Autumn Shadows

When I was a kid, the fright in a ghost story was the sense of evil or impending doom—not the actuality. You didn’t see guts slathered on the wall or heads rolling around like runaway bowling balls. Today’s fright is visual, probably a result of our worship of movies and television. If it doesn’t bleed and puke, it isn’t scary. Never mind the delicious anticipation of horrible things; let’s have a drooling demon pulling the legs off children. This may scare the wadding out of you…but it’s not a real ghost story. No, a good ghost story has sounds in the night and unexplained deep cold and shimmering visitations. Chains clank and there are footsteps where no person is. There was the tale of a couple in East Craftsbury, Vermont, who bought a Colonial era home and began stripping wallpaper. Under several layers they found a charcoal drawing of a Civil War soldier. Vermont had an inordinate number of boys who left to fight for the Union and were killed. Immediately after the drawing was uncovered they began to hear disconsolate weeping in the night. They hastily covered the drawing again and the sobbing went away. There were many such stories and they all raised a chill, that feeling when the hairs on your neck stir and you swallow nervously. Now that’s a good ghost story. The stories in Autumn Shadows are throwbacks. They don’t involve dismemberment or buckets of blood. In some cases the ghosts are in the mind (which are, after all, the worst kind). Some are benevolent, some unhappy, some evil. Some might not even exist. Outdoor ghost stories are nothing new. The Headless Horseman was a pioneer, and almost every kid on his first campout has the be Jesus scared out of him by the story of the golden arm. Indians saw spirits in everything and in the long run, after we’ve destroyed our natural world and in turn have been crippled by its loss, we’ll realize they were right. We should have paid homage to the spirits in the trees, waters and air. Joel Vance