The month of October is all about witches, goblins and ghosts, and all the things that go bump in the night. It's a season of celebration steeped in Pagan ritual and lore that has infiltrated mainstream American culture as cheap entertainment for the masses.
Even in prison we get sucked into the spirit of the season. We celebrate with a Halloween themed carnival night filled with games, contests, candy and prizes. The Wiccans get to celebrate Samhain with a special meal, an evening bonfire, and lunar ritual honoring the departed. The East Indians get to celebrate "Diwali", or the Festival of Lights, during this same time of year.
The atmosphere here is one that is fully charged with celebration during the entire month. Even the puppies that are here training as service dogs join in by donning their costumes and leading the annual Halloween puppy parade. To add to all this fun, we also get themed movie nights with all the classics and first run scary movies. Not too shabby, considering.
When polled, a majority of Americans concede to either believing in ghosts, or the possibility of their existence. Getting these same people to openly admit to it, is another thing. Hence, the famous adage: "I don't believe in ghosts. They scare me."
Well, I do believe in ghosts, and sometimes they scare me too, but mostly they fascinate me. I am an avid ghost hunter - seeker of the paranormal, and everything that has to do with the afterlife. I blame this peculiarity in me on my late maternal grandfather. And a little bit on my mother for having left me in his (and my disinterested grandmother's) care, while she and my dad went out on what I presume were their date nights when it wasn't so much fun having to tote a toddler around.
I grew up occasionally sitting on my grandpa's lap witnessing as he sprayed his home office with "Indian Luck" spray. The one with the chieftain's feathered headdress on his big red face adorning the can's label, his hand held out in protection. The aerosol mist would envelop the room in a horrid stale patchouli, musk and sage fragrance. My grandpa would douse the room with it to "ward off evil spirits", then he would light up his wall of votives opposite the wall of saints and deities. All in this ritualistic order. Then he would concentrate his gaze into his crystal ball and conjure up every departed soul to guide him in his quest to find "the" love, lost love, health, wealth, good luck, and/or fortunes of those dozens of people who lined up from near and far to have a reading done by him.
He was known to them as "el curandero". That's Spanish for healer, shaman, witch doctor, medium, psychic. He was everything to these people. My dad used to call him a quack, a fake, and a scammer (among other things). The neighborhood kids would call him "grandpa weed." I didn't quite know why they called him that. I just used to think that he was the coolest grandpa ever. I never saw him with any "weed." Just his tobacco rolling paper and his ever-present black and teal green Bugler Boy pouch of what I thought was tobacco in it. What did I know? I was just a kid.
I was so excited that he allowed me to sit in during with his "clients" during their readings. I also felt special to have my picture proudly displayed in his office. He had it sealed in a pretty glass box sitting in the middle of all the saintly statuettes he kept. His only rule was that no one was allowed to touch that photo. Which is exactly why I couldn't resist doing it! He slapped my hand away so hard that it brought tears to my eyes, but I didn't dare run away to find my grandma for fear of missing out on anything - like a disembodied voice or apparition manifesting from within his crystal ball. I never knew just how bizarre it was to have a grandpa like mine until way into my adulthood. I thought everyone had a grandpa like this in the family. I thought it was normal.
From all the ghost hunting I have done, I can tell you that most of my encounters with the paranormal have occurred in some of the most routine ways - when I wasn't out actively searching. The most recent was right here in prison several months ago. I was working the afternoon shift as the kitchen clerk, following the food service supervisor around with my clip board and pen in hand. (Little Miss Type A that I am.) As I'm standing behind and off to the side of him drilling him with questions regarding the day's business, he's waiting for the kitchen staff inmates to exit the cooler. One by one, they are coming out carrying heavy food boxes. First one, two, and three come out. Then he's getting ready to slam the door shut in front of four, and I yell out "Wait! There's one more." The supervisor laughs and tells me to "stop playing, they all came out." And, I'm like, "no, there's one more. Don't lock the cooler!" And he says, "Stop playing, Ms. Costa. There's no one left in there." I'm beside myself at this point, insisting that yes, there is one more inmate in there. I saw her walking out behind the others. Well, there wasn't anyone else in there when he opened the cooler to check. He started laughing at me, and told me to go ask the girls up front (at the serving line) about what I just saw.
I sensed an immediate fear, and blurted out, "Stop f@#king with me!" I ran to ask the girls about it, and they immediately said, "Oh, you saw the ghost in the cooler!?!" I started shaking uncontrollably, and tears just came streaming down my face. Yes, apparently I was witness to the ghost in the cooler. So, now I know the answer to, "what would you do if you saw a ghost?" I would probably not realize I was seeing a ghost at first, then I would cry like a baby once I did, then I would probably pee my pants.
At one of the other facilities where I was imprisoned (state max), it was common for women to commit suicide by hanging themselves with bed sheets from the handrails. It happened again while I was there, but I didn't witness the actual hanging. I just experienced the aftermath - the lockdown and shakedown that followed.
Weeks later, tossing and turning in my bunk, I was wide awake in the middle of the night, restless. At the time, I was housed in an open-berthed dormitory. No cells, just row upon row of bunk beds with the center of the room lined up with singles. I was assigned one of the singles in the center. I was looking out at nothing in particular, when I saw a woman in a white nightgown gliding toward the restroom at the front of the dormitory. We all wore either white or light blue night clothes, so that wasn't inordinary. What was so, was that the apparition seemed to float toward the restroom. I rubbed my eyes thinking they were playing tricks on me. I saw the woman enter the restroom, heard the toilet flush, but never saw her come out. I waited and waited until, exhausted, I fell asleep. The next day, at least two other inmates were talking about having seen what I saw.
I can't say that I live in a highly haunted prison, or even that this place is, in fact, haunted. What I can say is that there is no solid scientific explanation to what I saw here. I wasn't on one of my many ghost-hunting expeditions, I wasn't even wanting to, or thinking about seeing a ghost. But I did. The fear is paralyzing once you figure out that what you are looking at isn't "normal." But as scary as it all is, it's more than fascinating to me.
Obviously, I am not the only one to hold this fascination, otherwise television shows like True Hauntings, Paranormal Witness, and Ghost Hunters wouldn't play on a continuous month-long loop on the Sci-Fi Channel, nor would the pursuit of frights have turned into a billion dollar industry.
Strict "entertainment" value aside, for those of you who are just as excited by things going bump in the night as I am, I highly recommend an overnight stay aboard the Queen Mary Ship that is permanently docked in Long Beach, California. Here, I am certain that you, too, will encounter some otherworldly phenomenon that will leave you questioning YOUR senses - all without having to set foot inside prison!
