True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen. • Francois de La Rochefoucauld, 17th century French writer.
In Carl Sagan’s wonderful book, “The Demon-Haunted World,” he quite succinctly debunks the notion of the existence of gods. His argument is brilliant. The specific chapter shattering these myths, The Dragon in My Garage, puts an end to any belief in ghosts or their many cousins.
All of which makes the following story, well, interesting.
It begins in Southwest Harbor, Maine, at Balla Cragga, a resplendent mansion which resides on Mount Desert Island, most of which is Acadia National Park. In other words, the beauty here is heavenly (yes, that’s a pun). I visited with my wife during a quickly crumbling young marriage.
Under flickering lights, both our minds were struck by a similar notion: it just might be possible that someone here could get away with murder.
(An important note: one can still reserve Balla Cragga. Google it. The pictures will show a remodeled mansion since my visit, so owners have made it even more beautiful. They haven’t paid me a dime to write this, but I add it because the mansion’s design and contents are key to my story, now four decades old.)
My soon-to-be-divorced wife and I spent a week there as part of a wedding party. For the big event, the bride rented the mansion (vows on the windy veranda facing the ocean) because it could house sixteen, more in a pinch. Think of the movie “The Big Chill,” but a gathering instigated not by suicide but by matrimony, a happy reunion of young people with shared memories and a similar view of life.
We two occupied the sole room on the third level, and each day we swept down the majestic staircases while gripping polished wooden balustrades, smiling as we coasted two floors to the main rooms below, a library with fireplace, a living room with a piano, a dining room which fit us all for the rehearsal dinner and wedding reception. Katie Scarlett O’Hara had nothing on us.
Fun was had by all, though my wife’s and my enjoyment came from engaging with friends and avoiding each other. You yourself might have experienced that this often happens when two minds share a single thought and pursue a similar goal: freedom.
The wedding ceremony was held early Saturday and by evening, the newly married couple, buoyant on a sea of good wishes, departed in tears for their honeymoon. They were quickly followed by the hasty cleanup and furious departure of every guest except us. This was by design, as my wife had volunteered us for the final night. The mansion was rented through Sunday and the bride was responsible for it. You might call us security.
Now, were I you, reader reading this, I wouldn’t believe the rest.
The day grew into a storm battered night. The outer world became a swallowing darkness which hurled the angry rain, like so many battering rams, against the windows. Under flickering lights, both our minds were struck by a similar notion: it just might be possible that someone here could get away with murder.
Some of you might empathize with the notion that murder may strike one as eminently easier than divorce.
A walk by a roiling sea might haul a poor soul to her watery death; at least that is what one might tell authorities. Or high above, attempting to close a wayward window against the drenching conflagration, the wind might suck out a hapless man till he landed flat on the pavement below. It’s been known to happen. Hell, the well-stocked kitchen held more knives than an abattoir, official explanations to be fabricated upon the body’s final disposition.
With such dark ruminations we settled in the library, ostensibly to peruse books. My wife demanded a fire (in her world a man’s job). I reminded her to extinguish it before retiring. (We were at the stage where we made sure to go to bed at different times, and Balla Cragga aided us immensely in our efforts with twin beds on the third floor.)
I thought nine o’clock that evening a great time to disappear.
At one in the morning, a whisper woke me. The voice was distant but somehow deep. In my sleepy confusion I rose, angry at my wife for disturbing me. She, however, was snoring in the other bed. The voice billowed up from the stairway. Intruders? Down I went.
On the second floor you turn left to walk the landing by the bedrooms, and then continue the second flight down. There, two surprises assaulted me.
The first was light. A great orange glow slid over the nearby wall like burnished mist in a breeze. The second was sound. The voice was a bit louder, bombastic, and, I kid you not, speech that is best described as backwards, as if a recording of Gregorian chant played in reverse.
I was genuinely creeped out, and fueled not by bravery but by overwhelming curiosity, I continued down.
At the foot of the stairs one crossed the main hallway to the living room archway. In the opposite wall, to the left of the fireplace, was the open doorway to the library. There the brightness was menacing but no longer terrifying, as I could explain it to myself in a convenient (and perhaps in later divorce proceedings helpful) way: my wife had failed to put out the fire. The library was now ablaze.
What I cannot elucidate was the oppressive nature and cruel foreboding of the voice, which continued distinctly though, again, the only way I can help you hear it is by insisting that it sounded like a man with a deep voice speaking backwards.
When I entered the library, three events happened, indistinguishable time-wise one from another. The light went out. The fireplace was ash – my wife had in fact dealt with it. The voice ceased. And a book fell to the middle of the floor, rather far, certainly several feet, from the shelves.
We left that morning. The noise and glow did not wake my wife. I said nothing. I had no proof for others, let alone myself, of the voice or light. I did pick up the book from the floor.
The voice was a bit louder, bombastic, and, I kid you not, speech that is best described as backwards, as if a recording of Gregorian chant played in reverse.
To paraphrase Monsieur La Rochefoucauld, I had not experienced true love, but had I experienced a ghost?
No. Now, I was not drugged or drunk (I have never imbibed). I was not the victim of a practical joke. The fact that I cannot explain what occurred is no evidence for the violation or suspension of the laws of nature or physics. It simply means that I have no explanation.
My emotionally exhausted mind may have interpreted the growling clamor outside as words, the incessant lightening as fire. Or not.
Humans have a rich history of filling the gaps in their knowledge with nonsense. Two of my favorites: in the middle ages a widespread belief held that cotton came from vegetable lambs. When trains were first invented, many believed that traveling faster than fifty miles an hour would melt the human body.
I am not one of those people who require an explanation for currently perplexing events.
I will, however, admit that the roaring sea and my wife’s predilection for shore walks in moody weather greatly tempted me. Had her unfortunate demise happened the tale I might have spun for the authorities would be far closer to the truth than any story about the supernatural.
And I had no worries that she would haunt me.
