The Ghost on Hayes Street

Copied from a set of memoirs that I was writing for my next of kin.  But they'll never read it.

Someone on social media wanted to read this, so what the hell.  Here's my Ghost Story.

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A tale to tell the young ones around the campfire

I don’t believe in ghosts. But, there was this ONE time…

Now stories were made to be told
And here's the one that I know
I can't hide it anymore

There's evil on Queen Street

– Ronnie James Dio, “Evil on Queen Street”

Evil resides at 1682-B Hayes Street in Eugene, Oregon. Don’t ever live there.

It’s the middle unit of a triplex in what was once an apartment complex, but had been converted to condos by the time I moved there.

Shortly thereafter, the woman I loved dumped me – hard. Thus begins my tale.

A year or two later, my neighbor in 1682-C moved in with the love of his life, and offered to rent his home to me for less than what I was paying at “B.” So I moved.

Time went on, and my son, the son of the woman who’d dumped me, and I had gone backpacking to the Rosary Lakes on Willamette Pass. I don’t remember how the topic came up – maybe it always comes up when fathers and sons are around a campfire, but we started talking of Spooky Stuff and I was half-joking about a ‘curse’ on that place because his mother had dumped me right after I moved in there.

He wondered aloud what would happen to the young couple who had just moved in, and I kinda gulped and said, “Well, actually, the man just moved out.” The woman half of that couple was the infamous Kim Kutyba, of whom there are many entertaining (and ribald) stories.

Then he cleared his throat, beginning with, “Well, I don’t really believe in any of this stuff… but --” and proceeded to tell of strange noises he’d heard, sleeping on my couch during my exercise of what they call “visitation rights.” He said it sounded like someone was bouncing a pencil on its eraser somewhere in the room.

I made a little gulp when he told me that. He’d always insisted on sleeping with a light on, and I was always tempted to tease him about being afraid of the dark. Something dark in my own head had always stopped me from doing that.

So… I had moved in, and my marriage ended. Kim and Kerry Green moved in, and their marriage ended. Matt heard strange noises. Kim heard strange noises after her husband moved out: she complained to the building superintendent that she could hear me walking up/down the stairs, next door to her. The super tried to brush it off with, “Well, these walls are thin.”

“But that happens when Ken isn’t home,” she replied.

Years later, I actually saw that ghost. But that tale needs to be told separately. This one MUST end thus:

So Matt and I are around the campfire, talking about ghosts, and the sun has gone down. It’s getting a little spooky, so we changed the subject to backpacking. This was his “first” backpacking trip, sort of.
At least, the first one that he was old enough to remember.

I told him of a backpacking trip, years before, that my recently-departed father had taken with me and two of this boy's older brothers, to Mildred Lake in the Jefferson Wilderness north of where we were. Grandpa had had quite a bit of trouble on that trip, needing frequent stops to rest, but nothing bad happened and the four of us had a pretty good time. Matt was just a baby at the time and didn’t go.

So I told him of the trip and what a good time we’d had, ending my story with, “and that was the last backpacking trip that Grampa ever took.” Immediately the campfire flared up with a WHOOSH! noise, flames shot up 3-4 feet in the air – and the fire went dead out.

I looked over at Matt, and he was looking at me. I noticed that the moon, either full or nearly so, had come up and was casting a spooky light through the trees.

“I think I’ll go to bed now,” he said.

“Me too,” I replied. Both of us pulled our sleeping bags way up over our heads, and closed our tents as tight as a tent can be closed.

We still don’t believe in ghosts – but, there was this ONE time...