A Ghost Story
October, 2000
As soon as we turn the page on our calendar, we see the word Halloween
and conjure up the ancient image of the Eve of All Hallows, when
scantily draped, hollow-eyed corpses leave their graves and traipse
around dark cemetaries.
There's something about October
where we chill to the thought of everything dying then warm to
the promise of spring and renewal.
Perhaps that's the reason for
ghost stories; you know, where someone dies before his time and
wanders aimlessly, looking for something, someone. I know of one
such man, personally.
A story lies behind this event
but I don't know that part. I only know the ghost story that followed
it and my part in it; I witnessed a man's return to the scene
of his life. Make of it what you will.
It's Fall '59, and we're still
unpacking from the move. After six weeks in a motel with a baby
and a black cocker spaniel, we are very happy to be settling into
a rented swiss chalet standing all by itself at the rear of a
30-acre tree nursery in Cleveland, Ohio.
The time period is the beginning
of the corporate ladder's swinging young executives from city
to city and on this night John is flying off to Pittsburgh for
meetings. I tell him I'll be okay; I tell myself I don't like
this at all. I feel safe but very alone.
The evening is quietly uneventful:
the baby is fed and rocked, the dog is fed and let out, the shelves
are lined and dishes stacked. We go upstairs in a still curtainless
house bathed in the light of the full moon shining into every
room.
I'm in bed and almost asleep when
I jump up to a dog's barking. Below in the driveway, really a
graveled path running a quarter mile between rows of trees and
shrubs, is a huge white barking dog standing squarely on his four
firmly-planted paws. Huge? He's the size of a fully-grown steer.
Shushing him is not going to work His echoing bark would wake
the neighbors except I don't have any. He's not baying at the
full moon; he's just barking at nothing I can see.
I turn back toward the bed hoping
for an answering bark from snoring Raven. Nothing. And, then,
silence. I look out the window in time to see the strange dog
high tail it down the lane at a gallop.
It's unnerving but I crimp my
pillow and settle in. I am wide awake. I hear footsteps -- slow
footsteps -- on the stairs. I wonder if John missed his plane.
Why didn't I hear the garage door go up? Is that why the dog ran
away, at the sound of a car?
The hall light is on between our
room and the baby's. If he wakens, he'll have the reassurance
of his own crib in a strange house and, if I have to run to him,
I won't trip on the path not yet well-worn enough for scurrying
in the dark.
If John is going to say "Boo,"
I won't laugh. But, wait, it isn't John framed in my doorway.
It's a man. He's very well dressed in a crisp, khaki, belted trench
coat with a matching fedora in the same fabric. He's quite hefty,
his face is round, his complexion ruddy, he has very long black
eyelashes and thick brows.
I lie there, taking in everything
in my doorway and putting myself into a quiet place where I can
still my heart and slow my breathing. He looks at me. Then, he
looks over his shoulder and into the baby's room.
Fright is coming on me. I'm not
afraid enough to scream, mainly because no one can hear me, but
afraid nevertheless. I'm not thinking ghost, this is one solid,
45-year old man; I'm thinking robbery.
I decide staying still is the
best plan. If I don't move, he'll take what he wants and leave.
I continue studying him through slitted eyes until my eyelids
close and I fall asleep.
John comes home the next day and
I tell him about the man who was in the house. "I've searched,
John, he didn't take anything."
"You were dreaming," John said.
"I was not dreaming, I was wide awake, the dog woke me."
And so it went, dreaming, a figment,
over-stimulated, over-worked, a thousand reasons to answer away
my very real night visitor.
Some time in the following weeks,
my "dream" now behind me, I chatted with my landlady, Rose Bender,
finally out from under loading all the Christmas trees for shipment.
I learned the former tenant had called wondering if her dog had
come back to the property.
Rose went on, "Yes, as soon as
her husband died, she called movers, left details to me, packed
up the station wagon, dog and all, and went back to Pennsylvania.
Now, she says the dog's missing. Thinks it might be one of those
cases of a faithful dog looking for his master."
"Was her husband ill?" I asked.
"Oh, no," she objected, "he committed suicide."
My mind immediately suspected
"faking" a death, collecting insurance, body never found, and
all the drama found in "B" movies. Because, I was obviously thinking
he sneaked into town on a moonlit night to see his wife only I
lived there. "Did they ever find the body?" I asked, innocently.
"Of course, they did," she said,
"right over there. He shot himself and tumbled down that embankment.
That's why she immediately left the place."
I don't know why I asked -- well,
yes, I do know why I asked -- but I said, "What did he look like?"
She didn't seem to find the question
unusual and answered, "Well, I'd say he was in his forties, heavy
set, nice dark eyes, rosy cheeks; a good-looking man. He was an
FBI Agent, used to tell us Elliot Ness stories -- you know Ness
was from Cleveland, don't you?" The conversation rambled off but
I stayed focused on a major event in my life that autumn.
If I believed in ghosts, and my
jury is still out on that, I think the faithful dog made his way
back for his master. He barked and barked, finally understood,
and then turned tail.
I don't know if I will ever understand,
but I was there, and I saw a man looking at me, looking at my
black dog asleep at the foot of my bed, looking at my baby asleep
in the next room, and, no doubt realizing he had no business being
there, he left.
That's how I see it. Read into
it what you will. It did happen and it happened to me.
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