I have to admit, I love this time of year. It’s not so much just Halloween, as I’m up for a good ghost story any day of the year. I can as easily get lost in a scary book in the middle of summer also. It can be hot as hades outside with the AC pounding away indoors and I’ll still be kicked back in a recliner reading. I confess, however, that ghost stories are always more fun if the weather is cooler and there is perhaps a crackling fire in the fireplace.
And who hasn’t, at one point or another, been in the midst of reading a scary or suspenseful story, completely absorbed, when there comes the startling sound of a phone ringing, or the doorbell. Or perhaps simply a knock on the door? You flinch, of course. Who could it be? What unexpected company has come calling?
The phone you can ignore but what about the door? Someone is standing there, waiting. And once again there is that knock, less jarring this time. You have time to think about it now.
In my case, I have the same first thought of who might be at the door. That part is normal. It is always the second thought that gets me. And what is that next thought? That’s where I wonder, not who might be at the door, but what’s on the other side of that door. As I walk slowly toward the door there is hesitation. I take a few steps, pause, perhaps chew a finger nail. The knock comes again. I move a little closer. I reach for the knob and then . . .
OK. I’m just having fun here. I do sometimes have that second thought though. And where does this second thought come from? Well, this thought stems from my having read a certain short story years ago. And if we go back to the little scenario much like in that story, W.W. Jacob’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” the thought is there, lingering for half a second or so–could it be something evil lurking on the other side of the door?
Okay, enough. I could go on, but you get the idea. And in the W. W. Jacob’s story, the characters had a very good idea what would be standing on the doorstep.
It’s probably just trick or treaters waiting for you to reward them for their scary costumes. So, pass out the candy and have a few laughs with them. Or maybe I’m thinking of years past. Now everyone just gathers at the local school or wherever (at least in non-Covid times) but where is the fun in that?
I didn’t start this post with all of that in mind. I just wanted to talk about (and maybe it has to do with Halloween) how I’ve kind of been getting back into reading Stephen King lately.
I’ve mainly just been going back and reading a few of the early works that I hadn’t read, or perhaps had started but not gotten around to finishing. I finished up Different Seasons a month or two ago, and then read The Shining. I had read the first two stories in Different Seasons years ago, but always had trouble getting into “The Body.” Of course, I had seen the movie version of the story, titled Stand by Me. And a friend of mine had always talked about how great the story “The Breathing Method” was. Don’t know why Different Seasons was so much more difficult for me. I did like the first two stories well enough: “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” (Gotta love that title) and “Apt Pupil.”
And as far as The Shining goes, I had seen the original movie made from the novel. The only real difference between the book and the movie is the hedges. Spoiler alert: The hedges in the book are animal shapes that come to life.
I’m mainly a fan of King’s short story compilations. Night Shift, and Skeleton Crew are classics as far as I’m concerned. The newer collections are good, but not quite classics, at least in my mind. There are a couple of exceptions as far as individual stories go: “Under the Weather,” from The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, and “Autopsy Room Four,” from Everything’s Eventual. This is all just my opinion, of course, and you’ll find a million other King fans with other opinions, I’m sure. I remember being a little disappointed with Bag of Bones being used as a title for a novel when it would have been a very cool title, I thought, for a collection of short stories. Again, that’s just my opinion. I really did enjoy the novel.
As far as King’s novels go, I don’t feel as though I’ve read that many until I start listing them, then I’m like, Wow! I guess I’ve read more of them than I thought. There are just so many of them. There are still many of the most popular ones that I have yet to get around to reading. I’ve only known one person who had ever read every book King had published up through 2017 (though I’m sure there are many people out there who are Constant Readers) and that was my oldest sister. She died in 2017 (peacefully in her sleep) so that streak ended there.
The Dark Half is perhaps my favorite King novel, if I had to pick one off the top of my head. I might could make an argument in support of a couple others if I took some time to think about it. Pet Sematary was the first King novel I ever read, though I’m not sure where I would rank it in the list.
I started listening to King’s nonfiction book On Writing (the twentieth anniversary edition) on Audible a couple of weeks ago. I had read the book when it first came out, but don’t really remember much of it. I do remember liking it, but that’s about it. I have to say, the man cracks me up. I don’t remember the book being this hilarious. The first part of the book is somewhat autobiographical. To listen to King tell his own story in his own voice is a real treat. I had watched a few interviews and talks on You Tube where he riffs about stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, just as I’m enjoying listening to him now. A friend of mine, who happens to be a bookseller, said she had met King quite a few years ago at a bookseller’s convention and she said he is just as you would imagine him to be in person. That makes sense. He seems to be a very down to earth person. Though I’ve never met him, that’s the impression I have. It is interesting to me that he always seems a little bemused at his own phenomenal success. He seems comfortable with it, and even has fun with the idea of it all. This, I think, is what makes his novels and stories such comfortable reads. He’s straight up, no B.S. about it. Ok, there is maybe some B.S. at times, just for fun.
Anyway, the very weekend I chose to start listening to him on Audible, I was surprised to find a Stephen King movie marathon underway on television. Made sense, though, as Halloween was only a few weeks away. And there were other scary movies offered up as well. The only problem is that when you watch the movies on regular television, the language gets heavily edited. And so, after setting up to record the streaming movies, I went onto Netflix to see if any of King’s movies came up there. Not many.
And this leads me to the next, related topic. Continuing with idea of scary stories . . .
I ended up staying on Netflix and watching a strange movie of four stories called Ghost Stories. This was an Indian movie, with Indian actors in each of the stories. This movie, or set of films within the movie were creatively interesting. The first one harkens back to old-time horror or ghost stories. And then there was a really strange one involving a woman turning into a bird(?) I have to say that this one intrigued me the most, as I had written a very strange horror story called “Fluttering” (Blue Girl and the Stars) that was almost as bizarre and was along similar lines. I can’t say any more than this without spoiling the film for you. But I will say that there was one big difference. This film was so bizarre that I plan on watching it again to try and figure this story out. It is quite possible that there isn’t any way to figure it out, however. Yes, it is one of those types of stories. The whole point of the film might just be the bizarre nature of it all, and you walk away scratching your head. There was a zombie story, and then another one about a haunting of a family by a grandmother.
And now back to a lighter note on the scare scale, and back on regular channels again. There is a new series called Ghosts which is extremely light-hearted. Apparently, it is an American version of a British TV series. The show revolves around a couple inheriting a haunted mansion. There is a good bit of wisecracking humor on the part of the ghosts and the humans. The wife ends up having an accident and then suddenly being able to see and communicate with the odd assortment of spirits. The spirits are all from various time periods. The show, as I said, is light and airy, or, well, blithely humorous. Bad pun intended. It kind of reminds me of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir blended with the sense of humor similar to that in the movie, An American Werewolf in London, updated with the faster paced witty banter of a sit-com that would appeal to today’s viewer. I’ve watched the first three episodes. I like it, but have a suspicion that it might not last. Then again, I could be wrong.
And now, finally, I’ll mention my own encounter with a spirit. It isn’t a story I tell often. I don’t even think about it much, to be honest. I usually forget about the whole incident completely for years on end. It is only when I run into a cousin of mine that I happen to remember it, because he always brings it up. He heard the story from my younger brother, initially. My younger brother was also witness to the incident. He was right there with me when it all happened.
Years ago, some of my family (myself included) traveled to the Midwest for a funeral. We stayed in what had been my grandparent’s home. My uncle was still living there at the time. The funeral had to do with my mother’s side of the family and was a hundred or so miles away. In other words, the incident I am about to tell you had absolutely nothing to do with the funeral.
Anyway, the house where the incident took place was one of those old midwestern style farm houses. My father’s parents had lived there for decades, but at the time there was only my father’s brother residing there. I believe my grandmother might have still been alive, but in the nursing home. She had been bedridden for years, and had at the time suffered from what was called “senility” for longer than I can remember.
You’ve got to understand that in the Midwest there are old farm houses that stand alone with nothing but fields surrounding them for miles around. In this case there were a few distant neighbors, and one house that was fairly close. A long gravel lane ran from the main road up to my grandparent’s house. The main road was also gravel and led into the small town of about 600 people. That’s how small the town was. There was another house on the lane, closer to the main road. There was an apple orchard and a small cherry orchard behind my grandparent’s house. I remember as a child spending a few days up in the cherry trees picking cherries for my grandfather. He was always making wine: cherry, elderberry, blackberry (the blackberry bushes were along the end of the gravel lane). Other than this, the house was surrounded by corn fields for as far as you could see, the view broken only occasionally by a rare clump or copse of trees. The cornfields always made a fun playground as you traipsed along in the rich black soil that was so soft you would sink up to your ankles. The corn stalks would be swaying about in the breeze, towering three or four feet about your head.
Also on the property, there was a barn, a garage (the backside of which was my grandfather’s workshop. He was a cabinet maker). The shop/garage sat a good distance from the house, and a few smaller buildings sat closer in. There used to be an old outhouse on the apple orchard side, out behind the house. Which sat silent and unused. I used to peek in there sometimes, fascinated at the hole in the board, the darkness with spiderwebs stretched across the hole in the board. It was spooky in its own way. A way that can only fascinate a kid.
Overall, it was a beautiful farm (if you disregard the outhouse). I have to say, however, that old farm houses can be scary places (especially to a child) even in the middle of the afternoon.
As an example, none of us kids wanted to venture upstairs alone. I remember many a visit, each of us begging one another for accompaniment on the dreaded journey up to grab something out of the suitcase. It could be broad daylight out and it didn’t matter. And you could certainly bet on none of us making the trip after dark unless it was bedtime. On those afternoon jaunts, there would be the slow and hesitant start up the steep and narrow stairs. After a few steps the pace would become more hurried, ending in a mad dash into the bedroom to grab whatever you needed to get. And on the way back down there would be the hurried rumble of scuffling feet. It’s a wonder no one fell and broke anything. You had the person in front racing to leave the other behind, giggling nervously; and the one behind terrified of being left alone. By the time you hit the bottom of the stairs there would be the hilarity of relief tinged with the remnants of fear. After bursting forth into the safety of the sun-bright kitchen, the two sojourners would be laughing uproariously, pushing and batting at each other, the follower accusing the other of trying to leave him or her behind to be gotten. To be gotten by what? There was never any clear sense of what was so evil or scary upstairs. What was up there in the middle of the afternoon? Well, you get the shadows and maybe a slant of sunlight coming from one side or the other, east or west, depending on time of day, streaming through a window of one of the two bedrooms. Other than the two bedrooms, one on either side as you hit the upstairs landing, there, straight ahead, was a small room called “the book room.” This room was at the center, just a door that remained closed. It was just a white wooden door with a black, old time metal knob for a handle, set in a half inch, outward jutting rectangle of black metal with a keyhole. You always hoped the door would remain closed, and that nothing would appear to block your way to the escape route of the stairs while you were in the bedroom. I often imagined the old metal door handle turning, rattling slightly as it turned, the door creaking open.
Some of the doorknobs in the old house were solid hard glass, of a ridged design, set in a woodgrain door, such as led into the front room, or parlor downstairs. Other handles were smooth and hard with a glossy swirl of brown and black. That downstairs room (the parlor) was really what had been the front of the house when the house had been built back at the turn of the century. This parlor was just off of the dining room. Behind the parlor on this lower level was another bedroom where my grandparents had slept. The parlor contained a couch that could be pulled out into a bed for company to sleep on. This bed in later years was where my grandmother slept (prior to her going into the nursing home), her walker standing nearby, along with an oxygen tank and a side table filled with medication. The door leading out onto the front porch from the parlor was always closed. No one ever used it. There was a window on the upper part of the door that had a beautiful frosted design. I always want to remember it as a design of figures on ice skates skating along. I’m sure this is a false image though. It was something totally different. The parlor was always dark. My grandmother was always sleeping in there, day and night during her years as an invalid. Though she was never truly an invalid in any real sense. She just stayed drugged up most of the time, I think. Not because she had any interest in being so, but because she started taking medication for allergies, which left her groggy and sort of out of it most of the time. The drugs, and being asleep all the time made her forgetful and never fully sure what time it was. Eventually, she lost track of the decades and would swear she needed to get dinner ready for the men who would be coming in from working the fields. There were no men working the fields at this point, at least none who would be showing up to eat with us.
So, let’s wander back upstairs. What was there to be afraid of in the daylight, upstairs? There were only dust motes floating in the slanting sunlight. And there was the silence. And the small book room, which had housed only a few boxes and shelving along one wall, I found out in later years. It was a somewhat narrow room, with one window at the end opposite the door. There might have been a box or two of books, but mostly other boxes of stuff, including the many trophies and ribbons, along with photos of two of my uncles (my father’s two older brothers), twins, who had ridden the rodeo circuit in the old days. These trophies were also stashed in both of the two upstairs bedrooms.
So what else was there to be afraid of in the middle of the afternoon? Nothing really, if one ignores the sounds of the wind. In old farmhouses in the Midwest one can always count on there being strong winds sweeping across the open fields and brushing against the sides of the house. There will often be creaking wood, and pipes that knock, etc. You could kind of grow used to these sounds.
In later years (the teen years) I was a little braver. I would venture upstairs alone, to read or get away from the family for a few minutes. There would be the winds, which no longer scared me. But picture this, imagining yourself there. . .
You’ll be upstairs reading or doing something, the daylight is there, the silence, perhaps a slightly moaning or whistling wind. All is calm and quiet and you get a strange feeling, the urge to look over your shoulder or up from your book. There will be nothing there, of course, except dust motes floating in a slant of light coming from one of the windows and landing innocently on the dark wood of the floor. There might be a slight creak or whisper and a light shiver runs up your spine. That’s when you just sort of get an urge to go downstairs and find somebody else to be around, or you might feel the need to leave the house altogether, and go out into the sunshine. Perhaps you suddenly get the desire to be out strolling the apple orchard or wandering lazily down the lane. You get up from the bed and walk toward the stairs. The bookroom door is still closed, harboring its secrets, memories from the past. The other bedroom door is open but you don’t really want to look in the room. You start down the stairs. The whole way down the stairs, you resist the temptation to look back over your shoulder. You know there isn’t anything behind you; but still, there is that sensation. You know it is just your imagination, nothing more. By the time you get to the bottom of the narrow stairway you almost have yourself convinced. In my grandparent’s house, you would open the door on your right (the only door there was at the bottom, the one I mentioned earlier) that leads to the kitchen. This door always remains closed. It’s a little loose in the frame, and perhaps thuds a bit against the frame with a draft when someone opens the door in the pantry way that leads outside. The door creaks as you open it. You simply take another step down and there you are in a bright and airy kitchen, friendly and inviting. You step down onto the dark and white tile squares. You simply had hoped someone be there to greet you, some living being.
And so now that you’ve taken the tour and are familiar with the surroundings, I’ll present the incident:
We were up for a funeral, remember, though that (again) has nothing to do with my grandparent’s house, or even this side of the family. It was nighttime, and my brother and I were in one of the two upstairs bedrooms, the larger of the two bedrooms. It’s the bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs. I had the full-size bed, and he had the single. There must have been maybe four feet distance between the two beds (I mention this for a reason).
I couldn’t tell you what time it was. Not that late, probably, but very dark. It’s not like back east in the city where there might be a street light close by. Nope, total darkness. I’m lying there, trying to go to sleep, not quite at the edges, just relaxed. I was around twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, maybe. I believe I was on leave from the service at the time. So that makes my brother seventeen or eighteen, though I think of him as being about fifteen or younger. There was four years age difference between us.
In any case, I was lying on my back with my eyes closed, and my mind was a million miles away. All was quiet. Then I sort of got this weird feeling that someone was standing over me. You know that feeling. You know someone is there, the feeling is just too strong for there not to be. I opened my eyes. I closed my eyes and opened them again. I was a very sober and level-headed young man at this point. I remember thinking that I was acting just as someone would on a television show. I couldn’t believe what I had seen. I opened my eyes again, and there it was, still. A presence lingering at the foot of the bed. There was probably more feeling than sight involved. The feeling of someone pushing into the realm of sight, of being in the space of reality that you occupied. Now, I will say that I didn’t get any sense that this presence was evil or anything. Also, the impression I had was that the presence was female. The few times I’ve told the story I always say that this presence was like the images escaping from the Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The only difference was that this wasn’t an angry or malevolent being.
At this point I could have reached up and pulled the string that was tied off to the metal headboard (very similar to the brass headboard of the seventies style bed, but sturdier tubelike metal) of the bed. The other end of the string was tied to the chain attached to the ceiling lightbulb. Had I pulled the string, the light would have come on immediately and the presence would have most likely disappeared. I didn’t want to.do that though. I truly wanted to know whether what I was seeing was actually there. And so . . .
As calmly as I could, I said my brother’s name. I didn’t want to startle him awake and scare off the presence. I just wanted verification. No matter. It didn’t at all matter that I had spoken my brother’s name in the calmest, most measured voice I’ve ever used. All I know is that suddenly he hollered and there was mayhem and commotion as he leaped across the distance between the beds. He was on top of me in a matter of two seconds. The only thing I can think to equate it to is Scooby-doo jumping on Shaggy in the cartoon. How my brother didn’t knock himself out on the sloping roof of the ceiling that extended down across his bed I’ll never know. In any case, the presence was gone at that point and my uncle, who was sleeping in a bedroom below hollered up at us: “What the hell’s going on up there?” I had pulled the string for the light then, or maybe my brother got his flailing arms caught in it and tugged it on. My uncle was then standing at the bottom of the stairs. At least I think it was him.
I hollered that everything was ok. It took a few minutes for the household to calm back down. I never went downstairs then and I don’t think my brother did either. “Get off me,” I remember saying. He somehow ended up back in his own bed. Everybody managed to go back to sleep. I slept late the next day, and my brother had filled everyone in before I went down. When asked about the incident the next day, I half-jokingly replied that I hadn’t seen a thing.
At some point after that night, my uncle, who lived there alone, told of an earlier event of his seeing car lights progress up the lane toward the house one night. At first, he thought the house down the lane was getting company, but then the lights passed the neighbor’s house and came further up the lane towards the house. He got up to see who it was. No one. The lights had disappeared when he went out onto the porch. He went back in and in just a few minutes the same thing happened again. He saw the lights, but then there was no car. But then, he said, while he was standing on it, the porch started shaking beneath his feet. He said he had called out, “In the name of God, what do you want?” The porch stopped trembling. And then things were quiet.
An old farm house in the Midwest, situated in the middle of cornfields can be one of the scariest places a person can be. Probably not all farm houses are that scary. At least I wouldn’t think.
My grandparent’s house is gone now. The place was sold, after my uncle died, to some company that came in and razed it so they could plant more of whatever they intended to plant. My uncle was in his early nineties when he passed away from pneumonia. My grandmother, who I’m pretty sure had still been alive at the time of the incident, but in a nursing home, lived to within three months of her hundredth birthday (passing away long before my uncle). Even my father lived to the ripe old age of ninety-two. My aunt, the oldest of my father’s siblings also lived to ninety-eight or ninety-nine. I remember visiting her after my father died. “I’ve outlasted them all,” she said.
My younger brother passed away in 2012 in a motorcycle accident. He, from the time we were little, used to always play the tough guy. When he grew up, he was all about tattoos and leather jackets and Harley motorcycles. He loved the skull image. He wasn’t a mean person. He was someone who would give you the shirt off his back. He always had friends. The only thing was, inside there was always that scaredy cat of a little boy. I could always see that little boy. I still see him as a little boy today. I haven’t actually seen him since his death, of course. Perhaps I’ll ask him to come and visit me and see what happens. Would I be the same sober person I was at twenty-two? He might just have a good laugh at my expense. I never razzed him about the incident. After all, I had woken him up out of a dead sleep and the presence was the first thing he witnessed when he opened his eyes.
I don’t really even think about that night much at all, and it never comes up in conversation unless I’m talking to my cousin. That only happens once every couple of years or so. He always brings it up, asking me to tell him about it, acting as though he doesn’t remember hearing it before. And then he laughs. Oh, I don’t mean he laughs in disbelief. He’s just tickled by the story. He had been in the house as a child, and later, as an adult, though he never lived there either. I’ve never asked him if he was afraid to go upstairs alone as a child when visiting my grandparents. Maybe I will ask next time I talk to him.
I don’t have any judgments one way or another about the incident. I’m not saying it proves or disproves anything one way or another about life or death. I just know what I saw, and my little brother was my witness.