GHOST STORY

I used to be skeptical about things that go bump in the night. Until I lived in a haunted building for eight years, that is.

I'm pretty open minded and tend to be suspicious of overarching explanations and quick dismissals of odd anomalies. There sure is a lot of baffling stuff out there. I've had several striking experiences with psychics. And, in addition to lots of the usual thinking-of-someone-and-then-they-call sort of thing, I've had two completely convincing clairovoyant visions. They were not only very accurate, but one of them is damn near undebunkable. Once a stranger came up to me in a parking lot and told me she knew that I had psychic abilities. She offered to help me cultivate them. I said I didn't want to know, which is the truth. I was convinced it was real. It's just that I had other plans.

And I'm also completely convinced that the chemical/mechanical model upon which our whole medical industrial complex is based is hopelessly primitive. I have gone exclusively to Chinese doctors for many years. The bang-for-the-buck differential is amazing. $40 out the door. That includes diagnosis, treatment and medication. It costs that just to have them pull your file at an AMA doctor. And it's been very effective as health care. So I'm definitely open to a more "energetic" understanding of the way things work. (As is contemporary physics.) And I had a pretty intensive seven years of Taiji and Gigong training that only reinforced that openness. I had to curtail my practice because glass, including bottles of liquor, kept shattering in my hands. I got tired of cleaning up after myself. Not to mention wasting booze. I stopped training. Glass stopped shattering.

To some that may seem loony fringe, but I consider myself a practical guy. I go with what works and trust my instincts and experience.

There sure were some strange goings on at 1223 South Halsted when I lived there from 1983 to 1991. I don't know if there was a ghost or even many ghosts. I don't know if there are ghosts. For narrative convenience I'll call it the ghost, but I never saw anything. The two cats could see something that I couldn't. I know they could see it because there was a certain hostility between the ghost and the cats. When it was around they were on red alert. They would stake out a safe place where they could see everything. And as they sat side by side I watched their eyes tracking in tandem the movements of something I couldn't see. Something they didn't like. And from time to time, when it would get too close, they would scatter and regroup.

But I never personally experienced any hostility at all from the ghost. It actually tried to kill or at least scare the shit out of one of the cats by dropping a big olive jar full of pennies on the water bowl while she was drinking. That thing must've weighed twenty pounds and moved over six feet to smash that bowl. But with me the ghost was playful. Childlike, in the best sense. A friendly, if I may, perhaps even lonely ghost. And it may well have saved my life.

My first encounter with the ghost happened shortly after I moved in. I had been working all day to get the kitchen set up. Moved in and hooked up a stove. Fixed some plumbing. Cleaned and put stuff away. Finally I had the necessities. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. I went to bed feeling very satisfied. Starting to feel like home. As I lay there I heard an odd noise in the kitchen. Both cats were in bed with me so it couldn't have been one of them. And they were agitated about something. I got up to investigate. There was nothing there. I looked around the room and everything seemed fine. What could that noise have been? Rats, maybe? Then I looked at the kitchen table. It was the one thing I hadn't finished that day. There had been odd piles of crap on the table when I went to bed. Now it was all arranged in a very specific fashion. Neat, geometric, definitely not how I left it. I stared at it for a minute or so, scratched my head and went back to bed. The cats were very happy to see me.

After I had been back in bed for a few minutes there was another noise in the kitchen. This time I listened intently. It wasn't very loud. I have no sound to compare it to. Rustling leaves, maybe? It was coming from the area near the table. I thought I heard muffled giggling. I got up again. This time I went straight for the table. Everything had been rearranged. Again very neat. Again geometric. But now it was broken up into four groups, one on each corner, instead of all being in the center of the table. And the four chairs had been pulled out from the table and were now arranged off to the side facing each other in a square. I had to think about this one for a minute. Hmmmmm.... a lot of fours. As I struggled to recall my limited knowledge of biblical number symbolism, the glasses on the shelves started rattling gently. Was there some message? I sure couldn't decipher one. But it certainly was peculiar. I went back to bed, listened for a while and finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning the chairs were all neatly pushed in, each exactly centered on it's side of the table.

It didn't seem particularly threatening. It was all new to me but I saw no cause for alarm. After that initial contact, my own relationship with the ghost consisted largely of finding pranks when I woke up in the morning. Shoes hidden in the weirdest places, furniture stacked into little towers, that sort of thing. When it was around I would express occasional pleasantries. I always knew when it was there because of the war with the cats. But I figured that was their problem. What was I supposed to do about it? I just went about my business. The ghost went about its business. Nobody got hurt. Sometimes the ghost was there every day for weeks. Then there would be months at a time without even a hint of spectral activity. Then one morning I would wake up to find the refrigerator well away from the wall, still plugged in, cord taut. That sucker was heavy. It wasn't easy moving it back.

Since the place had been a sweatshop going back to the 19th century I imagined some child laborer dying in a work related accident. I asked the landlord, who had been around that building his whole life, if he knew of anything spooky there. He had heard a few stories over the years, but didn't know of anyone dying violently in the building or anything like that. Nothing tragic. No unquiet grave stuff.

Then one February night while I was asleep, the front third of the building collapsed, including the bedroom I was sleeping in. (see "Maxwell Street" story for details.) Psychologically it was a most anomalous experience. I remember a bright, colorful event, even though it was 4:00 AM and must have been very dark and thick with dust . And I had an overwhelming feeling that I had been protected by some unseen presence. Everything was too "just so." There just happened to be a length of conduit in the right place that was strong enough to hold my weight... To have emerged unhurt from such a potential disaster without aid from some intervening force seemed implausible. I credited the ghost. And a blue suit. But that's another story.

As it happened, my friend Leigh, who had a place down the street, was in Brazil for eight months. I had a key because I was already watering her plants in her absence. So I moved right in while they put a new facade on the considerably smaller building. When Leigh returned I moved back to my old place. The ghost was still there and I thanked it for helping me.

Later that year I started dating my now ex-wife. I didn't tell her about the ghost. I didn't want her to be afraid to stay over. Soon she moved in. The ghost was pretty quiet about the whole thing, as if it were sizing her up. And then we eloped to Las Vegas. We were making plans and I had a real job. One day Judy called me at work. "There's a ghost in our house," she blurted, and then went on to describe a series of bizarre events that morning. "Yeah, I know," I said lamely, "but it's a nice ghost." Fortunately, she was fascinated, not frightened. I might have never gotten out of that doghouse!

A couple years later we did move out. The ghost wasn't the problem. Judy being a beautiful, curvy blonde in a largely black area, there was a too-frequent assumption that she was a prostitute. Why else would she be there? The unwanted attention (from police--and not just to question her, they were predatory!--as well as from would-be-Johns) just wore her down. She was plenty tough and street wise, but she just got tired of it. And so did I. A couple months before we moved out I took the advice of an acquaintance who was savvy about such paranormal stuff and performed a little smudge ritual to help the ghost move on. There were no more spooky contacts. I assume my efforts were successful.

So, are there ghosts? I don't know. But there definitely are things that go bump in the night. I don't need to know the details. I doubt if I can fathom them. But it sure was eye-opening to live with whatever it was for eight years.