It was a mixed bag, our gang of kids. We hung out together mostly because our parents were friends and we all went to the same church. Some girls, some boys, aged three to fourteen. Bruce was the only teenager, and the youngest, two girls were just three. Bruce always had stories to tell, the kind that made the girls cling to each other and the boys square their shoulders to prove they could be just as big, and bold, and manly as Bruce was.
Some of his ideas were just nutty fun. Like his “Action Man.” Action Man looked like G.I. Joe, an action figure that was all the rage back then, but he was smaller. Probably just one of millions of little green army figures kids played with. Except that Bruce’s idea of playing with him included things like tying a string around his middle and flushing him down the toilet then pulling him back up. Bruce borrowed one of his dad’s handkerchiefs so Action Man could try parachuting off the roof with mixed results. But more exciting was tying the little guy to a kite or dragging him behind Bruce’s father’s car. One of Action Man’s predecessors ended up who knows where when he went for a ride with a helium balloon at Bruce’s little sister’s birthday party.
Eventually Action Man began to lose favor with Bruce and he went on to look for other ways to entertain himself, often at the expense of the rest of our gang. None of us wanted to admit we were sometimes scared of the things Bruce wanted us to do and it’s fortunate none of us ever got hurt trying to keep up. But he was the oldest and the leader of the pack so we sucked up our objections and got with the action.
Payback came unexpectedly one day when all the families came to my new home for a house blessing. It wasn’t a new house, but rather a one hundred and twenty-five-year old farmhouse with a basement, two attics, a coal cellar and string of attached sheds ending with an enormous two-story barn.
To set the stage for later events, the house blessing included the burning of incense in an ornate censor on a long chain that was waved around each room as we asked for blessings to follow. Father David of the Episcopal church had borrowed the censor from the Catholic church to make our house blessing official, and it conjured up all kinds of creepy notions in our young brains as the adults speculated about the possibility that the house might be haunted. If there had been spirits about, there was no telling if the incense was doing its job as we didn’t see anything unusual. No rattling chains, no ghostly moans. Just this novel, pleasantly scented smoke drifting up as we went from room to room, stopping in each to offer another prayer.
Once the official event of the day was complete we were free to play while our parents gabbed in the living room. We headed for the barn. Such a neat place to explore. None of us had ever lived in a house with a barn before and this one had stalls and nooks and hidden places everywhere. We played hide and seek and it was THE BEST game of hide and seek ever. We definitely weren’t ready to quit when we were called in to supper.
As soon as the last of our dessert had been gobbled down, we couldn’t wait to get back to our game. Bruce said he was bored and disappeared into another room. The littlest girls were sagging in their chairs almost falling asleep, and the older girls went up to one of the bedrooms to play with their dolls or whatever girls like to do. That just left the six of us boys. We found a single, dying flashlight in the kitchen and headed out through the train of sheds into the now spookily dark barn.
I think we were on tiptoes. Not sure why, but sneaking in the dark seemed appropriate somehow. Just as, Danny, the first one in line stepped into the barn itself he stopped short and gasped. The rest of us piled into Danny’s petrified form. I’m sure our eyes were like saucers as we peered over his shoulder and added to the gasping that quickly turned into screeches of horror. There on the far side of the barn, just in front of the window was a ghost.
A real, honest to God ghost, white sheet and all, rattling something that sounded like chains and moaning something awful. After that first terrifying moment of frozen panic, we tore back into the kitchen like scared rabbits. Father David was the first to hurry to our side to find out what had us so spooked.
Our stories were overlapping and babbling as we recounted what we’d seen with our own eyes, but eventually we calmed down. Father David was a pretty shrewd guy and noticing that Bruce was not among us, he had an idea. He explained his devious plan and sent us off to tell Bruce all about this ghost and convince him to come see it himself. This was going to be even more exciting than Action Man had ever been. Off we went.
Bruce laughed and said we were a bunch of ninnies, that ghosts weren’t real but he was happy to go prove us wrong. We handed him the flashlight and followed as he strode boldly through the connecting sheds and into the barn. He slashed the light around the empty space and laughed again. “Ninnies!”
The word was barely out of Bruce’s mouth before an apparition appeared in the window. Shaded in the depths of a dark hood, a disembodied face, all white except for blackened circles around what looked like holes for eyes. Light shining up from somewhere below made the vision even eerier. Bruce shrieked and just about ran us all down bolting for the house. Father David pulled the hooded cape off his face and grinned at us with a thumbs up gesture. We rolled on the floor laughing until our sides hurt. We’d finally beaten Bruce at his own game.
