Ryne Douglas Pearson's Blog, page 4
November 24, 2011
November 16, 2011
In Honor Of Penn And Teller...Six Truths & One Lie
Six truths about me, and one itty bitty lie. Okay, maybe a pretty big lie. But do you know which one it is?
1... I do not drink coffee.
2... I love tofu.
3... I have never read War & Peace.
4... I have never been to Hawaii.
5... A TV legend once farted on me.
6... I have never tasted strawberry ice cream.
7... I once dreamed that Rhea Perlman saved me from a ghost.
November 13, 2011
November 7, 2011
I'm A Bit Of A Weather Nerd
Which is odd considering we generally have the same weather in Southern California for eleven months of the year.
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This is my Davis Vantage Vue weather station, whose reporting you can follow HERE.
November 5, 2011
'The Little Girl Upstairs' -- My Personal Ghost Story
Recently I sent out a very personal ghost story in my e-mail newsletter. Now it's here for any who didn't get a chance to read it before.
Enjoy :)
The Little Girl Upstairs
A True Story
By Ryne Douglas Pearson
The staff told me my first day on the job about the ghost.
It was the mid 1980's and I was working for the local branch of a national social services organization, running their recreation program, which basically entailed keeping kids from killing each other while they played after school, with the occasional bit of getting my butt handed to me in contests on one of the few arcade games we had. Note to self: never trust a thirteen-year old when they say they've never played Zaxxon.
We were located in an old two-story firehouse that had been converted for our use, with the downstairs sectioned off to include a rec room, gymnasium, and offices. Upstairs, where the firefighters used to sleep, was a library and a machine shop and a few storage spaces.
Upstairs was also where 'she' was.
From the story I was told, the ghost was a little girl who'd died while the firefighters were trying to save her sometime back in the early 1960s. There was no name, of course, and no more specificity on the when, why, or how of this supposed haunting. In fact, it didn't seem like much of a haunting with what the staff described the little girl upstairs did. Apparently, she played with marbles.
Yes, that was this ghost's repertoire—playing with marbles.
I quietly scoffed at the story, but openly enough that my new co-workers smiled and said 'You'll see.'
One week, two weeks, three weeks passed. I lost a lot of games of Zaxxon and broke up a few fights and made a few kids laugh. However, the ghost was a no show. I even went looking for her, searching the rooms upstairs where she was rumored to play. In one, a space once used as a bunk room for the firefighters which had been turned into a sort of huge storage closet, there was even an old shoebox sans lid, a handful of marbles scattered within. I poked around, moving between old shelves and leaning stacks of books donated for our library, looking atop piled furniture and beneath ancient school desks.
Nothing.
Now, I wasn't expecting to see a ghost, actually. And I thought the box of marbles was a nice touch, clearly placed there by my co-workers in some attempt at spookery. Still, I had to admit that upstairs had a very disconnected feel to it. Like it didn't belong. Or I didn't.
But, and I repeat, no ghost. Not even a hint of one...whatever a hint might look, or feel, or sound like.
One Friday I was to be the last to leave. It would be my first time securing the building and locking up. The first part meant working with the rest of the staff to herd all the kids out through the front door. The second part was left to me once everyone was out.
Now, when you have a couple hundred rowdy and potentially mischievous kids romping through the place on a daily basis, you have to anticipate that, on occasion, some might try to 'stay behind' and run wild in the place with no supervision. So we had a well choreographed procedure to follow once the last person was in the building. First, I locked the front door. If you were in there with me right then I would find you. Next, I followed the path through the downstairs, checking spaces and other doors in a route that would allow no one to sneak past. Then, once the downstairs was cleared, I moved up the front staircase.
Actually, it was the only staircase we used. The one at the far end of the upstairs hallway was blocked at the bottom by a one-way door that only opened out into the back of the rec room. It was only to be used in case the upstairs needed to evacuate, and the door downstairs made a huge racket when opened. Ten times that when being closed. So after I checked the library and the storage room and the couple other old spaces upstairs, I moved to that back staircase and looked down.
It was dark, but I could see a sliver of light from the rec room under the door, which was clearly closed. Convinced that the facility was now empty but for me, I moved back down the upper hallway, turning lights off as I neared the front stairs, then down I headed. All that was left was to grab my stuff by the front door, kill the downstairs lights, unlock the front door and let myself out.
That's when I heard it.
Have you ever taken a handful of marbles, or, for you gearheads, ball bearings, and dropped them onto a hard floor? You get that fast, solid click click click sound as the objects rebound off the surface, clicking slower until they come to rest. That's what I heard from upstairs, the quickened tapping echoing lightly down the front stairwell.
'She plays with marbles...'
The words from my co-workers rose within right then. But, come on, it was just a sound. It could be rattling pipes or an air conditioning duct vibrating. Right?
Except, the A/C was off. And how would pipes be rattling? No water was being used. And I had to admit, I'd never heard this sound in the building before.
It had to be something. Someone.
I eased away from the still locked front door and to the stairwell as the sound ebbed to quiet. I looked upward into the near total darkness, fixing on the upper landing. Watching. Listening.
I heard nothing. Saw nothing.
"Hello..." I called out. It was instinctual. You hear something, you assume that, likely, someone is there. Only there could be no one there. I had just cleared the upstairs. It was empty.
This was impossible. Just plain stupid. I turned away from the stairs and back to the front door.
The same click click click started again as soon as I was facing away. Marbles being dropped.
This was not happening. I spun around and bound up the stairs, stopping just short of the second floor. By the time I reached a spot where I could see down the nearly black upper hallway the space had gone silent around me.
And it had gone cold. Really cold.
"If anyone didn't clear out," I said, trying to sound forceful and not on the edge of freaking out, "this is your last chance before you get a suspension."
Suspension...they wouldn't be able to come to the facility for a week. I had the distinct feeling, however, that this was not a threat appropriate for the circumstances. And there was, again, no response.
I climbed the last few steps and walked slowly forward, my eyes adjusting to the near total darkness, making it a yard or two before click click click rattled again, sounding like loud miniature cannon shots in the hallway around me. For an instant I froze, my gaze snapping to the old bunk room where I'd seen the box of marbles. The sound was coming from inside there.
I ran fast to the bunk room door, reaching it as the sound stopped yet again. For a moment I stood and just listened. A few feet away, atop an old file cabinet, I could just make out the shoebox I'd seen earlier. In the very same spot. My eyes tracked down to the floor at the base of the cabinet.
There were marbles there. Six or seven, scattered in a small radius on the old tile.
My heart began to race as my brain ticked through the possibilities. Someone was playing a really elaborate prank. I was imagining it. Or...
Or it was the little girl upstairs.
I reached in and flipped on the light. It blazed dim at the center of the space, its beam broken by the lumbering stacks of forgotten items. But in the brightened din I could see more clearly now the marbles on the floor. I stepped in and stood over them, listening again. For the shuffling of feet. Breathing. Stifled laughter from kids or co-workers who had figured out a way to stay behind and punk me good.
There was no sound. No one was in there with me. In the truest physical sense, I believed that. But beyond the physical... I wasn't so sure.
I crouched down and scooped up the marbles, a chill washing over me as I drizzled them back into the shoebox one by one, creating my own muted click click click. Once they had settled I did a slow circle through the narrow lanes between boxes and stacked furniture in the space, confirming that I was alone.
I drew a breath and headed for the door, pausing at it to look back in. Did I really want to believe that there was a ghost here? In a place I was spending the better part of my days, and some nights? That was a question I wasn't ready to answer. I flipped off the light and headed back to the stairs, and the question was answered for me.
Click click click.
I was a couple steps down when I turned toward the sound, fixing on the doorway to the space I had just left, the sound of marbles bouncing off the hard floor spilling out. And then I saw it.
A single marble rolled out from the space, through the doorway, and into the hall. It settled dead center in the dim corridor.
Then I heard her. A small, girlish voice. Giggling. Seeming to come from far away. Another place.
I backed slowly down the stairs, chilled by more than the icy temperature, and made my way to the front door. As I fumbled for my keys, silence once again came, but I was going to look no more. I didn't need to. I let myself out believing, knowing that there was a little girl upstairs.
And always would be.
November 3, 2011
Favorite Science Fiction
Short Story. Novel. TV Show. Movie.
That simple. I'm going to share mine, and I'm going to even break my own belief here in a divide between Speculative Fiction and Science Fiction, because they are different. But, these two authors, and the pieces I choose to include, are widely placed in the science fiction category. Even though they shouldn't be for these pieces.
Short Story: A Thousand Deaths by Orson Scott Card. It's available in his short story collections, or if you have a really vintage copy of Omni Magazine, which is where I first came to know this gem.
Novel: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Please tell me you've all read this. It's a landmark piece of literature.
TV Show: The Twilight Zone. What, no Battlestar Galactica? Sorry. The depth of the shows that The Twilight Zone gave us goes beyond any single-subject offering.
Movie: Alien. Some will say this is too much horror to be science fiction. I say phooey.
November 2, 2011
How Many Shopping Days Until Christmas?
Well, because I like to constantly remind people (hey, it's my favorite holiday), now there's a handy little reminder right over there to the right.
You're welcome.
October 25, 2011
October 18, 2011
My Personal Ghost Story...Coming Soon
In my pre-Halloween newsletter coming soon, I will be including a true story about my very personal, and very creepy encounter with a ghost.
Be sure to sign up for my newsletter using the form on the right sidebar. Just over there. Yeah, that one.
And, yes, the story is true. I've mentioned it generally before, but this will be the first time I share it in detail.
BOO!
October 15, 2011
Books I Remember From My Youth
No grand point to this. I was just thinking back to the books that I remember from my younger days, novels mostly. Most of these I recall from my days in Junior High, where I had some wonderful English teachers who kept us reading and discussing.
Probably the most vivid memory I have of a book is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and the discussions we had about it in my 7th grade English class.
The Chocolate War and I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier. Great young adult lit long before young adult lit was all the rage.
Animal Farm by George Orwell. 'Some animals are more equal than others...'
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. My first exposure to a sprawling adventure story.
The Bridge At Andau by James Michener. My introduction to riveting historical narratives. Major Meatball is still one of the most horrifying characters I've read about in a book...more so because she was a real person.
Now that I think about it, maybe remembering these books, and the fact that they have stuck with me, is a 'grand point' after all. Precisely because they stuck with me. As all good books should.
