I Hear You Knocking, But You Can't Get In! A True Haunted Tale

The Christian Church Hospital 1921

It was a dark and stormy night.

Alright.  It was dark. 

The humidity was at 45% with a dew point of 56.8 F; barometric pressure at 30.9 and falling with variable wind speeds gusting up to 20 mph., and a 70% chance of precipitation.

But it was dark.

The late-October night air had that crisp edge of descending frost that thrilled us with the promise of winter.  This was one of the reasons we moved from Arizona to Kansas City:  The change of seasons.  And here it was; the shift from balmy summer to brisk fall replete with brittle, orange and yellow leaves whirling in an invisible night wind. 

It was perfect.

But we were bored.  My two daughters and I had taken this particular Saturday in independent bites.  I spent my day reorganizing my bedroom closet and each of the girls had meandered through theirs in the aimless but profligate way only teenagers can do:  They spent it shopping.

Halloween was closing in which meant that the city paper was rife with stories of local, haunted hot spots, from the old Union Hill Cemetery where filmy spirits in Civil War regalia are routinely encountered by both skeptics and non, to the third floor of a nearby mansion formerly used as a nursery for orphaned infants in the mid 1800's, whose walls still echo the small cries of inconsolable foundlings; victims of an age when for women, childbirth and death were often synonymous.

So when my eldest daughter began reading for us the story of a local building under reconstruction that was beset with unusual calamities of inexplicable origin, my younger daughter and I embraced the details in the spirit of the season and inclined our ears in ghoulish delight.

The project in question was not far from us in midtown and involved the renovation of a the Christian Church Hospital.  Built originally as charity hospital, the facility also served the wounded veterans returning from WWI.  It opened its doors on October 31st, 1916.  Halloween Day.  Gulp.

From its inception the hospital adapted to the needs of the community through the years.  In 1919 it was well regarded for its exceptional care in treating victims of the great flu pandemic of that year.  Unfortunately, because of the limited medical knowledge at the time, more people were lost than were able to be saved.

In 1927 the facility was sold to Dr. G. Wilse Robinson, a well-respected neurologist whose accepted cures for mental and emotional disorders included the use of wet sheets, beatings, cages, chains and the cutting edge procedure:  the ice-pick lobotomy.  His predecessor, Dr. Patterson, kept these methods in use for the next 30 years until succumbing to insanity himself in 1957, at which time his staff applied to him the same 'cures' resulting in his death.  

The building was then purchased by the city and used to house the criminally insane until 1973 after which it stood abandoned until 2005 when work began on the renovation that would transform the building into affordable housing for senior citizens.

The newspaper article went on to relate accounts of the accidents and incidents the construction crew had encountered with alarming regularity throughout the six months since reconstruction began, which included the opening and closing of doors, tools being both hidden from and occasionally thrown at the workers and disembodied voices threatening harm.  Apparently, several of the workers had walked off the job in midday vowing never to return.

It was stated in the article that photographs taken on site revealed hundreds of light orbs circling the grounds and in some instances, photographs at night revealed dark and demonic figures standing at the windows, including the ghost of Dr. Patterson himself.

It took no more than a collusive glance between my daughters and myself and we were headed to the car, camera in hand, to make the short drive to the site.

Now, I take these things seriously having spent the entirety of my life immersed by lineage in the culture of the unseen and fully respect both planes of existence.  My head is thoroughly vested in reality, but my soul recognizes the overriding truth that we operate from a very limited perspective and that there are elements between sentiency and the cosmos that we can neither readily see nor fully understand.  But that does not mean they do not exist.

As practical as I am, the first thing I did after moving into the ninety-year old home we now occupy was to bless each room with a prayer and holy water and seal the property by prayerfully burying blessed stones at the four corners.  (Trust me.  It was necessary and there is a whole other story precipitating that move, which I will save for another spooky day.) 

We located the facility easily enough (aided by the extrasensory divination of Google Maps); its massive stone facade done in the Classic Revival style common at the turn of the century and standing in perfect accord with the dense and dark sheath of sky that loomed above it.  In various stages of deconstruction the entire building was cordoned off by a chain link fence posted at ten-foot intervals with warning signs about the consequences of trespassing; and although several of the windows were illumined by the bare bulbed, workmen's lights; clearly they were lit solely for security measures and not as an invitation to peruse the interior.

The most we could do was to stand at the fence and snap a few photographs and given the late hour, the buildings location in a questionable part of town, as well as the fact that the previously tame October winds had suddenly turned colder and much more insistent, we did not linger long.

We had read that "As soon as anyone walks towards the site where the hospital once stood, they feel an overwhelming sense of death." and standing in the chilled night air scanning the massive facade with the shadows cast as they were by flickering street lamps, it was not hard to feel or to imagine the lingering presence of it's grizzly history.

Pressed by these ominous musings and our unanimous trepidation about the glacial reception by scene and senses, we climbed back into the car and headed home.

We had driven about three hundred yards when there came a certain and distinct knocking on the back, passenger-side door.  All breathing ceased as we regarded one another with wide, startled eyes.  Seeing the terror in my daughter's faces, I calmly told them, "I probably picked up a small tree branch that kicked up from the undercarriage of the car."

My explanation satisfied them until the knocking came again seconds later; this time slightly louder, longer and had migrated to the car roof!  Clearly, this was no tree branch!

At this point my younger daughter, seated alone in the backseat, began to cry.  As unnerved as I was, I did my best to appear as though this intrusion were no more of a problem than replacing a light bulb and gently instructed the girls to begin to pray the Rosary.

  

This was not an entirely foreign request.  When they were small and we'd take prolonged family trips somewhere in the car, I would sometimes initiate recital of at least a decade of the Rosary; perhaps, in part, out of guilt over my own conflicted beliefs; but also to help them become comfortable considering recourse to prayer in troubled times.  I knew my daughters would take this suggestion in stride without being further alarmed.

The drive home took an interminable ten or twelve minutes with the knocking occurring in intervals of sixty seconds or so and migrating from door to roof to hood to a different door for the entire ride; but I knew that if I could just remain focused and return home, to our property, whatever spectral jokester was harassing us would be forced to leave.

Fortunately, this was the case.  Once I crossed the sidewalk separating our driveway from the street, the knocking abruptly ceased and has never returned.

The next morning I downloaded the couple of photographs I had taken of the construction site the night before, and this is what I saw:

You make the call.  

                Residences At West Paseo 2010

By the way, the residential facility was completed in 2007 and is now serving the community.

Oh, and I hear they have some vacancies.  

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go.  I hear a knocking at the front door......

Happy Halloween.........

PSYCHIC PERSUASION

I come from a long line of psychics.   Most hail from my mother's side of the gene pool whose clairvoyant waters run to depths of inky blackness.  Yet there also exists a significantly greater volume of normal, shallow ancestral tributaries, thus ruling out the possibility of unilateral genetic insanity.

Growing up Catholic most of these other-worldly proclivities were never discussed with those outside our family.   But within our mystical tribe they were routine.  So much so that I thought nothing of them until I was much older and realized through my friends that no one else's mother could read their mind and that the "Blue Lady" who often manifested to chat with my grandmother was not marketing her prophetic wisdom at everyone's dinner table.

By then I'd had enough encounters of my own not to question the value and validity of such preternatural exchanges and thought only that it was a shame so few others shared that same metaphysical advantage.

The clairvoyant bloodline apparently moves through the matriarchy and impacts the firstborn daughter; from my great-grandmother, to my grandmother (who was the eldest of nine); to my mother (her only child); to myself and to my eldest daughter.

I have an intense aversion to the idea of ever visiting Salem, Massachusetts.

My grandmother was an eccentric personality in her own right.  She was a cabaret and opera singer; beautiful, exuberant, loud, large and extreme.  Believe me, she did not need the added eccentricity of psychic proclamations to make herself known.

But there she would be reciting for all who were within earshot the latest news from the 'Blue Lady' or  what her "psychic-ness" tells her or recounting her afternoon with my paternal grandfather among the flowers in his precious rose garden on the grounds of the house she then occupied.  She purchased it two years after his death.

It was when visiting that same large, rambling old house as I was growing up, that I often saw a lean, elderly man in stripped pajamas going from bedroom to bedroom late at night, nodding in calm gratification that we were all tucked in, safe and sound.  He was not my late grandfather, and although I did not recognize him as an ancestor of mine, he never frightened me.  I simply assumed he was The Sandman, whom I believed in at the time as much as I did in Santa Claus and pitied him for the ungodly nightshift hours mandated in the terms of his employment.

Both my mother and my eldest daughter and I share the gift of moderate precognition as well as a deep knowing as it regards the soul and integrity of a person.

However, so has every dog I've ever owned, which implies that the gift is really in the ability of my mother, daughter and I to articulate their findings with detailed accuracy.

Every sentient being has this potential.

When I was in high school, my mother knew of the death of my boyfriend a week before it occurred in a car accident and was visited by his confused spirit three days after his death.   She let him know what had happened to him and diplomatically informed him that it was both alright and necessary for him to move on.

It is no secret that an affinity for psychological counseling comes in handy when mediating with the deceased.

Many times as my daughter was growing up I was 'called' to go into her bedroom where it became necessary to interrupt her nocturnal conversation with whatever disembodied traveller had situated themselves at the foot of her bed or in the corner of her room.  I reminded them both that she operates on a linear plane where it is important she get eight hours of sleep before school in the morning.

With rare exceptions it ended peaceably, and on the occasion it did not, it was always due to my daughter's healthy obstinance and her refusal to believe that the ability to read and write have more credibility in this world than does the knack for guiding the deceased towards the light.


Not every supernatural encounter was pleasant, and there have been a number of times when they've been downright hostile.  I cannot number the times throughout my life that I have been shoved by an unseen hand.  The first time came when I was an infant in the arms of my mother as she descended the stairs in the family home of my grandmother's second husband, Hiram, at the Blauvelt Mansion at Bluefield.

My mother said that she was violently pushed down those stairs and yet no one was anywhere near her at the time.  Miraculously, neither one of us was injured.  She claims also to have felt a mysterious cushion of protection upon landing, which would have been necessary to escape certain injury on those unforgiving hardwood floors.

Not many years later I would experience that same phenomenon when at age three I was outside by myself in winter and pushed off the snowy bank into the frigid waters of a small stream.  I was under water for several minutes and heard a disembodied female voice tell me, "Not yet, Susan."  Seconds later I was fished out by the woman whose house stood on the property because she 'happened' to glance out an upstairs window and saw me there.

When I was five I was again pushed down the stairs by an unseen force only this time my rescue came by an equally invisible source pulling me back by my shirt as I was in mid-tumble and gently righting me, lifting me off the step ever so slightly before setting me down.  

These sorts of occurrences were commonplace and while I was never afraid and had faith in whatever angels or guardians protected me, I have developed a healthy regard for the use of handrails and rarely descend any steps without a firm grip on one.

For a time I took my show on the road believing I could be of benefit to others.  I spent over a decade using the Tarot as a springboard to give 'readings' for clients, each one centered around aiding them in the spiritual aspects of their earthbound road trip and helping them realize the precious meaning of their own unique lives.  

But I abandoned that practice when I realized that most people don't want direction in their lives as much as they want to be told what to do, how to do it and where to go to make it happen.  No one on earth has the right to orchestrate the destiny of another.

I'm not playing gypsy witch.  Go make your own future.

Admittedly, I have spent the great majority of my adult life attempting to disengage from this filmy realm of non-being.  I have a hard enough time training my attention on the salient aspects of daily living without the added muddle of extrasensory engagements to further confound me.  

Instead I have tried to channel whatever otherworldly knowing I may stumble upon into my words and my artwork where I can incorporate these prescient musings into grounded and practical wisdom that everyone can benefit from; right here, right now.

If given the choice, I'd rather lift the spirits of those I can see than commune with those I can't.  After all, it is the quality of the spirit within us that should be our primary concern.

And as for my ghostly confrontations on the stairs, they can keep trying to trip me up but they'll never succeed.  I'm simply not ready to depart.

Rest assured, they don't stand a ghost of a chance.

REBEL WITHOUT A STAR

On the day I was born every teenager in America, if not the world, was in tears.   While my young parents celebrated my arrival and the sweet procession of life cocooned as they were within the sterile walls of a New York hospital;  on the opposite coast, time had come to a standstill.

James Dean, the sensational teen idol, actor, edge walker and star in the movie classic, Rebel Without A Cause, was dead; killed in a head-on collision on a West coast highway while driving his sports car to a race in a nearby town.

  

Whether it was by fate or by a divine design agreed upon in some preexistent state of stardust and goodwill, it makes little difference. All I know is that I stumbled into this world swaddled in the dual but contrary emotional vestments of grace and grief. On the day Jimmy's lights went out, mine turned on;   and the mantle had been passed.  I would live my life as a rebel.

Knowing that such a massive terrestrial star burned away on the very day my own first breath ignited has stayed with me as an abiding curiosity; particularly since throughout my life I have repeatedly been given the same startling astrological assessment from notable cosmic prognosticators and psychics from sea to oil-laden sea:  "You were born to be a star!"

Huh?  Come again? There must be some mistake.  I am many things: a rebel, an altruist, an artist, a seeker, a philosopher and a flake; but never a star. The only thing I have ever been first at in my entire life was being the firstborn child of my parents and whatever cosmic or conjugal convergence was behind that landing, I'd rather not speculate.

In fact, I might even go as far as to say that I am an UNstar. If I could disappear, I would. Rebels are noted non-participants.

I doubt James Dean shared those sentiments. He wanted to be seen and lauded. Ironically, his star burned most brightly when he was lost in celluloid brooding; whereas I brood heavily in real life, but only when no one is looking.  

When I have an audience of any number I play to them. I shine. But my luminescence is a mechanism for survival in a world whose game holds little appeal for me; it comes because I want to get out of here leaving as little collateral damage as possible in my wake, and the only way I can reason to accomplish this is to make everyone in my wake happy.  

But I don't want to be a star.

Of course, all this makes me an even more steadfast believer in the existence of a parallel universe, or multiples of them.  If there are varying and infinite degrees of expression, than it stands to reason I might well be famous in some neighboring dimension. Probably the same one in which James Dean had decided instead on that fateful day to ride the bus to the races and is now a withered thespian in television ads for Dentu Creme and Medicare.  

However, I was relieved to learn that James had died just after I had drawn my first breath.  I'd hate to think that I'd deposed a legitimate star and then failed in my fated quest to fill the void after his passing.  

But whose to say that the standards of success and stardom need follow the worldly definitions? I would be fine remaining in obscurity while letting my art and my words reach a high level of worldly recognition.  

The spark that shines brightest is within me, not about me; and I have a profound need to unload it and to move on. In light of that, I just keep smiling and producing.

No one is going to accuse me of being a star without a cause.

I merely want my bows to be taken at the conclusion of this life in that paradisaical plane we go to after a job well done.
  

I'm sure its on the map; just inside the eleventh dimension and a little east of Eden.

   

                                     

LOST AND SOUND

,

I have a tendency to get lost.  Alongside my earliest memory of motion is the corresponding memory of finding myself at a destination well outside my original game plan.

The first time this happened I was in a large field behind the garden apartments where I lived with my parents until I was three years old.  That time it came at the lure of a train whistle.

The tracks lay on the far side of the field well beyond my view; standing as I was not more than half an inch taller than the dried grasses that separated us.  But the hypnotic sound of grating iron heaving and merging in a machined fit of rhythmic insistence was too compelling for my fledgling curiosity and roundly ordered my toddling march from the constraints of our patio towards enlightenment.

Being less sure-footed in execution than intention, I quickly found myself swallowed whole by the coarse and inhospitable reeds surrounding me and realized at the same moment that not only had I lost sight of home, but that the train had now become no more than a faint, high whistle on tin rails at a distance much to far to consider; even for one as intrepid as I.

The thought occurred to me that I should cry; that perhaps the crows above me circling for prey more suitable than a three year old in corduroys and Maryjane's, might alert my mother that I'd once more fallen from the nest.

But then there were also the very real fears of parental retribution to consider.  This usually involved my father and an unpleasant encounter with a flat "Beaver" paddle ordinarily used to beat rugs.  I was well aware that it's dual purpose was to tan the fannies of insurgent youth, and although my father's gentle hand, bent by the grace of fraternal guilt, mitigated the hostility of the act itself; it could not eliminate my own grief over having let him down or the fear that this time I might well put him over the edge and incite a heavier blow.

Fortunately on that day, my recovery came by another sound: That of my mother calling me in for lunch.   Calmly and with restrained panic I tethered my ears to the thin trail of her young voice and tracked my way back to the safety of home claiming only that I had been just around the farthest side of the building.

But when it happened again the following year, it did not go as smoothly.

Ironically, this time it also involved trains.  More specifically, the train station.  We had moved by that time from the apartment to a small, pleasant house on a kid-infested street, lined by clapboard dwellings of settled domesticity.  However, it was too far away from the parochial school where I attended kindergarten, and the perimeters of school-bus convenience were too taxed to warrant a school-sponsored ride.

The solution?  Those of us on the street attending St. Pius X took the regular commuter bus from the corner of our street to the train station in the heart of town where the regulation school bus would then collect us and complete the journey.

The train station was mesmerizing with its dizzying array of gray-tinted men in their suits and ties and colorful women in matching knits and Pillbox hats, their hands artfully-fitted with designer gloves;  all of them commuting into the city for adventures I was nowhere near able to comprehend.

 Theoretically, I was lost from the moment I disembarked at the station, and it was only by remanding myself squarely among the leather book bags left idling by the sixth graders (whose ritual it was to descend on the candy machine in between bus rides) that I did not float away entirely.

At least not until the day I spotted my first handlebar mustache.

There it was, strapped to the face of a bespectacled man by some invisible means.  Half hiding in the blend of blue shadows cast from the rim of his equally unique Bowler hat, I could see the hard wax bonding of hairs as they extended in ornamental curls on either side of his face like the wings of a rare and noble bird.

How far I had wandered to take in this sight and how long it engaged me, I could not say.  I knew only that when I returned to my safe haven; to where I'd last seen that field of brown leather book bags, there were no book bags.

Spurred by the hard crush of fear, I stood on the sidewalk in front of the station and began to cry.  I  pictured myself an orphan wondering whom among the hurried, rush-hour throngs would become my new parents.  It never occurred to me that I would be returned home.

My new mother arrived within minutes; her hair bound in sections to massive pink rollers all swaddled in a bright, silk scarf.   To me she appeared more comical than nurturing.  But hey, orphans can't be choosers.

While depositing my new father at the curb, she noticed my tears and came to my rescue.  Because in my panic I could not recall more than my first name and a vague rendition of my last, she escorted me to the traffic cop at his nearby post by the stoplight.

I had nothing for him either.  No return postage or known address.  Nada.

However, the owner of the Gristedes' Market where my former mother did all of her shopping happened to notice this scene outside the store window.  He recognized me and emerged bearing all those salient facts that I had deftly replaced with images of handlebar mustaches and bowler hats.

Within a half hour my former mother arrived with my former siblings in tow.  Noting that she showed more relief than anger, I bid a fond farewell to my almost-new mother, who favored me with a kiss and a Tootsie Pop, and I left with the mother I knew best.

Getting lost is routine business for me.  I get lost in my thoughts, my words, my art, my affections and regularly, lost in my travels.  But because for all these years I've always managed survive the trek, my faith in the joy and necessity of exploration remains sound, and I am not afraid.

If you value what you've left behind, you will always find your way back to it, even when you don't remember how.

This is a fact; with or without Tootsie Pops.