Unlike my parents, I always had an affinity for old houses, antique furniture, vintage clothes and just about anything that was older, dustier and mustier than I was.
As a result, they — Emilio and Louise — were particularly worried in 1997, when I told them that I was determined to give up apartment life and buy my own house.
Something with character!
“He’s going to buy some terrible old thing that’s falling apart,” Louise screeched to Emilio. “What can we do?”
“We’re just gonna have to force him to listen to reason and buy something new,” Emilio barked back.
I did look at 36 houses in Bergen County before falling in love with the small, cozy place I purchased in Wood-Ridge. It had charm! It had grace! And, best of all, it was built sometime around 1892.
That’s right: 1892.
Woo-hoo!
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When I told my parents I’d finally found the home of my dreams, their first question was “How old is it?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I replied. “It was built in the ‘90s.”
(Well, it was…)
I moved in a few months later. And, guess what? Hardly anything was falling apart, not even the 100-year-old furnace.
The day the previous owner moved out, he shook my hand and wished me luck. “I know you’ll be happy here,” he said. “This house has good karma.”
And that was great to hear, because I love good karma. To me, it’s better than all the other karmas put together.
I was a bit disappointed in something else, though.
When one moves into a house that is 100 years old, one expects a couple of things. First, he expects to lift a floorboard one day and find an old satchel containing $100,000 — left there by Al Capone, or Ben Franklin, or someone else who entered the house to use the powder room, stashed the cash there and never came back to claim it.
Second, anyone who has ever seen a movie about a creaky old house naturally expects their creaky old house to be inhabited by spirits — disembodied types like Scrooge’s partner, Jacob Marley. Or the Canterville Ghost. Or Patrick Swayze. Or the entire cast of “Lost.”
In most haunted house stories, like “The Haunting,” “The Turn of the Screw” or “The Others,” people find themselves — at least initially — scared out of their wits by otherworldly entities and eerie, late-night sounds. Moans! Groans!
Tortured souls in torment!
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And yet, people keep writing more haunted house stories, filming more haunted house movies and creating more haunted house amusement park attractions, because… why?
On some level, I think, most of us really want to be scared by tortured souls in torment. We want to scream and feel our blood run cold. Some of us also want to become friends with our ghost, engage him in lively conversation, help him find his killer and, perhaps, take him to the mall for ice cream.
For some reason, I’ve had this fantasy of communing with “the other side” since my school years.
In 1970, long before the movie “Poltergeist” was released, I purchased a book called “Great American Ghosts,” which had a chapter called “Poltergeists” — a word I’d never heard before. (I’m embarrassed to say that I pronounced it “pole-tur-gee-ists.”)
As I write this, several of my neighbors’ homes are decked out in cobwebs and tombstones. And, with Halloween looming, several media outlets are running stories about why people enjoy being scared. (Long story short: Horror films give us an adrenaline rush, which makes our popcorn taste better.)
Of course, ghosts can be funny, too. My favorite: Lou Costello in “The Time of Their Lives.”
There’s also a British sitcom called “Ghosts,” which premiered on BBC-One in 2019 and was adapted in America two years later. In both versions, a young couple takes ownership of a large country home teeming with ghosts that only the wife is able to see and converse with.
I’ve watched both. And, although I prefer the English one — I think it’s funnier — I’ve decided that living with so many deceased individuals would probably not be much fun.
They’re all over the house. They talk too much. They’re just as boring as living people.
And, at my age, they’re not scary, anymore.
Nowadays, when I want a frightening adrenaline rush, I go to my urologist’s office.
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So, no, I’ve never encountered a spirit in my charming 19th-century abode, although, a month after moving in, I did have a close call. I was walking down the stairs and heard an odd creaking sound. When I stopped walking, the noise stopped.
Then, I took a few more steps and heard it again!
The noise seemed to be right around me. I eventually realized that the creaking was the sound my stiff new shoes were making on my recently refinished hardwood floors.
Tortured soles in torment.
I’d have preferred Lou Costello.
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