Season of the Ghost- Ghosts of Infinite Sweetness

The gentlest ghosts I've ever run into have to be the animal spirits I've dealt with over the years.

The woods behind the house I lived in as a little girl was magical. In the summer it was densely green with moss, fat old leafy trees, may flowers and lush patches of purple violets. I used to go and pick bunches of violets almost every day.

On these little forays, I would often see these tiny little white wisps of something. When they'd zip past me barely touching my skin, I'd think of running up a tree and the roughness of bark; digging in the earth or curling up with a bunch of other tiny warm bodies and going to sleep. Sometimes I'd be a hunter stalking my food and eating it. Those violent images scared me at first, but I did know not everything could live by just eating berries and I came to understand the hunter spirits.

When I was around 7, I felt I was going to be so much braver than last summer start going further into the woods than the area just behind our house. Well, I picked my usual bunch of violets and started back in the direction I thought would take me back home. I was so wrong.

The trees and plants got more tangled and dense and the sun was barely visible through the canopy of trees. I panicked and started to cry. Suddenly I felt a light touch on my arm. I turned and saw one of my little wisps. It was one of my hunter sprits. I followed it over a fallen tree trunk, through a dense area of tall grass and May flowers. The trees started to thin and I could see the sun again. Looking carefully I could see a few wisps floating near an opening that lead to the edge of the wood. I had come out on the opposite side of the woods near my friend Vicky's house. I just had to go up the street in front of her house, cut through the high school's football practice field and I was just a short ways from a road that would take me to my street.

I ran all the way thanking my little wispy friends as I headed home.

The photos are ones MJ took of 2 of my rescue cats. Spats is the black cat and the other is Max Perkins.

The Season of the Ghost- The Ouija Board and Flaming Gary

When I was around 11, one of the neighbor kids, Susan, showed up with a Ouija board instead of the Monopoly game she said she was getting. She explained how we all needed to put a finger on the planchette and ask questions.

Well, you could tell Sue was moving the planchette. So we weren't impressed. Everybody took a turn and the planchette never moved a millimeter.

Now, I had been seeing ghosts since my Grandma Bartlett died when I was 7, so this doodad board wasn't impressing me too much. It couldn't compare with getting a last hug from Grandma or the little white floating spirits I saw in the woods behind our house.

I took my turn and wouldn't you know that planchette zipped around like it was electrified. The man who wanted to talk to me was named Gary and he was really excited to talk to me and wanted me to do him a favor. I was supposed to go get some matches and bring them out to the yard where we were all sitting.

He explained that he and his brother were killed in a house fire in a house that once stood near we were playing .....

Suddenly the planchette jumped and slid violently off the board. We all freaked and got up off the blanket we'd been sitting on. Everybody dared me to try the board again. I figured a ghost couldn't really hurt me and I did get dared.... so I plopped back down.

The planchette started moving again and this time I was talking to Ian. According to him, Gary started the fire that killed just him. I got this uneasy feeling that someone was behind me and jumped up. After that I lost interest in the ouija board, but Gary still seemed to be following me around. I thought I saw him a few times in the woods behind our house. I had a couple of dreams where I saw a man running from a burning house and through the windows.....saw a man fall into the fire.

From that experience, I learned not all spirits were good and that needed to not listen to the bad ones. Also, being dead doesn't always give the ghost any more knowledge than when he or she was alive.

As an adult I've thought about when this fire could have taken place, what were Gary's motives in wanting me to get matches and if he affected any other kids? I probably still wonder about this ghost because during that year a couple of kids I knew died in house fires.

The house had tiny little paned windows and seemed to be in wooded area. The men seemed to be in old fashioned shirts and suspenders with knee high boots.
My guess is that the fire took place during the 19th century because the area seemed so undeveloped and the style of house and the tiny panes of glass reminded me of windows I'd seen in the historic homes at Hale Farm and Village. I've always thought about contacting the Tallmadge Historical Society to see if there were any records that might tell me about those 2 brothers.

Here's Andy Corn to make you laugh after my creepy story.:)















These illustrations are also done by my husband, MJBivouac

The Skipsy Doodle of Death

My brother David got a red skipsy doodle for Christmas one year.

It was used inside as a teeter totter and a stand-y thing until the snow melted. For about a week it was an outdoor teeter totter. But David who could tear apart a Tonka Toy Jeep with his bare hands, had other plans.

We lived in one of those 60's neighborhoods on a culdesac (I like that word). As the street moved away from our house it sloped down into a pretty decent hill. David and his friends rode various bikes, wagons, big wheels and scooter-type things down this hill a literally breakneck speeds.

I knew something was up one sunny afternoon when David came in in wearing a football helmet, an old bath towel superman cape and wanted to borrow my long pink jump rope. I went out front and there was David tying one end of the rope to the back of Bobby Trauger's purple Spyder bike . He then secured the other end to the handle of "old red".

He threw himself on "old red" face down, grabbed the handhold on and yelled let 'er go! Bobby peeled out of our driveway and "old red" popped over the curb about a foot in the air, smacked the street and scraped away with David holding on for dear life. You could hear the scraping sound all the way down the street and David yelling "Go Go Go!" Amazingly, Dave and his friends never got hurt on the "old red" street runs until they started using him on their bike rides through the woods behind our houses. I think it was Jeff who got catapulted into a tree and got scratched up. But, his real problems started because he landed landed in a poison ivy bush .

Poor "old red" went to the great teeter totter playground in the sky when I was going off to college one year. My Dad was cleaning out the basement and put a bunch of stuff out by the trash cans. Scraped and battered "Old Red" was leaning upright against one of the cans. I was upstairs packing and looked out my bedroom window when I heard an old heap pull into our drive way. David and a few of his friends piled out. They all stood looking at "old red" who was scraped, scarred and still had a length of pink rope tied to one of his handholds. For a few minutes, they each took turns laying on "old red" and dragging each other around in street in front of our house. Eventually , they stopped and were laughing and telling stories looking at "old red" who was resting at their feet.

Dave propped "old red" back up against the can and they all started to walk back up the drive to our house. Everyone of them looked back at least once at that battered old piece of red plastic.

Son of Bun

Remember this nasty little guy? Remember how I said he was the most terrible candy experience ever? Well, I have a new story for you.

My husband thinks the Killer Bun Story is hilarious. So I think he has been looking for Buns locally to surprise me. Why he thinks I'd like to relive such an experience is beyond me, but I think he thought it would be funny to look at them and laugh over old Killer.

One night he came home from work with a Charlie Brown's Farms bag and seemed so pleased with himself.

Yep.

One of our local farmers markets had started carrying BUNS. Well, vanilla and caramel ones anyway. I was almost disappointed that he couldn't find a Killer Bun. I am curious now to see if it was as bad as I remember.

The caramel one was old. It had been smashed, heated and then left to re-solidify. I don't know what possessed me, but I just had to try it. I should have thrown it out. The peanuts were stale and the caramel was brittle in some places and gummy in others. The chocolate had more in common with a candle than a piece of chocolate.

But as always... the Vanilla would do in a pinch.

I really should stop eating candy. Or maybe I should just send all future buns to my brother David and see if he'll eat them now.

The Dreaded Candy Flavor

When you're a kid darn near anything sweet is a wonderful thing. But the worst candy eating experience of my life had to have been getting one of these little dudes to my left. Mom ran in to Bumpas Drug to get cigarettes or something and brought me one as a treat.

No no! Not the vanilla...that wasn't that bad really. The caramel was better of course, but the vanilla would do in a pinch. Apparently Mom didn't notice, that in her rush to get a handle on her nicotine craving, she picked up a MAPLE Bun!


I was hopeful as I opened it...I'd never had the maple before. I had the fleeting thought that pancake candy was a weird idea, but heck I'd try anything once. OMG! It was horrifically sweet and gritty like sand. And gummy... let's not forget gummy. I kept taking little bites. I guess I thought for some strange reason it had to get better. The motion of the car started to make me nauseous, my head started to hurt and I thought I was going to die. Mom would have never tried to poison me on purpose...would she?

Our green Galaxy 500 had a big deep back-seat. So I wrapped that sucker back up and wedged it in the crack between the backrest and the seat. I then tried to put the experience out of my mind.

That Christmas I got The VERMONT MAPLE COUPLE in my stocking.
I conned my little brother David into eating mine. It was easy. He used to eat Play-Doh.

A few yrs later my Dad was cleaning out the car in preparation for trading it in. He found the petrified remains of my Maple nightmare. I 'd forgotten old killer Bun and I just kinda chuckled to myself. That wild sugar poisoning from my past has put me off Maple for life.