I was born a week before Halloween. I wonder if that is where my love for classic Horror and Science Fiction originated from? Neva J remarked on a few occasions that she saw a suspicious shadow or felt an invisible presence in our home. I usually enjoyed the Frankenstein and Dracula movies at the Orpheum Theatre. There were Monster Magazines in my halcyon days as well as Monster Models. I had Frankenstein and Dracula as well as the Wolfman and the Mummy. Neva J threw them in the burning barrel after I moved out of the familial home at 17. I enjoyed Tricker Treating due to having the best receptacle to accept my ill-gotten gains in…a plastic Jack-O-Lantern.

I DEALT WITH A TRUE GHOST STORY when I was employed at Southern Illinois University. Anthony had several Malaysian students on the custodial crew that cleaned what was in its inception a dormitory for women but in recent years had been converted to the office of the President of the University and his Vice Presidents. The crew supervisor asked me to come to Anthony as his Malaysian students were afraid to work in it. I discovered that a young lady had been checking the floors to ensure that all of the doors were locked and the lights off when she saw a woman with a white blouse and her long hair done up in a bun on the back of her head and she was wearing a black dress that went to her feet. The suspect apparition was behind a pane of glass that separated office areas and when the student saw her she sat motionless. When the Malaysian student hurried to get her boss to see the lady in the strange garb she was no longer there. This story went far and wide on Campus and resulted in the Vice president requesting a full report regarding the Ghost Of Anthony Hall. Later Jack the crew boss took me into the attic of the building and showed me a photo of Anthony when it was a Women’s Dormitory and there were many women assembled with their hair in a bun and white blouses and long black dresses.

Anthony’s Ghost was so widely discussed that the Malaysian Community refused to work in the building again.

Neva J loved the study of Edgar Cayce who was called The Sleeping Prophet. She believed in a spiritual realm that was just beyond our senses…usually.

We moved into a haunted house in Eldorado in the early 60s.
The feeling was spine-tingling and the Lemp Mansion that we visited almost two years ago in St. Louis reminded me of my first home in Eldorado. We not only had dinner in the Lemp Mansion, we also took a tour of the old Lemp factory where the Lemp family made their beer and they were the premier beer makers in St. Louis. Our tour guide swore that he had heard voices who spoke to him when he was alone in the factory. He also said that he had a human head submerged in formaldehyde that was set on his desk. Aaron and I bought a few rosaries from him. One of the Lemp family committed suicide in the mansion and the blood stains are still on the carpet.

As I lay in the bed in the cavernous bedroom and adjoining sitting room at Lemp I considered why I had chosen to make such a scary visit…while the little television droned on with peculiar programming…