
IN
THE NEWS | ELECTION
2002 | CALENDAR

A
Ghost Hunt | Righting past
wrongs |
The
Pink Glow
Ghostly
Ferndale | A ghost named
Ralph
Rocky
and his friends | Things that go bump in
the night
Spirit
world do's and don'ts | Other haunts
I am thy
father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Hamlet
WE CAN'T PROMISE THAT THE FOLLOWING
STORIES will be quite so chilling as the ones that the ghost
of Hamlet's father could have told, but we think they're pretty
scary nonetheless. Or at least entertaining. You'll meet Ralph,
the friendly ghost purported to reside at the Morris Graves Museum
of Art; Bertha, a mischievous spook who enjoys goading folks
at the Ferndale Repertory Theatre; and Heidi Monteverde, a medium
for whom interacting with the spirit world is just part of the
daily routine.
One tale has nothing to do with
Humboldt County. We decided that didn't matter. Ghost stories
are universal, after all -- they're essentially about the dead,
and we all die. And while it may sound strange, they also have
religious implications -- if the dead really come back as spirits,
then there is an afterlife.
Maybe that's why ghost stories
can provoke such strong reactions, from fright to outright rejection.
Even those who are merely amused by them can, with the right
story and under the right circumstances, fall under their spooky
sway. They have a way of getting inside our heads, of forcing
us to read or listen to them even when we don't want to. Yes,
part of the attraction is simply morbid curiosity. But ghost
stories are irresistible in a more profound way -- they awaken
something ancient, a deep-seated sense that lurking all around
us is an invisible world populated with invisible beings. Occasionally,
we feel them and even see them, or at least believe we do. And
when that happens the thrill is excruciatingly sharp. The hairs
on our head may not stand up, but the hairs on our neck certainly
do.
So read on, enjoy and if you
can't fall asleep tonight, don't blame us. You've probably got
a ghost.
-- Keith Easthouse
A Ghost Hunt
by ANDREW
EDWARDS
"OH, HELLO," MEDIUM
HEIDI MONTEVERDE SAID LOOKING around and smiling, seemingly at
thin air, as we walked into the 90-year-old Clarke Memorial Museum
on E Street, in Old Town Eureka.
I'd
met Monteverde at 321 Coffee in Old Town an hour before to talk
about ghosts, hauntings and the spiritual world in general from
the perspective of a professional medium. Now we had ventured
out, with the goal of doing a "walk through" of a haunted
Eureka building to hunt out all of the spirits we could, not
to catch them or "bust" them or anything, just check
`em out. Kind of a spiritual social call.
So, the skeptical reporter and
the flamboyantly dressed medium descended on the museum determined
to see what we could see.
She'd told me she'd just lead
us around from ghostly energy center to ghostly energy center,
and then she'd tell me what she saw. We'd try to take in as much
of the entire building as possible.
"I'm one of the most thorough
mediums I know," she said on the way over.
It was a gray, Humboldt sort
of day and inside the museum was bathed in a neutral, flat-white
light from the skylights that make up most of the ceiling. The
display cases spread out before us in a sort of antique-packed,
counter-level maze.
Monteverde immediately headed
over to one side of a central room, pausing in front of an old
photograph. It depicted a logging railroad and a swath of forest
in the process of being harvested.
"This looks like the way
things were when this building was erected," she said. She
looked closer at the date in the lower left-hand corner of the
black-and-white photograph. "1912, that must be when this
building was erected."
I asked why she had gone over
to the photograph.
"Spirits are attracted
to photos that remind them of things when they were alive,"
Monteverde said. She motioned at a display of period clothing
across the aisle we were in. "And [to] objects that were
familiar to them in life."
Like clothes?
"Like clothes."
She explained that ghosts like
to hang out in museums for several reasons. First, there aren't
many living people in museums -- and therefore there's less confusion.
Secondly, museums are full of things that the ghosts may have
actually used in their own lives, things that they find comfortable
and reassuring. And finally, of all the buildings a ghost could
happen upon, museums are most free of modern technology, which
confuses and frightens them.
"Unless it's electrical,"
she said, as we continued on our tour. "Computers, televisions,
telephones. They like electricity. It excites them."
So Poltergeist wasn't as far off as I'd
thought. (Remember the television?)
We moved into a darkened alcove
decorated like a turn-of-the-century sitting room. Prime spiritual
real estate.
At this point a museum docent,
an older woman, thin with glasses, had attached herself to our
discovery party, listening.
There was a ghost, several in
fact, Monteverde was saying. There was one spirit, a woman, who
very much liked the piano (it stood against one wall of the alcove),
and "the smell of violets." There was also a man with
glasses standing next to a large multi-drawer desk (also in the
alcove). He was, perhaps, a banker.
I asked her how she saw them,
what it was like.
"I see through their eyes
for an instant, it's like becoming the person," she said.
"It's very dangerous for people who are inexperienced to
try this."
Then she looked down.
"There's a large concentration
of spirits right here, underneath us," she said, tapping
her foot on the ground.
Our museum-affiliated shadow
said that directly under us was the museum basement, where toxic,
stuffed birds in piles of plastic bags and other objects were
stored. She said we could check it out if we wanted.
I had just discovered the secret
to getting full access to a museum: Bring a medium along.
On the way, Monteverde noticed
a large wooden record player. Touching it, she said a spirit
was very attached to it. The docent smiled tightly. Then both
Monteverde and I noticed the "Do Not Touch" sign. Oops.
Our guide explained that the
building had been built as a bank in 1912 (just like Monteverde
had said!) to replace an older banking establishment that had
stood in the same location.
The basement was behind the
museum office down a flight of cement stairs. It had exposed,
low piping and was indeed filled with bags of dead birds, unidentifiable
junk and a few ancient-looking tricycles. Monteverde said there
might be as many as seven spirits down there, but that they were
very confused about the change in the buildings and were from
an earlier time than the building itself.
The one she could identify was
a man in a suit with a small watch and chain attached. He was
wearing a bowler and liked to smoke cigars. "A definite
male presence," she said.
At this point another museum
staffer had joined us, Lynn Wellman, volunteer coordinator and
assistant registrar. She said she had been working upstairs in
the clothing collection that morning and felt a little funny.
So upstairs we went.
The first stop at the top of
the stairs was the old bank vault. Over the door was a panel
painting of a cocker spaniel, its brown eyes staring off into
space. Inside the box of a steel room were open racks with a
hodgepodge of items from the museum's collections stacked on
them.
"I hear people counting
over and over," Monteverde said, looking around. "Back
there someone's writing in a ledger."
She said the counting sound
was probably a haunting, an echo of the work that used to be
done here, as opposed to an active spirit, and that in general
the vault was a very powerful place, spiritually.
"My chest constricts when
I come in here," she said. As I joined her in the vault
-- and I don't know if it was just in reaction to her or what
-- my chest seemed to tighten up over my sternum as well, the
same high, butterfly feeling I get when I'm in a jet that's accelerating
for take off. Maybe it was the power of suggestion.
She said there was an active
spirit in here too, but it was hard to pin down. All she could
get was the sound of shuffling, as if the spirit was older and
had trouble walking, and a musty, medicine smell.
After the vault, Wellman led
us down the hall to what used to be two women's restrooms. The
first was stocked with guns. Rifles lined two walls with cabinets
of handguns, all sorts, on the other two.
This room, according to Monteverde,
was the most powerful we had been in so far. With racks of old
weapons, some of which, according to our host, had been used
in the Civil War, all kinds of spirits were "manifesting."
She said mostly military personnel were attracted to guns, but
the people they had killed were attracted to them as well. She
said she could spend a whole day just dealing with the ones in
here, and that a lot of them were trying to communicate. She
offered to come back and do specific object readings when she
had the chance.
The next room, the other ladies'
room with the sign still on the door, contained rows of stacked
paintings and a pile of furniture.
"There's a lady here, wearing
red or purple," Monteverde said. "She's got light-colored
hair, either blonde or gray and a pin at her chest, gloves, boots
with little hooks, and a parasol."
She said the ghost was happy,
but that she wanted one of the chairs in the pile to be set up
so she had somewhere to sit down. Wellman said she'd do something
about that.
Finally, we went to the textile
room at the other end of the hall, back past the vault. The room
was full of clothing hanging in white garment bags (just the
way ghosts like it, Monteverde said -- stacked clothing bothers
them for some reason). Wellman had been marking and categorizing
them, which Monteverde said was good, the ghosts wanted it done,
and that they would like to help her out if they could.
With the second story pretty
well covered, we went back downstairs. We briefly went into the
Indian room, where, Monteverde said, the spirits from the five
tribes represented -- the Hupa, Yurok, Karuk, Wiyot and Tolowa
-- were in perpetual dissent over the display of their items.
Monteverde gave her card to
the museum staff, and asked them to call her if they needed any
spirit-related assistance. And then we headed for the door --
and saw one last thing.
"That dress is haunted,"
Monteverde said, pointing at a white lace dress in a plate-glass
display case as I held the door.
And thus ended our social call,
at what seemed to be a very ghost-packed museum. As we walked
away, Monteverde turned back and smiled.
"I feel that the spirits
are really happy that we came in there," she said.
I was glad for that; it's always
nice when you leave your hosts happy.
Righting
past wrongs
There is still some dissatisfaction
on the part of tribes (and possibly tribal spirtits) about the
display of artifacts in the Native American collection in the
Clarke Memorial Museum, but nothing like it used to be.
"There was a time when
the Native American people were very unhappy about [the Native
American collections room]. They felt that the baskets and other
things here were being held captive; they didn't like to see
them behind glass," said Rosemary Hunter [in photo at left],
a long-time museum volunteer who, in her words, definitely has
"the ability to see the spirit world."
She said that the problems had
arisen because Native Americans viewed the objects -- bows, obsidian
blades, baskets and jewelry -- as things that have a life of
their own and need to be used.
She said angry Native American
spirits abound in the region -- in no small part because the
injustices and massacres perpetrated on Native Americans in Humboldt
have left a spirit population that is still here trying to set
things right.
"Because of the injustices
to the Indian people there is a lot of pain," Hunter said.
"Spirits hang on hoping to make it right and set nature
back in its proper balance."
So how did things change for
the better at the museum?
According to Hunter, the museum made a conscious
effort to involve the Native American community in its operation.
They advise on the proper display of artifacts and have an open
invitation to come in and care for them.
"People come in to visit
things, talk to them and hold them, sing to them," Hunter
said.
A Hupa, Vernon Bradley, serves
on the museum's board of directors.
Hunter said that he, too, can
sense the spirits, and that when there's a problem the two of
them walk over to the source of the distress right away, sensing
the spiritual disturbance.
One might think seeing spirits
would be a strange thing, but Hunter says it's just a part of
who she is.
"It's as much a part of
my life as eating," Hunter said.
She explained that she was raised,
in part, by her Cherokee grandmother, who also saw spirits, so
she never thought it was weird. "It's like anything else,
if you're raised with it."
-- Andrew Edwards
The Pink Glow
by
KEITH EASTHOUSE
THIS HAPPENED 12 YEARS AGO,
IN SANTA FE, N.M.
My girlfriend (later to be my
wife) Gigi Espinoza and I had agreed to housesit for a couple
we knew. It was a long gig -- they were going to be away for
three weeks.
It was a cute place, a converted
basement built into a hillside. The main house was upstairs.
Greg and Anne said not to worry about it; it was all locked up,
the owners didn't live there anymore.
For a week or so we didn't notice
anything strange about our temporary digs. In fact, we enjoyed
living there. Located at the end of a long winding driveway off
Upper Canyon Road on Santa Fe's mostly exclusive east side, the
sloping wooded property had a secluded feel about it. Whoever
owned the place had money, we said to each other.
Like everything else in the
apartment, the kitchen was tiny. It was divided from the living
room by a partition that had entrances on either side so that
if for some reason you wanted to you could walk in circles going
from the small sitting area in front, through the kitchen, out
into the narrow hallway, and then back to the sitting area. The
bedroom was on the other side of the hallway and also had two
entrances, a regular doorway next to the side of the bed and,
beyond the foot of the bed, French doors that opened onto what
passed for the living room. It was all a bit cramped, but we
thought very cozy.
The first time I felt uncomfortable
was late at night when I was going through my ablutions in the
bathroom before bed. Gigi had already retired, so I was the only
one up and about. I was brushing my teeth when I first had the
sensation of being watched. I didn't conceptualize it that way
-- not then. I just felt edgy. I finished brushing, splashed
my face with water and, deciding that the best way to conquer
fear is to stare it down, ventured into a part of the apartment
I hadn't been in much before -- the very back of it, which was
completely underground and cluttered with boxes.
I'm afraid of heights but I'm
not at all claustrophobic; I enjoy caves. But somehow this particular
cave didn't agree with me. The further back into it I went, the
more jumpy I became. It was like I was in enemy territory and
something was about to leap out at me. I felt extremely wary
and didn't stay back there long. It was, in a word, spooky.
A couple of days later I went
back into the apartment's nether regions again -- in daytime
-- and didn't feel much. But nonetheless something had changed
-- it was an awareness on my part, but an awareness of what?
I finally confided my edginess
to Gigi, who, to my surprise, said that she had also been feeling
weird. She said that the back of the apartment felt particularly
uncomfortable, as if it contained an "evil pressure."
Once, she went back there in search of the cats we were taking
care of and had to walk back out quickly when she felt panic
rising inside her.
For the rest of our time in
the apartment, we felt uneasy. I began to get the feeling I was
being watched, particularly when I stood in the kitchen or the
bathroom. I definitely sensed a presence -- it seemed to be in
the doorways -- but neither of us could see or hear anything,
until one of our last nights there.
The experience was not terribly
dramatic. I simply woke up one morning very early, it was barely
dawn, and saw a pink glow near the French doors at the foot of
the bed. I didn't feel frightened, as I had in the back of the
apartment. In fact, I felt quite calm. I stared at the glow for
as long as I could, thinking that if I blinked it would disappear.
But when I finally blinked it didn't disappear. I tried looking
away and then looking back -- and still it was there. Very slowly,
over what must have been a minute or more, the glow faded. Then
it was gone.
I told Gigi about it over breakfast.
To my amazement, she had had a similar experience. She'd had
a dream that a woman in a white nightgown was watching us as
we slept. When she awoke, she too saw a pink glow -- in the doorway
leading out to the hall. She didn't feel any menace or danger,
saying that "her spirit felt very self-contained."
When Gigi blinked, the pink glow abruptly disappeared.
When Greg and Anne finally returned,
we told them about the dread we had felt and about the "visit."
They were not at all surprised. "We didn't know whether
to tell you guys or not," said Anne. They'd never seen anything,
but they often heard noises in the main house upstairs, "like
someone moving furniture."
"Who
lives there?" I asked. No one, Anne said. The owners died
in a plane crash a few years ago; all their stuff is still up
there covered in sheets. "Who were they?" I wondered.
"Scott and Vivien Gershen," Anne replied. "Do
you know who they were?"
I had to sit down. I was stunned.
As a staff writer with the Santa Fe Reporter, a weekly
newspaper, I had written a cover story about the Gershens after
the plane they were passengers on struck a mountainside in Burma.
They were there on vacation and when news of the tragedy spread
through Santa Fe, their many friends spontaneously threw a party
in their honor that attracted more than 150 people. Scott had
been a prominent member of Santa Fe's alternative healing community,
while Vivien had been a vivacious Realtor, "the most outgoing
person on the planet," as one friend, Judy Margolis, had
put it when I had interviewed her. Somehow I knew with a certainty
that the presence in the apartment had been Vivien. [The Gershens at right, photo from the
Santa Fe Reporter]
When we got home I immediately
dug out the paper, dated Oct. 21, 1987. It had been three years
and I had forgotten most of the details, so I read the whole
thing over -- a long main piece and a sidebar. It didn't take
me long before I remembered something. Margolis had told me off
the record that before they left Santa Fe Vivien had had a premonition
that she and Scott would not return from their vacation, that
they would die over there.
Another friend had mentioned
something else, in an offhand way, about Vivien, something that
hadn't seemed terribly important at the time but seemed remarkable
now, something that underscored her flamboyant personality. Vivien
had been nuts about the color pink.
Footnote: A few years later
I drove a couple of friends to the Gershens' property. It was
after midnight, and I told the tale as we sat in my car parked
halfway up the sloping driveway, just far enough to get a glimpse
of the apartment, but not so close that anyone could see us trespassing
-- if anyone was living there. When I got to the punch line about
Vivien's favorite color, something unaccountable happened. The
car, a stick shift that was in first gear with the emergency
brake on and the engine off, suddenly lurched backward. It felt
for all the world as if a "pressure," to use Gigi's
word, was trying to shove us out of there. I started the engine,
put the car in reverse, and hurriedly complied.
Ghostly Ferndale
by ANDREW EDWARDS
EVERYONE
KNOWS (OR AT LEAST SUSPECTS) that ghosts love Victorians. They're
old, they're squeaky, they're spooky-looking at night. So where
better to look for ghosts than the Victorian Village of Ferndale?
Beyond a great concentration
of some of the oldest buildings in Humboldt, Ferndale has one
of the most eerie cemeteries this side of the Redwood Curtain.
There have been rumors (and in one instance a police report)
of witchcraft among the graves. Part-time Ferndale resident and
artist Hobart Brown's legendary Halloween parties, thrown at
his gallery in town and at the Benbow Inn, sparked rumors of
Satanism and the occult that have never quite died down. The
Gingerbread Mansion bed and breakfast is listed in several guides
to America's most haunted inns.
But arguably the most prominent
ghost in this sleepy town of 1,300 souls is Bertha, the spirit
reputedly haunting the Ferndale Repertory Theatre.
"I've been at the Rep or
working at the Rep since `82 and I've had things happen during
productions that were inexplicable," said Ferndale Rep Executive
Director Marilyn McCormick.
Bertha is, allegedly, the ghost
of Bertha Russ Lytel, a Ferndale matriarch who died in 1972 at
the age of 98. The legend goes that she had always wanted to
be in the theater when she was young, and so when she died she
took up residence in an old room off the main dressing area that
harbors the Rep's circa 1920s oil heater, and, appropriately,
lies behind a mirror. She has haunted the place and made mischief
with productions ever since.
She is reported to be a meddlesome,
if generally good-hearted, ghost and tales of her exploits abound
among long-time Rep staff.
One night Denice Riles was coming
in to work late in the costume shop. She walked up the stairs,
past the light booth and was about to open the door to the shop
when she heard a voice coming from the other side telling her
not to come in.
Riles, who thought the room
should have been empty at that late hour, decided to err on the
side of caution. She turned around and left.
One
of the more inexplicable cases involved the bathroom connected
to the greenroom (where actors hang out and get ready during
shows).
The actors came off stage from
curtain call after a successful performance only to find that
the bathroom door was locked from the inside. They banged and
banged on the door, until they realized there wasn't anyone in
there. Adding to the puzzle was that the one window to the tiny
bathroom was also locked. They ended up having to force that
open and hoist the smallest member of the cast through it to
get the bathroom door open. [the
bathroom door latch is pictured at right]
When Bertha appears, as she
reportedly has on several occasions, she is seen as a kind of
(you guessed it) "ghostly light," but more often only
the effects of the whimsical spirit's actions are in evidence.
Once, a show required a shot
to be fired in the distance, and the logical place to fire a
shot and produce that effect for the audience was Bertha's room.
When the stage manager opened the door and fired the shot in
the first performance, everything went off as planned. But afterwards
a series of minor accidents plagued him, including spraining
the finger that had fired the shot.
"Of course he blamed it
all on Bertha," McCormick said.
The
last thing any theater needs is an angry ghost, so casts always
make sure they let Bertha know she's wanted.
"At the beginning of each
show we always look up into the theater and say, `We love you
Bertha, you're welcome here,'" McCormick said.
So far it has seemed to work,
because even though there are minor unexplainable quirks -- particularly
with the computerized lighting on opening nights -- nothing really
bad ever seems to happen.
McCormick recounted one time
when a backdrop that had been rolled up above the stage came
crashing down in the midst of a performance, even though it had
been double-checked several times before the show. No one was
hurt, although the backdrop narrowly missed one member of the
cast.
Right now the theater staff
is worried a bit because one of the upcoming plays this season
is Blithe Spirit, a ghost story, and they're not sure
how Bertha is going to react.
"I'm anxious to see if
[the show] is going to trouble her or make her feel at home,"
McCormick said. "I'll guess we'll just have to wait and
see."
A ghost named Ralph
by ANDREW EDWARDS
IT
ALL STARTED IN 1972 WHEN CLAUDIA, a former employee of the Carnegie
Library in Eureka, was down in the basement searching for some
magazines that had been requested. Suddenly, she felt a pull
on the hem of her sweater from behind as if someone were trying
to get her attention. When she turned around, no one was there.
She told her ghost story to
all of her co-workers and things just took off from there. Footsteps
on the stairs, a tap on the shoulder, doors opening and closing,
lights turning on and off -- the usual ghostly tricks.
One young woman, who didn't
want her name to appear in this article because she didn't want
people to think she was a "freak," described an incident
she experienced as a 9-year-old that she has never forgotten:
Alone in the basement looking for a book, she saw a chair standing
balanced on its back two legs in the middle of the room.
According to one newspaper article
from the 1970s, janitors were afraid to work alone at night,
and librarians dreaded turning the lights off when they were
locking up.
Finally, one brave employee
decided to take a stand and find out just who or what was behind
all of the commotion. She and a friend, armed with a Ouija board,
held a midnight vigil in the library to summon the restless spirit
and ask it what was going on. He came, but all they got out of
him was the name he has been known by ever since: Ralph.
Since 2000, when the Humboldt
Arts Council moved into its new digs in the basement of what
is now the Morris Graves Museum of Art, stories have multiplied
along with the new activities. The council's executive director,
Guy Joy, speculated that maybe the building's new life had reawakened
its spirit.
"Think
of the changes that have happened here over the years,"
Joy said. "It went from a vacant lot, to a library, to a
museum and performance venue with over 50 live performances a
year. That's a lot of noise in here, and a huge change in the
energy level."
While the museum was being restored
a few years ago an elderly couple was inspecting the progress
of the renovation, towards which they had donated generously.
Finally, they were touring the basement and walked into a back
room -- the stacks, the same room that Claudia had been accosted
in.
"They walked in, turned
around and walked right out," Joy said. "They were
white as sheets."
They had seen Ralph, lying there
on what should have been empty shelves, stiff as a board. When
they looked back he was gone.
Joy said that one former arts
council official was working in her office in what is now the
Balabanis Gallery in the upper part of the museum when, suddenly,
objects started flying off the top of the bookshelves into the
center of the room. Unnerving, to say the least.
According to a museum booklet,
Ralph was invited to follow the Carnegie Library's book collection
to its new location at the Humboldt County Library on 3rd Street.
Apparently, though, it wasn't the books, but the building Ralph
felt attached to.
One can see why. From the uniquely
patterned pine slat floors to the tight-grained, old-growth redwood
columns that rise up to the domed central skylight, the turn-of-the-century
classical revival building almost looks like a temple. It simply
cries out to be haunted. And Ralph has answered the call.
Everyone has a story.
The room the old couple had
their encounter in was later converted into an art classroom.
One night another council official was working late, and, of
course, alone. She was walking out to leave the building when
she saw a name scrawled in blue chalk or paint (depending on
who tells the story) on the classroom's cement floor: Ralph.
Joy said one night last February
he was working late when he noticed the lights were on in the
classroom. He got up and turned them off to save energy and went
back to his work. After a while he looked up and they were on
again. No one else was in the building.
The museum's temperature and
humidity are regulated to preserve the artwork on its walls,
so it is important to keep all of the doors closed. One time
Cory Gundlach, the exhibitions coordinator, came in to work to
find that the doors had been propped open with rubber stops.
He muttered something under his breath about how he really wished
someone would remember to close the doors around here, and went
into another room. When he came back, the doors were closed.
Footsteps heard on the gallery
floors above by people who are working alone in the basement
are so common that no one even finds them worth mentioning anymore.
It's just part of the job.
"I always hear strange
thuds and cracks when I'm in here by myself," Gundlach said.
"I just think it's the building settling."
Joy pointed out that the building's
cornerstone was laid 100 years ago, and there's probably not
much "settling" left to do. To his mind people who
try to explain Ralph away are wasting their time.
"I'm open to anything.
It doesn't matter if it's imagination or the life of the building,"
Joy said. "(But) people who claim they know everything that
could possibly be going on don't know what they're talking about."
Overall, people who work at
the museum don't seem particularly disturbed by Ralph, who is
considered a happy spirit, almost a good-luck charm.
"My thought is that it
[Ralph] is someone who has something to do with the building
itself, someone who really cared about it," Joy said. "When
it appears, people never feel bad, there's never fear or terror.
I think the spirit's really happy. It's glad we're taking care
of its home."
Rocky and his friends
It
was just before midnight on a foggy Wednesday and the streets
of Arcata were quiet. There was a big crowd across town at City
Hall where Iraq was the topic of discussion, but for the half-dozen
people smoking and chatting outside the Minor Theater, talk focused
on the upcoming showings of the sci-fi musical The Rocky Horror
Picture Show, arguably the ultimate cult film.
At the center of the group were
two women: Alyse, a stunning blonde with a ring in her nose who
wore a floor-length trench coat over a black vinyl evening gown,
and Keila, a brunette, who was shivering in an unzipped sweatshirt
worn over a black strapless bra and a micro-mini skirt. They
were recently appointed co-directors of a makeshift troupe known
as Psychotic Cabaret, one of many Rocky Horror "shadow
casts" who lip-sync and dance along with the movie. And
they were here to lead the cast in a rehearsal. [four members of the cast in photo at
right]
The Rocky Horror Show started life as a musical created for the London
stage spoofing the sci-fi horror film genre. When the show was
transformed into a film in 1975, it was not an instant box office
success. However, over time the film gained momentum as it mutated
into a midnight movie with a cult-like audience. The film's images,
songs and dialogue were augmented with shouted jokes and comments
to form an elaborate subtext. People came in costume bringing
props: rice for a wedding scene, squirt guns to simulate rain
and toast for a toast. Attendance became an interactive experience.
While Rocky has always
been a traditional staple of the Halloween season, many theaters
began showing it every Saturday night at midnight. And all across
the United States, serious cult members put together complete
casts who dress as specific characters and pantomime the entire
movie in front of the screen week after week.
"I started going to Rocky
Horror when I was like 13," recalled Alyse, who grew
up in Southern California. "My mom used to go a lot, she
showed me the movie when I was maybe 10. When I first saw it
my initial response was, `Ugh, how could anyone like this?' But
then my friends took me to an actual live show and I was hooked.
"After a while I would
go every weekend. At first it was like, `There's nothing to do,
let's go to Rocky,' but then it became this ritual. When
I moved up here [in 2000] I went to see it on Halloween, but
there was no cast. I was confused, it just wasn't the same thing."
There was another Southern California
transplant in the audience that Halloween, a woman who went by
the name of Gatsby. Like Alyse, Gatsby started attending screenings
while she was a teenager. "There was this incredible variety
of absolute freaks," she said the other night. "Everyone
was doing what they wanted to do. I went with my friends and
screamed, yelled and threw things. By the middle of the week
I had a craving to go again, then I just kept going and going."
After a while she found herself
directing a weekly performance in Redondo Beach. When she moved
to Humboldt she became a self-confessed "cult leader"
by starting up a Rocky cast here. Alyse and Keila were
among those enlisted. Now Gatsby is trying to hand over the reins,
in part because she is tired of being "pegged as the girl
who does Rocky."
Out front of the Minor, Alyse
and Keila discuss the casting for the three Psychotic Cabaret-accompanied
shows coming up: two midnight shows on Friday and Saturday and
a 10:30 p.m. screening on Halloween.
The movie's slightly silly story
line concerns two "ordinary healthy kids," Brad (Barry
Bostwick in the movie) and Janet (Susan Sarandon), who end up
at a spooky castle on a dark and rainy night.
Greeted by a butler and maid,
Riff Raff (Richard O'Brien, who wrote the original play) and
his sister Magenta (Patricia Quinn), Brad and Janet are stripped
to their underwear and introduced to "the master,"
Dr. Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry), a bisexual transvestite in sequined
bustier and fishnet hose who comes from the planet Transsexual
in the galaxy of Transylvania.
It seems Brad and Janet have
arrived on "a rather special night." Frank is about
to unveil his latest creation, Rocky Horror (Peter Hinwood),
a blonde boy toy he has cooked up in the laboratory. Before the
party is over they have all shared a cannibalistic feast, Frank
has seduced both Janet and Brad, and Janet has seduced Rocky.
Psychotic Cabaret's shadow cast
will rotate nightly with three different Franks: one night it
will be a Mohawked punk rock guy known as Mom; Hans, a clean-cut
college boy, plays him another night; and P.C. founder Gatsby
will play Frank on Halloween.
It might seem odd that a woman
would play a man who dresses as a woman. But Alyse explained
it's all part of the game. "The whole thing is about gender-bending,"
she contended. Her co-director Keila will take the role of the
male criminologist who provides narration between scenes all
three nights. And Alyse? She plays Janet over the weekend, but
she's Rocky on Halloween.
No
rice, please
"Truly amazing," said
David Phillips, describing the Rocky Horror phenomenon.
Phillips owns and operates the Minor Theater along with the Broadway
and The Movies at the Bayshore Mall. He has shown the movie regularly
since the '70s. He pointed out that with adjustments for inflation,
the film has brought in the equivalent of $354 million and ranks
No. 30 among the highest grossing films of all time.
Until recently, Phillips also
owned the Arcata Theater, the primary venue for Rocky Horror.
When he sold the movie palace earlier this year, he wrote a clause
into the contract giving him the sole right to show Rocky
Horror in Arcata.
There has been some talk of
screening the film at the Eureka Theater, and the Psychotic Cabaret
cast would love to see it shown there as a regular event. Phillips
thinks that would be a bad idea -- and not just because of the
competition.
"You have to know what
you're doing when you put on Rocky," he asserted.
"If you don't, you're going to regret it. Your theater can
get thrashed. And with the casts, well, you have to recognize
that it's an unusual group of people who do it. You have to work
with them and monitor them because they will constantly push
the envelope."
When the film is shown at the
Minor this weekend and on Halloween, Phillips will beef up security
and search attendees at the door. They will be looking for contraband:
smuggled booze, and also some items that are classic Rocky
props.
"We ask people not to bring
in water-guns, rice, toast and things like that that are going
to cause a huge mess," said Phillips. "All of those
things are traditional props, but we've experienced them and
they have created havoc."
-- Bob Doran
Things that go bump in the night
Kareen woke up in the middle
of the night sweating. She opened her eyes slowly, and saw a
shadow on the ceiling of her second-story bedroom. She froze
and closed her eyes again. She peeked. It was still there. Again.
Still there. Again. It was gone.
At this point she was spooked.
Her Victorian house in Eureka had always been a little spooky.
But she'd never felt like this, irrationally afraid. So to calm
herself down she called a friend. As she talked, she suddenly
heard ranting from the street below her window.
"I'm going to kill you!
I'm going to kill you!" the voice was screaming.
She hung up and called 911.
"If it'd just been ranting
about the aliens landing or something I wouldn't have done anything,
but to say that was a bit much," Kareen, who didn't want
her last name used, said.
The sound died down as the ranting
voice disappeared down the street.
After a while, she went back
to sleep -- only to awake moments later to a thud from her living
room, and then another.
"It sounded as if someone
was jumping up and down and throwing themselves into the walls,"
Kareen said.
She called the Eureka police
department. They came only to discover that there was no one
there, and what's more nothing was broken or even disturbed in
the living room.
Still Kareen was spooked. A
few days later she called over a friend who was "sensitive."
He said that the angry-looking statue of the Hindu god Ganesh
that was on prominent display in her living room really bothered
him.
So they went outside and smashed
the statue. After that the disturbances ceased.
-- Andrew Edwards
Spirit world do's and don'ts
ORIGINALLY, HALLOWEEN WAS CELEBRATED
AS Samhain, the day before the Celtic new year, when the veil
between the world of the living and the dead is thinnest. Costumes
were worn to scare away any bad spirits that might make it through.
But in case your costume isn't quite scary enough, here's some
advice from two local mediums.
First of all... There is a difference
between a spirit and a haunting (one is a person, only dead;
while the other is an energy residue from a past event that repeats
itself when something triggers it). But generally, they can be
dealt with in the same ways. To wit:
IF YOU'RE BEING HAUNTED BY
A FRIENDLY GHOST:
ADVICE: Accept it and enjoy
it.
WHY: If you're frightened or
disturbed by a friendly ghost, you'll make it feel bad (think
of Casper).
"Basically when [a positive
spirit] manifests, it is trying to help," said medium Heidi
Monteverde of Eureka. "If you fear [a spirit that is] positive
it will feel guilty and get depressed, just like a person."
IF YOU'RE BEING HAUNTED BY
A NOT-SO-FRIENDLY GHOST:
ADVICE: Ignore it and it will
go away.
WHY: Angry or mean ghosts generally
enjoy making people afraid, and feed off their fear, so reacting
to them just makes it worse.
POSSESSION:
Getting taken over by a ghost
seems like an extremely scary prospect, but in the spiritualist
community (and some fundamentalist Christian ones) it is an established
fact. But there are ways to reduce the risk and to nip the pesky
spirit in the bud, in the early stages at least.
HOW TO AVOID GETTING POSSESSED:
Don't play with Ouija boards,
or similar spirit-calling devices, which are considered "windows"
to spiritual realms. Monteverde and another local medium, Rosemary
Hunter, were adamant about this. Unless you're an experienced
medium, they said, you run the risk of attracting a negative
spirit. "If you invite anybody [from the spirit world] you
need to know what you're doing," Hunter warned.
IF YOU FEEL YOU'RE BECOMING
POSSESSED:
SYMPTOMS: According to Hunter
these include thoughts you would not normally have, or compulsions
to do things you would not normally do, especially after handling
a spiritually powerful object.
WHAT TO DO: Hunter said an Indian
shaman once told her there were very specific steps to get rid
of an encroaching spirit, including simply telling it to leave.
Just saying no, this is my body, get the heck out of it, seems
to work most of the time, according to Hunter.
Hunter advised washing your
hands, particularly between your fingers, your face, hair and
the back of your neck. After washing, don't go directly home
as the spirit may follow you. Instead go to a café, to
work or to a mall -- anywhere there's plenty of people, so the
spirit will get confused and lose you.
IF YOU ARE POSSESSED:
Exorcism, according to Monteverde
and Hunter, is a very dangerous and violent process, to be avoided
if possible. The best thing to do is get a medium to talk to
the spirit and try to explain to it that it's not wanted.
-- Andrew Edwards
Other Haunts
His presence
haunts this room tonight,
A form of mingled mist and light
From that far coast.
Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! This vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!
-- ROBERT
BURNS
ARCATA
WHERE: Arcata Co-op Bakery
WHEN: This ghost manifests in times of stress and strong emotion.
WHO: The ghost appears as a tall male person, possibly Native
American. Its most common pranks include moving tools and baking
materials; making mysterious scratching noises; and, in at least
one case, causing a "ghostly" water leak (water has
been seen seeping down the walls from an upper story without
any apparent source).
WHERE: Humboldt Brewing Company
WHAT: Furniture and dishes have been moved around mysteriously
during shifts.
EUREKA
WHERE: In the plumbing and tunnels
underneath the Vance Hotel in Old Town.
WHAT: This subterranean place is believed to be powerfully haunted
by a very angry spirit or spirits. One time there was a flood
of water out of the pipes on the second floor of the hotel that
couldn't be explained. A plumber's investigations led him to
the source of the leak. It was a spot that, well, spooked him.
"He was definitely psyched [out]," said Fritz Sabath,
owner of the Saffire Rose Café in the Vance Hotel's old
lobby. "He was talking to himself; I think he was so eager
to leave, he left things down there." The tunnel to the
spot, which could be reached through the wine cellar of the cafe,
has been boarded up.
WHERE: Eureka High School Auditorium
WHO: The legend (as told on theshadowlands.net, an online
ghost directory) tells of two restless spirits in this building.
The first is of a construction worker who fell to his death during
the building's construction and was decapitated. The second is
of a girl who, after losing the lead part in a school play, hung
herself in the light booth during a performance (in full view,
according to the website, of the actress whose role she coveted;
the actress took no apparent notice and continued the performance).
WHERE: A huge pink Victorian on J Street, known as The Pink Lady.
WHO: No one specific, but the place is known as a ghost crossroads
of sorts. The basement is supposed to be particularly disturbing.
According to an article in the October 1992 North Coast Journal
by George Ringwald, it was so bad even an avowed psychic and
ghost hunter wouldn't go down there.
Less specifically, there have been rumors of ghosts in numerous
older Victorian structures over the years, including the Carson
Mansion (though a current employee said she'd never heard of
one), the Eagle House Inn and numerous others.
FERNDALE
WHERE: The Gingerbread Mansion
WHY: The building was once used as a hospital and the spirits
of several deceased patients are rumored to still be in residence.
The inn is on several national travel publications' lists of
haunted American inns.
-- Andrew Edwards
IN
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