took place in that house were related to that ghost. I've never had any nightmares similar to that since.

But the last coincidence that really just confirmed things was when one of my roomates had a friend over. We were sitting on the living room floor when this friend suddenly got a weird, weird look on her face.

"Is there a ghost in this house?"

I shrugged. "I think so. There's a kid who plays with the toys down there. I can hear him giggling sometimes."

She shook her head. "No, there's some--" She shivered and paled a bit.

Now, look. I think this lady's a bit of a flake most of the time, but this was really freaky. She was sitting in that spot where the cats wouldn't go -- above the spot in the basement that I thought of as the ghost's. And it was obvious from her reaction that she wasn't doing this just for her "rep" or for attention. You don't turn that color for fun. And I never saw her do anything like it ever again. (Of course, she didn't set foot in that house again, either.)

"What's the matter?

"There's something wrong in your basement."

My roommate shot me a look. I nodded. The bad ghost had been very active lately.

"There's a bad ghost down there, too."

About six months and two roommates later (I'm a little more stubborn), I finally had a roommate who was himself so scary that the bad ghost quieted (or left, I was never sure which).

How did Justin get the ghost to leave? He played techno-goth every night. He watched more horror movies than any human on the face of planet. And anime. The really, really violent anime.

I don't know if he scared the scary ghost or if he just satiated the ghost's need for violence.

And that's the story of the bad ghost. And that's why I no longer think that ghosts are harmless. I don't think they could physically hurt me ... but that one taught me they can make you hurt yourself just from the paranoia you start to get!

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:54 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 11, 2007

Haunted

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.

Enjoy!

My cousin used to tell me terrifying ghost tales. I loved watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In second or third grade, I checked out every book in the public library on ghost stories and hauntings.

I'm not some wishy-washy, new-age, granola-eating hippy who thinks ghosts are real.

But I do think ghosts are real even though I've never seen one.

I have been around a few ... as the meme the other day reminded me.

In college I worked for a sub shop in Texas -- Gino's Subs, a properly New York-Italian sub shop. The shop out at the mall was in an outlying building rather than the mall proper, right next door to the movie theatre. I don't know a whole lot about the building's history, but I know it was haunted.

The first few run-ins with the ghost were just odd little things. I couldn't quite explain the things that happened, but I was prepared to think it could have just been a fluke. During a really busy lunch one day, I saw the soda fountain do something bizarre. There's a sticker where you can label what pop should come out of that spigot and over the sticker is a piece of clear plastic to help keep that sticker legible longer. The clear plastic piece over the Sprite suddenly shot off the machine and landed about ten feet away. Not too odd, there's got to be some pressure on the plastic to get it to pop into place. But that pressure should have made it pop forward more than it did. It was more like it moved out about an inch forward and then moved ten feet sideways, not diagonal. Weird, but these things happen.

Another lunch rush the lid to the toothpick dispenser shoots straight up in the air, nearly hits the ceiling and then lands on the counter. Lined up perfectly with the toothpick dispenser. And somehow, tucked neatly under the little "arms" that hold the dispensed toothpick.

Okay that was really freaky, but still, could have just been a fluke.

What sealed it was the night that John and I were working the shop alone. We'd closed the store at 11 p.m. as usual and were working on cleaning up. I went over to the old Wurlitzer juke box and perused the 45s (yeah, this was the late 80s). I popped in a quarter and picked "Mandolin Rain" and "Our House." John calls from behind the counter, "What'd you pick?"

I tell him and he likes "Our House," but violently hates "Mandolin Rain."

"Our House" plays first. Cool. John has me call out the name of every song on the machine so he can pick some out. "Ooooh, I love 'West End Boys.'"

The next song to play? "West End Boys."

Hmmm. Maybe the jukebox shares John's taste in music. Maybe it's not wired right. Whatever.

A third song plays. Huh? Two songs for a quarter ... and a bonus song. Okay, the jukebox is a bit eccentric. Must be the wiring.

But the third song is some old fifties tune. I think it's Elvis, but I can't read the label on the spinning 45. John pops his head out "What song is that?"

"I have no idea."

"But you picked it."

"I didn't pick it. I think it's Elvis." Whatever it is, it's a sappy 50s love song and we're both glad when it's over.

The radio still doesn't come back on as we're treated to an encore performance of "West End Boys."

Very odd, but we figure the wiring on this juke is just old and goofy. I leave a note for the manager to tell her the jukebox guy ought to take a look at the thing.

Over the course of the next few weeks, any time John and I are working alone together, we're treated to "West End Boys" a couple of times a night. After the store has closed. Never when there's customers and we can safely assume that someone is messing with us. And when we close at night, I usually do the front -- near the juke -- and John does behind the counter. There's no way he can be doing it or I'd see him near the juke.

When the jukebox man finally comes in, I happen to be there. "Hey, make sure to take that Elvis record out of there, okay?"

"I don't think there's one in here." He runs through his list. "No, there's no Elvis in here."

"Yeah there is, I saw the thing." And I run through the whole story for him. He literally takes every single 45 out of the juke box. I watch him.

No Elvis 45 is in there. No funky 50s 45 is in there.

In fact, there's no 45 in there with the funky color of blue that I saw that night. You know, that old funky blue with the silver writing that used to be on a lot of records from the 50s and 60s. Nothing like that is in the machine.

WEIRD.

But the really weird thing doesn't happen until John quits. I mean, come on, it's a sub shop and college kids can do better, even in 1989, than $3.85 an hour.

So, I'm closing the store one night with a new kid. She's cleaning out front and I'm cleaning behind the counter. She's barely started sweeping the floor and hasn't made it anywhere near the juke box yet. John's been gone for about a week.

"West End Boys" starts up.

The new kid's head pops up. "When'd you put money in the juke box?"

"I didn't." I don't bother to explain at first. I mean, it sounds crazy to say that a ghost just likes that song. Actually, John and I had a running joke that the ghost had a crush on John and that's why it played the Elvis love song and John's favorite song.

"West End Boys" plays again. And now, I get this weird feeling of query and sadness. I don't know how else to explain it other than I could feel the question in the air. Umm, I'm kinda thinking that the ghost really did have a crush on John.

The song begins a third time. A fourth time.

Finally, the new kid is kinda freaking out. Especially when I explain the whole ghost thing.

When the song starts for the fifth time, and that sense of question and sadness has just gotten more and more intense with every iteration of the song, I finally say out loud, "I'm sorry. John doesn't work here anymore. He quit. I'm sorry."

This time the radio comes on after the 45 finishes.

I never saw the ghost, but me, John and the new kid knew it was there. The manager of the store knew about it, too.

I always felt sorry for that ghost. It was so obvious that it liked John and it was terribly sad when he left.

But that was a nice ghost. Later I'll tell you about the one I lived with who was definitely NOT a nice ghost.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:52 PM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

August 21, 2007

Recovered Memory

When I was at the Shedd Aquarium a few summers ago, I was entranced with the seahorses. I've always loved them, but I know a lot of fish enthusiasts who just despise the things. For a long, long time, I had a dried seahorse that was one of my special kid-possessions. I don't know when I finally lost it or got rid of it, but I remember still having it as a teenager - it probably went in the great purge of summer '84.

And then, while looking at the photos from the Shedd, I suddenly remembered back to when I was two or three - Dad had an aquarium with a seahorse in it. I could clearly remember sitting, utterly spellbound. There are no lights on in the house except the almost blue glow of the aquarium light. My mom is sound asleep in my parents' room (dad's at work) and I'm watching the seahorse bob in and out of the plants in the aquarium. Three of the sides are just covered in plants, but the center of the aquarium's front is open. More plants sparsely spot the middle of the aquarium and I'm sitting on my knees, the nasty 70s shag carpeting leaving red imprints in my kneecaps, watching as he bobs around. I could stay there all day.

When Mom finally wakes up, she shuffles into the den with her lit cigarette and startles when she sees me. "What are you doing in here in the dark?"

I don't answer. It's between me and my seahorse.

I don't remember when the seahorse died -- I assume the dried one I had was probably that same one from Dad's aquarium. The aquarium was probably emptied when we moved. I didn't see it come out again until Dad decided to put it in my room and fill it with minnows so he could go fishing and always have live bait.

Funny. I haven't thought about that in ages and ages, even though I've always said that I liked seahorses. I didn't remember that right after seeing the seahorses at the Shedd. Took a few days and it suddenly just popped into my head, kind of out of nowhere. But now, it's so clear. I can't remember much of anything about the house, the room that we were in ... just the aquarium and "my" seahorse.

Weird how that works.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:32 AM | Comments (4) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

July 23, 2007

Ghost

My mother discovered very early on that I was perfectly content to keep my own company. Apparently as an infant and early toddler, I would wake up in the morning and play by myself in my crib until Mom could wake up at her own pace and be ready to face her day. Of course, by the time I was seriously toddling, Mom figured out VERY quickly that a quiet Red Monkey was not necessarily the good thing she'd once thought it was.

There was the day that I grabbed my little blue chair and dragged it to the baby gate, unlatched the gate and then grabbed the ... of all things! ... Vaseline. Apparently I remembered to lock the baby gate behind me when I went back to my room. Mom only figured out that I'd escaped (again) because I left my little blue chair there next to the gate. Well, that and the Vaseline on every available surface that I could climb. (And I enjoyed climbing.)

My imagination was a machine in overdrive. Blue curtains turned my room into the ocean (particularly after watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks). A piece of packaging from Mom's acrylic paints would become a spaceship. A book served multiple purposes (including a passport to somewhere else, once I was old enough to read).

Just before I turned four, however, I got the one companion which became my constant, my conscience and my stability.

I was born in Amarillo, but we moved when I was simply tiny, a babe in arms. My parents moved to Houston. Another apartment in Houston. Then, Dad moved out to Albuquerque on what was to be a temporary trouble-shooting job. Mom did not want to move us again, so she and I stayed in Houston. I turned two. Three. I got my first hit of Fisher Price Little People, and let me tell you, I was hooked. I'd just lost all of my stuffed animals, so these little wooden guys were a delight. I suppose they were a distraction from the fact that Dad was gone. And, like is typical for the age, the Little People family became my family. The blue mom with the intense curls became my mom, even though my mom's hair was a deep auburn-red and not blond ... and certainly never pulled back into a plastic ponytail. The dad became my dad. The little blue girl with blond pigtails became me. At least, I named her with my name.

Finally, deciding that the Albuquerque posting was more permanent than previously thought, we moved there to join Dad. It lasted just another three months. Then, we moved to Oklahoma City, the city of my mother's mother. Was it six months? Nine? Ten? Eventually I began cutting up the plastic plates brought back from the hospital where my mom was "getting" my little sister and creating accessories and homes for my little wooden family.

Then it was Carmel, Indiana. Our first (and thank the gods, the ONLY) foray out of the south. My sister followed in my footsteps and was still a babe in arms when we moved. My little wooden family had friends now ... a yellow and blue house ... an airport ... a houseboat.

We drove down the road, southwards ... and a snow plow driver was moving from car to car. The snow was coming down in near white-out conditions and no one wanted to be out here. Not wanting to wait ... and knowing the traffic wasn't really going anywhere anyhow, Dad went out to see what was up. Came back pale as the snow falling around us. We, and the whole line of cars in front of us and behind us, were driving in the ditch instead of the road. The snow pack could give way at any moment.

We finally arrived back in Texas. In Austin. Imaginative and creative, I still could be maddeningly literal-minded at five. I was ready to start school instantly upon arrival. I'd been asking for years when I could go ... Mom had said after we move. Well, we were moved! I was ready.

But with a November birthday, I was going to have to wait until fall.

That wooden family had tons of friends by now and they all had the most incredible adventures. I rarely used the adults anymore. Just the kids. The adults were nearly always bad guys or at least, people to ditch so we, I mean so the kid wooden people could get on with what they needed to do.

My sister grew old enough to begin to play with me. We took turns picking who got which guys. Choosing up our sides, our teams. I always picked that little green boy, the oddball of my first family. Mom, Dad, me ... and the little green boy, who didn't exist in the real world.

I started school finally. Kindergarten and first grade in Pillow Elementary. Second grade, it was off to Catholic school. I hated it. Back to Pillow for third. Teacher-Parent conference.

Suddenly, we moved again. The first six weeks spent at the beloved Pillow, and then off to the unknown. With those wooden peoples. I was bounced from class to class a bit when I first arrived at the new elementary school, but then things seemed to settle. Fourth grade, fifth ... sixth. Junior high. Halfway through the second of three Jr. High years, I'm moved to the other Jr. High. Then it's high school.

There were several constants in my life. Moving was one of those constants. My mom, dad and sister were others.

The one stable, consistent and positive constant was one which no one but me seemed to know was so important. Over the years, this one bit of dowel and paint had come to mean potential. Had come to mean both hope and happiness. I had endowed him with everything that I wanted to be ... and didn't think that I was. I had created a character who was every bit as real to me as the other members of my family, despite the fact that I did know he was nothing more than a sliver of wood and a large chunk of imagination. He'd been through the bulk of the moves - at least the ones that I could remember.

(Click for the larger picture.)

My ghost ... 35 years later ... he still lives with me ... Chris.

... done with Copics, Pigma Microns and Copic Multiliners.

Entry for the HeartSong contest for July.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:53 AM | Comments (15) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

July 19, 2007

Wooden Iguana

At last ... the last pages are up at Wooden Iguana. If you click the preview image below, you'll be taken to page 30 and you can navigate to page 31 from there. To help keep people from seeing things out of order, the final page will publish on Friday, July 20 (about 3 p.m. or so Eastern time).

Clicking the preview will take you to the current page. On the other hand, clicking this link will take you to the main page where you can start from the beginning should you need to do that.

If you really really can't wait to see the final page ... find the easter egg in this entry and click there for a view of the jpg.

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:16 PM | Comments (0) | Sketches | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

July 10, 2007

Wooden Iguana

Clicking the preview will take you to the current page. On the other hand, clicking this link will take you to the main page where you can start from the beginning should you need to do that.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:05 AM | Comments (0) | Sketches | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble