Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov
I have one last request. Dont use embalming fluid on me. I want to be stuffed with crabmeat.
Woody Allen
It was twenty years ago.......but it is as fresh in my memory as yesterdays lunch.
To recall it now still makes me shiver. Tiny chilled feet of refrigerated rodents scamper the length of my spine even now at the thought of that clammy encounter. For that was the day I became a believer......
But let me start at the beginning, as proper stories must.
We had been in the Butte 3 or 4 years by then.....didn't matter we still weren't 'locals' yet. We, being myself & my partner & pal John Zink.
It was our thought back then in those clueless days of yesteryear to put in a.........a, 'coffeehouse', of all things. I know, I know, absolutely ridiculous, but Zink & I hadn't done anything right yet, so we stumbled ahead, the blind leading the blind. A fool & his money.
We chose a house on Elk Ave, apparent even then that this may be the street where the action was. We purchased a rumpled Fixer-upper, that even a coat of bright blue paint couldn't disguise as the 'Homey Victorian' it was billed to be. We bought it from one Roger Conn, & to Roger we paid the unheard of price of 30,000. American dollars.....course the place also had a huge log barn on it & was zoned commercial.
It was across Elk from Penelopes.
It was called THE BLUES PROJECT.
For some odd reason it was not until after we closed on the house that Roger offered a somewhat disturbing bit of information.
"The place has got a quite a history boys." said Roger.
"How's that." we said.
" Well, they say that back in the late 1800s, a beautiful young woman was murdered by her jealous husband here. Guess he caught her with her hand in the cookie jar over at Kochevars." Roger's eyebrows arched like a cats back.
"And?" We said.
"And when he got her home, 'whack' with the old ax...."
'Had to be an ax'....interrupted Zink.
"So then he panics & decides to bury her in the root cellar."
"Roger, why didn't you tell us this before we closed?" I asked.
"Well I don't' cotton to it much....however...there was one thing......"
"What's that Roger?"
"Well they say she was still alive when he buried her."
"Great". I said.
"And?" said Zink.
"And....wellllll....and they......they say.........wellll..."
"Well, what, Roger."
"Well some say she still haunts the place."
"Great." Said I.
"Cool." Said Zink.
The thought of 'ghosts' have a strange affect on most of us. In our world of constant diversion through loud music, bad T.V., fast food & faster funerals we seldom have the time to reflect on any type of afterlife. I mean we just don't have the interest anymore to listen or see what just isn't apparent on this dimension. Never mind that civilizations that have out lasted ours 10 to 1, so far, such as the Egyptians, Mayan, & Incas went so far as to send food wealth & even servants along on that long ride to another life. Never mind that tribes from Africa to the Americas still believe the dead walk among us. Never mind that millions more people believe in reincarnation, than believe in hell. We simply don't need to be bothered with what aint there. Here in America, the 'real' world, when we send someone off to that big 'closing' in the sky., we just hope they stay there. Certainly don't need the ghost of Grand pa, hanging around giving advice. Nope, we believe in dust to dust, when your gone your gone, you only live for a short time & your dead for a long time......
Or do we.
So why is it, children believe in that monster under the bed. Why is it abandoned house's on black nights give us the creeps. Why is there Deja Vu, Lady Luck, the Bogie man, weird dreams, or Halloween? Could it just be that maybe in fact everything in this world cannot be explained.
Could it be....just possibly, that there are ghosts?
Why is it then, in real estate transactions, that 'May Be Haunted' is just not considered a big selling point.
Word spread like a bad virus around town. The 'pilgrims' had bought the BLUES PROJECT.
It seemed like we had been the only people in town that hadn't heard about the house's evil reputation.
"YOU?" They would say, a look of disbelief "Bought The BLUES?" "JeeZZZZ, man, the place is HAUNTED!!"
"How do you know?" We would challenge.
"Cause a friend of mine used to live there, lasted only one week, walked away from 2 months rent."
"Why'd he leave."
"Said the place had cold chills, & a rotted smell, just gave him the creeps."
It was true, in the four years I'd been here, I'd yet to see the house occupied.
Other horror stories suddenly began to surface about the place.
" A young woman & her child lived there...the woman murdered her kid one night..."
"Maybe the kid deserved it." We said.
"Nope...it was the house that made her do it."
Henrietta Raines, told us this story.
"When I was a kid, a spooky old man by the name of Ochevar, or something, lived there. We used to sneak up & peer in the windows at him taking a bath in a number 4 washbasin....."
"Kinda slow in town back then huh Henry?" asked Zink.
"I tell ya the guy was spooky...died of a heart attack in there...."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why'd he die of a heart attack?" We asked.
"How the hell should I know?" said Henrietta. "What do I look like, Dr. Christian Barnyard?"
Steve Glazier offered this:
"A bunch of us had a seance in there one night, We were kinda just kidding around when all of a sudden this apparition appears.!"
Apparition?"
"A ghost!" said Glaze.
"Just exactly what does a ghost look like?" asked Zink.
"This was pretty much your standard, basic type....floating, transparent...'
"Like a jellyfish?" I asked.
"Yeah but colder...a cold breeze...& it stunk real bad. Scared hell out of us!"
For a month, the house stood empty while we put together plans & financing for the ill-fated coffee-house.
"Maybe's we should rent it out while we're waiting?" said Zink one night.
He was the real brains behind the operation.
"Yeah...kinda experiment on some short term tenant.' I was joking really, neither Zink nor I believed in ghosts. Zink even less than I.
We decided to do a bit of remodeling to command top dollar for rent. After all the place at best could only be called dreary. In the old style of miners homes the house had numerous small dark rooms, tiny windows emitted a dim & lonely light. A great feeling of musty melancholy permeated the place. And so with a great fever of accomplishment we took to tearing out walls & ripping up floors.
"If there's a Ghost living here She's gonna hate this, HA!" Yelled Zink as he buried a sledge hammer in a smoky old wall.
"Yeah ....HA!" but my voice kinda squeaked as I ripped at a horrifyingly ugly piece of green linoleum.
" Man these people had the fashion sense of Neandertal, asylum green with pink roses......" Suddenly I jumped like a flea on a skillet. "OH MY GOD!!"
My heart dropped to my crotch & bounced up into my throat. My blood turned to ice. For there under those layers of moldy linoleum suddenly appeared a trap door. Hidden away for decades, till now.
"THE ROOT CELLAR!" I yelped. The place did indeed have a cellar.
Zink & I stared at the wooden door in the floor, neither moving to open it.
"Maybe's we better get a gun?" Said Zink.
"A gun? For what?"
"To shoot each other if there is a ghost down there."
"Hey!! Maybe's the old guy kept his money down here, in a jar!" That's just the way my mind works.
"Those old boys didn't trust banks ya know."
"Who does?" said Zink.
We fetched a pair of crowbars & cautiously commenced to pry at the ancient hatch.
The door suddenly started to creak loose, breaking the gummy seal of a hundred years of life.
"God," groaned Zink "What's that smell??" Indeed a sickly sweet, musty odor engulfed us.
"Feel Like a draft to you?" That was funny...it was August outside, toasty warm; yet a chill draft, almost icy, was starting to creep into the room.
Suddenly, with an unholy agonizing groan the door rose like a phantom....
To be continued,
GHOST STORIES Pt 2
By Steve Church
The living are the dead on vacation.
Maurice de Maeterlinck
Go away, I'm all right.
Last words of H.G Wells
"The Budweiser Clydesdales couldn't drag me down there!" I was telling my pal Zink as we stared into the black abyss of the newly discovered fruit cellar. An unholy stench floated from those evil depths & seem to coat us in a film of decay. And the cold! Even though outside the sun shone brightly on an 80 degree day, a icy breeze rose from the cellar that chilled ones blood.
"Oh for pete's sake, the smell is just rotted fruit, the old timers kept it down there cause it's cool." asked Zink.
"I don't know man....there's something evil about it....you remember what Roger said about the guy burying his wife down here....alive!'
"Don't tell me you believe in ghosts?" asked Zink
"I'm leaving my options open."
I'm probably as 'normal' as the next guy when it comes to believing in Ghosts.
On one hand.
On the other hand I don't purposely walk under ladders, drive in front of black cats, & smash mirrors either. And there was something about that rank black cellar that just didn't beckon me.
It did Zink however, & moments later he was descending a creaking ladder, flashlight in hand.
I followed against better judgment.
The cellar was just that. Cold, damp, dirt floor. Hand hewn rock walls supporting a rotted floor above. Cobwebs swung from dusty shelves, an occasional suspect mason jar & rotted gunny sack crouched in ageless in- difference. The place smelled like a coffin.
It was creepy alright, but certainly nothing supernatural, & after a brief inspection of the jars for hidden treasure we returned to our earnest remodeling of the first floor.
Nothing unusual happened again...until three days later. Zink & the rest of our small remo crew had gone to lunch. I alone stayed to start the gutting of the dingy attic. One tiny, filmy window emitted the kind of light that gets through an algae coated fishbowl. It wasn't dark, but it wasn't light either. The ceiling, coated in coal dust, & draped in cobwebs seemed to press in about me. I felt claustrophobic, like being buried alive in that old, musty space.
Suddenly I heard someone coming up the attic ladder. Funny, I hadn't heard anyone come through the front door & I knew I was alone.
Although I saw nothing, the floor atop the ladder then creaked in the most unnerving manner. The attic air, seconds before a thick 80 degrees, suddenly
became quite brisk. Not refreshingly brisk but more a clammy cold. A cold like death itself....a final permanent lifeless chill.
A sudden hopeless, morbid, sadness overwhelmed me. A feeling of being a hundred feet down in a cold dark water & out of air. The horror of losing ones grasp on a tenuous at best life. Like a miner in a cave in, I panicked & moved quickly toward the only available light, the tiny window.
I knew the window was to small to facilitate my escape but I was simply drawn like a moth to the comforting light. Then I felt it. As plane as day I felt someone, or something, at my back.
I spun around, eyes bulging in horror, heart pounding with adrenaline. For there not one foot away stood the thing. Every sense but sight verified it.
I could smell the decayed breath, feel it's slight chilled exhale. I could hear it groan & sigh like an ancient ship in the wind. It felt like I stood in front of a very old person, a being riddled in disease & despair, & weighted by the years of a weary life. A person very tired of living, & very worried of death. Something caught in the middle.
Limbo.
Just because I couldn't see the thing, made it no less real. It was if I were blindfolded & talking with a stranger. Every sense but the one of sight was filled with it's presence. Clear as day.
This 'presence' was not exactly threatening, it made no move to come closer than it was, but there was something completely unnerving about being close to it. Like standing in a pit of snakes, you were probably alright if you didn't panic, but who was capable of that.
Every fiber of my being screamed to get away, to struggle with every known device to win my freedom from this dark abyss, this black hole of despair before me.
The next few seconds are still a dream, for surely only seconds passed in the time it took me to flee that evil dwelling, & I stood gasping for air in the middle of Elk Ave. Only seconds had passed, but in my frantic mind I had fought my way out like a man in quicksand. The thing had seemed to be pulling at my entire existence. It's loneliness seemed to call for days afterward.
I never went back into the Blues Project. A few days later Zink & the crew finished the hasty remodel. We insured the place & moved in three intrepid long-haired short term tenants.
That night the Blues Project burst into flame, & although the Crested Butte Fire Dept. responded in minutes, the fire burned with such an intensity, within an hour nothing more than a smoldering pile of black cinders was left.
The cause of the fire was never determined.
The Zink building now stands where the Blues Project burned. Apparently the ghost disappeared along with that spooky old house. Some people even go so far as to say there never was a ghost in the first place.
I know better.
GHOST STORIES Pt 3
By Steve Church
Being a living legend is better than being a dead legend.
George Burns
They say such nice things about people at their funerals. It makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.
Garrison Keillor
A few years ago the new owner of the newly named White Buffalo Ranch, Ms. Cap Fitzgerald, took pity on Church Bros. Const. Co. & despite our motto,
"We'll get it right if it takes every dime you've got.", hired us to remodel the magnificent yellow brick farmhouse that graced the property. The house was a thing of beauty even in disrepair. Built in the late1800's by one Joe Acre, (near as anyone around the Conocos' potbelly could recall), the place is a tribute to craftsmanship. For here was a home that had lasted 5 generations & with a face lift would last another. It sits on a 8 foot high foundation that resembles a vast French wine cellar, or at the time, dreary, dark catacombs. The walls of the house are two layers of solid brick with a 6 inch air space for insulation, the bricks coming back from Pueblo on the return Crested Butte coal train. The train ran about 100 feet in front of the house, 50 feet west of the present highway. The house boasted a diesel generator in the early 1900's & was one of the first in Gunnison Co. to sport electricity. The wood work, impeccably clean, from hardwood floors to curved stairs, to ornate ceiling trim made the place elegant even in the sad state it was in. It would be a pleasure to tear it apart.....
To rebuild it.....mind you.
Cap herself had a strong pull to the house, & felt very strongly about preserving what could be preserved, & what couldn't was to be rebuilt better than before. Cap wanted the finest hardwoods for the interior, all new trim on the exterior & the peeling yellow paint stripped from the exterior. There was not one detail about the house Cap hadn't considered, so it came as no great surprise when she asked me one day if I thought the house held any kind of spirits.
After all, within the first week we had already discovered a number of crosses built into the brick, & the strangest thing, 4 buffalo head nickels poured into the 4 cornerstones of the place. Odd that 100 years later it would actually become 'The Buffalo Ranch".
Being early in our relationship, & not wanting to lose the job I decided to play the middle of the road.
"Well, Cap....it's an old house."
Now that was a pretty safe statement & I should have stopped there, but wanting to put my new client completely at ease with the scope of professionalism she was dealing with here at Church Bros. Const I heard myself continue:
"But anyway Cap your in luck, for one of the services we provide at Church Bros. Const Co. is Spirit Consultation. That's right, for no extra cost to you, the client, we, myself & my brother, bring in a professional ah......
"Medium?" Asked Cap.
"Exactly!" A professional Medium, to seek out & Exercise if need be....
"Exorcise?"
"Yes, indeed....any spirits that an old place like this may have accumulated over the years." I was rolling now.....
"And it would certainly be best to do it now, before we tear to much out & offend someone...or something."
I couldn't believe what I was saying.....& either could Cap, but hey, the service was free!
"Do it!" said Cap and walked away.
"Great." said my brother. "Now what, look under Exterminator for 'Spirits Eradicated', maybe call Ghost Buster's?"
"I'm not sure.....but I'll bet I know someone who will know who to call."
"Who?" asked Tom.
"Henrietta."
"Forget it boys, out of my league." said Henrietta.
"But you know someone that could do this." We asked.
"Sure, there's lots of people that deal in this kind of thing, but they all live down in Santa Fe & Sedona, & would charge to come up here to work."
"Work?" You mean this is like some kind of Orkan Man, the Bug exterminator?'
Henrietta looked at me as one might regard the village idiot. "Something like that....I'm afraid it may be a little deep for you Church."
"Why...cause I'm a man....
"You said it, I didn't.....
"Lookit Henrietta, You must know enough about this stuff that you could at least tell if the place is haunted. If it is, then we bring in the heavy artillery."
"What's in it for me?"
"Well if it is haunted, one hell of a interesting afternoon!"
Two days later, Henrietta pulled up to the ranch house & started unloading a small eclectic array of spirit attention-grabbers.
"Now to exorcise a ghost all together one has boil pine needles in olive oil & circle the house three times with the pan...the smell drives em nuts." said Henrietta to a duly impressed brother & myself.
"Sounds dangerous." said Tom.
"It could be." agreed a grim Henry.
"Let me try to explain this as simply as possible to you two goons."
"See, on this planet, in this life, there are several different levels of 'vibrations'. Take for example, high noises to dogs, they hear them, we don't, but they are still there. We cant see these different levels generally but occasionally we cross over....something you two probably would'nt even recognize. Now, there are 5 levels, starting with the lowest which has all your devils, ghouls, evil stuff. You DO NOT want to mess around down there...very dangerous & disturbing."
"Kinda like Kochevars.' said Tom.
"Next comes your ghost level...souls trapped close to our level but not quite."
"Limbo Rock!" I said.
"Now this is generally where you see the buggers. Not to dangerous, but can be very sad, very unnerving...."
" Like your 30th birthday?" asked my brother...
"Henry glared at him & continued, "Then comes our level, what we actually can see, feel, hear." Henry went on....
"Now the level above us, is what you'd probably call the angles...."
"We probably don't have to worry about that level....." I was telling Tom, when Henry went on again. "Now the fifth & highest level is of course.....
"Square Dancing?" said Tom
"Powder Skiing naked?" I asked.
"God...the Big Guy, El Supremo." Said Henry.
" Whoa!!!" We said.
"So what level are you going in at?" I was in awe now.
"I'm going in on the second level, try to contact spirits there...if there are any, mind you. I've got to what we call 'bring them into the light,' it won't be easy but with the right tools...
"Which are?" I asked, recalling the elaborate equipment sported by the Ghost Busters.
" All I can tell you is a burning mixture of cedar, sage, & hair gets their attention...."
" I should imagine..."
"Then I'm going to tell them you guys will be remodeling the place for the next 6 months..."
"Better give us 10 months...." said Tom.
"10 months then, & if they want to move out during that time, then come back when it's done. Fine."
My brother & I looked at each other "Cool!"
"That way they'll leave you alone while you work..." said Henry
"That's important for us." I assured her. "Well go get em Henry!"
"Say Hello for us. " Said Tom.
Henrietta was entering the back door, frantically waving the bundle of burning herbs & hollering the lords name in earnest when I turned to my brother.
"I'm outa here." I said.
"Me Too!!! He screamed & off we went tearing across the lawn & leaping onto the fence above the massive white buffalo, Chief White Cloud himself.
The three of us then stared expectantly back at the house.
Think we're far enough away? Tom asked.
"How do I know, remember 'Poltergeist'? Sucked the whole neighborhood into the TV set!" Now that was pretty impressive!"
"What If Henrietta just blows right outta the roof, what in the world are we gone tell Al...."Hello Al? Yeah, Church Bros. here...yeah,yeah, taking our time & your money..... say Al...your wife was just messing around with some ghosts down here at the Buffalo Ranch,.....& darned if she didn't get blown right into outer space."
"We'll never work in this valley again." groaned Tom.
Henrietta could be seen passing by the windows, swinging burning sage, shaking eagle feathers, & howling some kind of ghost bothering incantations.
She started upstairs & was working her way down, given the place a good Spirit scrubbing.
"Oh my God, she's headed to the basement, if there's any Ghosts in there, their in the basement!" Squealed my brother.
Chief White Cloud snorted his agreement.
We held our breath & braced for all hell to break loose......
Nothing happened....
Then suddenly the back door flew open, & Henrietta exploded onto the back porch & collapsed.
We raced to her side. "WELL?"
"Wheeeooo, that basement had me goin, thought I might of cornered one there for a minute, but just my imagination....nope, far as I can tell the place is clean, not a piffel of a ghost anywhere...you boys will be fine."
And she must have been right, because for the 12 months we were able to milk that job.....believe it or not, nobody saw a ghost.
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