Giving Up the Ghost (35 page)

“We’d hear stuff all the time down there,” he said. “Children laughing, crying, all kinds of stuff, and nobody was around. We’d hear these voices, then go look to see if somebody was there, and it would be empty.”

The house he stayed in had previously belonged to an old lady who sold her property to the state. Jerry and his co-workers all believed that the old woman’s ghost was still hanging around the place to keep an eye on things.

“It was so common that I’d just talk to her whenever I’d hear her moving things around,” he said. “I’d say things like, ‘It’s just me, Jerry,’ or ‘I’m just getting something to eat.’ ”

Jerry told of a time he was downstairs and heard feet dragging across the floor above. He went upstairs and saw nothing. Once he went back downstairs, it started up again—the sound of shoes dragging across a sand-covered floor. He yelled upstairs to keep it down, and everything suddenly got quiet.

All of us were absolutely silent as Jerry told his stories. Afterward, others around the table started talking about their own experiences. My older cousin remembered repeatedly smelling Bobalu’s favorite perfume long after she died. My aunt talked about watching the motion detectors on her security system trip repeatedly while she heard strange noises.

I took it all in stride. But then later that night I had terrible dreams of being trapped inside an old house with a collection of odd shadows and voices lingering around the corners. After barely sleeping, I realized that I might not have come very far at all. Ghost stories can still send me into a tailspin, often when I least expect it.

Ultimately, what this quest has reinforced is that I am a huge believer in fate.

I feel that everything happens for a reason. I think that all things are interconnected and even the smallest gesture serves a larger purpose. I believe a tiny event in one life can ripple through the lives of others, growing more significant with each progressive wave. Everything that rises must converge. Nothing cheesy like butterfly wings eventually creating hurricanes, but something more simple and human.

The big problem is, and always has been, that I don’t know what that reason is. I don’t know why I had the experiences I had. I don’t know why I made the choices I made. I don’t know what the Mystery Poem was supposed to mean. I don’t know why I am alive and Laura is not.

I guess, if anything, I’ve come to realize that it is okay not
to have all the answers right away. It’s okay to never have the answers. Because life isn’t neat and binary and clean; life is messy, troubled, and leaves ghosts in its wake.

I’d like to tell you that I survived these events in my younger life without repercussions, but in truth I’ve suffered some long-term cognitive effects: an inability to recall lists, remember names and events, and, occasionally, to pronounce words. But I still consider myself lucky.

I’d like to tell you that this story has a happy ending, but there really is no ending.

I’d like to tell you that I have always been well behaved, but that isn’t true.

I’d like to tell you that my life was carefree and painless after that time, but I can’t.

I’d like to tell you that the relationships with my family have always been good, but they haven’t.

I’d like to tell you that I never again used alcohol or drugs to deaden pain, but I can’t do that either.

What I can say is this: Remember that feeling I described when Laura got into my car after returning from Finland? About ten years later, I felt it a second time. I had just started working at a public radio station in Ohio. I was walking quickly around a corner and came about two inches from plowing into the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had dark red lips and deep brown hair and looked more than a bit annoyed that I’d almost knocked her over. I just stood there speechless, staring at her. I felt numb and everything was still, as if time had stopped just so I could drink in that moment. I stumbled out an apology and stepped aside. It took me another nine years, but I eventually talked her into marrying me. We recently welcomed a son into our lives.

As for Laura’s and my friendship, I think the best way to
explain it is to share how I’ve come to feel about the Mystery Poem. As much as I’ve struggled with the poem’s meaning over the years, I think I’ve finally figured something out.

Whatever “gift” was inherent in Laura giving me the poem, it wasn’t the words or their meaning. The gift wasn’t the ideas and emotion it contained.

The gift was the poem itself.

The gift was being angry at Laura.

The gift was losing the poem.

The gift was keeping it in my mind for more than twenty years.

The gift was finding the Mystery Poem once again, by mistake.

The gift was wanting to know more.

The gift was wanting to understand my fear and struggling to face it.

I never told anyone this at the time, but I carried the Mystery Poem with me on all my ghost-hunting adventures. It was in the trunk of our rented Mustang as we cruised up and down Clinton Road. I’d pull it out of my suitcase while in Lily Dale in the evenings. I carried it in my pocket across the battlefields of Gettysburg and through the prison cells of the Mansfield Reformatory. I even had it with me when I climbed the stairs to my parents’ old attic. All that time I was hoping that some bizarre something would happen that would stir a revelation inside me and its meaning would suddenly become clear.

“Just think about it for a while. You’ll eventually figure it out.”

The thirty-four words of the Mystery Poem don’t need to mean anything.

The gift was the poem itself.

There is no possible way that Laura could ever know where
that piece of paper would take me. There is no possible way she’d ever know how right she was, or how long it would take, or what I’d have to go through in order to understand.

Laura was just a girl. A girl who died too young.

I’m still here. And it’s my job to make the best of it.

My original plan was to burn the Mystery Poem during my final ghost hunt or perhaps hide it somewhere in some supposedly haunted place where no one would ever find it. What good is it if I’m not willing to set it on fire? Then, to me, it would just be a memory—a symbol. However, I’ve decided to hold on to it for a while longer, keep it safe from my sometimes questionable decision making.

“Just think about it for a while. You’ll eventually figure it out.”

I park the car at our usual spot at the end of the road near Lake O’Dea and face the front toward the lake as the moon sways and shimmies against the rippling water.

As we settle in, I get out and lie back on the hood of the car, listening as Laura explains some theory. I feel the heat from the car engine warm my back.

“What I’m saying is … so … we think our lives move along some kind of linear path through time, right?”

“Okay,” I say.

“One thing happens, then another, then another,” she continues. “Day after week after month after year. Right? So do you think time itself moves along a linear path, or we just think it does? I mean, what if it doesn’t? What if everything is just scrambled up or it all happens in a flash and it just takes us years to soak it all in?”

“So what you’re saying is that maybe the past isn’t the past, because it may be happening right now?” I ask.

“Or maybe even that the past hasn’t happened yet,” she says. “Maybe it is all just one big moment; everything happens at once.”

“Hmmm, that’s interesting. I have no idea,” I reply. I really don’t care about time; I just like listening to her talk.

I close my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose.

The cold October air fills my lungs. It is energizing. It makes me feel alive.

I let out a deep sigh. “I love the fall,” I say, interrupting her.

“Well, good for you,” she says, continuing where she left off, joining me on the hood of the car. “Then that means nothing is old, nothing is new, nothing ever goes away. That there is no past, no future, only right now.”

She rests her head on my arm.

I feel calm and relaxed.

I feel like everything is just as it should be.

I feel like anything is possible.

PARENTAL ADVISORY:
MUSIC CENSORSHIP IN AMERICA

THE DEAD TRAVEL FAST:
STALKING VAMPIRES FROM
NOSFERATU TO COUNT CHOCULA

E
RIC
N
UZUM
lives with his wife and son in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C. He is also the author of
The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula
and
Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America
. He has appeared on CNN, VH1, and elsewhere.