31 Ghosts 2018: October 1 – Things That Go Bump In The Night

Photo by Greg Panagiotoglou on Unsplash

In 1981 my parents lost the house they had owned and we moved into a new house in a new (to me) town. It wasn’t too far – I didn’t change schools or anything like that (well, immediately anyway). But when you’re young and you’ve only known one house your whole life, even moving one town over seems like a major upheaval. And while I was too young to understand concepts like mortgage defaults or foreclosure, the sense around every aspect of the move felt like defeat. So, you can imagine my surprise – and delight – when the house we moved into was a hulking mission-style 1920’s place on top of a hill with a view of the Santa Clara valley; it hardly seemed like a downgrade!
As an adult I look back on the time in that place – let’s call it the Oakridge house – with an adult perspective recognizing things like how we had to convert the formal (enormous) dining room into a make-shift apartment so we could take a boarder and make rent, or how when my dad was a kid he and his family stayed in a place not far away in Los Altos Hills and that, in some ways, renting this majestic, decaying place was a way of keeping his pride intact even after he felt he’d utterly let his family down. Those are Adult Details. But seven-year-old Jordy saw an incredible adventure palace! And if I try I can suspend my Adultness and see the place through his eyes. More often I see our time there with the mystery and adventure braided in with adult hindsight; one doesn’t diminish the other, but rather each perspective highlights and contrasts different aspects.
My sister Jill and I had to share a room, but I didn’t care. We got along great and we had our own balcony! And there was so much to explore! You want to defy danger? We had that in spades – we’d sneak down the steep hill to make forts in the bushes bordering the country club golf course. Or the annual rattlesnake infestation that came with the heat of summer.  One of our neighbors was an elderly woman and her husband – Peggy and Paul, if I recall correctly. I remember they seemed ancient, but I realize now she must have been in her late sixties early seventies (funny how that doesn’t seem so ancient anymore). Jill and I would visit her with my mom for long talks – Peggy gave Jill and I rolls of lifesavers. One summer she told us she had been tending the fruit trees in a clearing on the property when an eight foot rattlesnake slithered by. Part of me remembers she killed it herself with a hoe, but part of me remembers that she didn’t – live and let live. I’m sure my family will correct me, but for now I’m okay remembering both outcomes. Every evening her husband Paul would take a walk along the road that bordered the golf course. I drove those roads not long ago when I was back that way, and that was a not insignificant walk, let me tell you! And then one night he didn’t make it home on time. He was found, but I remember hearing the word “Alzheimer’s” for the first time. I know Paul was around for some time, but in the way that childhood time speeds up in the mind’s eye I see him fading into a ghost himself before disappearing entirely.
I learned to ride a bicycle on the wide circular driveway there. Just when I felt like I had a hang of it I’d lose my balance and crash into the same damn Cyprus tree (that winter, a particularly windy storm toppled that tree. I like to take some of the credit). We raised a small garden in a bed adjacent to the house – I ate my first home-grown tomatoes at the Oakridge house. I remember we had chickens for a short while – that was less a deliberate act and more a begrudging accepting of the chicks that hatched under the incubator at Jill’s kindergarten class.
The house was also haunted.
Let me pause for a moment and get a little meta. First, welcome! It’s October 1, and that means it’s the first day of 31 Ghosts 2018!! Looking back on the stories last year, particularly the true ones, I noticed stories about the Oakridge house were absent. There’s a reason that nicely illustrates one of the difficulties inherent in this theme: for the most part, ghost stories can be, well, boring. Okay, not exactly boring, but unless you’re living on the corner of Hell and Damnation, real paranormal activity has its own pace and it rarely makes for a compelling tale. From a writer’s perspective, stringing the rare, spooky beads onto a narrative thread in a way that’s engaging can be quite the challenge. Taken another way, we go to horror movies and read scary stories because we inherently know life isn’t that spooky. And that’s good. Reality is scary enough as it is (the way real life facts and episodes are spun into grotesque horror stories intended to keep us afraid is whole different story in itself).
But let’s go back to the Oakridge house when I was small and the cracked whitewashed stucco walls towered above me to the master bedroom turret. The house even had a basement – a feature all but unheard of in California! The washer and dryer were down there in that perpetually dim space. I didn’t go down there much — a fact that surprises me because I should have loved it! Maybe it spooked me more than I care to remember, but I only have vague memories of the chill dampness. There was a stairway down from the outside, but we mostly used the narrow steep stairway that led down there from inside the house. With at least three of us kids and my dad, my mom hefted some serious laundry baskets down those rickety stairs. Years later she admitted that on numerous occasions lugging baskets down there she would lose her balance and feel herself start to pitch forward only to physically feel something take hold of her and steady her until she got her balance under control. Maybe it was the repeated benevolence of the act that kept her from talking about the events until years later. More likely, she took it as it was, felt grateful for the assist and kept going – there was always laundry to do, kids to feed, etc, etc. No time to worry about ghosts…
On a number of occasions, we heard unexplained footsteps. I remember waking one night to a sound downstairs. The wan glow of the AM radio alarm clock let me know it was the middle of the night, and with Jill and my door open I could her my dad snoring down the hallway and up the short stairs to their turret bedroom. But there was that sound: one of our kitchen chairs pulled out from the table to accommodate someone taking a seat. I waited in the darkness, breathing shallowly, quietly, lest I miss a sound. I listened hard. Nothing but my own heart and my dad’s snores. Then the sound again! The chair moved! And then footsteps started slow and deliberate on the creaky wood floor of the kitchen. Step by step, and I hoped for a moment it was Dave who lived in the apartment downstairs and he’d just go into his room and it’d be quiet again… but these were boots. Dave didn’t wear boots. And the slow footfalls moved from the kitchen into the tiled entry way and didn’t stop at the door to Dave’s room. No, I heard the first booted foot start up the stairs. I was breathing fast, trying to control my fear now. The footsteps climbed the curving stairway, step by step by step. I could hear my heart beating in my ears as the boots came up onto the landing. My bed was in direct line of sight of the top of the stairs. Whoever – or whatever – was at the top of the stairs could no doubt see my outline under my beadspread, pulled tight now over my head. I didn’t dare peak. I heard the steps come closer to my open doorway and then pause. I heard a doorknob turn and quietly I heard the door to my brother Jay’s room open…pause… and then gently close. But it wasn’t Jay. No, the steps moved the few feet to our open doorway before they paused again. Whatever it was, it was in the freaking doorway and it was staring at my bed and Jill’s bed. I didn’t move. I lay as still as I have ever done in my life before and after. I held my breath. And then the steps moved down the hallway… only to take the few steps up to the landing leading to my mom and dad’s room. There, too, I heard the door open… pause… and then close again. The steps came back down the stairs. I started breathing again, shallow, fast, and quiet, oh god, so quiet, as the footsteps started down the curving staircase. I listened to every receding footfall grateful with each stair that I might live to see the next morning. When the steps reached the bottom of the stairs, the heavy boots again crossed the tiled foyer. And then… they faded out. I waited. I listened. I listened more. Nothing. When I was certain there wasn’t another step, when I knew it had been long enough, I bolted from my bed down the hallway, up the short stairs to my parent’s room and leapt into bed with them. I don’t remember what I said or what they said, but I do remember laying there between them, safe, and drifting off to sleep.
For the record, Jill? I’m sorry I left you in the bedroom that night after that, though I’m pretty sure the ghost was done for that night.
There were other occasions where I heard – and Jill and I together heard – the footsteps. They always terrified us. I remember one time eventually screwing up the courage to peek my head out from under the covers when the steps reached the landing, when whatever it was would be in plain sight of me – and it would see me. And I remember seeing… nothing. Seeing nothing, I leapt out of bead and into the empty hallway. Nothing. I took a few tentative steps down the stairs to look the length of the curved stairway down to the foyer. Nothing. Don’t get me wrong, that didn’t make it any less terrifying, but it sparked a lifelong curiosity about what it was exactly that went bump in those long nights in the Oakridge house.

Five Things This Week: week 36

The Hollywood Reporter
Remember Michael Moore? He has a new movie coming out, and we’d better damn well pay attention. As mentioned early in this article, he was one of the few left-leaning pundits who called the election for Trump ahead of the voting. I didn’t believe it was possible at the time, but, well, things have changed. You may not like him, but he’s well worth listening to.
The Atlantic
How did the dinosaurs go extinct? Asteroid impact, right? Maybe. But maybe not… And therein lies an acrimonious disagreement filled with academic badmouthing, backstabbing, and name-calling. It’s a serious scientific brawl that you probably had no idea was even going on (which is largely because the “Impactors” camp doesn’t want you to!).
Topic
As I write this the Mendocino Complex fire – now the largest wildfire in California history – is approaching 100% containment. As we approach the heart of fire season it’s with the understanding that realization that the threat of wildfire is only getting worse and more year-round – six of the ten largest fires in California history have occurred within the last ten years. This story takes place up in Oregon, but provides a very good example of what happens when the geography that draws tourists to admire it catches fire at the worst time.
GQ
Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’re no doubt aware of the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the UK last year – there have been international sanctions imposed on Russia by most of the world (even as Trump says Putin is a great guy). But what went down with the poisoning? What was the poison itself? And what’s the aftermath? This article examines all of that and puts it forward in a rather terrifying narrative.
“Pantsuit Sasquatch” by Molly Lewis
YouTube
None other than Aimee Mann tweeted, “It’s rare that I hear a song I wish I’d written. This is a beautiful and heartbreaking song about a woman who just wants to take a walk in the woods, goddamn it.”

Five Things This Week: week 34

Longreads
I admit, I was drawn in initially for the ghost aspect – but it’s not real ghosts here. She discusses the phenomenon of seeing the face of her dead brother in strangers. Like literally seeing his face. She discovers it’s not an uncommon thing and traces the psychology of the experience as well as the social aspects of grief. I can commiserate; I remember once when I worked at Orchard Supply Hardware (now being liquidated! Sad!) in the mid-90’s, only a few years after my dad died, and a man came through my line who bore a striking likeness to my dad, to the point where I made a double take. On the second look, I saw the differences, but for a split second… All these years later, I still vividly remember that moment and the aftermath where my brain tried to regain focus. 
Longreads
A second article from Longreads (you, too, can sign up for their weekly newsletter because you know you want to) – this is a fascinating memoir of a woman revisiting the unlikely place she called home: China Lake missile range as a tourist. 
I came across the Quartz article first. I’ve been following the Stratolaunch since the announcement way back when. I was positive it would never be built. I’m glad I’m wrong.
Start with the Wired article. That does a lovely job of giving the context and history of the project in a way not wholly dissimilar to the article Last week I linked to about Virgin Galactic’s efforts to launch a vehicle into space from an enormous plane. Where that article focused on a pilot, this article focuses on the creators – Paul Allen, the billionaire who believed it into viability, and Burt Rutan, the genius designer who has been tinkering with the concept for decades.
While the Wired article does a nice job of casting doubt on the viability of the proposed mission of this leviathan, the Quartz piece goes a step further… It gets going in the second half of the article when it suggests it may be a “secret” government project being built in plain sight and compares it to the Glomar Explorer ship that was ostensibly built for manganese mining, but in fact was intended to (and almost did!) raise a wrecked Russian submarine, K-129. That in itself is an awesome story, so could the Stratolaunch be a similar military project? I don’t care! It’s so bonkers and I’m so excited this behemoth is going to actually fly that I really don’t care about the rationale. But that’s just me… Also, if you want to see this thing actually move? Check out the successful taxi testing. 
YouTube
Yes, the Toto song, but covered by Weezer. This is a link to the YouTube video of them playing it live, but they also released a studio version that (Spotify willing) I’ll embed below. It’s as straightforward, loyal-to-the-original cover you’re going to find, and that’s just fabulous. Granted, Weezer isn’t exactly cutting-edge and first on the playlist of Kids These Days™ but their version did actually chart at number 1 on the alternative-rock Billboard chart. The inter-webs are mixed, with music pundits decrying it as “the worst thing ever,” or heralding the arrival of pop culture’s reboots into pop music. Really? Who cares. It’s fun. And, it’s helping Toto, too – they’re still around and touring (though of course a 40-year-old band has had numerous line-up changes over the years). Founding member Steve Lukather told the Wall Street Journal, “I never thought I’d live to see a resurgence in a positive way. All of a sudden people are being nice to us. It’s new to me! This has been the most surreal summer of my life.”
Hey, that’s pretty cool!
Chuck
I recently started watching this show again. I habitually do this every couple years with this series. Maybe you remember it? It first aired back in 2007 and ran for five seasons. Synopsis: disenchanted Nerd Herd (think Best Buy’s Geek Squad) tech gets all the government’s secrets embedded in his head. Hilarity ensues. It’s dated, sure, but it’s still just a lot of fun and the soundtrack is like a late aughts greatest Indie rock hits. I still love it wholeheartedly. I actually own all five seasons on DVD. It’s fun to see Zachary Levi (he of Tangled, Thor, and the upcoming Shazam (check out the trailer)) way back when. He’ll always be Chuck to me.