Going Under

That afternoon, the living room of our Florida ranch house was draped and shadowed. The lights were dim. A candle burned on the coffee table. People spoke in whispers. Expectation snapped in the air. We were about to have a séance.

The group included Spiritualist minister Joe Dickenson, and his wife, Lil; my mother, cool in white linen pants; our hairdresser, Carl, smoking nervously on the couch; and my sixteen-year-old self. We were waiting for Gail Greenberg—a psychic "coach" from New York—to arrive.

We didn't wait long. A moment later, a stocky, short-haired woman dressed in a skirt, blouse, and silk neck scarf bustled into the room and greeted us with breezy aplomb. She dropped a worn leather briefcase on the floor, lit a cigarette, and gave me her order for a Tom Collins. I grabbed a tray from our slate-topped bar and hurried to the kitchen.

Beyond the swinging door, our housekeeper Ann was mixing cocktails; as I paused, she tippled from a pint of gin on the kitchen table.

“Ann. . .”

A guilty look crossed her face and she set the bottle down hurriedly. I gave her a sly smile and she chuckled with relief.

“This day’s got my nerves so janglin’ I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Seems like I just got to have a little drink or I’m not gonna make it.” She gave me her sweet smile again and poured just a little gin into a glass, sipping delicately.

“Mother won’t let me drink or I’d join you,” I said.

“What’s that lady from New York going to do?”

I tried to shrug nonchalantly. “She’s going to make a trance psychic out of Carl. I guess she’s trained a lot of them up North, and when Joe found out she was in town to speak at the Spiritualist Church, he asked her to come and meet Carl.”

“What’s Mr. Carl been doing trance for?” asked Ann.

“He didn’t mean to; it just happened, while we were at Bartie Butcher’s house for a séance last month."

Bartie was a frail, white-haired ex-schoolteacher who could read palms, cards, and the crystal ball. I found her to be amazingly accurate; she foretold the disastrous end to one of my romances; she saw me marrying three times (it’s been two so far); and she said that I would live in England, because she saw a trip and an English crown (I did, and gave birth to my son there).

Her down-to-earth approach and steady ability impressed Mother, leading her to try and acquire similar skills—although my mother's methods were predictably unorthodox. She practiced on the dog races. (Note here: when I was a teen, no one thought twice about greyhound racing or knew of its underbelly of neglect and mistreatment. Fortunately, we're more enlightened now; I've adopted more than one retired racer myself.)

In those early days of her paranormal journey, racing forms flowed over the my mother's bed and lapped against our crossed legs like a sea of paper. Mom liked names like Go Get ‘Em, or Fast Red; I preferred romantic names like Queen’s Ivory or True Love. We'd clutch our forms, with all their scribbled notes, and spend an evening at the track testing our ability to pick dogs via intuition. Sometimes Bartie would go, too, reading winners in the foam of her trackside beer. We did okay, but even after a dog, a color, and a number were chosen at home, Mom would become distracted at the track itself. She'd ask people around her what they thought. She'd look at the bookie's odds. She'd peruse the hounds as they headed for the track and change her mind. So even though it was an intriguing way to develop intuitive accuracy, the theoretical parameters were not always followed. As any kind of clinical trial, it was a bust. This could explain why being a psychic doesn't guarantee success in gambling.

Anyway, as I told Ann on the night of the séance, it was at Bartie’s house that Carl first went into trance.

“Everyone was sitting in a circle in the dark, holding hands, when Carl sat straight up like he was poked and started speaking with someone else’s voice, calling Lucy and telling her he was Douglas, her first husband who’d been dead for ten years.”

Ann gave a little gasp.

“Mother and I were on either side of him, and I didn’t know what to do, but Bartie said not to pull my hand away, so I just had to sit and wait till he was through talking. We told Joe about it and he told Gail. Now she’s down here, that’s all. Let me take those drinks through.”

“I seed a trance once,” said Ann. “A lady in our church did it. Her head throwed back and her eyes rolled up, and there was stuff on her lips. She went into convulsions...and then she started calling out words we couldn’t even understand. The preacher said it was the tongue of God...”

Ann's eyes were like saucers as she placed the drinks on the tray. “Is that what’s going to happen out there tonight?”

“I sure hope not!” I said, and pushed my way through the door.

Ann had good reason to be nervous, I thought. Whenever Joe and Lil visited our house, strange things happened. Like the night they used my bedroom, and I had to sleep with my mother (my stepfather was at sea). In the deep, wee hours, I heard a nearby door swing shut, quite distinctly.

“What was that?” asked Mother, turning over.

“Door shut,” I mumbled, sliding deeper beneath the covers.

“Which door? Turn on the light and see,” she said.

“It was the closet door at the foot of the bed," I replied, "and I’m not getting up and turning the light on, no way.”

“Don’t be silly,” said my mother, nudging me, but I was adamant. With a sigh, she slipped out of the sheets and over to the light switch on the wall.

We both blinked and looked: the closet door was standing open, just as it had been when we went to bed. The house was silent, except for Joe’s snores coming from my room down the hall.

“Well, it must have been the bedroom door, then,” said Mother.

“Nope. It was already closed. I did it myself,” I told her.

"Then what was it?"

I snorted. "You ask? It was Joe. Spooky stuff always happens when he's around."

The next day, Ann answered the front door and let in a lady who said nothing, but walked down the hallway and disappeared. When I got home from school she was in the laundry room, clutching our cross-eyed male Siamese to her broad breast in an effort to feel protected. I told this tale to Mother, who tried to soothe Ann's fears.

“Now Ann," she said, "what are you afraid of? These are just people who have passed over to the Other Side.”

Ann rolled her dark eyes and shook her head. “One night, when I was getting ready for bed, the spirit of my aunt appeared and when I asked her what did she want, she grabbed me by the neck. I liked to choke to death.”

Mother made a sound of disbelief.

“I think you just imagined that part. Spirits can’t hurt you.”

Ann stuck out her chin. “Maybe not, but even if they can't, they’re sure going to make me hurt myself! You tell the Reverend to take his haunts with him next time he goes.”

Personally, I think it was a wonder that Ann continued to work for us—much less agree to be in the house during a séance! Now, perspiring with the tension and eeriness of the occasion, she took another sip of gin and patted her forehead with a handkerchief. I grabbed the drinks tray and hustled back to our guests...

Everyone had fallen silent. Gail’s dark eyes were sweeping the room.

“Now who,” she said, swishing back her hair with a plump hand, “is the new psychic in this house? Who is going to go into trance tonight?”

I was a bit surprised, because I thought she was there for Carl. So was this just a bit of showmanship to relax him into thinking he had a choice? Did I imagine it, or did her glance snag on me as I stood there, tray in hand?

Not me, I whispered. I’m not the one. But a sudden compulsion washed over me, like standing on the edge of a building and feeling the urge to fall off, even as your hands grip the railing with sweaty intensity.

Since Mother and I had begun exploring paranormal phenomena, I'd discovered my own innate sense of intuition. Several experiences—such as catching glimpses of people who weren’t there, or hearing doors shut that hadn’t shut, or feeling my neck hairs rise to an unknown breath—had dimmed my enthusiasm. But I knew the potential lurked right beneath the surface, like a shark circling in dark waters. I could be a psychic if I wanted to, I thought. It was that, combined with a compulsive honesty from my parochial schooldays, which prompted my sudden desire to step forward and be called upon to perform.

Gail’s gaze lingered on me a moment longer. Don’t try to hide from me! her frown seemed to say. Just then, Joe Dickenson’s bulky outline moved between Gail and I like a solar eclipse, breaking the spell and freeing me to move forward and hand out the drinks. She took her Tom Collins from the tray with an impatient swipe.

“There he is, there’s the young man you want, Gail,” Joe wheezed. He gestured at Carl on the couch. Pale, slender, with a wispy pompadour hair-do, Carl blinked nervously at Gail as she walked over and sat down on the cushion next to him.

“I’ve trained a lot of psychics in my time, young man. Just relax and stop acting as if I were going to bite,” she cooed.

I was reminded of a thin, skittish sheep being driven by an oversized sheepdog. Carl’s face had that white-rimmed, sheep-like kind of stare, too, as if he were trying to assess his chances for bolting. After everyone finished their drinks, Gail clapped her hands and called for attention. She turned off all the living room lights, leaving only the candle and a bulb in the hallway to throw slanted highlights on her heavy face. The candle flickered as the air conditioning kicked on. I saw Ann creep quietly into the room and take a chair. She had a drink in her hand.

After a pause, Gail’s strong New York voice rose in the first bars of the hymn, I Come To the Garden. The hair rose on the back of my neck. Joe’s rumbling bass joined in, and the quavering tones of his wife, Lil. My mother’s clear soprano sounded from the other side of the room. Not knowing the words, I tried to hum along.

Gail was trying to get Carl to relax and enter what she called a "preliminary light trance stage". I thought anyone who could get Carl to stop shaking and flicking ashes would be ahead of the game, but gradually—with her help—his breathing slowed and the silence in the room deepened. He leaned back into the sofa and closed his eyes. Then, something strange started to happen. First there was a thickness in the air, as if it was soft and spongy. I had the perception of increasing energy, as if everyone there was a drop of water that, together, was forming a pool. I also felt a sensation of something being pulled from my nostrils and fingertips.

“Ectoplasm,” murmured Joe from the darkness, and my heart beat fast. Ectoplasm was the substance frequently seen around trance mediums, especially during a materialization. Theoretically, it was drawn from the medium and others participating in the event. It had been photographed on occasion, showing up as a wispy, whitish halo encircling the medium’s face and body, sometimes transforming their features.

Gail was talking in a low, even, voice. “Carl, you are going deeper and deeper into a trance state,” she said. “You are completely and deeply relaxed. Your limbs are heavy. You cannot move your feet. . .”

Watching someone go into a trance always reminded me uncomfortably of watching someone drown; they stopped struggling, went slack, and opened their mouths. Another person’s voice came out of them, someone who claimed to be the medium’s “guide.” They were usually native American or Hindu or even Atlantean; I always wondered why there weren’t any car mechanics from Akron, or dry cleaners from Boston.

The guide would act as sort of a metaphysical bellboy, someone who went back and forth, fetching information, advice, or other people to speak during the trance. As if the afterlife were a big hotel lobby. Joe Dickenson had a small Pawnee girl named Lucy as his guide; it was weird to hear a high, female voice coming out of his oversized frame. Even weirder were the buzzing noises, like gnats, that hung around his ears. They sounded like a radio left on low in another room, but Joe could always translate what they said.

At this point, Carl had laid his head back on the sofa and was appropriately loose in the jaw. Gail was still intoning instructions. “Your body is heavy and sleepy, but your mind is light, weightless. . . It moves up and away from your body and takes you wherever you want to go. Go with your mind, Carl. Let it take you. . . What do you see? Where are you, Carl?”

 “I’m above a city,” Carl replied. “I’m above mountains, and a city. There are white buildings below. It’s early morning, the sun is just coming up. I can see its glow on the buildings. The earth on the mountains is green. It’s not here. Not now. Far away…” His voice dwindled and the heavy breathing returned.

“Good, Carl, very good,” soothed Gail. “Is there someone in that city who wants to be your guide, Carl? Is there someone who wants to speak to us?” She turned to the crowded silent room. “He should find one main guide, a spirit who will always start his trance off.” She turned back to Carl and waited, but he remained mute, supine, breathing in and out. 

“Is there someone who wishes to speak to us?” Gail’s voice became imperious. “Does someone wish to speak?”

“Yes!” came the answer, sudden and loud as a thunderclap. “I will speak!”

Ann put a hand to her mouth. I could see the whites of her eyes in the darkness, and my own clutching fear made me feel as if I were suffocating. Sweat ran from my hairline and I could hear the sharp intake of my own breath.

Gail Greenberg whirled to face the opposite end of the couch. There in the shadows, eyes closed and head back, was my mother. The voice was coming from her.

Haunted House

My mother was a professional psychic. I doubt she ever dreamed of growing up to be that when she was a tiny, redheaded child with a temper hot enough to swallow her older brother's piggy bank pennies. But that's what she became. And I was there when she started her journey.

It happened the year I turned sixteen. In those days, Mayport—once bustling with shrimp boats—had become a sleepy Florida backwater. People still came to eat at Singleton’s Seafood Shack or ride the ferry across the river to the white beaches of Fort George; but by and large, the town slept on in a moss-draped dream of older times.

My friends and I drove there on moonlit nights, sitting and smoking in the old cemetery. I found the teetering headstones, ancient trees, and starry sky soothing rather than spooky. But if ever we were in the mood for spooky, we knew just where to go in Mayport.

John King owned a haunted house. Not the kind of dressed-up fright house you find on Halloween, with smoke and scary music and kids jumping out at you in costume—but a genuine repository of spirits that had been documented by Duke University. It was a magnet for high school and college students; it was also the beginning of my mother's exploration of the paranormal. After I told her about one of my visits, my mother was excited to meet Mr. King.

We'd attended a Spiritualist church in downtown Jacksonville a couple of times, and Mom had become friends with a Spiritualist minister and his wife. Joe Dickenson was a large man, balding, beefy, and short of breath. He had a kind and buxom wife named Lilian. We'd seen Joe go into trance more than once and found the whole process astonishing. He had a young Pawnee "guide" who would speak through him and facilitate any conversations between the audience and their loved ones on the "other side." More about that stuff in another blog.

The King house as I remember it in the 1960s.

(Photo Anna Lane)

Late one summer night, a group of us stood before before Mr. King's three-story home, admiring its deep, columned porch and elaborate railings. There was me, my mother, the Dickensons, our hairdresser, Carl, and a psychic "talent scout" named Gail, who was visiting from New York.

Gail looked for people with paranormal abilities to train. Carl had shown some early promise in this regard; he often saw and heard inexplicable things. He was also an incredibly nervous young man and at this point was chain smoking cigarettes with a shaky hand.

We stepped onto the porch and knocked softly on the screen door; that was the routine you followed when you visited Mr. King. Bugs circled the yellow porch light and crickets shrilled from the bushes, but nobody came.

"Maybe it's too late," whispered Carl. "Maybe he's gone to bed. I don't see any lights on.

"It's always like that," I told him. "And we always come kind of late because you have to wait until it's good and dark outside."

Carl flicked his ashes into the flower bed below. A few moments later, there was the sound of footsteps inside the house and the front door edged open.

“Who’s there?” asked a soft voice.

“It's me, Mr. King,” I told him, stepping forward. “I’ve brought my mother and some guests to see your home, if that's okay. I said I would, last time I came, remember?” If too much time passed between visits, Mr. King forgot who you were—but not tonight. He swung open the screen and greeted me with a smile.

"Ya'll come on in. Glad to have you visit." He stepped back and let us pass into the cool, dim hallway. A staircase rose on the right, and there were open doors leading to rooms on the left. The hall went straight back into what I knew was the kitchen.

Back then, John King was in his sixties. He always dressed in a clean white shirt, a bow tie, and a pair of dress trousers, even on warm summer nights. His rubbery face was creased with lines, and his wavy hair was dark with hair tonic and carefully combed. A fat cigar was constantly in and out of his mouth; to this day, the smell of cigar smoke evokes for me the deep, dim recesses of that rambling house.

He ushered us into a large living room and told us to sit down. The electric lights were (always) off, but a silver candelabra flickered on the huge marble mantelpiece and votives shimmered around the room. After some quiet pleasantries, my mother persuaded him to recount the history of his house.

He’d moved in forty years earlier as a young man with his bride. They’d had two children, both sons; one died early from illness, the other grew up and moved to Pensacola. Eventually, his wife passed away and he remained in the house, alone except for a weekly visit from his cleaning woman. The majority of his company came from curious, thrill-seeking teenagers who’d heard about the ghosts.

“They started appearing about eight years ago,” he said, drawing hard on his cigar. “There’s a little man in a red velvet suit, cut Spanish style. Then there’s a woman in a high-collared black and lavender dress—she’s usually downstairs—a weeping bride in white on the second floor, a Seminole Indian, and an elderly gent. I’d say eight or ten spirits have appeared here over the years, but those are the most frequent.”

He paused while a deep, rasping cough overtook him.

“Doctor says I shouldn’t smoke such strong cigars, but I don’t listen.” He patted his mouth with a white handkerchief and leaned back in his chair. "A few years back, Duke University sent two experts down here to document things. They had cameras and tape recorders, all sorts of stuff. Stayed over a week and said they’d never seen ghosts as solid as the ones I’ve got. Their conclusion was that the reason for so many apparitions is because the house was built over an old Spanish graveyard. In fact, the original house burned down; the one we're sitting in was built around 1881."

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Joe.

"Amazing," murmured Gail.

Carl looked more nervous than ever.

Mr. King continued. "One night, soon after my wife died, my cousin Cox Dunham came over to see me. I was in the kitchen fixing coffee and he was in here, on that sofa where you’re sitting. When I came back in with a tray he said to me, ‘John, there was a friend of yours here.’

‘A friend of mine?’ I said. ‘What did he look like?’

‘Why, he was an elderly man,’ says Cox, ‘with a shirt rolled up at the sleeves and black suspenders. He sat right down next to me and said hello, and asked if I was waiting for you. I said yes. Then he stood up and walked toward the back of the house. I thought for sure you’d see him on his way in.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘there isn’t anyone back there, Cox.’ But he didn’t believe me, so we went and had a look; of course, the back rooms were all empty.

‘Cox’, I said, ‘what you saw was a spirit. He’s been here before, I’ve seen him myself, plain as day." Mr. King paused and glanced at us, chewing on his cigar.

“I haven’t seen much of Cox since then,” he added slyly.

We were all silent for a long moment. The hair on the back of my neck rose up, as if someone was breathing gently on me from behind.

"Then there was the time a group of teenagers came to visit. I showed them around and everything was fine. When we were done, one boy went outside and got into his car. There was someone sitting in the passenger seat, a young girl who asked for a ride to the beach. But when he asked her name, she just disappeared."

"Oh, Lord," whispered Carl. "I might should leave."

"Don't be ridiculous," my mother told him. She stood up and smiled. "This gentleman,” she said, gesturing to Joe, “is a Spiritualist minister from Jacksonville. His name is Joe, and next to him is his wife, Lil.”

Lil dipped her head in greeting, while Joe lumbered to his feet and gave Mr. King a bear-sized paw to shake. “Honored, sir,” he boomed.

Mother stepped to one side, neatly drawing Mr. King’s attention back to her.

“And this is Gail Greenberg, who’s come all the way from New York—"

"—where I heard of your house from a colleague at Duke University,” finished Gail. My mother frowned; she wasn't sure she approved of this brash Northerner and her pushy ways.

I've always found it ironic that my mom, who insisted that women deserved to be strong, professional, and independent, loathed any female that fit the description and who tried to befriend her. Many times she told me she was "a man's woman" and that she couldn't bear the company of "wimpy little domestic wives." But she also pretty much couldn't take her own kind, either. There was only one queen bee in her circle, and that was herself.

Gail, of course, was oblivious to this nuance and kept talking.

“I am here from New York because of this young man," she said, pointing to Carl. "I am what some call a ‘psychic coach’—that is, I find and develop paranormal ability in promising individuals who have the sacred gift of communicating with spirit. Carl recently went into trance for the first time…”

“It was a terrifying experience,” blurted Carl.

Gail Greenberg stuck out her chin. “Because you didn't have a qualified trainer to coach you through the process,” she challenged. “Next time will be different.”

My mother stepped forward, interrupting Gail. "Anyway...Mr. King, if you wouldn't mind, we’d love to have you show us through your amazing home."

Mr. King seemed a little non-plussed by the conversation, but he scratched his jaw ruminatively, cleared his throat, and then said, “Well, why don’t we get started? I’ll make sure we’re not interrupted.”

He walked to the front door and flipped off the porch light.

“Kids know that’s a sign that I’m not receiving visitors,” he explained.

*    *    *    *

The house had been added onto piecemeal over the years and was a rambling hodgepodge of rooms. Bathrooms were stuck in odd places and there were two kitchens, one in the house and another in an outbuilding connected by a covered breezeway. I noticed a rollaway bed in a corner; Mr. James said he frequently preferred sleeping downstairs, rather than occupy one of the many empty rooms above—especially when the bride was crying.

There was a whispering to our footsteps as we walked through his home, and a heaviness to the air, as if we were brushing through fine cobwebs. It was strange to see all those beds made up but never slept in, lying stiff beneath their tufted chenille spreads. Mirrors were flyspecked and the wallpaper was faded. Books and boxes of papers stood piled in the corners, and everywhere was the damp scent of mildew and the sea.

We circled through it all, even the large bathrooms with their claw-foot tubs and empty towel racks; but though the air was ripe with portent, nothing happened. No gauzy outline floated down the hall or through the walls. Once I thought I heard a sob, but it was just the breeze sighing through the shutters. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

We finished our tour and broke apart as a group. I chatted with Lil in the downstairs hallways for a while, then headed for the second floor to see what the others were up to. On my way up the stairs, Carl rushed by me. I say it was Carl because, intellectually, I know that’s who it was; at the time I couldn’t have told you for sure—he was running that fast.

Mother and Joe were standing on the landing above, laughing.

Apparently my mother and Joe been circling back through the bedrooms, and when they came to the last one, they stopped. Joe said there was the spirit of a woman sitting in the room’s wooden rocking chair. He was just in the process of finding out who she was and why she was there, when Carl stuck his head in the door.

“Who are you?” Carl asked her.

“Agatha,” she replied, and began to rock.

It was then that Carl realized she wasn’t really there and rocketed past me down the stairs and out the screen door at the bottom.

"One young fellow was standing on the landing here, waiting for people to go downstairs so he could turn off the light. When he went to pull the light string, a hand clapped him on the shoulder from behind and he ran right through that screen door.” He gave a dry chortle. "I’ve had to replace it three times so far.”

Carl didn't break the screen door, but he also didn't come back in, then or ever. Mr. King told us that a distant relation was pitchforked to death in that rocking chair by her jealous ex-boyfriend. He said many people have seen the chair rocking—but I bet not as many saw the lady herself sitting in it!

I visited Mr. King several times in the two years we lived near Mayport, but I never did see anything. I've always wondered if my reluctance and fear prevented it. Though, even if I had, I don't know if I would've seen them as clearly as Joe and Carl did. That was their "gift."

I did have my own spirit encounters, but they were always via my "inner vision"—that combination of seeing and feeling with your mind instead of your eyes. More on that later.

Mother casually befriended Mr. King after that, and when we moved away, she'd send him bottles of port or a box of cigars for Christmas. The acquaintanceship gradually dwindled in the face of other moves, other relationships. When we returned, years later, on a holiday visit, we stopped to see Mr. King. He still answered the door in his white shirt and dress trousers, though it took him quite a while to remember who were were.

But as we drove away, I saw a carload of teenagers pulling up in front of the house. Nothing else had changed, it seemed.

(NOTE: Some details and names have been changed in this story, and some events have been condensed. It's my blog and I get to do that. But the weird stuff really did happen and the people I talk about were all there. Mr. King lived in the house until his death in the 1970s. You can find websites with information on the King house and there are some fictional novels inspired by it.)