Since I moved to my country house in le Perche, I’ve often wondered about ghosts. I’ve even asked myself if my house is haunted by spirits of the past. In the United States, except for places like Boston or Philadelphia, few homes are centuries old. Here many are—mine is—and that means a lot of living—and dying—within these walls.
Washington Irving, the American author who gave to his country some of its best-loved ghost stories— “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “Rip Van Winkle”—had a bittersweet theory about American ghosts. Contrary to their European counterparts, they didn’t get to do a lot of haunting. On Halloween, they were left twiddling their thumbs, roaming aimlessly around cemeteries and the homes they once inhabited. Their descendants had responded to the call “go West, young man,” leaving no one behind to haunt.
According to Irving, ghosts remain attached to their roots, they are not infected with Wanderlust. They’d love to move back in with the family, but what happens when they have no idea of where the family has gone?
In the 20th century, the movie industry gleefully found the answer: ghosts, vampires, zombies, monsters or evil creatures from outer space, thanks to the wonders of technology, can—and want—to go just about anywhere. In the 1956 movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” alien spores fall from the sky with the same randomness as drops of rain. They could turn into you, me, anybody, reproduced identically, full-grown, in a pod found floating in the family pool.
I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of horror movies. I’ve always been too impressionable, though I may have been turned off to them for life because of an experience in the former Hollywood Theatre of Pottsville. It was Halloween 1968 and what could be better than a horror double-feature? My friend Nancy Higgins-Schlitzer and I bought tickets and popcorn and then climbed to seats in the balcony.
The first film was about a mad scientist making some kind of green goo in his laboratory. It was silly, but we had fun laughing and pretending to be scared.
Then there was a brief intermission and the second film came on. It was “The Night of the Living Dead.” Today considered one of the best horror movies of all time, in October1968, the very month of its release, this low-budget zombie film paralyzed us with fear. As corpses wander down small-town streets, a powerless TV anchorman announces, “These ghouls are eating flesh.” We wanted to run, escape from these very ordinary-looking zombies, but we were too afraid.
Still to this day I wonder if anyone working at the Hollywood had watched this film before it was projected for that special Halloween show. It was not a film for children and that’s what most of us were. Although I couldn’t have explained it then, I knew “The Night of the Living Dead” was about more than horror and I knew we were not safe. Nancy and I left the theater stunned. We’d been looking for fun and some scares. We got more than we’d bargained for.
For decades now, horror films have been so bloody, at times so sadistic, that I shy away from them. Vampire films abound, but none have ever equaled the two all-time greatest, the 1922 German “Nosferatu” and Hollywood’s 1931 “Dracula” with Bela Lugosi. Egged on by my sister, I watched “Blair Witch Project,” but somehow its frightening charms were lost on me.
The French also have their horror industry, ranging from what I might call “sexy gore,” such as in the 2008 film “Martyrs,” which reaches new heights in torturing women on screen, or the 2006 film “Them,” where horror is subtly created in a haunted house in Romania, bought by a young Franco-Romanian couple. The French horror hits of 2018 are “Ghostland,” directed by Pascal Laugier, who also made “Martyrs,” and “La nuit a dévoré le monde” (The night has eaten up the world), another zombie movie in the spirit of “The Night of the Living Dead.”
But what about good old-fashioned ghosts, the kind who rattle chains or roam hallways at night? Is anybody still interested in them? Are they still around?
I am not sure of the answer to the last question, but I do know lots of people are still interested in ghosts. Doing research for this article, I came across “Ghost Hunters Inc., True Spirit Seekers,” with headquarters in Berks County.
The organization’s investigators have already looked into the mysterious ghost that haunts the lonely road over Gordon Mountain, joining Heckscherville to Gordon. I remember it from my high school days. There were many tales about cars breaking down on the mountaintop, of a ghostly young woman, and even of long scratches on car doors and fenders, desperate attempts by someone, something, to get inside.
As for my own home, I have decided it is inhabited by friendly spirits, happy to have me here, happy with the care I’ve lavished on a cottage about to collapse, that has been built back up again.
But not all in le Perche are as lucky, and I’m not surprised. This misty region of hills and vales is a perfect habitat for ghosts, and as the same families have been around for hundreds of years, ghosts naturally feel at home.
On the site actu.fr, devoted to local news from all around France, I’ve discovered some documented ghosts nearby. In 2009, a family with three children bought a Percheron barn, already partially converted to a home. They turned the loft into a bedroom for their children and happily settled in.
Yet, from the start, something was not right. At night, the parents would hurry upstairs to chase their children back to bed only to find them fast asleep. Returning to the living room, the ruckus would start all over again. Running, muffled cries, marbles dropped to the floor. Believing in mischief, they crept back upstairs, but found their children sleeping snugly in their beds.
Things went from bad to worse. Obviously, something, someone, wanted the husband out of the house so he, it, could have the wife to himself. The family called in some paranormal investigators, but, at latest report, all family members and ghosts are still there.
On that unresolved note, I’ll wish my readers a ghostly but happy Halloween.
