Priests, Lies and Boone's Farm Apple Wine

OCTOBER 19, 2010

 

Beth Anne leaned over and said to me in a big-eyed giggly whisper, ”Did you hear what happened to Father Dennehy at the basketball game Friday night?”

“No, what happened?”

 “Can you believe that one of the cheerleaders walked right up to him and…”

The classroom intercom crackled and a chipper efficient voice asked: “Will you please send Linda to the office, Sister?”

“Linda, go ahead and take your things with you.”

Slinging my shoulder bag over my arm and gathering my books, I could feel the laser beam eyeballs of my fellow classmates as they fantasized luridly. They all hoped, I am sure, that something juicy would be coming down. I just hoped it wasn’t really bad news.

It wasn’t.

It was just one of those strange Mondays when a steady stream of girls, all cheerleaders, was being called down to the office at intervals. I hardly noticed who went or when. I didn’t even notice the odd sort of attention they were giving me when they returned to class and whispered amongst themselves.
 
Cheerleader drama wasn’t my thing.

Beth Anne was dying to finish her sentence, but didn’t have a chance.

My eyes and nose both were producing enough snot to annihilate an entire forest of Kleenex. I had a mean cold and all I wanted to do is get through the day, walk home, and curl up with my cat and The Fellowship of the Ring on the big green corduroy couch where, magically, no one could last longer than five minutes before falling asleep. I was sick.

It was eerie walking the distance to the office down the loggias devoid of bustling kids. Everyone was in class and it was surreal, or I was woozy from my malady.

Standing outside of the office waiting for me was Father Thomas Dennehy, pacing, arms crossed, and face mottled red. I thought for one optimistic moment that  he might be waiting for one of the guys to show up for corporal punishment of one kind or another.

But, no, he was waiting for me.

Father Dennehy was an Irish priest, complete with a folksy sing-songy brogue.  He was highly valued as a “rainmaker” for the Archdiocese. He could squeeze every last penny out of a congregation to build a church, gymnasium or a school using every technique possible to extract pledges and cash short of holding us upside down by the heels and shaking it out of us.

Or offering penances. When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs and all that.

He begged, pleaded, scolded, guilted, coerced, blackmailed and even exerted mild forms of extortion.
He was aggressive. And the Church loved him for it.

He was also well known amongst the guys for his no-hostages-taken disciplinary practices of getting their attention in a loud and physical manner and making examples. The good Father was a pugilist and enjoyed boxing with the boys to toughen them up. Many times I would see him paired off with one of the guys, bare-fisted, hopping around on light feet, sparring and ducking and lunging for fun.
But when he was not having fun, watch out.

Once Father burst into a class, pulled a boy out into the loggia by the back of the shirt, and smacked him down to the ground for some transgression. Another time he plucked a misbehaving scamp out of the school bus dragging him down the middle aisle by the kid’s hair and down the steps to the outside where he cuffed him, hard. Another boy received a shove so powerful that his head smashed into a blackboard and cracked it.

In those days, the guys shrugged it off, if not in need of medical attention. Astonishingly, I heard that many of their Dads had given permission for the Father to deliver this testosterone rage of rough justice as their proxies. Even paddling.

T’was the way young men were broken and remolded in those days and the Dads and the Fathers were in cahoots. Just the guys though.

When Father had business with a girl, it was verbal, mean, and followed up by lengthy repetitive, almost begging for forgiveness, apologies.

And I apparently became the object of his attentions that morning.

 “Sit here.”

I sat in the chair in front of his big wooden desk. The open windows were behind him and he left the door open. I was relieved that the receptionist was within earshot.

 Jesus was there too. A giant crucifix towered over us on a stand behind his chair replete with a depiction of our pegged and painful Savior hanging from it, His eyes cast down in agony fixed precisely at the person being interviewed by the Father.

He sat in his leather chair and put his elbows on the desk, tenting his fingers and resting them against his lips.

“Ye took yer friends out onto the golf course behind yer house Friday night and you got ‘em all drunk on apple wine, din’t ye?”

“Uh, what?”

“Did ye get yer friends drunk out on the golf course Friday night, little missy?”

“No.”

And I don’t know what possessed me, but I laughed.

His hands slammed down so hard on that desktop the telephone receiver hopped out of its cradle and skittered across the surface of his blotter.

“Yer LYIN'!” he bellowed, “Ye think I don't know a LIAR and a SNEAK when I put eyes on one?  I happen to have solid evidence and the testimony of WITNESSES pertainin’ to yer activities Friday night. I know what ye’ve been up to. Ye may get what ye want by lyin’ with everyone else who will excuse yer wanton dishonest and sneaky ways, but ye can’t lie yer way outta this!”

The receptionist’s fleeing footsteps and the slam of the outer door made me lose a little courage and some control of my bladder as well. My nose dripped unattended. I had to keep my wits about me here.

“Father, I was home Friday night with my Dad. I was sick. I didn’t go anywhere.”

“No. THIS is what ye did, girlie. Ye got that older guy ye date to buy wine for you and the girls on the cheerleadin’ squad and ye all sat out there on the fairway in the dark and got drunk! THEN ye all came to the game, those girls got to jumpin’ around like they do, and they got sick…”

Dennehy had information. How the hell did he know I was dating a college guy? How did he know the golf course was a great place, second only to the beach at Lauderdale by the Sea, to hang out and get wasted?

“Not true. I was home on the couch sick watching Star Trek with my Dad, Father.”

 “NO. YOU. WERE.NOT!” his voice was straining and I could see the cords standing out in his neck.
He picked up the phone receiver and waved it in my face.

 “We are callin’ yer Dad right now to get to the bottom of this and agree on a consequence. And I want ye to know, missy, ye’ve lied to a priest here; t’is like lyin’ in the confessional, y’know. Do ye t’ink yer goin’ to heaven when ye’re sich a liar? Ye better change yer ways, quit engagin’ in sinful behavior wit that delinquent boyfriend ‘o yers and get the drinkin’ under control. And especially quit yer lyin about it all! Hell is a consequence.”

“Jackson 33448”

 “Did ye hear a word I said?”

“Yes, Father, Jackson 33448 is his office number. His nurse assistant is Marty. She’ll put him on the phone.”

The color of his face changed drastically to a butter colored white. He scowled and spun the numbers on his rotary phone and put the earpiece to his ear. I could hear it engage.

“May I speak wit’ the Doctor please?”

Then puffing his chest and standing straight looking me square in the eye he announced into the mouthpiece, “This is Father Dennehy.”

I heard my Dad’s garbled greeting on the other end.

The good Father wasted no time and asked the big question.

“Doctor, may I ask if you know the whereabouts of your daughter this last Friday night?”
I could hear Dad’s polite even cheerful voice relay the news to the now shaken man of the cloth.
“Home with what I think is just a bad cold. We watched some TV together. Why do you ask Father?”
With that, Father Dennehy stuttered and  thanked my Dad in an awkward spray of non-connecting syllables, maybe even Gaelic was worked in there, and hung up.

He wiped his hand across his now perspiring brow and said to me, “You are dismissed. Please return to class.”

So I did.

 Classes had just begun to change and about five of the cheerleaders were eyeing me from the commons in an uncharacteristically curious display of interest.

I ran headlong into Beth Anne who, with big dramatic eyes, finished the sentence she had begun just before my interview with Father Dennehy.

“Yeah, ok, this is great. You’re gonna laugh your butt off. That cheerleader named Shelly walked right up and projectile barfed Boone’s Farm apple wine all over Father Dennehy on Friday night! Right in his face! In front of everybody in the gym! Boy was he mad!”

“Don’t I know it?” said I.

][
Don’t I know it.

***

Fast Forward - 2010. Father Dennehy, deceased in 1999, was accused just this last September of child abuse and pedophilia by a man who served as an altar boy at the parish within which the high school is located.  There is not much more to say about it until the lawsuit is at trial.

A Cradle Catholic's Priests

• Editor’s Pick

SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

A Cradle Catholic's Priests

Father Mike
“Ack! Linda. Good to see you dear.”

“Ok, Mike, what in holy hell is going on?
”
I had waited until last. All the blue-haired ladies had lined up in front of Mike’s station self-consciously patting their hair and arranging their rosaries just right. They all had crushes on Mike, a bespectacled, gouty man with a Boston accent, because, I suspect, he delivered to all those dirty-souled little biddies that squeaky clean feeling that forgiveness brings.

I tried to control my decibels and failed. The whole church heard me anyway when I entered the confessional to exercise my sacramental privilege of Catholic penance. All the little old ladies hissed and sighed at the sound of my voice.

Skipping the prerequisite formalities, I plowed right in. Loudly.

It was the first time I was back in the jump-seat for maybe 30 years. God knew my peccadilloes already because I had installed direct trunk line to heaven’s mailroom without the intercession of a priest.

I cop to my own sins directly.

And, I am innately suspicious, no actually conditioned to be paranoid, of voluntarily coughing up my failings to a black-frocked human being. It gives him what he needs: Power over my life. And in the olden days, I am sure that it did. That was then. This is now, however.
Mike is a different kind of priest though.

And I needed answers.

“It’s like any family, Lin, and families have rotten apples. Just think about that. I am sure your family has black sheep who make everybody miserable with what they do. So do we. Pedophile priests are rotten apples and they must be cleaned out of the barrel. And they will be. Now let’s go have a beer at the Claddagh.”

That’s what I loved about Mike. He took one look at my face and knew what was on my mind. And over Harp beers we talked and talked…

He knew I was lapsing. No, my faith was losing me, and he still loved me.

  Monsignor O’Looney

“Come stand here next to me young lady. Let’s just see what we have here.”

We knew that Monsignor O’Looney was coming to class for “Report Card Day” because the nuns became all tiddly and excited dusting off shelves and spitting on their hands to smooth down cowlicks amongst the “young gentlemen.”

The monsignor was their celebrity crush, all-Catholic style.

We kids stood as he imperiously entered the room in full black cassocked Monsignor regalia. O’Looney would thoroughly embody his authority by sitting king-like in the front of the classroom, removing his bi-nodal Monsignor hat with the red pom-pom on top, and by going through up to twenty-five reports cards.

Out loud.

In front of everyone.

His Irish brogue was a buzzing drone as he called each of us up to stand by him in the front of the classroom while our grades were read off for the whole class to hear, including conduct. I made sure I had visited the bathroom before each of these events because I didn’t want any puddles forming under my knocking knees.

“Linda, Linda, Linda. Do ye t’ink you’ve been mindin’ Sister here properly?”

“Yes, Monsignor. I do t’ink I have.”

Shining a big smart ass grin out to my friends, they stared at me with fear in their eyes.

“Well, according to this, you’ve been a bit of a problem child. A “D” in conduct is nothing’ t’be smilin’ about! You’re going to stop that infernal whispering and fidgeting now, aren’t you? I want to see improvement in your behavior young lady. Your grades include a C here in Math as well. You’ll be bringin’ that up too before next time…”

And I always heard the “or else” lingering in the background like so much incense smoke. And never a mention of the A’s and B’s I earned.

Somehow I don’t think this kind of thing would fly in schools now.

 O’Looney was on the scene long before I was receiving his rough attention for my report cards. In fact, I was just an egg in my mom’s ovary. When my parents were engaged, it was this very man who would not allow them to marry in the church unless my Lutheran mother signed a document promising not to raise the children in any other faith except the Catholic faith.
“Luther was a heretic, y’know?” he snarled at her during the interview.

 Father Pete

“What should I do now?”

“Pete, just put your hands in that incubator and bless my daughter. Please.”

Pete peeled rubber to make it to the hospital the day my daughter was born.
He was the new/ old priest at our parish and all the others were attending to weddings and funerals the day I called for help.

Still not unpacked, he just got on his rental car horse and rode like the wind…

My daughter was born a little early but her heart and her lungs weren’t working on their own. We had to flick the soles of her feet and hope she would take a deep gasp and to coax her heart to beat and her lungs to expand.

When Pete arrived, she was lying on her stomach naked but for a tiny diaper and a pink visor attached to her eyes with velcro to protect them from the glaring bilirubin lights. She looked like a midget pink Power Ranger with bruised feet.

Pete’s hands were what I remember best. They were chubby and his gentle holy fingers sported a tuft of white hair on each knuckle. When he put his hands in through the incubator ports and placed them gently on Tori’s little body, the blessing just poured out of him like honey.

Tori wiggled and smiled.

Naturally, Pete became close friends with us in the English tradition of priests home visiting parishioners. His was always a knock on the door at dusk when he was winding up his neighborhood walk that day and wanted to undo all the good he had done with his exercise regime. After a scratchy kiss on the cheek, Pete would always make his signature demand.

“Where’s my ham sandwich and my gin and tonic?”

For the first time in my cradle Catholic life, we had a priest, a real live priest friend with spiritual benefits, at every one of our family events.

As is the practice in the Catholic Church, no priest really remains long enough in parish to put down roots, it gets too emotional, and Pete was transferred to Georgia after a while.

We made plans to visit him next time we headed north.

At Mass one Sunday, the new priest in a matter-of-fact tone, announced that Pete had died. It was a punch in the stomach. I gasped so loud the church went silent and all heads turned to me. I felt my knees buckle in grief. I had to leave.


Father Manning

“Have you said your morning prayers?”

“My whole day is a prayer Father.”

“But have you said your morning prayers? No? You know you’re driving the nails into His hands yourself! Kneel down here now and say them!”

“But Father…”

“The bus will wait!”

Every morning Fr. Manning would stalk the bus stop interrogating us about our prayer life or obscure Baltimore Catechism questions. It was an art form to avoid him by arriving at just the right second to board the bus before he could sneak up and pin us down.

He scared us mostly with his graphic passion for the more violent aspects of crucifixion and martyrdom.  He always told the stories of the saints who were made so by becoming lion food or for enduring the untimely ripping out of one or more body parts while still consciously professing the faith...

When I went on to high school, I didn’t see much more of him. I assumed his senility had advanced and he was being kept under a tighter rein much to the relief, I am sure, of the grade schoolers who had been tormented by him at the bus stop.

After I achieved a successful run as the lead in the school play, Father F-, a young progressive priest fresh from seminary, proposed that I do a new thing during the Mass at church.
He invited me to be the first girl ever to present the scripture readings at a full-on Mass. This was even before girls were thought of to be altar servers.

This was going to break down some barriers…And I was thrilled.

For the first time in my life as a Catholic, I thought , “I can do this!”

It makes the whole Mass thing something in which I can really participate rather than passively sitting- standing-kneeling. No more hokey-pokey rigamarole through every dreary service…This was getting interesting.

So young Fr. F- and I rehearsed and rehearsed and studied and delved deeply into the theological interpretations of each piece until I felt like I knew exactly what I was sharing with the congregation perfectly.

And my father was so proud. Bonus!

The Sunday of my groundbreaking came and Fr. F- and my father proudly escorted me up to the church entrance.

Suddenly, a figure in black blocked out the sun and my way in.

 Looking up, the butterflies in my stomach turned to vampire bats.

Father Manning.

He was in full black cassock and hat, literally shaking in anger with a look of pure disgust on his face. Looking closely, he had not remembered his dentures that morning so his face was all sharpness and angles. He spit a little when he spoke.

“This girl will not enter this church until we get something straight. She will not be allowed at the pulpit if I have anything to do with it.”

Fr. F- tried to intercede. “Alright Michael, it's ok.  Maybe she can do the readings in front of it.”
“Absolutely NOT!” His voice was booming. “She is PROHIBITED from even approaching the sacristy by church law! It would be an abomination.”

My father, now so conflicted between his pride in me and the authority of the priest confronting us, blurted the central question, “Why?”

“Don’t you know? What kind of Catholic are you? She is female. She bleeds.”


Postscript:

I was moved to write about these priests, both good and bad, so that I might discover some way of reconciling my profound sadness and, yes deep anger, with the Roman Catholic Church.
I feel mortally wounded on a spiritual level by the Vatican’s recent misogynistic rulings. Although as a cradle Catholic with obvious past healed-over flesh wounds from which I have recovered, I cannot reconcile the obvious categorization by the Church of women as potential egregious violating wounds on the body of the faith any more.

To borrow from Someone who would’ve found all this so very wrong:  It is finished.

“Here's what the Vatican's internal prosecutor, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, said from the news conference in Rome, when asked to explain why ordination of women was included alongside of rulings concerning sexual exploitation of children and the disabled by male… priests: ‘Sexual abuse and pornography are more grave dealings, they are an egregious violation of moral law. Attempted ordination of women is grave, but on another level; it is a wound that is an attempt against the Catholic faith on the sacramental orders.’

In a report from the AP, reporter Nicole Winfield explained that "The rules...list the attempted ordination of a woman as a ‘grave crime' to be handled according to the same set of procedures as sex abuse -- despite arguments that grouping the two in the same document would imply equating them.... Scicluna defended the inclusion of both sex abuse and ordination of women in the same document as a way of codifying two of the most serious canonical crimes against sacraments and morals that the congregation deals with. “ -From Psychology Today by Regina Barreca, Ph.d

Are You a Witch, or Are You a Fairy?

Bridget and Micheal's Wedding Photograph

“It’s not her.  It’s not my wife!”

That’s what Michael Cleary said to his father-in-law, his cousins and various tooth-sucking wide-eyed observers in Tipperary, Ireland that coldest of days in 1895.

“We tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen, so prideful and superior they are. So it’s no fault of ours, this thing that has come about,” they muttered while fingering rosaries and throwing hand gestures in the “old ways” against the dangerous magical beings that caused chaos in life when no other rational explanation will do. “Everyone knows what happens when you take a home built atop a fairy fort.” 

 

Even in the late nineteenth century, at the height of the Industrial Age when Roentgen was discovering X-rays and the Lumiere brothers invented the Cinematograph, the rural folk around Tipperary still gave a wide berth to the prehistoric grave barrows that dotted the landscape for miles around. To the people, they were homes to wraiths, goblins and banshees and, worst of all, fairies. 

Bridget Boland married Michael Cleary and promptly went home to live with her parents. She was 26, which was a bit long in the tooth in everyone’s opinion for a newlywed. Most girls thereabout were married young and were slavishly yoked to home and hearth by growing broods of children and serving the needs of laborer husbands. With none of that traditional servitude to distract her, Bridget built up her own professional life selling eggs and, as dressmaker and milliner, made most of the hats and dresses in town. 

She had her own Singer sewing machine which was a source of gossip in the pub or over the fence.

Was she putting on airs? Was she thumbing her nose at what should be her station? Bridget was peculiar. 
 

Michael Cleary

Her groom, 10 years older than she, continued to work as a cooper at a barrel making interest removed from Tipperary by some miles. He was known to be a “clever man” who provided for his wife and kin well. He tolerated Bridget’s penchant for commerce, even though he likely endured mockery about his “working” wife.

When Bridget’s mother died and the couple became responsible for her elderly father and, as such, inherited the right to occupy the best labourers house in Tipperary - The one famously known to have been built atop of an ancient fairy ring fort. As much as it was the nicest cottage around, no one wanted it because it was thought to be infested with fairies.

Everyone knew that fairies wreak havoc for sport.

They moved in anyway. And entered a higher social strata.

Again, peculiar, during 8 years of marriage, God gave them no children.  Whispers amongst the folk blamed the fairies for the problem.

The winter of 1895 was one of the coldest on record.  Rivers froze solid denying commerce from town to town. Livestock died in the bitter blast and crops turned brittle in the fields. Living had become a dire struggle. Devout Catholics, in addition to praying fervently to Jesus Christ, began to turn, for insurance surely, to the old deities in prayer. They called upon ancient forces that still gave them comfort and who perhaps would bestow merciful relief from the cursed frozen spell that was ruining them.   

By March, hundreds had succumbed to pneumonia, and in early March Bridget fell ill. She was seen by a physician who prescribed medicine and suggested calling in the priest to administer last rites.

  

“Are you giving her the medicine the doctor ordered, Michael?” asked Father Ryan.

“No. I don’t trust it.”

“Why not, for the love of God?”

“People may have some remedy of their own that might do more good than doctor’s medicine.”

The local fairy doctor was consulted. 

 

“The creature lying here is not your wife.  It is a changeling left behind to fool you when she went to join the fairies. To get her back, there are things you can do to loosen the grasp of the fairies on your wife.”

Michael Cleary then committed to memory the ancient arcane recipe for restoring his wife from the realms of the fairy, and to destroy what he felt was a cruel trick played on him, the presence of a profane effigy of her in his home.

Soon after, with his father-in-law and cousins gathered, he argued his case and methods for retrieving his real wife back from the netherworld. He was so convinced and convincing that the changeling lying there was not his wife, he met with little resistance from the family.  

From her bed, Bridget now helpless with illness but still strong in spirit said, “Michael, the only person I ever knew who was taken by the fairies was your mother.”

Perhaps she should’ve left that unsaid.

He began by pouring urine on her. Yielding no results except exclamations of disgust from on lookers, he then attempted to force feed her herbs and dried farmyard animal dung that had been provided by the fairy doctor to hasten the results of the ritual.  He dropped Bridget down next to the fireplace so when the real Bridget came back, the changeling would rise up through the chimney. “Go up, you witch, go up!” yelled Michael. Witnesses to the procedure claimed that Michael was throwing Bridget around like a rag doll and screaming “Away with you! Bring my wife back! Away!”  

 Her own father tried to interrogate her bellowing “Are you Bridget Boland, wife of Michael Cleary?  Are you she?”  To which she replied, “Yes, dada, I am Bridget!”  She, then, fell too close to the grate and her gown lit afire. As she smoldered on the hearth, Michael held a burning stick to her chest warding everyone else off when they tried to help her. 

   

Michael, either desperate to get his wife back, or desperate to get rid of her, splashed her with lantern oil and burned her to death in the front room of the best cottage built on a fairy ring fort.

For days following the incident, those coming to call on Bridget were shocked to find she wasn’t there. Michael stood his ground that his wife had gone to the fairies and that he had dealt with the changeling on his own terms. Three days gone, and a burnt body was found in a shallow grave nearby.

Michael and eight of his kin were brought to trial. The case became very popular known as the last witch burning in Ireland.

Bridget's grave.

 Many a rope was skipped whilst children intoned the rhyme - 

Are you a witch or are you a fairy? Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?

Great Britain, at the time, was considering granting Ireland home rule but news of Bridget’s horrific murder based on stubborn Irish pagan beliefs in ancient “savage” superstitions cast a shadow on that political movement. Michael Cleary, however, was so convincing at trial that he truly believed his wife would return if he destroyed the changeling, was convicted with a lesser crime of “wounding” and spent 15 years in prison.  He served his time, and even at an advanced age left Ireland for Canada to escape the ongoing attention.

 

Author’s Note: My grandmother was Clara Frances Cleary.  Her grandfather was John Cleary of Tipperary, a possible cousin of Michael Cleary, and possibly present when Bridget Cleary was killed. I’m not sure I want to dig any further.

Not all family trees have heroes, queens or saints in it. When exploring your ancestry, therefore, be very wary for there may be fairies.

Brain Surgery Color Commentary

It is not super fun in the hospital.   But everyone is nice about it.

This  first part of Deep Brain Stimulation surgery is supposed to be the most “uncomfortable” part of the two stage process.  This is where they had to have perfect control of my head to accurately send electrical leads down into the mysterious depths of my brain.

  

The word, uncomfortable, is code for, “This is going to challenge your current definition of sanity, so try not to emit any sounds that could upset the other patients in pre-op ok?”  All of whom sat up on their gurneys watching the proceedings with wide-eyed half-sedated interest. 

Dr. Foote injects the locals. I connect with my Neanderthal ancestors.

And as we got me ready for brain surgery, I could hear more than a little “There but for the grace…” and “Bless her heart” sympathy utterings combined with the “Ooohs” and the “Oh my Gods” from those who couldn’t filter their reactions to what happened next.

Screwing in the bolts

There is digital proof, however, that I smiled and chatted and babbled while a halo of stainless steel was lowered onto my head like some steam punk crown.  I was the Queen of Deep Brain Stimulation. The second of four scheduled for that day.  There was a little of that production line feeling about it all.

Dr. Foote, a naturally gifted teacher, carried on a quick efficient running dialogue pointing out the whys and wherefores of the procedure to his ever-present entourage of students. He injected lots of local anesthesia at four sites on my face and head where the pointy screw-in pegs were installed to render the crown inexorably bolted to my skull bone.

Fully crowned and cranky

Apparently my face looked like some punk body mod of egg-sized bulges above my eyebrows.  They went down fairly quickly resulting in a blessedly numb scalp and face.  

But not before I was deemed by onlookers to look like a Neanderthal in a trap. Which, under the circumstances, was hilarious.

Even when I heard the back left bolt grind into my skull with a crunch, I maintained.  I am a good patient and a Doctor’s daughter so I just held on to those two thoughts.
 

My team: The gorgeous Dr. Foote, Pam the no-nonsense OR nurse, and a sweet student guy whose name I promptly forgot.

 This is Part One.   There will be more about this soon.  I have been recuperating from both surgeries and the going  is slow. But I don't shake anymore...    Mark2:1-12

Ghosts, Orbs and Entities: My Fault,I Went Lookin'

^{Kangaroo.  Not scary.}

Satisfying our mutual and natural urge to wander, I traveled with my teen aged daughter this summer. We hiked around the Smokey Mountains, had facials, went to the Indian casino, and found a kangaroo farm out in the middle of nowhere Georgia.
But from the jump, we made a plan to fulfill our interest in visiting a “haunted hotel” in the South, and ultimately ended up for a night at the Inn at Merridun in Union, South Carolina.

This antebellum inn is widely known for its “haunts” and good food.

We were not disappointed either way!

^{The Inn at Merridun}

On the outside, if you squint, there is a glimpse of this mansion’s glory days when it was central to a booming cotton industry and anchored many square miles of property for the family by which it was owned. The echoes of steam locomotives chugging by, laden with white drifts of cotton, linger on the tracks not 100 yards away from the front door.

The gracious porches, where sparkling entourages of lavishly dressed guests were once greeted and ushered into the house for society balls, roll now like a set of ocean waves, the marble tiles pushed up and sunken down at intervals.

Looking up, all is overarched by a tin veneered ceiling gone green with dripping corrosion.

Now in unremitting dilapidation, the entire house seemed as though it is melting gracefully into the landscape drawn down by gravity and unseen tendrils of kudzu and mildew pulling it earthward.

No line is plumb, no angle angular.

It is a rounded dowager, an aging belle, stuffed with a profuse collection of delicious antiques, lolling on a green throne. She is holding court anxiously awaiting imaginary suitors to fill her dance card with waltzes and reels.

^{The Girl. Hunting.}

Naturally, upon settling in, we went into our “Ghost Hunter” mode. Since we were the only party staying at the inn that night, we gleefully explored every possible space in the mansion for cold spots, fleeting peripheral sightings or disembodied voices.

We ranged around trying to whisper and tip toe from the gentlemen’s sitting room on the first floor to the ballroom on the second. Ballrooms in those days were situated above the “mosquito line” for the comfort of the guests.
 
We heard a ghost dog barking, footsteps above our heads, felt cold tentacles embrace our legs, saw a shadowy sad man leaning over the balcony, and heard far away laughter with piano music.

And always the train going by on that discontinued spur - all distant and lonely and muted like the volume was turned down.

Imaginations overwrought, we just wound ourselves up into a susceptibility of the most exquisite degree.
We took gobs of pictures hoping to catch an “entity” digitally and did catch a few creepy photos with smoky ectoplasm and orbs in them, we think.

^{Just above the picture - See the orb?}

Assigned to the ground floor suite called “The Senator’s Room,” really the only scary thing about it upon first examination was a framed and signed photograph of Strom Thurmond next to one of Jimmy Carter, both of whom apparently stayed there at one time. I thought it might be disconcerting enough getting to sleep with those two evil birds gazing down from above the spooky black painted fireplace!
But they were the least of it, as it turns out.

Of course, as if on cue, the atmosphere literally became electrically charged when an unbelievable summer storm enveloped the place as the sun went down. Static was snapping and popping all around and ozone scented the air profusely. I could not have ordered a more appropriate special effect had it been a movie set.
My ever-so-mature and intelligent theory on “ghosts” up until this point is that they are merely “echoes” of past energies left behind by really passionate and particularly distinctive humans.  Their personalities were just too, well, interesting not to leave an indelible imprint on their environments.

Basically, I contended with a haughty confidence born of sublimely misguided arrogance, these energies are like a television broadcast possessing no sentient thought, and no purpose. Just recordings replaying until the battery runs out, if you like.

So, going in, “I ain’t scared of no ghost!”

Not until 3:11 a.m. in the morning anyway.

I awoke in our dark room with just the gleam of a streetlight streaming through the window. T was oblivious next to me snoring and cooing in her sleep a little as she does.

^{The sitting room. Orbs everywhere!}

Then I heard a voice coming from the sitting area in the room.

Clearly, closely and not in my head. It sounded like an old woman but had a childish tone as well. She said:

“This is the kind of paper that…”

Then she paused and said it again a little louder sounding slightly annoyed.

“This is the kind of paper that we…” 

And then…nothing. T continued snoring.

I smiled. Now I had finally heard my “entity,” my “energy recording from the past,” and congratulated myself that our adventure there was worth every penny; the fun factor was off the chain. Great story to tell!
Confident and content, I rolled over positioning myself back to back with my squishy snuffling little daughter to sleep.

Then, directly in my ear, sounding as though the talker was standing over me, I heard,

“This is the kind of paper that we use, LINDA!”

And what was my cordial, measured and winning response?

I told a ghost to “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

My southern-bred charm, poise and manners flew right out the window with what I imagined to be a very offended specter.

T emerged from her stupor only to say, “Mom I didn’t say anything! Why are you telling me to shut up?” From her vantage under me, because that is where she ended up, all she could see was me - white faced and growling, eyes bugging out and poised on all fours like a mother lion. I was unconsciously pushing her behind me trying to shield her from…

Nothing.

I still struggle with the embarrassment of that moment and harvests of goose bumps pop up all over my lily white skin even in the telling of the story.

Needless to say, in a flurry of dramatic flapping on my part, the lights went on, the TV and my computer were powered up. I made every modern electrical contrivance work to repel any more ghostly encounters for the night. We were left alone, ultimately, and I think it was because I was so rude.

Well, mea culpa all to heck.

The innkeeper, a lady called Peggy, explained the next morning over a beautiful breakfast, that the resident ghost from our room, a certain Miss Fannie, expressed to a visiting psychic (with whom she apparently had a better encounter than I) that she was not pleased with the renovations made to the inn.
She was especially annoyed that the wallpaper had been replaced with plaster and painted.
Apparently, Miss Fannie was the bossy old-maid business mind behind the plantation for many years, ran the massive cotton farming operation there, and evidently ruled every one’s life there as well!
She was also quite the prude. Her ghost allegedly confronted newlyweds after evidently being disturbed by their, ahem, newly-minted marital hijinks in the wee hours. Called the bride a “harlot!”  Loud and clear.
As we drove away from the Inn in the radiant purging light of a summer midday in the south, T said she was going to miss the sound of sweeping. She was certain she heard someone tidying up as she was going to sleep the night before.

^{The sweeping porch.}

“Didn’t you hear her on the porch outside our room Mom?”

I didn’t.

We were the only ones in the Inn that night, but the ghosts dish up what we might need to hear at any one moment in life.

My message was one of humility and T was gifted with a scratchy primitive  lullaby leading her to sleepy comfort.

I come to find out that there was a sweet black nanny who purely loved the children for whom she tended at the mansion. Many had seen her apparition gently and rhythmically sweeping the porch outside the children’s rooms as she waited for them to settle down and sleep.

It appears that love, among many other emotions, lingers on.

***

I've taken a lot of pleasure telling this story set at the Inn.

 Be sure to visit and say hello to Ms. Peggy and her friends:

The Inn at Merridun, Union, South Carolina