Since it’s Halloween, I thought maybe I’d tell a couple of ghost stories. These are real-life ghost stories, as experienced by your humble narrator.
But first: no, I don’t really believe in ghosts. I mean, I’ve wanted to meet one my whole life, sure. Sit down, have a conversation, see how it goes in the afterlife. In my mind’s eye, this would look like me sitting in front of a huge fireplace, tobacco pipe in hand, chatting amiably with a ghostly outline of some long-dead country nobleman or something. Perhaps he’s tumbled into the room with his equally ghostly pack of hounds swirling at his feet as the clock strikes midnight. You know. Something like that. But that’s not how it happened and, frankly, I didn’t realize what had happened until, as Edith Wharton said in her classic and eponymous ghost story, afterward.
But let me set the scene: It’s Autumn in Vermont , the year 2002. I was working at a local free paper, doing ads, layout, and pagination. Vermont is, of course, the very home of autumn in America. The quintessence and soul-center of that impossible burst of nostalgia and wonder that fall brings to the world. At least for me. And one of the reasons I had stayed in Vermont after college.
Anyway, so, I’m working this job. And I’m fairly new to the company. There are usually three of us on duty—myself, Lisa the production manager, Vicky the editorial coordinator, and Lucy the...mighty and mysterious graphic artist who came in for deadline days, who had worked at the company for 15 some-odd years.
Lucy was—and hopefully still is—quite a character. A badass motorcyclist who once carried her Harley up an embankment after crashing and separating her shoulder. She lived a pretty rugged Vermont life: caring for horses, felling her own trees, splitting her own wood, on and on. The things we do in Vermont. But lest you get the idea she was some tough broad, she wasn’t at all. She was sweet and gentle and endearingly eccentric and a little air-headed. For example, she carried a .38 revolver in the bottom of her purse, which she always seemed to forget about, and would frequently rediscover while digging for something else and exclaim “Oh! I keep forgetting it’s in there!”
I only go into so much detail about dear Lucy because I wanted you, my reader, to understand that she was a formidable person in all ways. Grounded, practical, and fearless. Nothing frou-frou or woo about her in the slightest.
So, anyway, it’s Autumn in Vermont, and it’s a Wednesday. Thursday was the day the paper went to press, and was always chaotic. A stack of ads had come in late on Wednesday afternoon, and I knew that if I left them til the next day a busy day could become a nightmare. So I opted to stay late and get the ads done.
As everyone is packing up to go home, I voice my plan to stay late so as to get the work finished. Lucy stops in the middle of gathering her belongings, fixes me with a hard stare, and says “you’re going to stay? But there won’t be anybody else here. You know that, right? Do you want me to stay with you? I’ll stay with you.” And starts to disgorge the contents of her purse again—including, I note, her .38. I sort of squint at her and tell her, no, I don’t need her to stay. Why would I need her to stay? I do ads and she does layout. So thanks but no need. But she’s pushy and making excuses and I don’t know why. Finally I convince her I don’t need her to stay, that she needs to get home to her animals. But she sort of says to me, “but this is your first time here alone!” And I don’t really know what that means, but it’s obvious she’s nervous for me. And I reassure her that, having grown up in New York city in the ‘70s, I’m not afraid of much, ha ha, please, a slasher comes in here or some shit he’ll be sad he did.
So Lucy punches out and leaves, but not without more standing looking forlornly at me from the back door, saying too many goodbyes, big purse clutched to her chest, looking a little walleyed and saying if I need her I can call and she’ll come back up after feeding and caring for the animals, goodbye goodbye goodbye.
Finally alone in the building, I clap on my headphones—it was a discman, btw, none of this ipod/phone fol-de-rol—and get to work.
And as I’m working, I become slowly aware that there’s a lot of...noise..in the building. A sense of activity. I take off my phones and listen. Nothing. Put my phones back on and keep going. But I hear it again, check again. Still nothing. But it’s an old building, dating from the ‘20s at least, and creaks and groans are to be expected, and probably that’s what I’m hearing. Or maybe the time clock?
The time clock: an old fashioned green enameled mechanical job probably from the ‘50s, hung on the wall about 15’ from where I sat. I could see it out of the corner of my eye while staring at my screen.
Now, if you’ve ever dealt with one of those old time clocks, you know that they make a lot of noise just hanging by themselves there, muttering away the time. They click, they snick, they clunk—and when someone sticks in their punch-card it’s a pretty loud and distinctive THUNK as the print heads slam down. I had been listening to that time clock for months now. Every person who worked there punched in, and when the print guys came on shift, they would fire it off in quick succession, THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK.
So I’m working along, making good progress on the stack of work...and the time clock punches.
And it’s loud, and I hear it through my phones and the sound is unmistakable. I whip my eyes away from the screen in surprise, expecting Lucy to be standing there, having decided she couldn’t bear to leave me alone for whatever reason. And there’s no one there. And nowhere for someone to have ducked where I wouldn’t have seen them.
...the hairs literally stand up on the back of my neck. Literally. It was like nothing I had ever felt before. A creeping feeling that slowly crawled from my shoulders into my scalp. I, like a soon-to-be victim in a horror film, say, loudly, “hello?” And this time, it’s not silence that answers me: in the fading echo of my “hello?”, I hear activity from the print shop at the back of the building.
So that’s it: one of the print guys came in to do something to the press, which was always breaking down. I don’t know how I didn’t see him punch in, but maybe I did? Maybe I did and he said hi and I was just so focused on getting my work done that I missed it?
I say again “HELLO?” And I hear the clear clang of a wrench being dropped, and muttered curses. All utterly normal noises for a work day in this place. Whew!
I get up to head to the back to see what’s up, and suddenly realize the lights aren’t on in the shop. And now that I’m walking to the back of the building it occurs to me, slowly, that, duh, one of the guys wouldn’t be working in the dark, no matter what, and...finally...I start to get really spooked.
The wall of the print shop is glass. The door is glass. The room is utterly dark except for the light coming in the window from the parking lot. I stop by the door and, yes, I hear my heart beating in my ears and my breath a little ragged. There’s no one in the shop that I can see. I nervously open the door and hit the light switch, even though I know no one is there. The air is thick with oil and ink and machinery. I say again, quietly, “hello?”
I bolt the three strides to the back door, bursting out into the parking lot, grabbing the door as it’s about to shut and lock itself. I stand there for a second and regroup.
The parking lot is pretty dark, as the light from the loading dock isn’t on. As a New Yorker, a dark parking lot is much scarier than any goddamn ghost, and after a second, I laugh at myself. Lucy got me spooked.
I head back inside and get back to work...and I hear it again. I pull off my phones again and listen. The activity in the print shop continues.
I need to make clear: these sounds were completely ordinary. There was nothing remotely spooky or eerie in the slightest. It just sounded like the guys were back there doing work in the shop. There were multiple voices talking to each other, though I couldn’t make out any words. I expected the press to kick on any minute. I said out loud: “If there are any spirits here, I am perfectly happy to communicate with you.” But the activity continued.
So at this point I get annoyed with myself, grab my jacket and head out back to have a cigarette. I decide there must be someone doing something upstairs in the building, and I need to stop creeping myself out.
Cigarette in hand, I head out around the perimeter of the building. It abuts a couple others, so I figure if I walk around the block, I’ll be able to figure out where the noise is coming from. I walk purposefully up the alley and into the street, make a right around the corner...and all the offices and stores are closed. No a glimmer of light showing anywhere. Looking from the street, the only light on in the block is the light in the layout room, where I sit. Thoroughly confused, I head back inside.
Fuck it. I have work to do, I’m letting my imagination run away with me, and I need to finish the stack of ads by my desk. So I keep working. And I keep hearing things. And finally, completely irritated with how little I’ve gotten done because of my nervousness I pull of my phones a shout “You know what, you guys? Shut the fuck up! I have work to do” And I hear a giggle from the back room.
And the noises stop. And no, nobody was playing a prank on me. I finished my work, locked up, and went home at about 9:30.
The next morning, Lucy says to me “so, how’d it go last night?” Looking at me very hard. And I say “you want to tell me now?” And so she tells me this:
No one will work in that place alone after dark. Even the press guys. Everyone has heard something. One press guy heard someone walking up the hallway behind him, turned to see who it was, saw no one, and fled the building. Lucy herself, someone who can pick up and carry a Harley, who packs a revolver in her purse, who you would think, living in the dark woods of Vermont, wouldn’t be afraid of anything has refused to work in the place alone after dark for 15 years.
Explanations? None. Make up whatever you like. Maybe Lucy just got me spooked and my imagination did the rest. Or, maybe, the place has been a print shop since the ‘20s, and you know how print guys can be. Never satisfied with their work or how the machine is running. Always messing with the layout people and artists.
But this isn’t the only story I have from my time at that place.
I think it actually happened the next summer, but for the sake of narrative, I’m going to say it happened later in the fall, before Halloween, but after the last leaves have given up and the trees raise their bare branches to the starry night sky. It’s a short tale. More of a vignette than a full blown story.
My best friend is a local Vermont boy named Walter. You could call him “salt of the earth” but that would be doing his nimble mind and boundless humor a disservice. His family has a farm up in the hollow on Mount Anthony, where they board horses and raise chickens and cows and whatnot.
Walter is a practical guy, handy and competent. His degree is in theater tech, and he builds stuff. Fixes stuff. We do a lot of that together, because that’s what life in Vermont is like. It’s called “pulling a Walter and Andrew special.” Usually more laughing and breaking things happens than things being fixed.
Walter’s family has been in the area for a couple generations, a famous name, but he’s from the poor side of the family. His grandmother had buried at least three husbands before she too departed. Knowing how her son, Walter’s father, turned out, I imagine she was a hard woman to live with. And maybe, just maybe, something of a black widow.
Her final husband was named Chester.
Chester was a nice old fellow. Obsessed with video. He was a founding member of the local cable access channel, CAT-TV, and deeply involved with the running and programming of the station. That station was his baby.
I met Chester any number of times, of course, but he never really seemed to remember me. He was always wearing a brown sport coat and a tie, the coat being a little worn out, the tie being a little dirty. He was always in a bit of a hurry, with things to do and places to go involving CAT-TV. I think he was a retired engineer, but I could have that all wrong, and I’m not going to call Walter and find out.
Walter and Chester had a falling out because Chester had videoed Walter’s wedding, then broadcast it on the cable access channel without permission. For weeks. Walter and his new bride were pissed, but I thought it was sweet. And it was a humdinger of a wedding.
Mostly what I knew about Chester was my best friend had been pissed at him for years, and got his back up every time I mentioned seeing him. And see him I did: Every week like clockwork, on Tuesday afternoons, Chester would come in to my place of work with the weekly schedule for CAT-TV, typed on a manual typewriter, all jagged and covered in white-out. This he would give to Vicky, the editorial coordinator, and there would be some chatting. “How you doing Chester?” “What you got there Chester?” And then Chester would head off to parts unknown, leaving behind a little puff of dust in his wake. And each week I would tweak Walter’s nose by saying “I saw your grandfather today!” And Walter would get all huffy and say “he’s not my grandfather, he’s my fucking grandmother’s husband. And fuck that guy.”
And so, one week--as I am pretending for the sake of this being a Halloween post--when the frost was on the pumpkin, and the fallen leaves were curling about the building in a cool breeze, Chester stopped in to drop off the weekly listing for CAT-TV...but Vicky wasn’t there. He asks after her, and I tell him she had to leave to run an errand, you know, but she’ll be back, and did he want to leave the schedule with me? And he allows as yes, that would be fine. And he hands me the piece of paper, and I put it on Vicky’s desk. And we say a few words, likely about the weather, as people who live in the country will, and he departs in his usual manner. Vicky comes back, I tell her Chester’s schedule is on her desk, the day continues as they always did, and we all went to our respective homes in the autumn dusk in Vermont, the sweetest of all the seasons in the sweetest of all places.
A couple days later, after the paper had gone to press, I talked to Walter. “Hey man, I saw your grandfather a couple days ago!” And there’s a long pause. And Walter says, hesitantly, “Dude. That’s not funny. Chester’s dead. He died Sunday.”
And I am shocked into silence. A moment of complete unreality. Because I saw him! I saw Chester plain as day! Nothing abnormal at all. No ghostly edges to his figure, no strange translucency. No ghost hounds swirling at his feet. Just Chester. Poor sweet old Chester.
And the story of Chester’s death is impossibly grisly. So gory and horrible that one of the responders, who was a seasoned rescue squad veteran, had to run off to the side of the road to heave. There were no witnesses, so no one really knows how it happened, but it appeared he had somehow gotten his coat stuck in the door of his car as it rolled down the driveway, and was pulled under and dragged a distance. He was hideously mangled. Apparently literally torn limb-from-limb.
Another of Walter’s Grandmother’s husbands gone. Make you wonder, doesn’t it?
The next day I told Vicky, and asked if the CAT-TV schedule had run in the paper. It had. Asked around if anyone else had seen Chester come in that day. They hadn’t. But yet there was the schedule in the paper, a couple days after Chester was so hideously killed.
So maybe I screwed up the dates. Maybe not. Likely I did , though, because, you know, I don’t believe in ghosts. Or maybe that building was a gateway to the great beyond, a place where the barrier between the worlds was just a little thinner.
I’m not in Vermont anymore, and I miss it desperately, especially this time of year--when the shadows lie long across the fallen leaves, Orion’s belt shines like row of diamonds in a mysterious sky, and the light of a jack O’ lantern can reach right across the frosted ground, all the way to parts unknown. And it hurts, the missing.
Happy Halloween everyone!
(PS: yes only my second diary ever. Living in New York, I really felt I had to do something to celebrate my favorite holiday in all the year. It’s a little rough, but I hope you enjoy it.)
