4
Friday, October 29,1976
University Daily Kansan
Arts & Leisure
They only come out in the chill of the night
Staff photo by DAVE REGIER
Ghoulish arins
Nancy Fuhman and Jan Majors, Shawnee Mission seniors, reconsider entering a haunted house in Lawrence when they
realize some noisy apportion may not want company for the night. When started, the girl's language made ghosts shudder.
By COURTNEY THOMPSON
Staff writer From ghosties and ghoullies And long-legged beasties
And things that go bump in the night.
A chilling, penetrating rain fell steadily, obscuring any traces of the previous evening's bright orange crescent moon. The wind stirs, glistening as winter starkness, glitched as coated with a thin layer of glass.
Good Lord, preserve us!
It was a dark and stormy night.
Such was the atmosphere confronting a Kansan investigative task force Tuesday at the Museum of Science. I firmly imprinted the above paper in our stream of consciousness, equipped ourselves with candles and set out in a room that investigates haunted houses.
AN UNINHIBITED imagination is required to effectively evaluate a haunted house. Not all are of the Victorian, curtorted, multigated variety—most in this area are deseret and ill-fashioned or without accompanying legendary tales.
After departing from the warm newsroom and secure parking lot behind Flint Hall, the member of our group asserting intimate knowledge of Oskaloosa *apparitions* enlightened us about the quarantine of our first destination.
LEGEND HAS it that the house, built in the 1870s, was the home of old-maid sisters who left about 20 years ago, unexpectedly and for reasons unknown. Since their unexplained departure, the house has stood vacant—except for a short time about a dozen years ago when an orphaned girl found the accommodations of the abandoned house to his liking.
The story says the man was more than a little strange. He kept files and maps of children's habits, outfits and routes they followed; he wrote about penguins, the tundra, Sandra, strangled a woman he feared was onto his "hang-ups," and dragged her through town with a rope tied to her foot.
By this time, we were well into the Kansas countryside—punctuating, our durets about the sanity of the venture and credibility of the tale with unscheduled veerings off the
AUTHORITIES say a ghost can return for many reasons: to re-enact its own death, to complete unfinished business, to find and enforce a normal pursuit when it was alive, to protest or punish, or to warm, console, inform, guard or reward the living. I was confident the mention of the conviviality attributed to ghosts is not an expression of confidence and bravado among the group. Wrong again.
IN AN EFFORT to allay the mounting skepticism of my friends, I drew from my well-researched (30 minutes in Watson Library's "ghost" section located in the innermost sanctum of the building) data on ghosts.
HOWEVER, I announced confidently, our company would have good credentials. Shakespeare included ghosts in Hamlet Marcabeth and other characters from the farnous. We should be so lucky.
These critters, I rationally explained, can be characterized by the appearance of whiteness, light or miscellaneous color. But these creatures should've left out that last part, I realized, after saving it).
Such intellectual musings were soon tested as we turned into a rutten, muddy road that looked like an abyss to the venture—a abandoned house.
I felt obligated to warn my companions that ghost experts say the beasts are prone to be noisy about their hauntings and are a heavy-footed lot, for all their incorporeity.
The car engine died as we drove in—if such was reassurance on the part of some passengers it obstructed kindness at the time. We got our vehicle going again and believing discretion to be the better part of valor, our driver moved forward heading away from the house.
"WE REALLY can't stay here long ya know. I've got a test tomorrow."
"Yeah, but this is neat. C'mon, light your candle."
Nevertheless, undaunted by initial feelings of terror, we pressed forward—onto the
dilapidated, weather beaten,
surrounded by weeds and
debris. Certainly enough to
be among us as our candles saw fit
"Don't step on the porch too hard—I think it collapses easy." The two story house was.
The two-story house was
to muster only the most feeble flickerings.
A Halloween Carol
Duest Writer
By RON HARTUNG
The scattered souls scurrying across campus through the crisp October night probably didn’t even notice that a lone window shone out from the dark building that loomed beside them. It was Halloween night, but the ram working in that room had been sitting on things far distant from trick-or-treat.
fascination with cavorting through a pumpkin patch and dreaming of goblins?
His name was Ebenezer, and he was an acting department chairman. Diligent and dedicated he was indeed, but he was so much jovial and nasty. There he sat this night, grading essays with a ferocity that had curdled in the many a hapless Bic. A smirk played around his lips: Finally he held the reins of power in this city, and they slaved for thirty-odd years. And he wasn't about to let go of them. So he spent all day and most of each night burrowed in his office, counting his degrees in the work of his weak-spirited colleagues.
"A POOR EXCUSE for
"cating the university of its
stipend," Ebenezer growled. He
then gave grudging approval.
"But be here the earlier in
the story, and have a pop
quiz tomorrow."
Those thoughts still occupied him as he arrived home, fixed a snack of Fig Newton and Squeeze Parkay and settled down to watch the Tony DeHaro nasty. A nasty man indeed.
His master anticipated the request. Without looking up from his gradebook he snarled into the outer office, "You'll want all night tonight, I suppose?"
Perhaps hours passed perhaps only minutes, before Ebenezer awoke with a start. The dank apartment was illuminated only by the eerie glow of the now blank television screen.
"If quite convenient, sir," came the muffled reply. "It is but once a year."
Butter-headed fools, he thought to himself. What's the
HE WASN'T alone on these late-night vigils. In a little close off to the side of his office shivered poor Bob Scratchit, his graduate assistant. Because it was Halloween night, because it was Hallowen night, Bob hoped to get off early to observe the holiday.
Suddenly out of the corner of his eye Ebenezer saw that a little man was standing in the middle of the room. He had turned off the TV, but still an officer came to the room. The little fellow's outfit was strange; he wore a cheap plastic mask that Ebenezer, had he been a student of the comic book, would have recognized as the face of the Mulk; on the other hand, he was recalled to the cosmic masse "Me Hulk. Me do Trick. Me eat Treat."
"These are but shadows of the things that have been," the Spirit said. "They have no consciousness of us."
His thoughts were interrupted by a voice—a voice much older than Ebenzeh had expected to issue from so small a frame.
And then Ebeneren saw a group of chubby little rascals all decked out in fancy costume home from school, where they sat before the admiring eyes of their classmates. The boys were dressed as pirates and devils, the girls as princesses and roses, the boys as wild expectation of the sugary booty the night would bring.
"Come with me," he beckoned, and once more Ebenzer was airborne. Soon he had a large window of a window of much butter duplex, gaily decorated with cardboard skeletons and scowling jack-o-lanterns. The wedge of the place touched Ebenzer.
Good heavens, Ebenezer thought, is this little beastie a junior college transfer?
"Folder!o!" replied his reluctant host somewhat nervously. "How do I know you're not some strange dream born of took Newtons? took Halloween—bah, chooe!?"
"I am the Spirit of Halloween Past," the visitor explained.
"COME WITH ME, ebenzee We are taking a trip. Touch my candy apple . . . there!" -and off they flew into the night.
Soon the University was no longer visible. They traveled a road that Ebenezer had made, to the house where he and even now there were little children frolicking about, paying the intruders no heed.
BUT WALKING behind the others was a forlorn-looking little boy dressed as a hobo, bored with dragging an empty trick-or-treat bag on the ground. He would spend the night alone, dressing in classmates and enjoying it. Ebenzer recognized him, and a
Nor did he have time, for in an instant he found himself back at his apartment, his mind racing with thoughts of tricks never done, of treats never tasted. Baby Ruths danced in his head.
of pumpkin-husk caserole and Indian corn, when through the door came more other than Bob Funk, a former mature hoisted bonnet on his shoulder.
"I wish . . .," he began, but didn't finish.
Ebenezer turned to see a jovial fellow dressed in an orange and black jumpsuit with white laffers. The Spirit's belly told a tale of too many popcorn balls, too much apple cider.
Speaking not a word, the Spirit ordered Ebenezer to touch his tocol, and away they went—on and on, into dark wood. He asked the student never before seen. They stopped. The Spirit pointed a bony finger down an alley, where Ebenezer saw a professional type being pummeled merlessly by young thongs On the floor came two men, "Trick or Treat or Taste Pin, Enemy of the Working Class."
"EBENEZER," called a voice from behind him. "I am the Spirit of Halloween Present."
“ITS ALL the fault of that Ebenezer monster,” she cried, and I felt so overwhelmed more often you could walk. Then Jim and put his sweater on him. And that skimpy stipend you on—it barely covers the cost of a winter coat.
AS THE TWO unnoticed guests watched, the woman inside prepared a humble feast
And a fear-inspiring Spirit he was. He was slammed, wrapped in a hooded black cloak, and what was visible of his face appeared to resemble mince-meat warmed over.
And Ebenzer looked on, unseen but hardly umoved. He remembered how he'd spent his last Halloween, trying to conceal a Norelco triple-header in an ample. He felt ashamed.
"Come now, Tiny Jim, tell mommy everything's all right." "Yap!" (cough) "a paddle who was obviously the darling of the household and by, who the books of him, was soo to eat his last Friskes Biscuit. Scratcht he came home, wife and shook his head slowly.
. . ." She sank her head into her folded arms and sobbed while Bob tried to console her.
There was to be one more visitor to the apartment that night—one Ebenenner expected, “YOU—you are the Spirit of
100-120 You are the owner of . . . Halloween Yet to Come! Oh, I fear your coming most of all!"
HE LOOKED on in horror as the beaten continuing and one of them tainted their victim: "Put the knife into her apple, will va, old-dimer?"
Again the scene changed,
this time to a graveward. There on a hill
above Ebenerz. Beneath the
name of Ebenerz. Beneath
the read this epithet: "He
was."
HIS HEART fairly leapt within his breast, for he realized now that there was still time to mend his ways, to embrace the noble pumpkin in the true spirit of Halloween. He ran to the throne, threw open and looked on the night with new eyes.
He was still moaning when he opened his eyes to find himself back in his Spartan home. He had no idea what time it was, but Tony DeHaro was still on the screen, and leading from the door down a trail of caramel and popcorn that it didn't been a dream!
"EXQUISITE exquisite!" he cheered as he raced outside, determined to make up for lost time. He wolfed down fistfuls of candy corn, soaped windows by firecrackers and flicked firecrackers into his own office window, all the time laughing uproariously.
"Must it be so, O Spirit?" he whined. "Must it be so?"
"An excellent lad, a remarkable lad!" chuckled Ebenen, suddenly overcome with a desire to bot for apples.
"OKAY, WE'VE seen it.
Anybody want to leave yet? Hey guys, let's go."
"You there, my good man!" he cried to an undergraduate on the sidewalk below. "Tell me, young prince, what day is it?" "Why, it's Halloween, sir," he confused really.
"You said there's neat stuff in here; I'm going upstairs. But this is a new railing. You sure is your place? I think you're full of it."
And when morning came he wasn't at his desk - nor did he ever return. But it's said in these parts that at the stroke of midnight on Halloween, his sister knocked out their windows a face smeared with apple butter, gigging and chanting, "I trick!" I treat!
The upstairs rooms were littered with pieces of notebook paper and old "girlie" magazines. Pin-up posters with measurements written on them hung on each wall. The writings are quite small, but that whoever stayed here last was strange and perverted.
gotta go now 'cause it's late.
Please you guys. I don't think
I'm enjoying our stay here."
I think the two stalwarts among us would have protested this latest cowardly urging and continued our rumagings through papers and paranormal mail and paraphrases hadn't dictated that discretion again prevail over valor.
When safely nestled into our faithful automobile, signs of trepiration evaporated and we eagerly awaited the next test of our steely nerves and rational minds.
HOWEVER, we agreed that no one had recently questioned the veracity of the safety in numbers theory. So, when we dropped off one member of the group, we commandered the services of three others for moral support.
The second haunting locale was just west of Meadowbrook apartments—right on the edge (comforting to save the least).
The two experienced venturers in the group forged ahead while the three newcomers followed closely and nervously.
"THE ONLY good thing about this is if I die I won't have to take my nutrition test."
"LET'S GO, okay? We've
We entered the room at the end of the hallway. Actually, two of us walked in, while the other three locked arms, through the doorway and huddled together in a corner.
"Com'on you guys, don't be such prissy butts."
"I want to feel a hand on my back at all times."
A winding staircase led to a second floor and, despite reservations among our reinforcements, we decided to assault the upper level at full strength.
BEFORE WE'D sufficiently recovered from the candelight he had brought to his ghost, a screen door that was previously in an upstairs room came flying at us. So much for reassurance—nothing lasts
"Didn't you say you'd just graduated from the Midland Karate School?"
Our strategy for the expedition into the house consisted of a single-file procession with candle lights, first candles supposedly leading.
"I wish we could get closer together. I feel terribly insecure right now."
IT WAS still raining, and getting windier and colder. The glass in most windows was broken out but our research had told us ghosts are particularly interested in doors and windows and we crunched as we walked around the first-floor window that looked what looked like blood stains on the floor were only water puddles from the wind-driven rain.
"COURTNEY, you have no idea how much respect I have for your right now," were words of encouragement heard as I led our process up the stairs. We talked small claims to farnear. I pondered.
"Yeah. But I'm counting on the 20 Marines we know to drop by."
as we uncourageously edged through the door, we saw five candles burning in the front window. Hopefully, we prayed these were left by well-intentioned spirits and were intended to warm or console. True optimists we were.
I FOUND myself bringing up the rear. I also found myself on the bottom of a pile of terrified "investigators."
"We're called Elmer's Glue." "Go check out that red door—it just moved."
After deciding that a gust of wind provided a logical explanation for the rug's movement and after completing our thorough investigation of the upper floor (in well under five seconds), we ventured downstairs.
Two of the group ventured to the back porch only to effect a easy run to report of things a hard, the night somewhere outside.
"Let's go across to that other room. I want a hand on my back at all times. You go ahead--you give me time, the respect I gave for you."
"Sit up, I hear something."
The rumblings we heard were for real. They started out softly but got progressively louder as they fell over the wall, fell over, apparently without provocation. We thought we'd possibly run onto a poltergeist—a particularly obstreperous ghost that throws objects about a house and causes damage in the process (to say nothing of causing normally rational beings to end our interest in intellectual explanations as a throw rug suddenly scooted across the floor.
"SHIIITTT! There's something down there."
WITH CANDLES waning,
feet and hands freezing and
rationality ebbing, bravery
again gave way to sensibility.
We made a dignified but rapid
exit.
"Fantastic—but let me up from here."
"JEEZ-US"
"I'M NOT at all comfortable up here."
"YOU GUYS are so brave. You have no idea how much respect I have for you."
"God, is my bed and three layers of covers gonna feel good!"
Highlights
This Week's
Exhibits
THE MAX KADE COLLEC.
oil paintings and prints,
including works by James
Boyle, is at the
Kingston Gallery.
TODAY'S WORKING CENTER • WORKS WITH BRAKEWORK by Lawrence artis, is displayed at the Lawrence Arts Center. Ninth and Vermont
AMISTAD II: AFRO-AMER-
ICAN ART, is exhibited at the
Watkins Museum, 11th and
Massachusetts streets.
Theater
"EVERYONE IS SOME
TIME!" or "TIME!", an original play by Donna Young, is performed tonight through Saturday at the Warner Bros. Theater.
"THE APPLE TREE," a musical comedy, is performed by Hashinger Theatre tonight at 8 in Hashinger Hall.
Concerts
BRUCE PENNER performs a senior recital on percussion tonight at iS Swarthout Recital Hall, Murray Hall.
THE UNIVERSITY SYMP-
HONY
practiced by George Cogor-
lawer,律师.
Sunday afternoon at 3:30 in
the University Theatre, Murphy
R. E.O. SPEEDWAGON performs in concert Sunday night at 8 in Memorial Hall, Kansas City, Kan.
THE UNIVERSITY SING.
ERS perform Tuesday night at 8 in Swarthout Hourt. Hall.
SHARI WEELBOR, vocalist and guitar player, plays tomorrow and Thursday from 9 a.m. at the Rubayyal, Ramadha Inn.
COLE TUCKEY ON RYE, a
everything from blues to rock
to western music, plays tonight
and tomorrow to 12
from Friday through Sunday.
SKIP DeVOL play banjo
bass to 9, to midnight at al
Grays' Jazz Place. Thursday is
FREE JAZZ JAM SESSION
Films
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS—Don Siegel's handling of this tale about a young girl who duplicates and replaces the population makes it the most notable of all '50s science fiction. Kevin McCarthy and Dia Dee work together with Peckinpah, who worked as
dialogue director on the film, shows up in a bit role.
DRUM—The biggest budgeted waste of film since 1985 is the "Mandingo" is marketed to exploit both the redneck and the hipster in which group you identify with, the here is either Warren Gates
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE-JAMES V. Cain's novel had already been adapted to film twice, once in France and then in Italy before the two films were published and Lana Turner as the scheming, murderous leads. To those devoted to the hard-edged style of Cain's prose, this is arguably the best treatment; in other words, the poetics inherent in the story, it is arguably the worst.
THE EYES OF HELL-This 3-D movie is campy enough to delight devatives of winking nonsense, but that is unintentional, as is the true horror of *The Maze* and the macachie producing 3-D qinnixm.
Check ads for showtimes.
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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