Happy Halloween, Everybody! Chuy is all dressed up for Trick or Treating but would prefer the "treats" rather than the "trick" of donning one of Mom's five costumes she's carting around.
I haven't seen my Requisite Ghost yet for the season but I got a dandy story the other night. The town council has moved into the old CAAG building downtown. In its heyday, the two story building was used as a barrroom/bordello/hotel (I guess you take your pick) and numerous ghost stories abound. We attended a night meeting there this week and when we left, I asked one of the people who work there if they'd had anything to report in the ghostly realm.
They had. They said doors that supposedly were left unlocked would mysteriously lock, day or night. Or vice versa, doors that were locked were found to be unlocked. One person said that she'd heard somebody using the bathroom one night when she was there alone. It bothered her and she stood in the hall for several moments watching a shadow move under the door from the lit up bathroom. She even heard the toilet fixture creak as when somebody sat down on it. Finally, she screwed up her courage and opened the unlocked door, only to find an empty room. (I think I'd be fleeing into the night, vowing, "Never again!" if I'd had that experience!)
The most amazing story I got so far was that a team of Ghosthunters had come up from the Valley to study the building. They'd been hearing the stories and wanted to see for themselves what was going on. It was daytime and they talked to the current staff of the building and went over it with their digital equipment trying to find EVP's or energy spots. When they finished for the day, they stood across the street and took some pictures of the building. When they got back and studied what they got, they were in for a suprise!
Standing in the doorway of the building, looking directly at them across the street, as though asking them what their business was, was a small statured Hispanic woman, dressed in a long black dress, a high black lace collar framing her neck, much as would be worn at the turn of the century. Is this the woman who walks the floors of the CAAG building and inhabits the toilet and messes with the locks? For it must be her building after all, if she has been here for a hundred years or more.
Tonight, the town has a big Halloween parade. Folks will park on Main Street and decorate their trunks and dispense candy treats to the little folks who dress up and Trick or Treat on the street. We're going and I'm donning a Mardi Gras mask of feathers and hand out goodies. But I'm also going to make it a special point at some time in the evening to go across the street from City Hall and snap a picture of this old building. Then when I get home, I'm hoping for a really ghostly 'treat'!
