Ghost Stories: a Cautionary tale in Three Parts; the third part. Don't start reading here, this is the end. Look for something called "Beginning."

People in the town where I grew up figure on one apricot harvest in seven years. Too many falsely warm days that come too late and too early to be of any real use. Sunshine out of its time can't extend the late ripening of last year's tomatoes but can steal fruit from July and August. The past is not prospered and the future comes to naught.

So, do you believe in ghosts? Did you ever tell their stories? Think quick of the stories you know. Do they scare you? Did they, ever? Lots of people wouldn't talk about ghosts or let anyone else talk, either. They said talking about ghosts calls them. I'm more inclined to think it births them. Gives shape, name, intent to something we feel but don't touch. I've read that Daphne Du Maurier lived her life haunted by Rebecca, by Rachel, by people she told into being and tried to leave where their stories ended. But a ghost stays right there. They don't go away. Of course, I don't know if that's true, about Daphne; she's dead. Maybe someone made it up.


I was not frightened by the stories I told. I was the one making them up after all and they really were not good stories (if they had been good stories I'm sure I would remember them). They violated every rule (bylaw, suggestion and guideline) of ghost building but especially that one about being in anyway plausible. Every story in this creepy little grouping I was setting in a building in which no one was ever born, lived, loved, died or was betrayed either tragically or otherwise. History passed by it, rather than through it and while that has made it interesting, from a historical perspective, such a sad lack of human past would be back-story suicide, if you were a building trying to get your hauntings told. No, I was never frightened by my silly stories. I was frightened by the other girls' belief. And I was very frightened by the telling.

Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy
And will not let belief take hold of him...

Frightened. And completely seduced. This performance was as delicious as Hershey squares soft from your pocket, but risky, a thing chocolate never was till just recently. The girls were choosing to listen to me. They went everywhere with me. More of them came every day. I never had to agree to play with someone no one else wanted.

I waxed desperate with imagination. And we were all having so much fun.

I might have noticed their fun took the form of wide-open, seldom blinked eyes. Of holding arms tightly, of avoiding some edges of the playground altogether. Of a quick-formed addiction to something all of us knew was, really, not too good for us. I might have noticed that certain of those three shining girls tried to tell stories of their own only to be shushed or ignored. I might have noticed a spreading coolness toward performances no one else could reach, toward skills no one else in this microcosm had. I might have noticed that, though I was constantly surrounded by a densely packed herd, no one, ever, not once, asked me to play. I should have noticed that my heart or my guts or the knowing part of me where the stories come out was gone all shaky and cold. I should have realized that I always know how a story will play out.

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.


It was only a matter of time before nightmares began. Children who live in farming communities have chores that must be done after school whether there is still light in the sky or not. Barns and outbuildings usually have lights in them. You can take a flashlight or you just walk from the house to the chickens in the dark. It was only a matter of time. You go down to the basement or upstairs to your room alone. You are sent to the cellar for a jar of peaches. You are told you had better get on home from your friend's house where you have played till all the sunset drained out of the west and you will not have a ride, you will ride that bike home what on earth do you think we bought it for?


We had a hard freeze. It was only a matter of time.

It was unnerving because it happened all on one day. The girls came off their buses as if their angry mothers had shot them at me from canons.
My mom said I couldn't listen to you anymore.
I can't play with you (!?) because my mom says you are not a nice girl or you wouldn't tell stories like that.
I'm not supposed to even be around you.
No one tell me any more of her stories.
I'm supposed to forget them.
I'm not allowed to talk to you, don't talk to me.

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

I am sorry they offend you, heartily,
Yes, faith, heartily.

It was the same sort of surprise as when they had first wanted to hear about my ghosts. Caught me off guard. Sorry, wasn't paying attention, not really keeping track of any of you, just my own self. But also not surprising, either, because I was half expecting it, wondering with a corner of my attention how long I could spin this out, how long this could last. Every teller of tales knows that telling scary stories to children brings their mothers down on you. No matter how old you are. No one asked me to play that day. None of them ever had. My usual play-partner-in-despair ignored me for a tiny while, too.

It felt unbearably horrible at the time and seemed to go on forever, like dying. Or being sick but not able to go home from school and just throw it all up. Burn it off in a fever. But looking at it from a perspective where I can see how it ends, shunning, banning, and ignoring only really work where attention has once been paid. I actually skated out of this pretty cleanly. Right back to familiar patterns; my cedar tree, reading books under my desk, failing to understand math, floating along on a private story, bobbing through the streams in the halls rarely focusing on anyone. Playing with whomever was left. Keep the rules, make more rules, rules of silence and observation, of distance and insulation. No one remembers your crimes if they forget all about you. I only felt the consequences on rare occasions when I was invited as part of a group, say to a birthday, and someone's mom recognized my name, looked at me again closely, reminding herself I was the troublemaker. The one who told all those terrible stories. What kind of a little girl does that? Not a nice girl, for sure for sure.

I grew on up watching those girls and their mothers and women like them. They talked a lot and I listened. Conversation is devastatingly revealing. I wondered about the stories they were making of themselves. I picked up bits of their lives they left behind, and turned them over and thought about them. These girls are here, and would be gone and only little bits would be left for other people to make the best sense they could out of them. Bits in my museum, in my school every year, in the church lost and found, at the dump and in dead people's houses. I thought about the bits of left over anger and grief, despair and sorrow, hope and excitement seeping from the belongings of the photo people to stain and to haunt the old State Capitol museum. I wondered about unfinished and badly told stories, one-sided but seeking the attention and justice they deserve. I thought about the best sense I could make of people's abandoned bits dropped where the owners lost their own threads. I wondered if I could use them since they were going to be hanging around, anyway, with nothing to do but tell stories to pass the time. I kept some in my pockets to turn over and rub and take out and ponder. I saw the wreckage of cheaply told tales, how far and fast the the shrapnel flies; how it breaks glass and how glass cuts flesh; how the bits splash when they reach the surface, how the splash swamps unheeding vessels; how the ripples move out and out, further than the maker could have ever imagined. I made some new rules.
Rule.
Never tell badly of anyone. Ever.
Rule.
When you make people, be careful.
Rule.
Be careful with your metaphors. You may lose control of them in a long sentance.


What sort of stories does a nice girl tell?

'Tis gone!
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence,
For it is as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

It was about to speak when the cock crew.


All the Photos are Noah's