Boo!

 I'm not a scaredy cat. As a kid in the late 50s, I giggled, screeched, clutched onto my friends, and begged for more spooky stories while sitting around a summer campfire. I relished how the suggestion of ghosts caused the night air to fold onto itself and deliver me into a shivery, altered sense of mystery. Fast forward to what seemed like an ordinary morning in 1976. I'm in my late twenties, married with two small kids, and living in our first sweet house in a quiet neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia. Unannounced, one day, my across-the-street neighbor shows up at my door with a pale face and need to talk. The night before, she dreamt that she and a small group of others circled the distraught, bare-chested Hollywood actor Sal Mineo, famous for 'Rebel Without a Cause' and 'Exodus.' In the dream, he was bare-chested and decked out in silk pajamas. At the same time, he was forcibly resisting being put on a rocket ship that was headed into outer space. Her job, along with the rest of the group, was to comfort and console him in his distress over having to make this trip. A few minutes before she arrived at my door, she heard on the news that Sal Mineo had been stabbed in the heart by a mugger the night before and died alone in a parking lot in California. My friend and I sat at my kitchen table while the sound of our kids trickled in from my backyard. There was no campfire or night air, but an actual ghost had appeared in broad daylight on our ordinary street and was raising some pretty hairy questions. To add to the spook factor, that seemingly ordinary day in February was a Friday, the 13th. 

Except for Casper, ghosts are invisible. Isn't that part of the mystique? They might materialize, then they disappear. We feel the unmistakable tingle of skin, but then, pouf, we are left leaning up against the counter, drinking our coffee, and wondering. That was me and my friend Ruth that day.

Another unmistakable encounter with the paranormal took place about a year later. My husband and I had just moved a mile down the street from our starter home. It was March of 1977. We had gone out to see Star Wars: A New Hope at the movies. While Jim took the babysitter back to our old neighborhood, I went upstairs, got into my nightgown, and settled myself to read in bed and wait for him to come home. Unexpectedly and unnervingly, as I leaned against the headboard, I heard a distinct voice coming from both close and far away say, "Get out of bed, get dressed, and go downstairs," which I immediately did. I quickly shoved my legs into my jeans, pulled on my sweater, and found myself downstairs in my kitchen, barefoot and pacing. 

For a while, like a caged animal, I walked back and forth into the hall and peered out of the glass window of our front door before I opened it. Compelled, I began to walk shoeless to the end of our flagstone walk. I walked in and out of the door a few times, then ended up back in the kitchen. I knew I'd heard sirens off in the distance, and with that, a cold-gelled numbness settled about me interspersed with tight bursts of panic. 

Even in my daze, I picked up the phone and called Phil, a good friend and policeman from our previous neighborhood. "Phil," I said, "This is going to sound crazy, but Jim isn't back from driving home our babysitter, and I keep hearing sirens." I hung up, momentarily reassured by him telling me to sit tight; if Jim were involved, somebody would notify me immediately. Minutes later, though, he called back to report that his scanner reported an accident on Route 50 and Carlin Springs, a stretch Jim would have taken after dropping the sitter off. “If you want to rest your mind,” Phil said, “Call the Emergency Department at Arlington Hospital. It won’t hurt." 

After a dazed fumble with the phone book, I called the ER, and my disbelief that any of this was happening morphed from possibility to reality. A blustering voice on the other end of the line shouted at me to repeat my name a few times before she loudly stated that they were carrying him in right now and "Honey, you better get yourself in here." Those, her exact words, still haunt me. 

The rest of the story is dramatic, too. Jim's green Maverik was traveling in the westbound lane. He got hit from behind and crashed into a red Volkswagon station wagon traveling east towards DC. The vehicle that hit Jim, a big old sedan, kept going. An eyewitness had seen a car weaving recklessly in and out of traffic and hitting Jim's car. Amazingly, he had taken down the license plate number and reported it to the police. They found the driver asleep in his car the following day near Fairfax Circle. Jim spent over a week in the hospital with a concussion, lots of stitches, a broken arm, and a collarbone. The fellow in the Volkswagen ended up in traction for 12 weeks, having suffered a bad break to his leg. Luckily, no one was killed. The sedan driver was charged with hit and run; there were suits countersuits, and eventually, justice was done. 

Still, that eerie command - what's most remarkable to me is that on an ordinary weekday night, alone in my room, waiting for my husband of nine years to come home from dropping off the babysitter, I heard - what? Some disembodied, ethereal voice that alerted me that all was not right. I am still amazed that I knew Jim was hurt without ever really being told.

Gandhi's words about "an indefinable, mysterious power that pervades everything" help me think about ghost stories and their attraction. My experiences witness the idea that there is, indeed, "an unseen power that makes itself felt. . . yet defies all proof. . . and [Boo!] transcends the senses."

Boo!