I was so glad to get out of the haunted hospital.
The Haunted Hospital; it sounds like the title of a Hardy Boys book.
I was hoping to put the whole thing behind me and get on with my life. School would be starting up in a few weeks, and I was looking forward to starting ninth grade at James K. Polk Jr. High, the same school I’d left last June.
Two years in the same school! Imagine!
I would walk in the building and people would know my name! Some could even be considered to be my friends! If something was going on, one of them might, just might, give me a call and invite me to join in! Oh the possibilities!
Any hopes I might have had about going home to a normal life, though, were dashed before our car even made it to the house.
As we drove by the supermarket, I saw in the parking lot a pale white figure wearing overalls and a large straw hat. He was trudging along behind an old-fashioned plow that was being pulled by an equally pale mule.
People hurried into the store pushing their shopping carts completely oblivious to this weird scene. One lady hurrying into the store walked right through them.
I leaned out the car window staring, open-mouthed, and then flopped back into my seat with a heavy sigh.
Phantom farmers plowing up the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, what next?
Three days later I was dealing with a serious case of cabin fever.
Mom insisted that I needed to “rest and recuperate” from my “ordeal.” That was okay for the first day or so; hey, I was pretty messed up. But then how many old movies and game shows can a guy take? I was getting seriously restless.
Finally I talked Mom into letting me out of the house.
I rode around aimlessly on my bike for awhile until I ended up at Burger Haus, a drive-in near the college where Dad worked.
I was winded and parched from my ride and in dire need of a soda, so I pulled into the parking lot.
Then I saw a guy leaning by the door.
He was wearing tight jeans and a tight white T-shirt that would have showed off his muscles if he had any. He had hair like Elvis Presley’s, if Elvis had used crankcase oil instead of Brylcream. There was a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his left sleeve.
He was leaning against the building, working hard at looking cool. Thing was, I could read the “Try our fries!” sign he was leaning against by looking right through him.
I stared at him pretty stupidly.
“Whaddyou lookin’ at punk?”
Damn! I always have had a hard time with those guys. Not ghosts…jerks, bullies. Those guys who hassle you just for the fun of it. Just so they can watch you squirm and get tongue-tied and stupid.
I always end up squirming and getting tongue-tied and stupid.
Now, knowing ghosts as well as I do, I would just tell him where to stick it.
I mean, what’s he going to do? Take a swing at me? His best shot would go right through me! (“Whoa! What’s that? Anyone else feel a breeze in here?”)
The ghost took a step towards me, staring menacingly. (I, of course, took a step back.)
“I said, whaddyou lookin’ at? You can see me, can’t you, punk?”
I stammered, “Uh, yeah.” (Witty huh?)
“Well that’s different. Nobody else around here can.”
A car pulled up and two college girls got out. The ghost straightened up and let out a low wolf whistle. “Beat it, punk, you’re crampin’ my style.”
His “style” was to walk around the two girls, looking them up and down and leering, “Hey baby, you got it all! Uhhhh-huh! You and me, babe! We can go for a riiide!”
He went on and on. I’m sparing you the worst of it. Fortunately, the girls had no idea any of this was going on.
I got out of there.
As these things go, there aren’t all that many of ghosts in Middleton. I don’t know why some places end up more haunted than others, but I was grateful for the chance to adjust to the idea of seeing ghosts without having to confront one every five minutes.
Still, Middleton had its share.
Besides the guy trying to plow the parking lot and the low-rent “Fonzie” imitation, there was an old woman who would walk up and down what we call “church row.”
Church row is a couple of blocks near the college that contain a Lutheran, a Methodist, and a Catholic church.
She was dressed like one of those stuck up old ladies you see Marx Brothers movies, and every Sunday she would flutter up and down the street bobbing her pointed finger up and down like she was counting something.
What was she counting? I have no idea.
Unlike Dave and Ernie and the Burger Haus pervert, she didn’t seem to know I was there.
I got up my nerve once and walked right up to her and tried to get her attention. She just walked right through me, counting away.
Another favorite was the ghost of an old guy who lived just a few blocks from our apartment. He sat out in his front yard on a patio chair yelling at anybody who got near his lawn.
Thing was, the family that lived in the house had three or four little kids and a couple of dogs who were always running around the yard playing soccer, or football, or just bashing into each other.
That left the poor old guy helplessly screaming, “You kids get out of here! Get off my lawn dammit! I’m telling you! I’ll call the cops!”
Not that the kids had any idea or anything.
Then one of the dogs would inevitably squat and take a crap. Right there in the middle of the lawn.
The old ghost would go ballistic. “You damn dog! What the hell do you think you’re doing!”
Unlike the kids though, the dogs seemed to sense his presence. They would look all nervous and guilty, their hair standing up and everything. Then, after hastily finishing their business, they’d slink away quickly with their tails between their legs.
I was starting to get the idea that ghosts were a pretty pathetic bunch: An old farmer trying to plant a crop into an asphalt parking lot; a perverted reject from the 1950s trying to hit on girls that didn’t even know he was there; a stuffy old lady patrolling church row; and finally, a cranky old geezer screaming his lungs out while all rowdy kids and squatting dogs in the neighborhood had their way with his lawn.
Even Dave and Ernie. I could see that what they were doing was kind of noble in a way. They’d chosen to remain on Earth so they could tell really sick kids that even though they might be dying, it would still somehow work out okay.
(Believe me, I’ve thought about that one a lot.)
Still, after spending a weekend in that hospital, I had to think: what a depressing place to spend eternity.
Or was it eternity?
Can ghosts “pass on” to “The Other Side” when they get sick of our world?
I’ve thought about that one a lot too.
Finally I had to say something.
Dad and I were in the car running errands when I brought it up. The misty figure of a cowboy riding a spotted horse had just crossed the road in front of us. “Dad, do you believe in ghosts?”
Dad turned and gave me a funny look. “Believe? Well, Marcus, you know I’ve always felt that believing was a pretty weak philosophical starting point. One might know something if one has the facts, or one might suspect something if all the facts aren’t in yet, but to believe something implies that one has made the decision that something is true whatever the facts may be. Frankly, that’s just poor philosophy. You know what Seneca said…”
Of course I didn’t, but I was about to find out. I know well enough that Dad wasn’t capable of holding a simple conversation without quoting at least one dead philosopher.
“He said, ‘Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.’”
Which wasn’t exactly an answer to my question. I tried again. “But suppose that someone started seeing the ghosts of dead people everywhere.”
“Ghosts of dead people?” He laughed, “I may have to report you to the Department of Redundancy Department.”
“You know what I mean.”
Dad gave me a little chuckle. “Yeah, okay, seeing ghosts…well the most obvious diagnosis would be schizophrenia – hallucinations, hearing voices, seeing things. Those are usually considered symptoms of sever mental illness.”
I did not want to go there, thank you very much. “Yeah, but what if there really were ghosts but only certain people could see and hear them? I mean, assume the person wasn’t crazy and the ghosts were really there? Say you had some kind of special power that allowed you to see them.”
Dad gave me a weird look. I could see he was trying to puzzle out exactly why we were having this conversation.
“Well…that’s a pretty strange assumption, Marc, but all right…you posit that I somehow could have the power to see all manner of phantoms, and specters and wraiths floating about. Furthermore, that such creatures, according to your assumption, actually exist, however no one else possesses those special abilities that would allow them to see them. Hmmm…I suppose that were I in such a position, I’d do my best to keep my big mouth shut about it even if I wasn’t nuts, especially if I wasn’t nuts. People can get dangerously cranky when someone goes about claiming to see things or know things that no one else can see or know. Remember what happened to Socrates…”
“He was sentenced by some court to kill himself by drinking poison, but what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Socrates was always talking about how he decided everything by consulting with his daemon…”
“His what?”
“His daemon, his personal spirit. He was always going on about all these things his daemon had told him. It really got on people’s nerves.”
We stopped at a red light. I watched the ghost of a young woman in an old-fashioned hoop skirt stroll down the sidewalk carrying a parasol.
Schizophrenia, forced suicide, Dad wasn’t exactly presenting any strong arguments for going public with my newly-discovered powers.
“Any particular reason for this line of inquiry?” Dad asked.
A woman with the parasol stepped off the curb and then suddenly, instantly, disappeared.
“No,” I answered, “just wondering.” But in fact, I’d resolved that from that point on, I was just going to have to learn to live with a secret.
That evening after supper I sat in my room thumbing through an old Spider-man comic. Peter Parker was doing one of his usual monologues about how much his life sucked. You know: all the impossible complications that come with having those cool super powers, but then having to keep them totally secret.
“Yeah, Spidey,” I thought, “ain’t it the truth.”
Then all of a sudden, summer was over. School started up again, but strangely enough, I wasn’t all depressed about it. In fact, it was great! People actually knew who I was. They called me by name in the hallways. I went over to friends’ houses after school. There was even this girl that somebody said that he heard somebody say to somebody that she said she liked me!
Or something like that.
Oh yes, things were looking up!
Of course it was too good to last.