The Stupid 365 Project, Day 31: Dogs and Ghosts
November 1st, 2010
In response to a Halloween blog about Thai ghosts I wrote over at Murder is Everywhere, where I natter about something or other every Sunday, Beth Crowley wrote about a dog of hers that could see ghosts. The ghosts apparently liked to hang out in the upper corners of rooms, because once in a while her dog, a Samoyed, would stare fixedly at a specific corner for about five minutes, which is, as Beth said, “a very long time in a dog’s life when not sleeping.”
Her note reminded me that our (my wife’s and my) Lab mix, Torrei, also saw ghosts. (Torrei is pronounced “Tory.” She was named after an absurdly romantic hotel in Verona, the absurdly romantic town of Romeo and Juliet, where we once stayed in an old, round, stone tower room that was probably packed with ghosts.)
Torrei’s ghosts, like Beth’s dog’s, preferred high corners. Torrei lived with us in a whole bunch of houses: a semi-shack in Topanga Canyon, a beautiful 1930s duplex in Hancock Park, an astonishing Spanish house built originally by Charlie Chaplin high above the Sunset Strip, an old mansion up near the Hollywood Bowl where we lived for about eight months while the Chaplin house was being rebuilt, and then, finally, a cottage just off the beach in Venice. (She lived to be seventeen.)
That endless list of houses is included for a reason. Torrei saw ghosts only in the Charlie Chaplin house, and only in the living room and the room in which I wrote some of the Simeon Grist books. Nowhere else, not even down in the abandoned and somewhat spooky maid’s quarters, which we used for storage. And after the house burned down and was rebuilt (a structure pathetically inferior to the original), she didn’t see ghosts there any more.
And that reminded me of another dog and another house, this one in Maryland, just across the Washington, DC, city line. The dog was named Lumps, and the house was an older (maybe 40 years) Colonial, all used brick and white wood, two and a half-stories high, It was common knowledge in the family that it was haunted. Twice, walking home at night, we saw pale lights moving behind the windows of my parents’ room, and with monotonous frequency, late at night, we’d hear something start to climb stairs in the basement, go right past the first floor, and then climb to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. Then it paused and, after a breath-catching moment, went up a nonexistent flight of stairs to the permanently closed attic.
My room was at the head of the stairs, making me the appetizer if the ghost was really hungry or the whole meal if he was just feeling peckish. For the first few months we lived there, I grew used to having my blood run cold as the thing made its way toward me. After I realized that I might not be on the menu, I got accustomed to it. Midnight, and here’s old Duane. Thump, thump, yawn, yawn.
But then one night I heard the first footfalls, and Lumps, who slept in my room, turned into a dog possessed. Barking, growling, slavering — and absolutely terrified, as far away from the door as she could get. Well, that got my attention. I sat bolt upright and listened as the footsteps drew nearer and then stopped at the head of the stairs. Lumps’ barking had gone falsetto, and I heard my father yell at her, and then the door to my parents’ bedroom opened, and he stalked into my room, furious, only to be met in mid-air by Lumps, so happy to see him she ran circles around him yapping in pure exhilaration.
Old Duane kept climbing the stairs, but only once more in the three or four years we lived there did Lumps go nuts. I have no idea what the difference was between the Duane whom Lumps ignored and the one that horrified her, but I was willing to take her word that it was significant.
When we put the place for sale, we got the original plans for the house, and there, outside my doorway,we saw that there had once been another flight of stairs to the attic, which had been removed in the 1940s.
I made that up about the extra flight of stairs. Should I have told you, or not?
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18 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 31: Dogs and Ghosts” -
Beth Says:
November 1st, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I vote for not. It is imperative that stories about ghosts not include too much information.
Lumps?? I thought Edna was a bad name for a dog. Edna was about thirteen when she went to join the ghosts. We had a second dog when we had the ghostbuster and since then we have had two other pairs of dogs. Edna was the only one to find the ghosts on the ceiling. We have even had a dog dumber than she was so lack of intelligence wasn’t the key to her clairvoyance.
Whatever Edna’s ghost was it was not as scary as thunder or as dangerous as the cat next door. She didn’t bark or howl; she just sat and stared.
Some people think that Samoyed’s look like they are smiling. Maybe the ghosts just wanted to hang out with a happy-looking dog who didn’t bother them.
Edna and I thank you for our brief moment of fame.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 1st, 2010 at 6:07 pm
I agree. I just had a conscience cramp.
And the dog’s name was really Lumpkins, but Lumps evolved as her nickname. She was a great dog, one of about 15 I’ve had and up in the top four or five. Every day at three o’clock when school was out, she’d be sitting at the edge of the campus and she and I would walk home through the woods. This was when kids could still experience the magic of the woods. What a crappy world we live in,
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EverettK Says:
November 1st, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Sorry, I can’t comment on this blog. I’m WAY too busy reading about Junior Bender, Thistle Downing, Wattles, Hacker, Rabbits Stennet, the slavering hounds from hell, Trey, Jimmy Dean, Kathy, Rina, Tatiana, whats-her-name Ellie and all of the other memorable members of the cast of Crashed. I may not get any sleep until I finish this damned thing. Who’s got time to read a miserable daily blog, let alone work, eat, sleep or …well, let’s not go into bodily functions.
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Sharai Says:
November 1st, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Where exactly was your old mansion near the Hollywood Bowl? The HB was one of my favorite Haunts as a child. One of the reasons I love the Simeon Grist novels is that you realy capture the neighborhood I grew up in.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 9:05 am
It was up on Outlook, north of Franklin and in between Highland and La Brea. Built in the 20s and VERY ornate, with dark red walls in some rooms and furniture left over from the Spanish Inquisition.
I don’t think I ever put Simeon up there — maybe I will in a new book, since I’m writing him again.
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Larissa Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 12:23 pm
I’m in awe of how many cool places you’ve managed to live…and no, you’re not supposed to tell us what’s true and what isn’t…i couldn’t have slept *ever* if i’d heard footsteps outside my door…i have a seriously overactive imagination though…it’s absurd. Luckily, my dog never saw ghosts.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 12:55 pm
This is fascinating. I lived in a 100 year lod house with a cottage dating from the 1880′s. This was supposed to be inhabited by the ghost of a fisherman(this was Half Moon Bay, CA) who had lived there selling his fish and eggs etc. People would come to the house wanting to walk through it and “sense” Peter. I never heard him, but just to hedge my bets, I would say hello to him. I think he was a gentle ghost, and didn’t like a lot of company. Please forgive the font-I’m on Firefox and haven’t yet learned to work with it.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
The font is fine on your blog so ignore my last comment-unlike others, I am a technological luddite.
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fairyhedgehog Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Very Halloweenie!
I’m having trouble getting into your blog: I keep being told that it’s down, or moved, or never existed. Every time that happens I wonder if it’s gone forever but so far so good.
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Sharai Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Oh well, not my mansion. My mansion was as low as you can go and still be in the Hollywood Hills, on Holly St. SE of the Bowl. There are two huge white stone lions guarding the front. My cousin rented the servants quarters in 1960 to ‘write a novel’. No signs of being haunted that I ever saw but stories of the great Rudy Valentino living there in his youth as the boy toy of the famous actress who owned it fueled my imagination just fine. Sorry to say the novel never saw the light of day.
Simeon trying to solve a crime in a haunted HH mansion would be great. So as some like to say, “Get crackin’”!
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Hi, Riss — When I was a kid my parents moved ALL THE TIME — I’d lived in something like 20 houses by the time I moved out at 18, and I’ve moved a lot ever since. The period when I had Torrei coincided with the period when I first began to be paid more than I was worth, so I was upwardly mobile, rising rapidly through the mortgage stratosphere into a position of truly exalted debt. Which in turn was corrected by an abrupt cessation of all income of any kind for about a year, which I recommend highly to anyone whose perspective needs adjusting.
Lil, your house sounds like something I could covet without even trying. And Half-Moon Bay is a place I’ve always wanted to live. Just the name makes me jealous. Too bad the ghost didn’t show up for you, though.
FHH — WordPress was down for about five hours today and has been up and down intermittently ever since. I was still feeling Halloweenie, and then, of course, Beth gave me an idea and at this stage (Day 32) any idea looks like a big slice of chocolate cake, so I grabbed it.
Sharai, when/if you ever come down here, let’s go find that house, and I’ll show you the one I lived in. Very peculiar neighborhood because of the proximity of Hollywood Boulevard — $2 million houses with bums sleeping on the sidewalk in front of them. The first thing I did every morning was to go out with a broom in case someone had thoughtfully broken a bottle in my driveway.
And this “get crackin’: thing can expire whenever it wants. It’s not bad enough that Everett is on me all the time, without you and Suzanna hectoring me in such rural terms.
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Suzanna Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Simmer down now sonny Jim, I mean, sonny Tim. Shar and I ain’t tryin’ to hector you none. But if you insist I will retire the C word.
Like the CRASHED cover by the way.
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Jaden Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 5:43 pm
You were right to trust Lump’s instincts, Tim. Dogs know these things. Maybe the scary Duane wasn’t really Duane–or maybe those were nights when he woke up reeeaaaalllly hungry.
I went to see a play about the Bell Witch two nights before Halloween. A friend was in it, so I drove out to Adams, where the play was performed in an outdoor pavilion on land that was once part of the Bells’ property. Two of the Bells’ descendants were in the play, which gave it an erie tie to the past. So on the way home after watching this creepy, creepy play, my GPS took me home via a tiny, winding, lonesome road that would have been at home in any slasher film. By the time I reached the main road, I was pretty spooked.
I’m glad my dogs don’t see ghosts. I have too vivid an imagination to deal with that.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I heardja the first time, Samantha, uhhh, Suzzana, uhhh, Soozanner. Ya go my name wrong. You may have thought ya slipped that by me. Butcha hafta get up pretty early in the morning to whip one past ol’ Jim. Glad you like the cover, but that don’t make us even.
Jaden — okay, most intriguing comment of the week — I found the Bell Witch website and it’s really fascinating. I’d love to see that play. And you didn’t read SPIRIT HOUSE or you never would have trusted that GPS. All GPS units are under the direct control of the devil.
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fairyhedgehog Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 4:47 am
I’m glad it wasn’t just your blog then!
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Suzanna Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:48 am
Okay, Mr. H, didn’t mean to upset you. I won’t hector you no mo’.
By the way, I don’t do no whippin’ early in the mornin’. Too hard on my shoulder. And there ain’t nobody named Jim ’round here so just SIMMER DOWN NOW!
Oops there goes my hectorin’ ‘gain. I’ll try to make it up to ya sometime real soon.
Yer pal,
Soozanner
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Yikes. I seem somehow not to have responded to Everett’s enthusiastic reaction to CRASHED, for which I was very thankful — and even more thankful now that he’s finished it and likes it ever better.
By the way, I’LL SEND A WORD FILE OF CRASHED to anyone who will review it (candidly) when it comes out on Amazon at the end of the month. Just e-mail me at thallinan@gmail.com, and I’ll send it to you by return e-mail. Just let me know — I’m feeling pretty good about the book, especially since four early readers, of whom Everett was one, have weighed in with some enthusiasm.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 6:18 pm
FHH — naw, it was the whole WordPress operation. Couldn’t get into comments or the admin’s area or anything. Very frustrating. I would have blown it off, but then there wouldn’t have been a blog and some readers (WE KNOW WHO, DON’T WE?) would have bitched for days.
Suzanna, enough of this backwoods back-and-forth. Iffen ya don’t start ta talk like a slicker, the ol woodshed is awaitin’.
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