Whoooooooo!

I have a certain respect for phenomena that I do not understand. I am always happy to accept rational reasoning for why something is happening, but that’s not always available. So, my operative mode is to look for the explainable, rational, and scientific. If you don’t find it, however, respect the fact that you don’t have a clue and extract yourself as fast as possible. So Superstitious, no. Cautious, yes.

I am not a horror movie fanatic, don’t watch much Television, and don’t read in the horror genre at all. So I’m not steeped in the expectation that the Zombie Apocalypse is about to occur, the undead arise, or that ghosts all have ill intentions. Nor have I fallen off the wagon and am experiencing the DTs.

All that having been said, during my time as a Pius Itinerant, I ran into more than one item that defied easy explanation. Now, let me add right away that it was a cardinal rule for me and my friends not to travel with or use whacky tobacco, pills, or other chemical enhancements while traveling. Those led to complications with the law that were worse than being told to remove yourself pronto. So simple straight sobriety was the rule on the road for us.

Given sobriety, and seeking rational explanations I am still left seeking to explain how some shit actually happened. There was the time I stopped to hitch alongside a pretty girl also looking for a ride. When a car stopped she disappeared. It trned out she was a kind of legend in the area.

Then there was the town we couldn’t get out of. We seemed to keep on coming back to the little Town Green with a statue of an elephant on a ball or globe. I’ve searched for it for years in Central Massachusets, Southern New Hampshire, and Vermont without luck.

Years afterward, my wife and I moved into an apartment in Malden, Massachusetts. The basement was empty, and I thought it would be a wonderful place to have a model railroad. But it had a sort of occupant. Every time I went down the stairs, I sensed a young man with a full-hearted scream. There was no sound. But after a while, I could almost see him with his mouth open, screaming at me in rage. My cat Clancy ( The Grey Menace, who was afraid of nothing) flatly refused to join me in the basement after the first few journey’s down the stairs.

I eventually decided that the uncomfortable feeling was enough to dissuade me from building in the basement. I built the trains in a spare room instead. Was I afraid? No, not particularly, but I wasn’t comfortable, and I was interested in doing things that were pleasurable. So I left the haunt to his basement.

Whatever caused the young man, let’s call him Bob, to be ejected from life and inhabit that basement, I’ll never know. But he wasn’t the harbinger of a major household haunting, the End Times, or any such thing. So, I just left things be. On the occasions that I had to go into the basement, I waved hello, did what I needed to, and left.

I can’t explain Bob, or any of the other things I’ve experienced. Not being addidcted to ghost stories, horror or conspiracy theories it doesn’t particularly bother me that there are this category of things that remain inexplicable. My heart doesn’t race, my palms don’t get sweaty, and I don’t rush for the door.

I’ll leave you now with the words of the wise Jimmy Buffett:

Vampires, mummies and the Holy Ghost
These are the things that terrify me the most
No aliens, psychopaths or MTV hosts
Scare me like vampires, mummies and the Holy Ghost