A Love Song in a Love Scene - Ghost Books and Ghostly Typeface

Recently, Amber’s and my suspicion that the world was at a loss for quality literature on issues of the paranormal was indeed confirmed. It’s safe to say I’m a bit of an intense reader, but I don’t hold prejudice against texts who’s aim is not my intellectual stimulation. These books include those of dream analysis, the how to take care of your house plant or what to feed your bunny rabbit book, assembling your ikea furniture manuals, erotic fiction, true crime, anything involving improving one’s psychic powers. I have read them all. It’s no surprise the writing is balls. But what never ceases to amaze me is the weirdo presentation of these sorts of collections.

Although we suspected our minds might not be blown by literary craft, we thought it useful to pick up some ghost reading specific to Portland, so Amber and I headed to Powell’s and spent 12 bones on a book by Todd Cobb called Ghosts of Portland, Oregon. What I’ve gathered so far by opening the book at random and reading as fast as possible is Cobb reminds budding paranormal investigators such as ourselves of a few known to be haunted Portland locations and dedicates a great deal of page to the retelling of Portland people’s individual ghost stories like the poor college student living way east side whose door was scratched by a vicious ghost dog. The reason I just can’t get into this one is not so much the quality of the writing; in all honesty I read a kiddie novel called Operation Dump the Chump every few  months simply for nostalgia’s sake. I’m a ferocious reader, but not a total snob (as long as my distaste for the writings of Billy Collins or Kay Ryan is not counted). My main beef here, and with books of this nature, is the design. I never really understood the importance of aesthetics until (a) I took a class in book design and began making chapbooks and (b) tried to actually read a book so terribly put together that my eyeballs eventually refused to cooperate. This one is hurting my face.

Ghosts of Portland, Oregon reminds me of this moment I had when I was 19 and training a new employee at P Murphs. So new employee, who is now a dear friend of mine, was clearly stoned and was having a difficult time with the arrangement of pizza toppings. In his defense, I did start him off with a challenging order, the dreaded combination pizza. I explained to him the concept of portion charts and counting pepperoni slices and cheese distribution, and then I sat back and let him have full control of the make line. It was honestly one of the strangest acts I have ever seen. New employee started with a single ring of salami around the crust of the pizza, followed by a ring of pepperoni inside the ring of salami, followed by a ring sort of spread of sausage balls inside the ring of pepperoni, followed by a ring sort of sprinkling of mushrooms inside the ring of sausage, followed by a pile of olives in the now formed center hole of the pizza, so that each bite taken by a potential customer would be like a single topping bite of whatever ring point they had made it to. I wanted to ask my friend if he had ever actually seen a pizza before, as I’m sure the mere recollection of any other pizza would help him better grasp the issue of design. While reading Ghosts of Portland, Oregon I wanted to ask a question similar to my pizza friend question. If I were designing a book so poorly written as the “how to” books of the world, I would at least attempt to make it visually appealing. If I had no idea how to accomplish this task, although that seems unlikely since I would at that point have a career in book design, I would at the very least pick up basically any other book just to take a look. And then I wouldn't use type called Rosemary Roman for its spook appeal. I think it was Tom Waits who talked about writing movie scores, creating soundtracks, and how one should never put a love song in a love scene. No tension is created; the scene becomes flat. I now feel this way about ghost books and ghostly looking typeface. It's too matchy matchy. Besides, the margins are wacky; the white space is abundant. I guess I’m gonna have to leave the reading of this one up to my more forgiving Amber, who can then kindly reiterate any vital information.

                                "They call him Private Paul, though nobody really knows his rank or name."

The two positive outcomes of Ghosts of Portland, Oregon, are the photographs taken around town and the idea the stories gave me to actually interview a few people willing to share their ghost tales with us. I bought a digital voice recorder and will be contacting Molly Brown soon. Molly Brown is both experienced in happenings of the paranormal as a former employee of Old Town Pizza, and a major sex pot.

       

Lone Fir Cemetery

On the drive to Lone Fir, we decided that a cemetery is in fact not an ideal choice for paranormal investigation. Our thinking had originally been that cemeteries equal gobs of dead bodies; we would head straight to the source. However, as Sean pointed out, cemeteries are outside, they are generally gigantic, and filled with bugs and trees and squirrels and possibly other people besides the three of us that have convinced themselves they have some business poking around a cemetery in the dark. All of these factors, especially the last one, could at best compromise the integrity of our audio equipment and at worst scare the shit out of us. But, we had to start somewhere and we were already over the Morrison Bridge, so we decided to continue with our original plan and chalk this one up to experience.

The Lone Fir Cemetery was established in 1855 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Amber and I had a picnic slash photo session there in the daylight once. It’s a beautiful piece of property in southeast Portland, spreading over more than 30 acres with about 25, 000 bodies buried. Notable burials include a handful of Portland mayors, poet Samuel Simpson, first editor of the Oregonian, Thomas Dryer, and Dr. James C. Hawthorne, the primary physician of some 500 inmates of the Oregon Hospital for the Insane in the mid 1800's. At our picnic we ate fritos (which I’m now calling freudists) and Amber probably drank yerba mate.

                         Frued ist gestorben by, sauco -m                         

Because Lone Fir is so huge, there are a couple entrances from the street and neither are fenced off after hours, so getting inside was no problem. Sean came totally prepared with a camcorder, EVP device and some sort of laser pointing thermometer. I had the two things I usually have with me, my camera and journal, and Amber brought fancy flashlights that double as weapons to ensure our safety. These flashlights are serious business, by the way. Upon being attacked, the manual instructs the flashlight operator to first attempt blinding the attacker by switching the mode of emitting light to a strobe of sorts that is bright enough to kill a man. If by some chance, one’s attacker has some sort of super human pupil dilation, the bulb area is equipped with little protruding pokers useful for gouging the eyeball out completely. We were set!  

Before venturing through the graves, we had a brief meeting of the minds and decided that this situation, especially for me, provokes feelings of slight ridiculousness. We were all going to do our best to take ourselves and each other seriously. I promised to practice laugher restraint and assured Amber and Sean that any laughter would be out of sheer discomfort anyway and that I wasn’t making fun. We would let intuition guide us, stop at any point someone felt a strong energy, temperature change or intrigue, be vocal with our prospective paranormal friends if we felt so inclined and always remember that the bodies buried around us were all once loved by someone and are deserving of our respect.

We took off down a paved walkway that weaves through the cemetery and were soon strolling through the graveyard grasses snapping photographs and stopping for anything that felt or sounded suspicious. I have never noticed how much noise trees make; wood creaks and cracks and the branches drop bits to the ground. I was starting to understand what Sean meant about cemeteries being a tough place to investigate. There was so much ground to cover and so much noise, not to mention, it’s totally creepy. I learned that I’m a terrible note taker when I’m terrified. Here are my notes word for word:         
                                                                 

                                                                  Lone tree cemetery

            -feels like we’re being followed
                                           (probably because we’re wondering around in the pitch dark) 
(what am I doing)
                                          -sitting where I felt strong before - 4 tree spot
            -unmarked grave
            -child’s grave
            -Sean just said something about freemasons...?

So, these notes aren’t particularly helpful. What I gather from them is that I’m afraid of the dark and I got the name of the cemetery wrong. I haven’t heard from Sean, but I’m guessing that means he didn’t pick up anything on the camcorder or EVP recorder. But I think our first investigation was still a success. We learned we need to set up shop in a much smaller location, preferably indoors. We have a better idea of each of our roles in all this and at least we’ve got our first investigation under our collective belt.

As Sean drove Amber and I back to NW, we discussed possibly joining one of Portland’s Paranormal Societies so we sound more credible when we ask people for their ghost stories and attempt to talk business establishment managers into allowing us to investigate their property. And we did run into other people during our time in the Lone Fir Cemetery. However, they seemed just as weirded out by us as we were of them. Thankfully for them, the flashlight death machines were unnecessary for the time being.

   

         

Paranormal Party

Ghost hunting is a hokey business. Honestly, I don’t know that I even believe in ghosts. Amber is addicted to all sorts of ghost hunting television shows, Ghost Adventures being a particular favorite, so I’m often subjected to what appears to be the fashionable idea of ghosts as spirits lingering from a past life, often with unfinished business, more often super pissed and eager to assert their muffled “get out” phrases as electronic voice phenomenon to provoking intruders. There are many accepted truths in popular culture that just don’t sit right with me. I’m a secular kinda girl, I’m convinced my cat is in many ways smarter than I am, I’m inclined to think that when I die, my body will be burned, my ashes will be scattered in some location yet to be determined and that my soul, whatever that may be, will not reside in hell, certainly not heaven, and won’t bear the feat of lingering in some in between world entertaining itself by moving family heirlooms and inexplicably opening drawers and cabinet doors. At least I hope that is not the case; it may be all Hollywood and glamour at first, but even M Night Shyamalan got a little boring and tedious after awhile.

I have always wondered, if ghosts do exist, and are perfectly capable of interacting with what humans understand to be reality, how come they don’t have a greater impact on the world? I’d like to think that if I were a ghost, and had the capability to be the illusive eyes and ears of the unknown, I would do my damndest to make some shit known. Six years ago I left a journal sitting on a park bench that contained drafts of poems I had been working on that year, a series of letters, a few I intended to send, some of my ramblings on and a few post cards I’d received. I was out of sorts that day and walked away without my journal. No other alive human was in the park, but if we’re all surrounded by ghosts, it would have been nice if one of them picked up my journal and smacked me upside the head with it. I was obviously leaving it behind by mistake. There must be do-gooder ghost types. They can’t all just be lurking around, watching us in our bathrooms, listening to us talk to ourselves, knowing our perversions and where we stash our secrets. The idea of that just seems silly and quite embarrassing to me.

That being said, I have, like most people on the planet, witnessed something unexplainable. Luckily for me, the same intrigue that has lead Amber to programs like Ghost Adventures has also lead her down the path of casual dabble in quantum physics. Amber and I attended a Michio Kaku lecture a year or two ago and one of his theories of the universe really stuck with me. He likened our human perception of reality to ants on a hill under a giant overpass. The ants don’t see the overpass, though it so vastly occupies the space above them. It is not part of their world; their existence is separate and independent. I could be completely off base here, seeing that Kaku is one of the most brilliant scientists alive, and very few of my own scientific experiments have proven successful (i.e. directional smell manipulation of ebay purchased glow worm) but my understanding of what Kaku is getting at is that our own perception of reality is in cahoots with our survival as a species. Now, this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective; our perceptions are fixed in such a way to fit our needs. Isn’t it true we only use a small fraction of our brains? Well, what the hell is the rest of my brain doing? Perhaps it is dulling some parts of “reality” or some sensory perception that if I actually did experience would explode me into a pile of dust or lead me to my new life in a padded room. I do not believe there to be a giant overpasses above us, however, I am simply entertaining the idea that I know very little about the world around me and the way this all works. I do know that I have heard the voice of a woman who was not visibly present in the room at the time, I’ve been bumped across a room I presumed to be alone in, I’ve seen the handle of a  faucet turn involuntarily and watched the cold water flow down the drain of a restaurant kitchen sink in the dark after hours. Maybe “ghost hunting” does not suit Amber, Sean and my ventures. We’re certainly not hunting anything or anybody, but as all of us are equally thrilled by what cannot be adequately explained by rational thinking, we are setting out to capture and record what we can of a bit of the mystery of existence.