Bumping Into Trouble

By Ed Staskus

   Oliver and Emma sprang out the back seat and ran up the walk towards the Lake County History Center, which was in Painesville, not far from where they lived in Perry. It was ten minutes before seven o’clock in the evening on the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. The first day of summer, or Midsummer, is when phantoms and the souls of the dead cross over from the other side. It is a day to remember of spirits and ghosts, devils and hobgoblins, at least for half the world. It is the middle of winter in the other half of the world.

    “Don’t forget, three o’clock sharp, as soon as it’s over, so we can get home and get some sleep,” their mother called out to them from the window Jeep Cherokee. She was grumpy about having to get up in the middle of the night. They didn’t hear a word she said. 

   The Public Ghost Hunt was due to start in ten minutes and go on until three in the morning. There was an age requirement, which was 16-and-over, but since their father knew a big shot at the place, the age requirement had been waived. The 150-year-old building they ran up to was the former County Poor House.

   The County Poor House got started when county commissioners bought a one hundred and ten acre farm outside of Painesville in 1852 to house the impoverished and homeless. Back then every county in northeast Ohio had its own poor house. The inhabitants had to earn their keep while there. The men handled the farming and the women cooked and cleaned. The farmhouse got overcrowded and twenty five years later a large dormitory-style house was built. The man who built it knew his stuff. He had built the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Public Saure in downtown Cleveland.

   The Lake County Infirmary, which is what the County Poor House became, closed in 2003 and became a museum and historical grounds. It became known as one of the most haunted places in Ohio, full of objects that moved on their own, phantom voices, and shadows that drifted in and out of the shadows. There had been a graveyard on the grounds long ago, but all the burials had been relocated. The center was famous for its “Myths, Legends, and Graveyard Tours.”  Buses took the curious to historic graveyards up and down Lake County where reenactors portrayed long-dead residents.

   They had been to the Lake County History Center once before when Oliver was a first grader and Emma a third grader. “You will be Little Pioneers today” their guide had said. “We are going to take you to the Western Reserve’s frontier in 1824.” They did chores in a replica log cabin. They went shopping in a replica general store. They sat at desks in a replica blab school, which was a one-room schoolhouse. They hand-dipped candles and took the candles home. They burned them every night until they were speckles.

   “Do you think we will bump into Mrs. White?” Emma asked.

   “I hope so,” Oliver said.

   Mrs. White was a former matron of the County Poor House. She was strict and obstinate seeing to her duties. She wore a scowl on her face that could be seen an acre off. When she passed away and was laid out in a pine box she wore the same scowl in death as she had in life. She had since been sighted many times patrolling the dormitory floors. She was known to have chased disorderly visitors back to their cars. One of them had reported her to the Painesville Police Department.

   “It takes all kinds,” the policeman said while filing the report in the trash can next to his desk.

   The Public Ghost Tour kicked off with an historical overview. Oliver and Emma settled down in their front row seats. “When this house was built it had bathrooms with running water. Most homes, even the summer mansions, didn’t have that. When people got here they had to surrender all their possessions except for their Bible. Men and women were kept separated. They ate their meals and went to church services separately. No alcohol was allowed. Mrs. White could come into your room at any time to check. If any alcohol was found the person would be locked up in the jail cells in the basement.”

   They got a tour of the building. There was the Law Room, the Lake County Military Room, the President James Garfield Room, and Doris Martin’s Doll Houses. There was a 1940s kitchen. It was bright and cheery, the colors in two-tone combinations. There was a stove and refrigerator. They had rounded waterfall edges. The freezer was so small it only fit one ice cube tray. The floor was checkerboard linoleum and there was a breakfast nook.

   “It’s like a booth in a diner,” Emma said.

   “I’m hungry,” Oliver said.

   Emma pulled a half-eaten pear out of her sweater pocket and gave it to her brother. He finished it off in four bites and threw the core to a racoon who was chinning himself up on a windowsill into the room.

   Back in Heritage Hall, which was the gathering space, things were wrapping up. “Now that we have come to the end of our presentation, it is time for your chance to investigate our usually off-limits areas, like the infirmary and the jail cells. There are more than eight acres you can explore. Make sure your flashlights are working before you start.”

   A man sitting next to them said, “The last time I was here I went up to the attic. An old broken chair started to move by itself. A baby started to cry. I put my flashlight on the floor. It started to turn itself on and off. The baby started to laugh. I got out of there fast.”

   The infirmary was a detached building, so Oliver and Emma went to the basement to see the jail cells first. Some of them weren’t even cells. They were cages. The cells were small, maybe seven by nine feet. The windows were barred and the floors dirt. There was a bare cot and a metal bucket for waste. They saw a forgotten Bible under one of the cots. The pages were brittle and looked muddy. The jail wasn’t just for the disobedient. It was also where the mentally ill were taken and forgotten. They heard heavy footsteps at the end of the passage, but when they went to the end there wasn’t anybody to see. They heard a disembodied voice behind them. When they turned around there wasn’t anybody there. They heard cackling coming from one of the cells. When they peeked inside a brown rat hissed at them and skittered away.

   “Let’s go see the infirmary,” Oliver said, leading the way. The brown rat watched them. He wanted to warn them about Mrs. White, but he didn’t know how to get the words out. 

   The infirmary, a brick building with forty two rooms, was built in 1877. The patients were called inmates. When they got there they heard coughing and crying and the  rolling of wooden beds down remote hallways. They heard the clang of coal being shoveled into a pot belly stove. They heard a scalpel being sharpened.

   “Anybody here?”

   “Let’s go for a walk outside,” Emma said when nobody responded.

   They were walking through a field somewhere on the eight acres when Oliver stopped.

   “What’s that?” he asked as his shoe stubbed something. Emma shined her flashlight at it. It was a hand. It was digging itself out of the ground. Before they knew it the hand grabbed Emma’s ankle.

   “Hey, let go!”

   The hand pulled Emma to her knees.

   “Let her go!” Oliver shouted, but the hand kept pulling. It seemed like it was trying to pull Emma into the ground.

   “Ollie, make it stop!”

   Oliver kicked at the hand with no effect. It had Emma by her belt and kept pulling. He found a dead branch and hit the hand. The hand kept pulling. The branch broke in half. He bit the hand, hard, but the biting had no effect, either. He spotted a large feather. It was a foot long. It was from a Canada Goose. He quickly picked it up and started tickling the back of the hand with the feather. The hand began to involuntarily shiver until finally there was a flinch and the hand let go of Emma. 

   She jumped to her feet and backed away.

   “Are you OK?”

   “Yeah.”

   Just then they heard a heavy groan. When they looked they saw the hand, shoulders, and a pair of legs wrench themselves out of the ground. Whatever it was stood up. It was a woman. She shook herself like a dog and brushed dirt off her dress.

   “Mrs. White, I presume?” Oliver said.

   “You need to go back to the dormitory, young man, and your friend, too.”

   Mrs. White reached for him. Oliver hopped out of reach. Emma pulled her jackknife out of her back pocket. She was wearing wide-leg jeans.

   “Proper girls don’t wear pants. Come with me.”

   Emma laughed, “What century do you come from?” 

   “Stop that laughing. Children are not allowed to laugh at me.”

   Oliver started laughing, too.

   “We can laugh at whatever we want.”

   “Stop, it’s making me melt.”

   “What?”

   “I’m melting.”

   Emma shined her flashlight on Mrs. White.

   “She’s not wrong about that.”

   Her skin was bubbling and separating from muscle. It began to run like hot wax. Her eyes leaked down her face. When her muscles started to turn to hot wax her bones clattered and separated. She lost her structural integrity. Her voice got weak. She sagged and became a shapeless mass on the ground. A stray dog walked up and sniffed her. He sneezed and rambled away.

   “Should we tell somebody about this?” Emma asked.

   “What time is it?”

   “Five minutes to three.”

   “No, we don’t have time. Mom said she was going to pick us up at three sharp. You know how she gets when we’re late.”

   “She can be a bear.”

   They ran to the parking lot, getting there a minute before a Jeep Cherokee with their mother behind the wheel pulled in.

    “That was a close call.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.” His books are available on Amazon and Apple Books.

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Summer, 1989. North Rustico, a small town on the north coast of Prince Edward Island. Criminal money on the move gone missing. A double cross and muscle from Montreal. One RCMP constable working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication