A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven (26 page)

And family is what makes a home.

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F
RIENDS
,
ROMANS
,
COUNTRYMEN
, lend me your ears, because it is time to do that groovy shake known as “sum it all up, Batman.”

As you may recall, in my first book I talked about some time I spent in a gnarly little farmhouse just outside of Dewar, Iowa, when I was twelve years old. We lived there during the fall/winter. Everything around the place was essentially dead or dying. Set bleakly against a decaying gray sky with temperatures that dropped even lower when the ferocious wind was threatening to blow us away, the house was like living in my own personal horror movie. The nearest neighbor was miles down the crusty gravel road, so signs of life were scarce to none around this barren place. Just to be able to see my friends from school I had to beg rides from my mother or my mother’s none-too-thrilled best friends with whom we shared this creepy haunt. It was indeed a hard solstice; I was beginning to hate the world in the worst way. This was the same house you may remember where I lived in a fucking closet with no light, no electricity, and no heat. I hated the place. But I discovered something there that I will never forget.

It was in this house of horseshit that I first saw the original and thoroughly incredible Night of the Living Dead. There was a local late-night creature-feature show on Channel 6 that used to run old, crappy cult classics, ostensibly for the entertainment of a handful of college students who might be up “studying” at that hour. It was hosted by a vapid, balding, middle-aged hack dressed as a low-rent Dracula called “Count . . .” something or other—I cannot even remember the character’s last name. I only know he was called Count something because he had a rap song he pressed onto vinyl that was twice as lame as he was. It made Dangerfield’s song “Rappin’ Rodney” sound like N.W.A. Half the time I did not even get the chance to see what was on—there was only one TV in the house, and that was usually dominated by our in-house alcoholics watching burned VHS tapes containing Dirty Dancing and Look Who’s Talking Too. So this was a rare occasion: I was home, alone, and I could do whatever I wanted.

It was the night before Halloween, which was on a Saturday that year. My “guardians” were out because it was Friday, and why stay at home with the family when it was a Friday? My sister was staying overnight with a friend. I sat in the house, contemplating what I should do. I was, of course, out in the boonies with no adult supervision. Should I start a fire? Should I look for a gun? Should I get high? Should I drink a beer? These were all wonderfully obvious options for a twelve year-old boy. But in a foreshadowing of good judgment I would not possess again until my thirties, I finally settled on watching TV in peace for once. I pulled on the power button, and the twenty-inch tube beast fired up with a spark and a flash of white light streaking across the screen. It just happened to be on channel 6; the Count was giving some speech dripping with drivel and useless vaudeville throwaways, and I was just about to switch it to channel 3 and look for a video when he announced that night’s feature: Night of the Living Dead. I had never seen it—hell, the only horror movies I had ever watched were the children of Halloween, like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and a weird one called Happy Birthday to Me, which starred one of the girls from The Waltons, I think. This was something different. So I plopped on our secondhand couch, lit a stolen cigarette, and hunkered down for a nice, scary movie.

Needless to say, it fucking terrified me.

First of all, it was in black and white. Black-and-white films to me are much more scary; I do not know if it is the graininess that somehow gives it the feel of a documentary that actually happened or what, but I get supremely fucked up by black-and-white films. Second, the house where they eventually hole up looked exactly like the fucking house I was living in, so after an hour I was bouncing between watching the movie and looking out the windows for starving naked zombies feasting on victims or random bugs. By the time the film was over, I was so fucking scared I actually welcomed the presence of the drunken assholes as they arrived from a night at the bar—at least I was not in that damn house alone anymore. I headed up to my closet for bed. Needless to say, even with a house full of loud people, I was still unable to fall asleep very quickly. Every noise was a zombie invasion. Every voice seemed to be calling my name, hungry for brains and blood.

After a while I came to make peace with the house, the irony being that shortly after I did, we moved again anyway. But I had learned a valuable lesson in that time: sometimes there is nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes it is your imagination and nothing else. I figured out the hard way that it is the threats you can see that can do the most damage—and usually do. Because of that house, I stopped worrying about the things that were not in plain sight. Maybe that is one of the central themes for this book: stop stressing on the shit that has not happened. I know there are people living in houses that seem to have uninvited roommates, and those interlopers tend to keep them on edge. My advice to them is take back your house—do not be intimidated by the, shall we say, extracurricular activity. Do not hire an exorcist unless you enjoy the process of cleaning up incense and sage while also drying off the walls when they are covered in holy water. If that is your kink, fucking have at it. In fact, make the priest wear leather and a helmet to enhance the sense of drama. Go for broke: play the musical score from Conan the Barbarian—that will get you fucking pumped, and it is also about as useful as bringing in a well-dressed holy man with a canteen full of H
²
O blessed in a glorified bird feeder where strangers dipped their grubby fingers.

The best thing to do is what I said before: take back your house. Walk around and yell—it is even more effective if you do it buck-ass nude. Throw your own stuff; it will confuse them as much as anything else, and at least when you break something, you know who did it. The main message is do not be afraid of them. You may experience some physical contact and you might even encounter a situation in which they try to hurt you. But my opinion is that it takes so much energy for them to make a fuss and so little for any of us to brush it off like nothing happened. You are going to have times when you are uneasy—that is natural. The creep level on a poltergeist is pretty high up there, and it is just plain unnatural for things to move on their own. But that moment is brief and fleeting; once it passes, life goes on just the way it did before the chandelier started swinging and blinking or the drinking glasses began pushing themselves out of the cabinets. Clean it up, throw it away, and move on—it is as simple as that. If you want to feel something, get pissed because now you need new glasses. However, be constructive with that wave of emotion and chastise them like children. It is an energy akin to children who do not know their own strength. Every once in a while you are going to have to clean up after them.

And as I said, there are better (or worse) things to be afraid of. Humans are notoriously atrocious to each other. I think you have a better threat of home invasion by real thugs than by ghostly ones, and that kind of violence leaves a mark that lasts longer than anything else on the planet. It is not like we live in the jungle and are surrounded by big cats. It is not like we live on the Great Barrier Reef and have to make it to land before the great whites swim up from underneath and chew the fuck out of us in a massive and spectacular breach. It is not like we sleep in a hammock at night and there is a chance a brown recluse spider could crawl on our face and make us necrotic with one fatal bite (well, no one reading this book anyway). The majority of the human rat race really just kind of rubs shoulders with . . . well, each other. There is the rare bolt of lightning and the occasional circus elephant rampage, but the only truly viable threat is the motherfucker next to you on the bus. Sorry—I know a lot of hippies and liberals want to ignore that idea and feel that if we all start drinking the same milkshakes, there will be world peace and renewable fuels and bullets that only chastise people. Life does not work that way—life only gives you the pieces. You have to put the puzzle together yourself.

I am not saying the next person you sit beside on the trolley is a serial killer either. I am simply making a point to the people who suffer unneeded paranoia and stress because of the haunts in their homes. What I am saying is that there are other things that deserve that kind of attention, and if you waste those emotions on things that do not really need it, you will not see the real shit coming until it is right in your face and unavoidable. Nightmares have enough fuel in the subconscious without throwing more lambs to your lions. This is your life, those are your things, and that is your fucking home. Dissipate their power and mend. So they come back—who gives a wet runny shit? Do it again, and again, and again until it quiets down. Their sense of “daily chores” is about as innocuous as a mouse fart on Sunday. There is nothing they can do to you that is truly dangerous as long as you know they are there and you know it is coming. After that, it is as easy as being calm and taking names.

I knew the risks when I started writing this book. I knew how people would regard a whole tome about this crazy person who sees and reacts to ghosts. But this is the great part about being me—I do not give a flying fuck what people think about me. You show me an expert who knows all the answers, and I will show you a man who closes his store down before he has made any money. You can believe whatever you want. You can even expound at length about how these “beings” do not and will never exist. It does not change the fact that I have had these experiences. If you are going to call me a liar, step to my face and do it. If not, shut the fuck up. I am not saying there is no merit in any of their arguments. As a man who puts no stock in God and his Sunshine Band, I do not blame them for a second. But I deserve the same in return: you were not there and you are not me. I may go on about religion, but I do not condemn the people who use the practice in their lives the way it was intended. I have wonderful friends who are Christians, like my friends in the band Skillet, and they are some of the best people I have ever met. I only really crack off when people commit hell in heaven’s name. The others are safe from my brutality. I do my best not to make sweeping statements so I do not get swept up in hype and hypocrisy. I also do not rail against the other end of the carpool, the ones who do not subscribe to anything that has not been proven or at least warrants a special on the Discovery Channel. All I say is that this is my story and this is what I have seen and been through. This book is for sharing, helping, and exploring—nothing more.

When it comes to what these spirits are and why they are around in the first place, religious doctrine gives few answers that really give me satisfaction. Maybe that is my own bias getting in the way of embracing their side of the fence, but I doubt it. Catholics and the like have their rituals to deal with the phenomena, and yet it never seems to do any good. Plus, there is no practicality about it; a house swarming with invisible rascals does not even register if you throw some suds around and light some candles. They may enjoy the prayers and the attention, but who knows? Almost every testimony of ghostly confrontation that I have heard or read about that includes an exorcism has revealed that it never solved the problem, and the family is left helpless and eventually moves away. Man, FUCK THAT! When you apply a more realistic approach to the issues, it may not stop these things from happening, but at least it gives you a sense of propriety, that this house is yours and no one is going to drive you from it, ever. It takes time and application, but it builds that peace that only the strong can understand. You have to be strong in the face of fear; it is the only way to leave that indelible mark on what is yours in life.

On the flip side, the scientific and generally pragmatic communities really just disregard any mention of anything as fantastic as ghosts and hauntings, despite countless bits of evidence and stories to the obvious. The extent of their imagination consists of zeros and ones, theories and studies, white coats and black holes. They continue to look to the unexplored heavens or depths, concerned with proving their own ideas while disproving others, though these may have merit or none at all. The only comparison I can make is how most people who can afford to donate to charity choose to do so as far from their front doors as possible, while more pressing issues closer to home are ignored or disregarded. That is the way I see it anyway—I may be right or I may be wrong. But truth be told, I at least know the difference between conjecture and a statement that, in retrospect, may make you look like a fool. I refuse to believe that the universe is the last frontier where fabulous mysteries reside. This world is lucky enough to have developed in the first place, through a collision of meteors, water, and wayward bacteria. Who is to say this planet, with all its beauty, has no capacity for the existence of the paranormal? Things like spooks and the like may be a part of the reason many of the “gods” and myths were created hundreds of years ago. There may well be explanations for everything I have said. Maybe I saw a human in Cold House. Maybe there was a person in the corn outside of Indianola. Maybe I was blown down the stairs on Foster. Maybe I was victim of mass hysteria at the Mansion. Maybe there was nothing in Farrar. Maybe my house on the Circle simply moves around and settles, like most houses its age eventually tend to do. Maybe all of this is nothing. Maybe . . .