Our Ghost Is Missing
by Dave Rasdal
A business owner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa says the recent flood may have chased away Jack The Ghost.
Image: R.G. Prucha says Jack loved to hang out at the top of the steps around the corner from a side entrance
Standing among the open-studded walls of his cavernous flood-damaged building, R.G. Prucha holds a stairway door open for Jack the ghost. “I swear,” R.G. says, “this building talks to you, the way it creaks and groans.”
We stand and wait, staring into the stairwell.
Nothing. No chain-shaking ghost. No groaning Jack.
“I have no doubt that at one time there was a ghost in here,” R.G. says. “Whether he stayed after the flood or not, I don’t know.”
If Jack stayed, this labyrinthlike old building, the former home of Service Press and Litho Inc. at 1105 Third St. SE, would make a great haunted house.
So begins a ghost tale, one of several I received after asking Eastern Iowans to share their ghost stories. (For a couple of others, see my blog, http://ramblinwithrasdal.wordpress.com)
“If he’s still here, I don’t care,” R.G. says. “He can stay.”
Are you there, Jack?
R.G. and I stroll from semidark room to semidark room, the sun streaming through windows and dancing on the floor. The air smells damp yet fresh, most of the cleanup completed after floodwaters reached record heights. Writing on basement walls indicates former tenants and past flood levels.
The main building was erected in 1890, an addition completed by 1900. Part of it once housed a fire department company with horses and wagons. R.G.’s grandfather started Service Press in 1917. R.G. operated it for 40 years, after his return from Vietnam in 1967 until selling it to Adcraft Printing Co. last year.
Jack began spooking during R.G.’s tenure.
“I like to tell it to people, to get their blood boiling. We’d always talk about the ghost at company Christmas parties. Some people would get squeamish about it.”
Are you listening, Jack?
“He was here for a long time,” R.G. says. “We’re not really sure where he came from, but we think he came from the old ... well, a house that John Kuba used to have a restaurant in, the Velvet Feedbag.
“After that house burned down (May 31, 1984), I think we inherited him cause we had the open spaces.”
Down the street a block stood Tower Grove, an Italianate Victorian mansion built in 1878 by Czech immigrant Frank. J. Mittvalsky. It became the upscale Velvet Feedbag in 1979. The fire, by an arsonist, destroyed the mansion so that it had to be razed.
But, before that, stories circulated about a resident ghost. Was it the builder who lived in the house but a few years before he died? How about a daughter’s husband, Charles Novak, who died in 1919?
Or maybe it was the ghost R.G. heard about, a little girl who died in the mansion, her ghost constantly moving scissors on a dresser.
So, Jack, who are you?
“One time he was standing at the stairway and had his little daughter with him,” R.G. says one witness told him. “He was wearing a white T-shirt and was always smiling.”
That mischievous Jack.
Once a tenant was interrupted by the doorbell, ran to the door and came face to face with a big ghost. He would not return to the building.
“Do you ever get the feeling that somebody is staring at you?” R.G.’s son, Bob, asked a few times after working late nights at the printing company. “It was like I could feel somebody with hot air breathing on my neck.”
R.G. had similar sensations at times, though he never saw the ghost, only evidence of its hanky-panky.
“The most ironic thing,” he says, “I came in one Sunday and I had four doors that have never been opened before in their life. They were all open. And all the outside building doors were locked.
Ooooo, sneaky Jack.
People have offered to spend the night. But, when it came to push or shove, nobody had the guts.
Last spotted a year ago, maybe Jack will make another appearance this Halloween.
“I think it’s kind of a joke,” R.G. laughs. “But it’s a good joke.”
And Jack is the jokester.
. . .
Post a Comment
