Giving Up the Ghost

I have had a fascination with ghosts going back to my childhood. My favorite stories were ghost stories; not the Caspar the Friendly Ghost but true haunting accounts. I particularly liked Hans Holzer’s books. He was the original ghost hunter.

As a child, I had a few encounters with things that went bump in the night. I never “saw” a ghost, but I would get creepy feelings. My childhood home had a partially finished attic, with stairs going from the closet in my aunt’s bedroom up there. There were lots and lots of things to go through and play with. I literally spent hours up there, twirling around in bridesmaid’s gowns and looking through family photos of long forgotten people. Most of the time it was a plain attic, but occasionally, there would be that creepy feeling, like someone was in there with me. It would last a few minutes, and then disappear.

My mother’s family is Austrian, German and Hungarian. In that Teutonic lore, there are family stories of creepy events and encounters that have been passed along from generation to generation. My great aunt Olga allegedly saw a vision of the Virgin Mary (which was very odd since they were Lutheran) across from her streetcar stop on her way home from school.

Pictures would fall off the wall, foretelling a death in the family.

Strange smells would waft through the house, causing those around to take notice. My grandfather was a pipe smoker; in fact he had his own particular blend of pipe tobacco that was quite distinct. To this day, I will smell it from time to time. The same with Giorgio perfume, which was my aunt’s “scent”. I don’t know if I actually smell a phantom smell, or if it is my memory playing tricks on me, but whatever it is, I am brought comfort.

Many years ago, the Big Man was living in a house in Roebling, NJ. Roebling was a company town-Roebling Steel was a big time employer. They provided the steel cables and girders for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Fast forward to the 1990’s, and the factory was long since abandoned, and it was a dying community. The house he lived in was in fact, the town doctor’s home at one time. It must have been majestic in its day, but by the point he was living there, it needed a lot of renovations and repairs to restore it to its former glory. The basement was sufficiently creepy, and the octagonal shape to many of the rooms led to oddly shaped shadows and dark places. The Big Man worked odd hours and I spent quite a bit of time alone there. I, in fact, was going to turn the unoccupied third floor into an arts and crafts studio at one point. It was when I was moving stuff up there and unpacking supplies that I rethought my decision.

I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t even smell anything. But I FELT something and it wasn’t pleasant. I moved my stuff out of there and never went back upstairs.

For the last year of my grandmother’s life, I was her primary caregiver. I paid her bills, took care of her, made sure she took her medicine, etc etc etc. It was both the toughest year of my life and the most rewarding. My grandmother and I were always exceptionally close, and the year I spent caring for her strengthened that bond. It was the afternoon of July 4th, 1999, that she suffered a massive stroke. She never recovered and spent her final weeks in hospice in a nursing home. I spent my days and nights with her at the home, because I didn’t want her to be alone. While she was there, there was a caterpillar that had spun its cocoon on her windowsill. I would watch it as it wiggled and then relaxed itself into its rest prior to metamorphosis. The day my grandmother died, the butterfly emerged from the chrysalis and flew away.

Every year since, it seems as butterflies surround me in the days before the anniversary. Maybe its because I am more aware of them that time of year, maybe its because of migratory patterns…or maybe because its contact from the other side.

As I said before, I have never seen a ghost, no matter how desperately I have wanted to see one and how much the “other side” has fascinated me. In addition to smells, I have been plagued by odd dreams over the course of my life. One happened within weeks of my grandmother passing away due to complications of her stroke. At the time she died, she was paralyzed on one side of her body, and it was slack. In my dream, she looked about 20 years younger-like she did when I was a child, and wasn’t suffering any of the effects of her stroke. We were in front of an office building, stark white, that looked similar to the Gugenheim Museum in design. She said she was taking me on a tour. I don’t remember all the specific details, but I did wake up feeling incredibly comforted and at peace.

I have had other dreams with her in it. When we were wrestling with the decision to move to South Dakota from NJ, I took a nap. (I am known for my incredible napping abilities) During the nap, Grama paid me a visit. Early in her marriage, she and my grandfather lived in Fargo, ND where my grandfather sold insurance. It was one of the happiest times of her life, and she used to love to talk about her life on the plains. In this dream, she told me to make my own way to my own Fargo, and forge my own path. I’ve had dreams with my dad too, but they are not as frequent. One memorable one is him, in his gray trench coat, walking up the steps going from the Ho Ho Kus train station to my childhood neighborhood (note: he never lived there)

One particularly creepy, disturbing dream I had was when we were in Sioux Falls house hunting. We were sleeping in our hotel room, and I dreamt of my aunt (who I never had dreamt of since she died in 1989), in her bedroom in my childhood home (the one with the attic door in her closet). She was in her bed, in her white gauzy summertime penoir. She was being held down, a la the Exorcist. I dreamt my childhood self was by the side of the bed, and a demon came out of her mouth and touched my arm. I immediately woke up. For days afterward, where the demon touched me in my dream, my arm remained cold.

But, still to this day, no ghosts.