WHO'S GONNA PLUG THEIR EARS WHEN YOU SCREAM?
Ghosts didn’t seem real until one day I had proof and witnesses.
My dad was slowly modernizing our old New England farmhouse, first adding plumbing and electricity, then insulation and a furnace, and most recently big dormer windows upstairs to give himself an office. Neighborhood kids had been telling me our house was haunted by the old farmhands that used to live there, and I didn’t really believe them, but still had nightmares about it. My mom got me one of the first grown-up books I ever owned, one with only words inside, about real haunted houses in the United States. I read this book over and over trying to tell if the houses were really haunted or if they were just making up stories. And it was confusing to learn about religion, early america, and the supernatural all at once. If Jesus was a ghost then America must be haunted. Why did everybody go to church to worship a ghost? Maybe they were just scared.
One day my parents both had to go somewhere, so I had a daytime babysitter, Kristen Connolly’s older sister Kathy. I had a walkman with a microphone, and every Sunday I would put the walkman in front of the speaker of the family stereo while Rick Dees did his Weekly Top 40 countdown and record it so I could listen all week. I was playing this tape for the babysitter and she started dancing to The Cars in our kitchen, and I tried to dance along with her. She interrupted herself and said “Oh! My boyfriend is coming over here if that’s ok.” She looked at me like it didn’t matter if I agreed or not. “Maybe he can show you how to dance.”
Minutes later Jimmy Pack, my neighborhood tormentor, was in my house. He immediately started laughing and mocking me, say “Oooh, who’s gonna save you now, you little turd!” I was already about to start crying when Kathy hit him and said “Stop! You’re gonna get me in trouble, you’re not even supposed to be here,” and they wrestled a little. Jimmy says with his perpetual smirk “If you want me to leave, it’s no problem, I don’t want to hang out in this haunted house with this little poop-eating nerd anyway.”
“IT IS NOT HAUNTED!” I screamed.
Just then, we heard the loud but muffled voice of a man coming from upstairs. The blood drained from our faces and our eyes got huge as we silently stared at each other in disbelief. The voice continued, loudly, but coming through the walls so we couldn’t make out words. Kathy said “Maybe we should get out of here” and we all ran out the back door. Jimmy kept running and went home, and we stayed on the yard until my folks came home a few hours later.
When they returned, my mom was looking for us in the house and poked her head out back. “What are you two doing out here? Why didn’t you eat the lunch I left?” and we both started talking at once. We told how the house was really haunted and there was a man upstairs, and I blurted out that Jimmy came over and made me cry. My mom couldn’t tell if we were messing with her, if there really was somebody inside, or what was going on. She said “If Jimmy Pack is in my house waiting to scare me, you are all in big trouble!” and went inside to get my dad.
Dad came downstairs, and was smiling because his new answering machine had worked. Everyone else looked totally freaked out and he said “What is going on here?” Apparently he had a separate phone line installed for his upstairs office, turned the ringer off so it wouldn’t bother anyone, but inadvertently had the volume turned all the way up on the outgoing message.
Kathy Connolly never babysat for me again.