Haunted Houses

Despite Superstorm Sandy’s best efforts last week, we made it through Halloween. We had a slightly higher number of kids this year than last year, but still not that many. We didn’t even finish off two bags of candy, despite more kids. We saw some really cute kids, their little faces happy and smiling as they loaded up their bags with Kit Kats and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. One little girl took a Peanut Butter Cup, looked at it and said “Ooh, what’s in this?” To which her mother replied “Don’t worry. If you don’t like it, Mommy will eat it.” Just a hunch, but from the way she was clutching that piece of candy I don’t think Mommy was going to get it, no matter what.

While watching the news over the weekend to get an update on the storm, I saw an interview with a person that does a haunted house every year for Halloween. Due to the storm they were going to have to cancel it this year. Somehow that story sparked a memory for me. It had nothing to do with Halloween, but it did include a haunted house. Sort of.

I don’t remember what time of year it was, but it was during the school year because everyone but my younger brother and I were at school. We were in the backyard playing before lunch with the sun shining brightly, warm enough that we didn’t need a jacket that day. There was a small hill at the back of my yard that led up to another street and a wooded area. At the top of the hill there was a small building, which I had only seen from down below, and which my older brothers had told me had been a chicken coop but had nothing in it now. They had also told me that the house beyond the old chicken coop was haunted, so I shouldn’t go near it. How they knew this I didn’t know, but at that age I thought they knew everything and I believed everything they said.  

My younger brother and I must have gotten bored playing with our Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks because we decided to go up the hill a bit. The hill was sandy and there were lots of rocks of varying sizes mixed in. We threw rocks down the hill for a while and we pretended they were bombs hitting the ground and blowing our enemies to bits. At some point we went to the top of the hill. We moved toward the chicken coop and I picked up a couple of good size rocks to protect us in case the house really was haunted. The old chicken coop looked abandoned and there were already a couple of windows broken. I remember throwing a rock at one of the windows and it broke with a marvelous tinkling sound, like it was tickling my ears.

We took turns throwing our rocks at the windows, missing some and hitting others, laughing the whole time. We were pretty good shots for two little kids and were having the time of our lives. We had just picked up another round of ammo when a loud voice rang out from the direction of the house, telling us to stop. We both slowly turned toward the voice – if it was a ghost we didn’t want to see him. To our surprise, it was just an older man. To our horror, he was starting to come down the stairs to the yard and toward us.

We turned and started to run for the hill, no words necessary between us, and my heart beating in my throat. I figured he’d stop at the edge of his yard, but when I glanced back I was shocked to see that he was coming after us. We ran down the hill and tore across the back yard toward the door and safety. We ran inside and sat down at the dining room table, ready for lunch. Mom was in the kitchen and turned around when we came flying into the room, probably because the door slammed. Or maybe because we were both out of breath.

I’m sure my Mom was wondering what the heck was going on with the two of us, especially when the older man just walked right into the house. He was not a happy camper and told Mom we had broken some windows. When she asked us if we had, a brilliant explanation came to me and I told her it wasn’t us, it was two kids who looked like us. Needless to say, Mom didn’t believe us. She was pretty angry and I think she even threatened to tie us to a tree so we couldn’t get out of the yard. I should have learned at that point not to believe everything my older brothers told me, but unfortunately, it took me a few more years to learn that lesson. 

So there was no haunted house that day and there was no haunted house this year for some people, nothing to give them their Halloween chills. Maybe next time I’ll talk about politics – now that would be scary.

Here's Looking at You Kid

My wife and I had dinner with some friends the other night that we hadn’t seen in a long time. Before dinner we were sitting in the living room and talking when my wife asked about a portrait that was hanging on the wall. I had been looking at that painting, which was of a young woman, since I got there because of her eyes. I might be a little strange, but sometimes I see a picture or a painting of someone and I can’t forget their eyes. This picture was like that.

A person’s eyes can tell us so much. There are times when a person is smiling in a picture but their eyes tell a different story. You can see the hurt, the pain or the sorrow despite what the mouth is telling you. Sometimes the eyes are just vacant, like there’s no life behind the face. Other times there’s just something about a person’s eyes that says that this person is fun, interesting or maybe a little crazy. It’s like they’re sitting all serious for the moment, but at any second they’re just going to burst out laughing uncontrollably. Again, this may seem a little strange, but sometimes a person’s eyes in a picture or a painting just seem to follow you wherever you go in the room. This picture was like that.

It turns out that the painting was of our friend Lesley’s great grandmother when she was younger and was from the 1850’s. When I first got to Tony and Lesley’s house, I was standing straight across from the painting and noticed it and how the eyes seemed to be looking right at me. Later, I was off to the right of it and noticed how the eyes seemed to still be looking right at me. Standing up so the painting was below eye level or sitting down so it was above eye level made no difference; the eyes were still looking right at me. I figured I was imagining it. So when my wife asked about the painting I started to say something about the eyes, but Lesley finished my sentence about how the eyes follow you. So maybe I wasn’t imagining it after all.

When I was in high school and my first year of college, we lived in a big, old house with a semi-creepy basement. My older brothers had a fairly realistic (for the time) ugly old man mask and one year around Halloween they found some old pants, an old boy scout shirt and some old boots, and stuffed them with leaves to make a body for the mask. They stuck an empty beer bottle in one “hand” and a pool stick in the other hand, and Bill was born. To add the finishing touch, they drew eyes on pieces of white paper and taped them in the eye sockets. Bill was placed in the corner of the basement and became our constant companion down there, hanging out with us as we played pool and ping pong, listened to music and did the stuff teenagers do. Here’s the really weird part: No matter where you were in the basement, Bill’s eyes were looking right at you! Two people on two different sides of the basement would swear on their lives that Bill was looking directly at them. Quite a few people thought Bill was alive and some were afraid to go near him. There were a few times me and my friends could have sworn we saw Bill move.  

I have always liked to read and one year I decided to read The Amityville Horror. Because the house was usually noisy, I decided to read it in the quietest place in the house – in the basement. I’ve already mentioned that it was kind of creepy in the basement and I did have a vivid imagination, but there were times I put the book down and just stared at Bill for a few minutes to make sure he wasn’t getting closer. I’d pretend I was reading but was actually looking at Bill out of the corner of my eye because I was sure he was moving. I really didn’t want to get hit over the head with a pool stick or a beer bottle, so I wasn’t going to let Bill sneak up on me! I actually even started thinking that maybe my house was haunted, too, due to the Amityville effect. It got to the point that I didn’t want to go into the basement myself, whether it was the middle of the day or the middle of the night. I’m pretty sure that I finished reading the book in my room, noise and all. The amusing part was that when I saw the movie, I actually laughed because it was so mild compared to the things I envisioned in my head, especially while I was reading down in the basement with Bill watching every move I made and plotting how he was going to get me.

I don’t know when Bill was finally laid to rest, but I do know that imagination can be much scarier than movies and reality. Bill is a testament to that. Sometimes imagination can also be more interesting than reality. I had already created multiple scenarios in my head about the girl in the painting when Lesley told us who she was, all more involved than her being her great grandmother who lived a normal life. Because in the end, those eyes that followed me told me there was something more to the picture. I just haven’t figured out what.