When I was a kid I was fascinated by ghosts. All my friends were fascinated by ghosts. Even most of the adults in my life were fascinated by ghosts. My friends and I would spend the night at each other’s houses staying up late watching monster movies. We would go for walks in the woods telling each other stories we had heard. The ghost stories would bleed into Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and the Bermuda Triangle. Shows like In Search Of… and The Twilight Zone were must sees. Halloween was looked forward to all year. It was a fun and scary time with many stories to tell. Here are a few.
My Grandfather on my mom’s side lived in Florida in this old house with a large wrap around porch, creaky wood floors, and huge trees in the yard. One with the perfect tree swing. I remember how they used to keep the windows open and how the Florida air would feel blowing through the house. My Grandfather and his wife kept foster children at their house, so when we would visit there would be all these teenage kids everywhere. At some point it was just known that the house was haunted. I’m not sure how I knew – maybe my mom told us, maybe we were told the first time we went there. I do remember people sitting around in the living room talking about their experiences. Noises, heavy things moving, cold pockets. Some even saw a lady in white walking down the upstairs hallway. Well, all of this scared the you know what out of me. I was pretty little at the time. Around 8 or 9. Well, one night we were sitting watching tv and we heard a scream upstairs. One of the adults ran upstairs and then came back down with one of the teenage foster kids. She was crying and shaking and looked genuinely frightened. She said she just saw the lady – all in white – walking down the hall. It was the first time I had ever seen anybody that scared, and it jumpstarted something new in my young mind.
When I started to get into real books, my first favorites were The Hardy Boys. I was pulled in by the mysteries, suspense and the scary undertones. My favorite cartoon was Scooby-Doo and all the ghost and monster hunting. I never missed an episode of Kolchak – the Night Stalker. Then I picked up a copy of The Amityville Horror around the age of 11. I probably shouldn’t have read that book so young, because it scared the crap out of me. I had nightmares after reading it. It became the subject of endless discussions with my friends, and, somehow, when the movie came out we all found a way to see it. It blew me away how scary it was. This led to other movies like Phantasm, Halloween, The Shining, and Poltergeist. In the reading area I eventually became obsessed with Stephen King. I read other things, of course, during this time – like To Kill a Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye – but kept coming back to the scary…
One summer when I was around 12, my friends and I got into doing seances. The idea for these chances to scare ourselves came from Todd – the assumed leader of our little group. We would gather in one of our bedrooms, light a candle, sit in a circle holding hands and then Todd would go into another voice – trying to communicate with some famous person who had died in the past few years. Our go to was Elvis Presley. Todd would try for a while – show us a sign, are you here Elvis? – we would all get goosebumps, but nothing ever happened. Until this one time. We were in my bedroom. It was the middle of the afternoon, so we had the shade closed in order to make it a dark as possible. We lit the candle, held hands and Todd started. Are you there? Show us a sign. And I saw something. A light – reflection? – on the ceiling by a corner. I didn’t say anything and Todd kept trying. This is your last chance to to communicate with us, Elvis. When I blow out this candle your spirit will disappear from this room. And when he blew out the candle – the power went off. We all looked at each other, screamed, and ran out of the house. I noticed as I ran that the light in the hallway was still on, but the wall unit air conditioners we had back then were off and the refrigerator noise was gone. Outside the the neighborhood was quite. What had we done? I asked if anybody had seen anything during the seance and someone spoke up – I saw this light on the ceiling…
During these Wonder Years we lived in Guam – a tropical south pacific island US territory that my dad was stationed on. He was in the Navy. The island was full of myths and legends and crazy stories and the people of Guam were very superstitious. One day we were on a school field trip and were exploring a field next to whatever we were there to see. There was this big tree in the middle of the field that the Guamanian kids seemed to know about. They called it the Witch Tree. They said it was cursed and that bad things happened around it. We thought that was cool, but then found something else to do – like play tag or something. A little while later there was a commotion near the tree. I ran over to see what was happening. Everybody was looking at a frog and pointing. I got closer and noticed there was something different about this frog. One of it’s legs was misshapen – it was really just a stump. No foot, no knee. It could’t really hop – it kind of dragged itself along. The Guamanian kids start backing away, pointing at the tree saying – Witch Tree…
My Grandmother’s house, also on my my mom’s side, was the epitome of a scary place to visit as a kid. Think the Haunted Mansion meets the Tower of Terror. The house was on the Jersey Shore and was really old with narrow hallways, uneven floors, exposed piping on the ceiling, cobwebs, furniture from the 1950’s, pictures of the Pope and angel statues everywhere, and a terrifying doll room with dozens of old porcelain faced dolls staring at whoever dared to enter. There was a dark boiler room in the rear of the house you had to walk through to get to this long, narrow, steep staircase that led to the second floor. When climbing this staircase it seemed to expand and get longer the further you went. Add to all this my Italian Grandmother who was catholic, superstitious and loved to talk about the figures she had seen standing by her bed over the years when she woke up. Ghosts and death were major topics in that house. My Grandmother and a couple of my Aunts used to go to funerals for sport – and actually took pictures of the deceased. I wish I was joking. A lot of other things were going on during visits to my Grandmother’s house, of course, like eating a ton of food, lots of family drama, and visits to the nearby boardwalk – but I never knew what might happen around every corner of her house or who might be standing next to my bed when I woke up.
A by-product of visiting my Grandmother was going to visit my Aunt Dee in Cape May where she worked in an old house converted into a gift store. And, of course, the old house was haunted. It even said so on the sign by the front door when you walked in. My Aunt used to tell us all the usual stories. Noises, weird feelings, sightings. I remember going there once with a cousin and walking up and down the stairs going from room to room waiting for something to happen – to no avail. We wandered out back where there were woods and overgrown brush and some tombstones from the family who used to live there. We did get surprised back there looking for the tombstones when a flock of birds suddenly flew out of some bushes – sending our hearts into our throats. But that was it. I got older and started to get more interested in other things – like girls and surfing and music. One summer while visiting my Grandmother, Aunt Dee came over to see us. She was sitting with my Grandmother and parents talking and I overheard her saying that the ghost at her shop was all made up. A ploy to bring customers in. A ploy. Wow. I’d been duped. How many other times had I been duped? How many other things had I been lied to about? It was quite an eye opening – and helped turn me into the skeptic I am today. But -the seance really happened, and my Grandfather’s house, and the frog, and my Grandmother’s house really was creepy. And it’s fun to be scared – or maybe to pretend – or maybe to wonder – is there really something out there?
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