Speculations And Spirits
by John Gray
Looking for ghosts can be a grave experience.
Halloween night, 1992. My photographer Bob Donnelly and I are standing in a graveyard with psychic Ann Fisher. It’s a place known as Forest Hills - an abandoned cemetery in Brunswick, New York where, as legend tells it, ghosts wander among the graves at night.
I’m not here for fun (well, not entirely); I’m on the clock hoping to catch a specter so we can show it on the late news.
Forget that stupid budget story - I’ve got Jimmy Hoffa and Bobby Kennedy doing the Macarena next to this scary old crypt. Film at 11.
It’s dark and cold enough to see your breath. As I walk through the overgrown brush and see the forgotten stones and the occasional statue missing a head, I am certain this is not a place I would want to be caught alone at night.
Ann immediately goes into her psychic rant, pointing out spirits I cannot see. I react like any good journalist would, “Hey Ann, can you chill out until my photographer is rolling on this?”
He points the camera in all the places she sees spirits and rolls tape on nothing.
This is a colossal waste of time.
Then Bob stops rolling and says there’s a problem. The battery is dead.
No problem, these things happen, we’ll just put a fresh one in. He does.
Thirty seconds after rolling tape the low battery light flashes on again.
“I thought I grabbed fresh batteries,” he says, trying another and another. Finally, he gets one full of juice and we finish the story. On the way out, Ann says to Bob, “That was them you know. They do that sometimes. They don’t like being filmed.”
Bob knew she was talking about the ghosts, so he let out a loud laugh. Nonsense he told her. Ann was convinced it was spirits, Bob was sure she was nuts and I was just happy to leave that place with my head still in place.
I love Halloween. When I was a TV reporter, I’d pick a different local urban legend and then go out on Halloween night to bring the ghost story to life.
The haunting of Forest Hills, the ghost of Jackson’s Garden at Union College, the hitchhiker who hangs out in her prom dress around the front gates of Graceland Cemetery on Delaware Avenue in Albany; I went to all of them, looking for a super story on the supernatural.
Even though we never captured a frame of spooky video on film, I still believe in ghosts. The most compelling ghost story locally is one I never got to tell. I tried.
Years ago, someone told me there was a real-life haunted house in Colombia County. They told me the owner, an elderly man, kept seeing the same spirit in the same hallway.
At first it scared him, then he learned to ignore it.
Eventually, he moved out of the home and tried to put it behind him.
Being someone who loves a good story, I tracked the guy down and asked him if he would consider going back to the house with me to share his ghostly tale. He said no. He said he didn’t ever want to speak of it again, especially on camera.
The sound of his voice told me something happened to him there - real or imagined. I left him alone with his ghost.
A few weeks ago, I went to see psychic Lisa Williams. I went into it skeptical and left even more so.
Then, something weird happened.
The very next day and on a few occasions, my dog has started staring and barking at nothing in the room.
There isn’t a noise, not even a breeze, just the sound of silence and his low growl as if something is there. He’s sure of it. It wasn’t happening at the same time of the day or night or ever in the same place.
Then, I tried something silly.
About a week ago, I was in my bedroom sound asleep with the dog at my feet when the growling started again. I sat up, looked into the night and said, “Whoever you are, you’re bothering the dog, so knock it off.” He hasn’t growled since.
Like I said, I love Halloween. From the free candy to scary movies to the sound that dried leaves make when the autumn wind pushes them down the empty street. Well, I assume it’s empty, but maybe we’re never alone.
Perhaps the spirits follow us like a silent shadow watching and waiting.
And maybe, when we shout into the night, they listen.
I’m not afraid of ghosts. I just need my sleep.
. . .
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