A Ghost Story

As I went through the Epstein house, clearing it out and getting it ready for a gut renovation, I found and set aside quite a number of things that I thought would be lovely in our little café, namely an eclectic mix of roughly 1,000 dishes.  But also lamps, light fixtures, tables, desks, chairs, hutches, filing cabinets, a convection oven and full-size toaster oven still in their original boxes, baking sheets, muffin tins of every shape and size, and a water cooler that was made before I was born.  (That is not an exhaustive list by any means).

But going through the Epstein family belongings was sometimes a little unnerving and I tried not to think too much about whether there were any spirits or ghosts hanging around because I was absolutely sure that there were and what you think about you bring about, as my friend Heath used to tell me.  When I found myself cleaning and sorting alone in the house and things felt particularly eerie, I did what any normal person would do and sang old jazz songs out loud to the ghosts.  Songs I thought Mr. and Mrs. Epstein would like.  Something to keep them happy and distract them from haunting me.

On February 24, we scheduled a moving truck and two local guys to come haul everything up the road to our barn.  In addition to me, Michael, and the kids, Michael’s brother John flew in to help and we pulled our neighbor Andrew in, too.  I was the first to arrive that day in order to meet the movers and unlock the doors and when I stepped into the house I was fully assaulted by a crackling, grating, hauntingly deranged buzzing sound.  My first instinct was to ignore it and wait for it to go away.  My second instinct was to ignore it and wait for Michael to arrive and make it go away.  But two and a half seconds into my first and second instincts I was already going slowly insane so I had no choice but to walk through the empty house ALONE and track down the noise that more and more sounded like it was coming from another dimension entirely.  While I sang "I'll Be Seeing You" I followed the sound up the first flight of stairs hoping I would find some old electronic right there on the floor that I could bash in with my boot.  But the noise was coming from one more flight up, in the attic.  UGH! Seriously?? (as I imitated my 8 year old).  The attic?!?  Do I have to????

The smoke alarm battery at the very top of the attic steps was wheezing out its last breath.  I fiddled with the cover, pulled out the battery, the noise stopped, my body relaxed.  I took a moment to laugh at myself for getting all worked up over a dying battery.  Then I had to congratulate myself for being so brave.  While I was doing all that I noticed a little label on the battery, handwritten with a date.  Mr. Epstein labelled his smoke alarm batteries!  OMG, what a cutie!!  Then the moving truck pull into the driveway so I dropped the battery into my coat pocket and ran down the stairs.

By herculean effort the truck was packed right around the time we all really needed to sit down and eat something. John, Michael, the girls, and I went to Ted’s Diner and ordered burgers.  I sat across from John and we took turns making each other laugh about the sitcom that was our morning – the Bert & Ernie/Abbott & Costello moving team who walked and talked like an Andy Griffith episode was the gift that kept on giving, all through lunch.  The girls took turns playing games on our phones and complaining about child labor.  At some point I told everyone about the battery going off in the morning while I was ALONE and how brave I was to go up into the attic ALONE but for some reason John and Michael were totally focused on finding out what brand of battery it was since it had lasted ten years in a smoke alarm.  I remembered I still had the battery in my pocket. “Rayovac,” I said.  And I also glanced one more time at the date, taking better note of the actual numbers written on the tiny white label in Jay’s handwriting:

02/24/07

Gulp.  

"What is today's date?" I asked, slightly shivering.

"The 24th," the kids told me since they had our phones.

And then I'm pretty sure I also asked what year it was.  

I really did try to keep my freak-out under control and the volume of my voice contained, especially since I was using the f-word quite a bit.  But John was surprisingly calm. (I guess one of the adults at the table had to be).  And he figured it out pretty quickly:

“What's the big deal?  Mr. Epstein’s spirit was trapped in the battery.  It's a good place to be if you want to watch over everything and make sure nothing catches on fire or whatever.  But now that you’ve taken care of all of his things, given them a new home, and you’re going to take care of his house and turn it into something beautiful, it’s all good.  Now he can move on.  He can be free.  You’ve set him free and he's happy.  You should be happy, too"

And I am happy.  I'm excited about the plans we have for this house, and for this stretch of Main Street.  And yes, it took me 5 months to write this blog post.  Let's all cross fingers that it doesn't take me nearly that long to explain why.  More to come!