“Happy Endings” – and how much are these law enforcement panty raids costing us?

I keep thinking I am not going to be so opinionated, and then something else comes up – like grandiosely extravagant law enforcement panty raids. I am still not sure I got it all straight.

First, there was a big, as in major law enforcement operation in Madison, Alabama, which is a bedroom community to Huntsville. From the looks of things, Madison really is a bedroom community – an active one at that. They had this major criminal type investigation, which culminated in a raid, to crack down on the kind of crimes that people tend to do in the bedroom, with money involved. Then they plastered the pictures of the people they arrested all over the news.

I never in my life thought I’d be writing about such, but let’s get a grip here. Alabama is among the poorest states in the whole country, we are among the least healthy, the least educated, and we make less money. At the same time, we have some of the largest numbers on public assistance, which makes sense, considering the other. We are also third in the nation for the most people locked up behind bars, and this is in the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world, that pretty much means we are number three, or right at it – in the whole world. Louisiana is number one, in the world, but it gets a little murky with us and Mississippi on the world level. At any rate, they have the second highest incarceration rate in the country, and we are number three behind them.

Not to be outdone though, Alabama has the most overpopulated prison system in the country, which pretty much means we are arresting people faster than we have jail and prison space to handle them. Alabama is already under Federal orders to do something about the overcrowding. At least we are at the top in something.

It is clear that with all those folks we got locked up in the South, we are among the most degenerate people on the planet. We also happen to “supposedly” be the most religious people in this  country, the heart of what is known as the Bible Belt. Talk about some oxymorons – the most degenerate and the most religious.

The other day, I was having a discussion with some folks, who were going on about the crime rate increasing in Alabama and we needed to get tough on crime, clean things up in these parts. And we already have the most overcrowded prison system in the whole country. Where are we going to put them and what are the heinous crimes that the people who haven’t been arrested yet supposedly committing.

The light bulb is now on. First, I figured, well, maybe it was a slow news day, so that is why they got so much coverage for busting up the shenanigans between a hooker and her customers out in Madison. I somehow understood how the TV stations would cover such, sort of, but not really, and then it was on AL.com. I was scratching my head at them, mostly because they generally have a high level of coverage and this whole thing was bordering on front-page National Inquirer material. At that point, I didn’t quite realize the level of what was going on in Alabama.

It got me thinking though. I started wondering how many taxpayer dollars it actually took to pull off a raid like the one in Madison. I don't actually know the answer. You have to consider the investigation time, hours logged, equipment, etc. Also, how much money is going to change hands? How much money is that raid going to bring into the system; there’s bail that needs to be made, lawyers that take a chunk, guards, facilities to lock them up, we could probably double the prison space in Alabama and still not have enough, and they got to eat, and those prison phone calls. The FTC has already been onto that, phone calls from jail are some of the highest priced phone calls in the country. Anyway, there is a lot of money in crime, and I am not talking about what the ones in handcuffs are making.

So I tried to digest all that. Then the next time I check the news, it’s Birmingham. Our neighbors down the road were not to be outdone in their own efforts to combat crime, or to generate all the attention they could possibly generate in the process. They went after the “HappyEnding” special at the VIP Spa.

Now those folks know how to get some attention. Best I can tell, they all dressed in full gear and called every news outlet in town to come out for the raid. They probably weren’t too worried about a lot of gunfire on that one, you got to know your criminals, so everybody came out for the photo op. There were pictures galore; a crime raid in process, good guys and bad guys both, girls, actually women. To tell you the truth, I am not sure which was which, good or bad I mean, but in any case, it was the culmination of a “major criminal investigation.” You’d think somebody had been stealing from little old ladies, or robbing banks, or raping folks in nursing homes, foreclosing on people’s houses illegally perhaps, maybe a serial killer, or two.

Well, no, it was a bunch of middle-age men taking advantage of the “Happy Ending” special at the local VIP Spa. I did a little checking around, never could figure if it was a chain or what, but evidently there are other VIP Spas in other areas, and some of the others have also had a few run ins with the law, mostly about some version of that “Happy Ending” thing, for which they seem to be famous. And people can say, well, we don’t want such as that in our neighborhood, but you know what? If nobody shows up for those “Happy Ending” specials, they will go out of business and leave, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. 

And it is not that I condone these activities, or in any way approve, it is just that I can think of a very long list of better ways to spend our tax dollars than chasing folks who are in some way or another involved in either purchasing or providing “Happy Ending” specials. Mostly, I don’t give a rat’s behind either way. If it doesn’t affect me in some way, or nobody is getting hurt, I really do not care what other people do in the privacy of their bedroom or some back room. Most people don’t.

I do care when my tax dollars get wasted in the process though. And it is not as if we are all living the good life, for all practical purposes, Alabama is poor, kind of low on the socio-economic scale. If we had a lot of extra cash to throw around, I could understand it, maybe. Actually, I still can’t, but at this point in the history of our state, we flat don’t have a lot of spare change, and spending it grandstanding on law enforcement panty raids is just about as big a waste of our already scarce resources as I can think of.

Every day, I hear somebody ranting and raving about how they don’t want their tax dollars going to help lazy poor people, or lazy sick poor people, or feeding poor kids in school. They are all about how they don’t want their tax dollars going to help whatever poor person they are ranting and raving about that day.

I will tell you what I don’t want my tax dollars going for, I don’t want my tax dollars going toward policing folks in their behind closed doors bedroom activities, and I don’t appreciate the fact that I am now apparently paying to regulate these “Happy Ending” specials. There was some mention that trafficking might be suspected as being involved in the Birmingham case, in which case, if they were there to rescue somebody, I am not sure why they led them away with their hands tied up behind their back. That is some kind of heroic rescue. (Update: No evidence of trafficking was found and charges were filed.)

It seems to me, if nobody is being abused and everybody is agreeable as to what is going on, the government does not belong in folks’ bedroom. I do not want my tax dollars to be wasted on this kind of mess. I don’t know who in their right mind would. But somebody has spent a wad of cash on these raids, and that wad of cash is coming out of the taxpayers’ wallet, and that is just the start of what it is going to cost the citizens of this state, or the people who just had their lives turned upside down, in Birmingham and Madison both. At this point anyway, I don’t know that anybody involved was actually hurting another single person on this whole planet. And I can’t see as how any of it does much of anybody a lick of good, except maybe the folks getting a paycheck for pulling it off. We already know what the prohibition laws (alcohol and marijuana both) did for us with law enforcement types worried about their job security and looking for somebody to arrest. No wonder they were wearing ski masks. I guess I didn’t mention the ski masks.

And I know people talk about Christian values and this being the Bible Belt, but I don’t recall Jesus spending a whole lot of time persecuting prostitutes; actually, some of his best friends were prostitutes. So don’t go blaming this one on the Bible. Prostitution is the oldest profession, still going strong, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. The thing is, you can do it fifty times a day if you want to, as long as no money is involved. And there are all kinds of grey areas when you get down to such, shacking up, helping each other out, payback for that lovely dinner out, and it goes on and on.

Folks aren’t always the way folks in politics like to make them out either, or the way it comes out in the news, to justify what they do to people’s lives. This one prostitute I knew way back when I was in college, looking back, no matter what a person might say about such, she was one of the hardest working people I ever knew. I don’t think anybody who ever knew her could have ever said she was other than a good person. She had kids, a husband who didn’t show up much, and she worked at the same restaurant as me.

If you think the difference in men and women’s pay is outrageous now, go back a few decades. She didn’t make near enough to support the family, so she “supplemented” her income. I didn’t think a whole lot about it at the time. I don’t think anybody else did either. Nobody I knew gave much of a rat’s behind what other people did in the bedroom. The other minor detail though is that most of her regular customers were on the local police force. That was a long time ago though. Things sure have changed, now it’s all over the news what people are doing in the bedroom. Also makes you wonder what goes on during those investigations.

I sure did some thinking when I noticed the pictures of those police officers in Birmingham, BPD's Vice and Narcotics Unit, ICE and the FBI were all there. Back in my day, criminals and bank robbers wore ski masks. You’d see pictures in the paper of some criminal that had been robbing banks, or some such, and likely as not, they would show a picture of a man in a ski mask. Now the police are the ones in ski masks, not all of them, but some sure were. Look at the gallery.

It seems to me, if they were proud of what they were doing, they would not have been putting on those ski masks. They would have been holding their head high. And I am not even blaming the police on this one; they were just doing their job, following orders. It seems to me though, the police used to be the most esteemed members of the community. Now, they are the ones wearing the ski masks.

And I am not saying that I think all this stuff is right, or that I am into it or any such. What I am saying is I don’t think it is the place of law enforcement and our government to legislate what folks do in the bedroom, or the back room either for that matter.

And don’t get me wrong, if an underage person is involved, I think you should throw the book at the freaking pimp and the person who paid for the services. If somebody has been raped, somebody needs to be doing some hard time. If children were involved, lock the ones who were behind it up for life, and I mean don’t ever let them out. *If there really was trafficking involved in the Birmingham case, that needs to be handled appropriately, the punishment harsh, and the individuals who were trafficked need to get the help they need and some social services too. But if is a matter of adults behind closed doors doing whatever the two of them have mutually agreed that they want to be doing, for whatever reason, including money, leave them alone.

This state has enough problems, I really would like to see Alabama get ahead, be the great state that some of us really do know that it is. We got too many real problems; we don’t need to be wasting our tax dollars on this mess. And yes, it’s a mess, but wasting the hard-earned tax dollars of the people of this state on such as this, especially with the way things are with the economy, and all the real problems we got, is a whole lot bigger crime than the mess they were grandstanding about cleaning up.

I’d rather see a little more money go toward education. Actually, I’d like to see a lot more money go toward education, and a lot of other things that could do the state and the people in it some good. My vote is to get the government out of folk’s bedrooms and send the bill on this one to whoever thought it was a good idea. I do not appreciate my tax dollars being spent on this kind of shenanigans.

*Update: No evidence of trafficking was found and charges were filed.

Copyright 2014 Regina Garson

All rights reserved.

 Photo Credit: Ravalejo: WikimediaCommons

The Byline Blues and My Advice to New and Aspiring Writers

It’s a toss-up whether I spend more time as a writer or an editor. It varies. I’ve been writing a while now but I am also an editor and I help other folks with their writing as well, go back and forth between the two. At a certain point, whatever you do, that’s what you do though, or something like that.

I’m pretty much compulsive about my writing and editing both, moderately OCD, but only moderately, which is actually a good thing for those in the editing profession. It can do a number on writers though, those byline blues come honest. Despite the perpetual worry of what other people are going to think about your writing, most word smyths really are their own worst critics.

I agonize over every word and if I can avoid it, never turn anything in for publication without sleeping on it. Why can’t one work twenty years on each and every story? I’ve given it my best shot on more than a few. I can generally churn out a news piece or review without significant angst, but the thrill of my long awaited first fiction byline was very short lived.

Nonetheless, if you make your living as a wordsmith, whatever you write, at a certain point, you occasionally have to publish what you write. Minor details.

Maybe you only had an hour to do it, well maybe three weeks, but you knew from the start that was a ridiculous deadline, you really did have a headache, or your dog just cleaned out the cat litter box, again, and barfed all over the kitchen floor. But that still doesn’t stop the deadlines.

No matter how long I have ever worked on anything, I have never had a piece published anywhere in which I didn’t later find something that I wished I had done different. Mind you, I am also a professional editor, moderately OCD, a good quality in an editor, if I do say so myself…. Well, anyway….

Add to that though, if you write for a living, the work you do is often public, the criticism you get, and your bad day bungles, often turn out to be very public as well. Could be you came by that OCD honest.

My first published fiction: Magic Stream, The Fairy Tale, I was absolutely certain it was a creative masterpiece, I had published it first on my web site, then the publisher of a small magazine picked it up, I was ecstatically elated and my head was inflated. I was getting feedback from all kinds of folks telling me they had all taken it to their 12-step group and read it aloud. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and everybody seemed to like it in the 12-step groups.

So what if it wasn’t a New York Times Bestselling Masterpiece, it was a 12-step masterpiece and this little story was going. I was proud.

Then the day came when I got my first literary review type comments from a reader, actually there were a few. Now my head was really swelling. This English teacher had gone online and found a couple stories, of which mine was one, and she gave her class the option of reading and analyzing one of them. Since it was online, she also thought it would be a good idea and a wonderful experience if they all wrote the author of their chosen story and shared their literary analyses with them.

The students dutifully read the stories, of which mine was one! Then they analyzed them, in flawlessly perfect prose, that you would not be ashamed to send an esteemed author of Internet, who published her story on her own website fame. They analyzed the stories according to every literary device in their literature textbook. And then, as is tradition in literary analyses, they contemplated the writer and what would have possessed that particular writer to write that particular story.

Certifiably Bat Shit Crazy

They all sent me their critiques of my story, the most elegant of prose. The first line, “We read your story in our class and...” oh, how my head was swelling, and they continued with their highly astute literary analyses, as my head continued to swell. Then they continued on into the part well, “It’s obvious the writer has numerous psychological issues to work through, etc., etc., etc.” The gist of their combined and mutually agreed upon collective opinion of the story, which was written in the vein of an old fashioned fairytale was that it was indeed lovely, to a point, but what’s with the gore, whatever did she do with Disney? This writer was most clearly “bat shit crazy.” So much for literary fame and fortune.

Exactly what do you do next?

How do you handle remarks like that?

Ok, so my sweet little fairy tale was on the gory side, and perhaps not exactly what they expected from the fairy tale opening of a fine castle and a not wonderfully lovely princess. I like my fairy tales in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm. The ending was happy, I at least got that.

I know, I am rationalizing and making all kinds of excuses for why they declared me bat shit crazy, but the class obviously spent a lot of time and effort reading and analyzing my fairy tale, and writing me about it. Do you thank them for reading your work? Do you thank them for the benefit of the free psychological analysis? Do you thank them for collectively pronouncing you bat shit crazy?

I’m not sure there is an easy answer. But like it or not, that too is part of being a writer, and singing the blues isn’t going to do your writing a whole lot of good. Actually, it could be something to fall back on. But those students delighted in my bat shit craziness, and they delighted in the reading and the literary analysis that led them to that conclusion.

Despite the fact that I picture myself as an extrovert, and I really like to get out and about, the truth is, most writers are not extremely outgoing. Neither are editors and writing at least can be a very personal profession.

Soul Stripping

It’s kind of like stripping, I used to tell my own students, if you can’t take it off—you are not going to make it as a writer. We’re not talking about stripping down to your skin though, we’re talking about stripping down to your soul. All the way.

On a certain level, you have to do that, even though, if you hang with it, chances are pretty good, at a certain point, you too are going to be out there getting heckled, trolled, and variously declared bat shit crazy. To be a writer, you have to get past that and keep reaching until you grab hold of the universal, way down deep inside, you got to take it down to your soul, the tie that binds us and makes us all human.

Then you splatter your soul all over that paper. That’s what makes writers different from other people, it’s not just putting words on paper though. To be any good, you have to write like no one is watching. You really do. But once you are published, oh boy, it’s the part about soul stripping that can really get to you.

I’ve seen new writers throw in the towel when they already had more readers than every other writer in town, all because of very public and mean criticism of some minor something, like a grammar error. We get that too, but that can be corrected with time and experience. You want to be a writer, you might as well pull out that old grammar book. It’s not optional. We haven’t even got to the good stuff yet and here I have gone from soul stripping to grammar, no wonder they said I was bat shit crazy.

Anyway, if your grammar isn’t where it should be and you publish, you might as well expect somebody is going to start picking at you and your grammar both. And there you will be thinking you just wrote the most astute philosophical analysis since Plato himself, or at least Sartre, and someone will call you out and drag you over every burning coal of the Internet because you used “there” when you should have used “their” but if you had really had it together, you would have used “they are.” And they fill three computer screens yelling in ALL CAPS about your incorrect use of “there.” Whatever were you thinking?

Suck it up, that too comes with the territory. And when they finish picking at your grammar, thirty years later, you will still be having nightmares about the word “there,” except now they are tearing into your soul, or your intellect, or something. They’ll find something. One very famous poet had a whole town mad about the color of her house.

To make matters worse, when it comes to writers, most of us are already our own worst critics. That OCD thing is not actually a joke. If you think your self-criticism is bad….

So what do you do?

You roll up your sleeves and keep on writing.

You can always thank them for their feedback, that’s pretty generic. Also remember the old public relations adage, any publicity is good publicity. It may not be such a bad thing at all.

Whatever you write, if somebody writes in with comments, that meant they read your writing, they thought about what you said, and they looked at how you said it. They may agree or disagree with what you said. They may tear your grammar to pieces, even catch a spelling error, and don’t be surprised if, after serious contemplation, you too are declared bat shit crazy, and they tear your soul to pieces while they are at it. Look at it as a writerly right of passage.

If we all agreed with each other on everything, the world would come to a standstill and progress as we know it would be nothing more than a tumble weed in the winds of time (gratuitous literary devices). Nonetheless, I do believe that the most important function of a writer is to make people think. Furthermore, if everybody agrees with what you are saying, they are probably not honestly thinking.

That can be tough. We all love an occasional pat on the back. And we do so love to see those heads a nodding, traffic flowing and that “Like” count going up. But at the end of the day, that is not the point. That is not why we write. Actually, maybe it is.

Some writers make their living by deliberately stirring the pot. I’m not one of them. See above about OCD. But I’m not saying that I am completely past singing the byline blues either, sometimes a comment will get to me too. Comments come with the territory.

Also, sometimes maybe a comment is valid, and you learn from what was said. Online especially though, some folks just look for whatever opportunity they can find to shovel whatever negativity they can. And they do so love to shovel it at writers. If you write for any length of time and publish online, you are almost surely going to run into a few of them.

Fans are a lot of fun, but you can pretty much count on meeting a few self-appointed foes along the way as well. After a while you learn to recognize them for what they are, ignore them if you must, but don’t be afraid to block them if they affect your other readership. Learning to deal with such is a reality for writers today. Either way, keep on writing. Dealing with a classroom full of literary explications simultaneously declaring you bat shit crazy, can be small potatoes to the blues you get when dealing with trolls. But don’t let any of them stop you from writing.

In some kind of way, that and the blues are part of it. Vent, rant, and yell if you must, but keep on writing, even when you are singing the byline blues. 

Copyright 2014 Regina Garson

Lost Writings

Lately, I’ve just had my head down and working, day jobs, bills to pay and all that.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am right near the point of  being one of those sweetly eccentric little ladies who wrote all her life and nobody knew she was writing. Actually, most everybody knows I write, but I never did a whole lot with my poetry and fiction, mostly just tucked all that stuff away in the nooks and crannies of my life, as in house, which at this point looks about like a candidate for a budding hoarder show.

I have been gradually working through it though, if for no other reason than to not leave such a mess for my kids when I am gone. Something about a bucket list after my now infamous accident, after which every day I am still alive, I am absolutely amazed to still be walking this earth. At a certain point though, one does understand, it is time to "get er done!"

Anyway, the other day, while in the process of looking for an old article that I wanted to re-purpose, I came across several of my short stories, and some poems that I had torn the house apart for several times and never could find.

Of course, they were in an old article file from one of my former activist focused writer gigs. Where else would one file their short stories and poetry?

The current plan, which I am in the process of implementing, I am going to release the series of short stories on Amazon Kindle, which is basically a computer format. If you have a Kindle, you can read them on that, if not, you can read them on your computer. The first of the series should be out in a couple weeks, still in the editing and conversion process, but I already got the cover. So it is moving right along.

I did some serious thinking about it all though, as in whether I should use a pen name. I have thought about this many times before, could be that is why some of that stuff was still in that file, never to see the light of day.

After much contemplation, and discussion with my sweet baby sister, she said that I had already shocked people plenty with my activist inclinations, one more time wouldn't matter too much and it would be right in character, as in people fully expect to be shocked by what I do, or something like that.I'm still scratching my head on that one.

Anyway, if you have ever found your mouth hanging wide open from my activist binges, who despite my best intentions, somehow apparently managed to get some kind of name, putting my own name on some of my own writing might well turn out to be the most gutsy thing I have ever done in my life. "Journey" should be the first out, in a couple weeks or thereabout. It is a short story "of sex, love and madness," kind of in a modern Gothic romance kind of genre. It is really not that naughty, but it is probably not something you will want to read to the kids.

Yep, I did that too.

The Family Ghost

This post falls under the heading of what I started with on this blog, stories of life that I always figured that someday, I would get around to telling. Such as it is, I am not going to bury this one. I did save it for just the right season though.
-----

In the last year, I have thought much about my mortality and the things I wanted to get written before I was gone. Somehow, the family ghost(s) was not on the list, or maybe it was. It is not that I ever officially said, well yes, I do believe in ghosts. Somewhere along the way though, I realized that no matter how logical we want reality to be, there are some things we just plain do not understand. And ghosts are one of those things.

Most of the time, when the subject of ghosts comes up, I have avoided mention of my own. One does so love to maintain a semblance of normalcy, the illusion of sanity. Be that as it is, with all these books and stories and histories of ghosts, it’s time to fess up, this one is among those stories that I am not inclined to take with me to the grave. We have a ghost(s). And we pretty much have, since we moved into this house.  

We had only been in the house maybe a couple weeks when we had our first encounter. Actually, my daughter had the first encounter. I am trying to remember her exact age, she was still in the carry her around in your arms, diaper wearing stage, less than two years old. But she had a few words, and one word that she communicated very distinctly was “Baby.”

I was walking through the kitchen with her in my arms, and suddenly, she reached for the ceiling and squealed “Baby!” almost jumped out of my arms reaching, like very small children do, when they are so excited to see another little person just like them. Except she was reaching for the ceiling, and there was nobody else around. The first time it happened, I brushed it off, didn’t think much about it. The kitchen is more like a great room, with a cathedral ceiling, and I figured maybe she saw a shadow—or something. The second time it happened, I squinted trying to make out what she was seeing. I didn’t see a thing, tried again to make out—a shadow—maybe. About the third time, she started excitedly squealing “Baby,” and excitedly reaching toward the ceiling, for something I still couldn’t see, I thought maybe I would say something to one of the neighbors the next time I ran into one of them.

Well, the next time, I am in the yard, here comes the neighbor walking over to my fence, “Did you hear about the baby?”

“What baby?”

“The people who lived there before you, their baby drowned in a swimming pool not long after they moved out of the house.”

I never met the family who lived there before us, never knew the child’s name. My own daughter was too young to have a clue what a ghost was, but after so many instances, there was no doubt, she was seeing and communicating with something that appeared very childlike to her. It was also eerie that in these early experiences, the apparition was always above us.

That was the start, but over the years, we had a number of what would be considered paranormal experiences in the house. When the kids were in elementary school, there was a while that it seemed to be a perpetual problem. And I do mean problem. Somebody was always seeing something. My son, who was maybe ten years old at the time, was in the backyard, and swore somebody was walking behind him. In the same time-frame, he had walked past me, looked at the wall beside me, which was toward the hall, and said, “There’s a dog man.” He pointed and kept going. Didn’t even stop. He doesn’t remember that now, but it sure stuck with me at the time.

Over the years, there were a number of instances in that hall. More than once during this time, out of the corner of my eye, I would catch a fleeting glimpse of a shadowy being that seemed to hurry away when it realized it had almost been seen. But it was always an almost, I never really saw a thing, nothing that I could define.

And then there was the neighbor’s kid. Late one night, one of the neighbor’s kids, she was around 16 at the time, started banging on our door to wake us up. She was terrified and had crawled out the window to come to us for help. She said somebody was in their house. Her parents were asleep in bed and she heard footsteps walking down the hall. We called their house to see if everything was okay. And her parents, of course, answered. Everything was fine. This child was an honor student; she was about as far from what you would ever consider a flake in your life. If she said she heard footsteps in the hall, there is no reason anybody would doubt her. As far as I know, she had never in her whole life had a silly little goofy incident; that was not her personality. She was rock solid as both a child and an adult. What she heard that night, we’ll never know. But at the time, it was just a late night incident with the kids. Alone, it was the inclination of teen angst, ghost stories perhaps, but in the context of the other, too close for comfort, and never to be discussed again.

Even for somebody who doesn’t believe in ghosts, and I never honestly did, but after so much of this, you start thinking, well could be we need to do something about it. So I had the bright idea of seeing a family counselor, a shrink perhaps. Whatever comes in life, I have always been of the mindset that you just deal with it. At least I felt like I was attempting to do something—the most rational think I could come up with to deal with an irrational problem. That was among the dumbest decisions of my life.

At the time all this was going on, I didn’t know about things like parapsychologists, there really are people who make their living as ghost busters, and later somebody did tell me that a family therapist probably wasn’t the best choice for dealing with ghosts. I figured that one out. I tried, I really did. Shrinks, Rid-Damp, and salt. I tried everything. For a while I wondered if a Catholic priest might know what to do, but I’m not actually Catholic. If a person can deal logically and rationally with a ghost, I gave it my best shot. I eventually tried to read and understand what I could. Didn’t deter those ghosts one bit. And the thing is, in the middle of all this, if you had asked me if I believed in ghosts, I would have still answered with a resounding “No, of course not, you have got to be kidding.”

As to the Rid-Damp, whatever you live with, you do your best to deal with it. Being the logical pragmatic person that I tend to be, who never believed in ghosts in the first place, except now I apparently had a problem with them, and no matter how crazy your problem might be, or how crazy it sounds when you try to talk about it, there are some things a shrink can’t fix, and ghosts are right near the top of that list.

So after the useless money I spent trying to shrink the ghosts away, I attempted to figure out what one does to rationally deal with ghosts. For a while, I would go from corner to corner of the house sprinkling salt. I heard somewhere that would work. It seemed like it would work for a while, and then they would be back again, so I kept at it, trying to resolve the ghost problem.

Then somewhere or other, I heard that ghosts really like damp places so if you get rid of as much dampness as possible, at least the place won’t be so enticing to them—perhaps. So how do you get rid of dampness in your house? Rid-Damp, of course. I put Rid-Damp containers all over the house. When an old friend dropped by and I was putting out more Rid-Damp, he was asking what I was doing, and I was explaining my ghost problem as I went from room-to-room and he is following me around the house as I put out more and more Rid-Damp. That was a particularly bad episode and I had Rid-Damp all over the house. Nobody questions my ghosts, my eccentricity, or even my sanity, they just nod their head, not a suggestion at all, and I continued in my mission to drive away the ghosts. And that week it was Rid-Damp.

Needless to say, the Rid-Damp was a complete waste of time, money and effort. Rid-Damp is not effective for controlling ghosts. I don’t remember who gave me that helpful household hint, but it doesn’t work.

Over the years, we had several instances that involved the family pets, when a cat or dog caught sight of something that nobody else could see, and for the cat, growling, and hair standing on end. One instance with the dog, she stood at the entrance to the hall, her hair stood on end and she started trembling, suddenly she broke out of the tremble, put her nose to the floor like she was smelling something distinct, on a trail, with her nose to the floor the whole time, she followed the trail into the bathroom and it ended at the vent. That was it, and she turned around looking, running around in circles, she clearly had the scent of something, and was going back and forth with her nose to the floor, over and over, tracing the same path. But whatever it was, it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared.

Over the years, there was also the realization that we were dealing with more than the spirit of one child. The ghosts are not an everyday or even an every year occurrence, but one can be pretty certain though that once you get complacent and you are sure they are gone, they will be back. And that is generally when you least expect it, and frequently at a time when you really do have real life problems to deal with, in the real word. The world does not stop just because you have a ghost.

The years brought acceptance though and then there was the one time, my daughter yelled out, “They’re back.”

“Who’s back?” I asked,

“The ghost,” she said. “The cat. Look at the cat. He sees something.”

By then, we were past worrying about it all. And we were no longer afraid of those ghosts. I can’t say the same for the cat though. One more time, that cat’s hair was on end and near the same area of the hall where the dog had also had an experience. Also, by this time, we had had so many encounters over the years, it was old hat, and this time my daughter went scrambling for a camera. I didn’t know what to look for in the picture, despite it all, I was never well versed in the lore of ghosts. There was indeed a light in the hall that we were able to see in the picture. I no longer have a clue where the picture is. But that was the day when the ghost went from being a problem to one of the family, or at the least a member of the household. It was there. It wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and neither were we.

The one time when the ghost actually manifest to the point of a poltergeist experience was the morning after my now ex had left. My soul was shattered at the break-up of our family and there was a horrendous storm that night, there were floods all around the area, as if the heavens were sobbing with me. In every sense of the word, it had been a dark, loud, wet, and stormy night.

The next morning, my daughter and I were sitting at the table in the kitchen, still digesting what had happened. She had a glass of something, I don’t remember what, probably juice, and one of those little toy straws like you get in the kiddy meals from MacDonald’s. It was something between a whistle and a straw, that you put together with one of those little action hero heads, then you could blow it and make noise while you drink your drink. We were sitting there and the action hero whistle straw starts blowing. And we were watching it blow, by itself. This was not a battery operated thing; you had to blow it. We were already in shock about her dad leaving and for a minute, we just sat staring at the thing. Then I picked it up and took it completely apart to stop it from blowing. A couple minutes later, the dog goes to the entrance of the hall and her hair stands on end. She stands frozen and trembles in terror for a few seconds, and then she snaps out of it, puts her nose to the floor, and begins the chase that once more ends at the vent in the bathroom, and then she runs around in circles, continuously retracing the trail of the scent, trying to find whatever it was she had both seen and smelled.

About that time the phone rang, it was our insurance man, sounding oddly nervous, stressed. My soon to be ex had already called about his car, the flood the night before had been so bad, places that had never flooded in town before flooded with that storm, and his beloved Beemer was among the damage.

Strange doings, the world doesn’t stop because a five year old ghost or any other ghost for that matter drops by. Over the years, I discussed these matters with people who knew and understood ghosts and the paranormal more than I did. With time, the fear of the unknown was replaced by an acceptance that there are some things we just plain don’t understand. In some of the experiences, it was clear that the ghost, or whatever it was, was a child and communicated with my daughter when she was too young to have a clue what a ghost was. Later, with that realization, in the times when it manifest, I tried to think maternal thoughts toward it. I really didn’t know what else to do. It is not like there is a manual on how to deal with the family ghost, or maybe there is and I just missed it.

With more time still, it was pretty clear, that not all of the encounters were with the same being. Although my daughter’s early encounters were very positive, the time in the yard with my son, and the incident with the neighbor’s child were both very frightening for everyone involved. Since, at times, the incidents seemed to involve more than the actual house, it has been suggested that perhaps the area was at one time a Native American burial ground. Since I too have at least a partial Native American ancestry, I did not find that troubling, and almost in some way felt like, well maybe I am supposed to be here. I don’t know, as frightening as it all was in the early days of awareness, with time, I have wondered what happens to the ghosts when the family moves away. Disconcertingly sad and odd thoughts.

Over the years, I have also visited other places that were supposed to be haunted. Sometimes accidently, sometimes on purpose, at which point it was as much curiosity as a search for common ground. Something I could latch onto. With time, I also learned that where there is a tendency of a ghost to manifest if, for whatever reason, that spirit is not at rest. It has been a while now since the last visitation, but if it was somehow within me, it was my inclination that my home would be a place of peace, strength in spirit, love, and respect for life in all its manifestations. I didn’t know what else to do.

The years have changed what Halloween used to be about, and we do so love a good ghost story. But the day used to holy, for honoring those who had gone before. What was really going on? I still don’t understand it all, probably never will, but could be those ancients were onto something. I have long since quit putting out the Rid-Damp.

-----
Copyright 2013 Regina Garson