ON GHOST STORIES, PART IV: MY STORY

 

I was not scared the first time I observed the laws of nature momentarily suspended. It was more an understated feeling of exhilaration, and a delayed sensation at that. The strangeness of it all came later.

Let me back up a moment for those who haven’t been following along. I can’t prove that the events I’m about to describe actually happened and have no intention of trying. This is, as always, just between you and me. It’s one of those situations where you’re going to have to choose one of the following:

A.) Pat is describing something that actually happened.

or

B.) Pat is describing something he believes actually happened, but is simply mistaken.

Of course there is also:

C.) I’ve had enough of Pat’s ghost nonsense and am going to see if there are any new pictures of Kim Kardashian’s ass trending somewhere. (If there are, I’ll join you there shortly. In the meantime, I have to get this off my chest.)

Apologies in advance if you clicked on the link expecting to be scared out of your wits. There are terrifying ghost tales and there are mundane ones; if I could have chosen the Bell Witch to appear before me I would have. No wait, I take that back. Based on what I’ve read, she sounds dreadful.

My friends know that I am someone who wants to believe in stuff. God, ghosts, aliens, Bigfoot, the possibility of a good new Star Wars film– I make no bones about desiring these things to be real. That being said, I never actually observed anything I could honestly classify in my own mind as supernatural until my late twenties. Not that I hadn’t seen some weird stuff. On the contrary– I had one truly unsettling thing happen to me a few years before this story, and I’ll get to it below, but there were too many possible explanations in that case.

So, the year is 2010 or 2011. I am sitting on the couch in my brother and his wife’s apartment in South Boston watching Michael Mann’s great film about the cigarette industry, The Insider. It’s late and they’ve gone to bed. Pizza boxes, Pepsi bottles, plates, glasses, beer cans, and utensils cover the coffee table before me.

Something slams the coffee table. From underneath. I know it’s from underneath because I see the table lift a fraction of an inch off the ground. Utensils rattle, Pepsi bottles topple, an empty beer can rolls off on to the floor. The whole thing’s over in less than one second.

I stare at the table for a solid minute, not moving except to blink. Suddenly I’m on my feet, moving swiftly around the table. Could it have been something heavy that had fallen off? Might something on the ground have simply tumbled over and hit it? No, and in any event I saw the table slammed and lifted upwards, not bumped and moved slightly askew. I circle the table a good three or four times. Eventually I find myself just standing there, staring at it. For how long, I do not recall. Eventually I sit back down. I do not turn off the light.

And that was it. There was some minor strangeness the following day. My brother and I saw some utensil, a dipping spoon or some such thing, pop right off its hook above the sink in his kitchen, then he lost his keys and found them in an unlikely spot behind a row of books on a shelf, but I paid none of it much mind. There’s also a history of my sister-in-law’s family seeing things in the house; figures here and there—again, fun stuff to talk about, but stuff I can’t vouch for. All of it was background noise at the time, anyway. The goddamn jumping table was what chiefly occupied my thoughts that day.

That’s the weird thing about seeing something like that. You’re not frightened as much as you are propelled into a kind of impromptu existential crisis. Sure, I was raised Catholic, believed in ghosts and all the other stuff, but even at my most willing to believe, it was still all in theory. I’d never actually seen the rules broken like that. And in such a mundane, almost nonchalant way! This wasn’t a guy walking on water or parting the Red Sea, nor was it a bunch of demon hands ripping out of the sofa like in Ghostbusters. It was something very small, yet very much not possible. Earlier this year I saw the film Noah, and was really impressed by the scene where the Creator (the movie never refers to the Man Upstairs as anything but the Creator) announces His presence to Noah. A single rain drop falls from the sky, lands on the grass before him, and a tiny flower immediately sprouts. Small, miniscule even, but still very much against the rules. In my case, I didn’t have the benefit (or curse, as it were) of my little moment of impossibility being followed by a booming voice telling me to do this or that. I’m no closer to knowing for certain whether there’s a God or ghosts or any such things out there. All I know is that, for less than one second, I saw the rules break.

This isn’t to say I immediately declared the episode a supernatural experience and was done with it. I made several attempts at rational explanations. None were satisfactory, and all were repeated to me by anyone who later heard the tale. One might wonder why I’d jump from there to the supernatural explanation. I admit I’d have to keep searching for that rational response if I was trying to prove this in a lab or in a court of law. That not being the case, the testimony of my eyes was enough to satisfy the court of my brain.

I imagine there are people who see things like that and just forget about it. It’s the same reason people ignore a strange blotch on their skin or a lump in their breast. Seeing things that aren’t supposed to happen is pretty much the check engine light of the brain, and as someone who’s worked in a mental ward or two, I can vouch for those being the scariest of all afflictions. Although I (and anyone who works with me) can’t completely vouch for my own sanity, my lack of hallucinations in the years since has allowed me some measure of comfort. On the other hand, I can see people putting it out of their mind because of what it might mean if it actually did happen. There’s a reason Alfred Hitchcock once said the scariest image in any horror film is that of a closed door; the rationale being that nothing is more terrifying than what we imagine lurking on the other side of it. That table didn’t just jump on its own. As I said, something slammed into it, something very much like a fist. Barring the possibility of an earthquake localized to the spot directly underneath my brother’s coffee table in Southie occurring, well, it damn well could have been anything.

As for myself, I haven’t put the episode out of my mind (clearly), but jobs, bills, relationships, responsibilities and other demands of everyday life inevitably overshadow that weird thing I saw that time. The enormity of it hits me every so often though, usually in the bathroom. I’ve never been into meditation, and I don’t pray as much as I used to, so I have to admit that’s where my quiet moments of reflection tend to happen these days. When I do think about it, the thought usually starts with, “Holy shit, that happened. That actually happened.”

That other thing I mentioned earlier is something I am less sure happened. In fact, I rather hope it didn’t. Nevertheless, I’ll tell the tale because it shares a thing or two in common with the table story.

So it’s several years earlier, about 2008. I’m still living at home, in the attic, and am working on the horror screenplay that will become my very first Camp Redblood material. This particular script involves a subject this Catholic boy has long been interested in, the demonic. Many reasonable people will tell you that while they don’t believe in such things, they also don’t mess with it. A wise policy to be sure, one I’d be smart to adopt.

In the course of writing this tale, I’ve researched dozens of legends of demons from the Bible and the ancient world. Anyone who’s looked into demonology from a Catholic perspective knows that the identities of these mythological entities are of great significance. The first thing an exorcist demands of an “unclean spirit” according to The Roman Ritual is its name, followed by the date and hour of its departure. As I write my screenplay, I have a sheet of printer paper with half a dozen demon names scribbled on it right beside my computer.

I close down for the night and head to bed. It’s a summer night and the attic is hot. Lacking an air conditioner, I turn on the fan. I lie down and drift to sleep. Some time later I waken. Not all the way, but enough that I open my eyes a little. Somewhere on the dark carpet I spot a small white rectangle, a sheet of paper. Suddenly the paper jerks up, as if someone had flicked the center of it with their finger from beneath. I give the paper a good long look, but the tide of sleep pulls me back in. I wake up the following morning to find the sheet of paper on the floor where I’d seen it. I pick it up and, sure enough, it’s the paper with all those demon names on it. I crumple the paper and hurry downstairs.

Clearly there are plenty of explanations on this one. I was asleep. I was dreaming. It actually happened, but the paper was merely caught in the draft of the fan. The possibilities are endless. A few things still stick in my craw, however. When I went to bed, the paper wasn’t on the floor. It was on a desk that was behind the fan and around a corner. Still, a breeze from another window could have given it a lift. Another thing is the way the paper snapped upwards when it was on the floor. That sound you hear when you flick a sheet of paper with your finger is the sound I heard, not the gentle sound of a paper being lifted by a draft.

The court of my brain ruled that one a dream. Later on, after I saw the table jump, I thought of that sheet of paper again though. The similarities between the two weren’t enough to change the ruling on the paper incident, but I gotta tell ya, it hasn’t done much for my sleeping habits.

 
P.S. I had hoped to save this tale until it was a little closer to Christmas. Telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve is a very old tradition that has been mostly forgotten or ignored in favor of Halloween.

ON GHOST STORIES, PART III: 5 GREAT GHOST READS

Nothing tops hearing a great ghost story in person, but if any medium comes close to replicating the experience, it’s the printed word. The greatest advantage written ghost stories have over spoken ones is that they can be experienced alone. If a scary story is really cooking for me, there usually comes a moment when I have to get up to turn on an extra light or double-check that the front door is locked. These are fun little private moments you don’t have in a group setting (unless you want to be ridiculed; the cat’s the only one who witnesses me chicken out at home, but he’s not saying anything).

Finding great collections of ghost stories is tough, though. Ghost books roughly break down into two categories: regional ghost stories and the classic chestnuts that everyone’s heard some version of, like “Bloody Mary” or that story of the railroad crossing where the ghosts of dead children push a stalled car out of the way of an oncoming train. The regional books are usually slapped-together affairs with subpar writing and badly Photoshopped covers. Collections of classic ghost stories often fare no better in those categories and face the additional challenge of remaining fresh to readers who have heard multiple versions of them. The Weird U.S. series is a good exception for both types; they’re written well and their design is consistent, if decidedly kitschy. Those big, mass-marketed tomes are like the Applebee’s of ghost books though. It’s hard to be transported by something that’s typically displayed on one of those discount racks you pass as you enter a Barnes and Noble. It’s the old, beat-up books with yellowed pages and maybe a missing cover that truly convey that forbidden, esoteric feeling lovers of ghost stories crave.

With that in mind, I’ve put together a list of five excellent collections that deserve a look. Most can be found on Amazon, which, while not being quite as evocative as a dimly-let used bookstore, is nevertheless convenient.

5.

Passport to the Supernatural

Bernhardt J. Hurwood

I first learned of this interesting “Occult Compendium from All Ages and Many Lands” while reading an interview with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who cited it as a major influence. Del Toro, whose knowledge of folklore is damn near encyclopedic, is famous for the great Spanish films Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth. His English language films include Pacific Rim and the Hellboy series. When I learned Passport to the Supernatural was also a source of inspiration for Hellboy’s comic book creator Mike Mignola, I knew I had to track it down.

The slim, weathered paperback I obtained features a charmingly literal cover illustration of a passport with monsters and skeletons printed on its pages. The book itself is a concise, well-researched survey of legends and folklore from around the globe, from spirits and demons of biblical antiquity to Russian vampire tales to the modern shenanigans of India’s Thuggee cult (a real gang of vicious highway robbers that existed in India for over six hundred years, but didn’t rip people’s hearts out like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). These legends are retold in a frank, earnest fashion, but what sets Passport to the Supernatural apart is the historical context provided before and after many of the stories. Hurwood isn’t interested in veracity of these tales, but does an excellent job illustrating their evolution, often comparing and contrasting multiple versions of the same story and analyzing their variations. It’s a terrific read for those interested in the anthropology of ghost stories as much as the tales themselves.

 

4.

New England Legends and Folklore

Samuel Adams Drake

Illustrations by F.T. Merrill

I frequently mention the excited, yet fearful feelings I experience listening to a particularly chilling story. Reading New England Legends and Folklore, written by Boston writer Samuel Adams Drake in 1884, one gets the sense that the denizens of early New England lived every moment of their lives in this frame of mind. Everything was an omen, the devil lurked behind every door, and all of your neighbors could be in league with him. Drake writes from an interesting point of history; his disdain for the superstitions of the Puritan era is palpable, yet he accepts the supernatural in a way that few serious writers today would dare.

Many of the tales presented in this collection were old even in 1884, and reading them I’m struck by how much of our own history is an empty timeline for many of us. This is a book that paints a vivid picture of life between the historical milestones of New England. There are feuds and spectacles and entire towns being sent into hysterics at every turn, and much of it is downright hilarious. Recounting the tale of “The Quaker Prophetess”, Drake contextualizes this story of a mad woman of the Friends by citing past incidents where Quaker women, fed up with all the repressive social bullshit of their day, basically streaked through their towns to let off steam.

Even the ghost stories have moments of pure, grim hilarity. When a recently-constructed ship departs New Haven on its maiden voyage in “The Phantom Ship”, one sensitive onlooker knows just what to say:

“Lord, if it be thy pleasure to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, take them; they are thine: save them!”

The good Lord graciously takes the speaker up on his suggestion, but is kind enough to send the titular phantom ship back to them the following season as a courtesy. The book is filled with many such moments, and plenty of chills to accompany them.

 

3.

Spooky Campfire Stories

S. E. Schlosser

Illustrations by Paul F. Hoffman

The tales presented in the Spooky series are as old as the hills, but are brought to life with style and deceptive simplicity by S.E. Schlosser. Comprised of over twenty books featuring classic tales from different states and regions of the U.S., this modern series is unique among local haunting books. Not content to merely report old legends, Schlosser gives each a fresh spin, writing ostensibly fictional versions of classic yarns such as “The Hook” and “The Birth of the Jersey Devil”. The tales are often told in the first person while the rural settings fluctuate between the present and a distant, vague past. The effect is very much like listening to tales around a campfire; it’s not that the line between fact and fiction is blurry– it’s completely irrelevant.

Schlosser’s writing owes much to the brothers Grimm, and like them she’s not afraid of venturing into morbid and gristly territory. Despite this, the Spooky series is perfect for children and easily superior to Alvin Schwartz’s popular Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. Like that series, the Spooky books feature gorgeous, evocative illustrations. Paul G. Hoffman’s scratchboard artwork is eerie, melancholy, otherworldly, and beautiful, often all at once, and really elevates the already excellent presentation.

Schlosser’s website, Americanfolklore.net, is an excellent resource for studying and comparing myths, legends, and folklore.

 

2.

Boston Bay Mysteries and Other Tales; Ghosts, Gales and Gold; Supernatural Mysteries and Other Tales; Mysteries and Adventures Along the Atlantic Coast; and many more books

Edward Rowe Snow

Edward Rowe Snow was a major figure in Boston and New England who is all but forgotten by the generations following the Baby Boomers. High school teacher, World War II veteran, journalist, historian, preservationist, adventurer, treasure hunter, and supreme raconteur, this is the type of guy you don’t see very much of anymore. I’ve always thought of him as New England’s own Chester Copperpot. When he wasn’t busy endeavoring to save Fort Warren on Georges Island during the ‘50s, he was hard at work writing histories of Castle Island, shipwrecks, lighthouses, the islands of Boston Harbor, and famous storms. He was also fond of ghost stories, especially ones featuring pirates.

When I was little I was frequently read passages from his Boston Bay Mysteries and Other Tales. This first introduced me to the tale of the famous pirate ship Whydah and its accompanying ghost story of Goodie Hallett, the pirate’s widow who is still said to walk the beaches of Cape Cod waiting for her beloved Sam “Black” Bellamy to return. Snow’s books are filled with great stories of the supernatural, all told with the warmth and skill of a great uncle sitting by the fire sipping whiskey.

 

1.

William Peter Blatty on The Exorcist: from Novel to Film

There have been plenty of books and articles written about the allegedly true story that inspired William Peter Blatty’s landmark 1971 novel The Exorcist. I first became obsessed with the story behind the story after I saw the film adaptation (not sure what age I was, but it was definitely single digits). My dad had casually mentioned that the film was based on a true story, which I later discovered concerned a boy from Maryland who was supposedly possessed in 1949. This only served to lengthen the already months-long period of sleepless nights I faced following that initial viewing of the film, but I was soon seeking out every available piece of material on the original case.

The most obvious place to start is with the Washington Post articles that originally reported the phenomena. The very first article, with its astonishingly straightforward reporting, can be found here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/features/dcmovies/exorcism1949.htm

There have been numerous nonfiction books about the case over the years, the most popular being Thomas Allen’s 1993 account, Possessed. Allen, a contributing editor for National Geographic, had the benefit of interviewing the last surviving member of the ’49 exorcist team, Father Walter Halloran. Intriguingly, a copy of the diary kept by the lead exorcist in the case, Father William S. Bowdern, is included in its entirety at the end of the book. This is said to be the same diary that Blatty was entrusted with when researching his novel. Possessed certainly has moments of creepiness, and it’s definitely worth a read for those interested in this stuff, but I found both book and diary to be incredibly dry.

For my money, the most chilling account of the 1949 possession can be found in Blatty’s own 1974 book William Peter Blatty on ‘The Exorcist’: From Novel to Screen. As the title suggests, this is more a chronicle of the novel’s adaptation into a film, but Blatty does spend a fair amount of time discussing the original case. The author had some contact with Father Bowdern, the aforementioned head exorcist, and the first mention of the diary presented in Thomas Allen’s book is made here. Unlike Allen, however, Blatty is not concerned with presenting the facts in such a dry, sober manner. Despite his repeated claims over the years that he never meant his novel to be scary, the guy has a real knack for framing the tale, in all its forms– fictional, non-fictional and otherwise– in such a way as to inspire serious goosebumps.

There’s plenty of intrigue to be mined from Blatty’s inquiries into the case during his time as a student at Georgetown University (the Jesuit institution where part of the ’49 exorcism took place), but I found some of his insights into the novel’s creation to be equally haunting. One such anecdote concerning his secretary and proof-reader during the time of the novel’s composition particularly raised the hair on my neck. She’d been working late into the night typing up the manuscript when a stark realization dawned on her. She immediately picked up the phone and dialed the writer.

“They’re not after the little girl at all!” she said breathlessly. “They’re after him.”

“Him who?” the flabbergasted author responded.

“Karras.”

I’ve never quite decided what is more unsettling here; the woman’s obviously correct assertion that Father Karras was the true target of the story’s antagonist, or the fact that she referred to this antagonist as “they” rather than “he” or “it”. After all, when the entity possessing the man from Gergesa was commanded by Jesus to identify itself in Synoptic Gospels, it responded, “I am Legion.”