Happy Halloween! Gorrie Street Haunting By Kim Casey
Strategic Suburban Sugar By Casey Fitchett
Do you know how much candy is too much candy? I think the answer to that question largely depends on how old you are. When you’re a kid in suburbia, the limit does not exist.
“Small town life is different than what you’re used to. But in time, you will come to like the slower pace,” he assured me.
I lived in the same house for the first 18 years of my life. Throughout my childhood, I stood on the same corner to catch the bus every day, I rode my bike around the same potholes, and jogged the same routes as I trained for races in my teenage years. Knowing the neighborhood so well also came in handy annually on October 31. It was time to collect a pillowcase full of candy from my generous neighbors. I was squarely in my ninth year of life, and I knew that life didn’t get any better than Halloween night. Okay, perhaps this was second to my birthday, but like most kids, I had an innate ability to live squarely in the moment. Donning my best (and only) wizard costume, I stepped out of the house with my dad. The world (and its individually-wrapped sugary goodness) was mine for the taking, and no one could tell me differently. I knew the work it was going to take to fill the empty pillowcase in my hands, but the miles my feet would travel were but a small sacrifice for the glorious momentary rush that would come when I dumped out all of the candy on the floor to see the whole night’s bounty. Not to get ahead of myself; there were many “trick or treats” to be enthusiastically expressed before I could revel in that moment. I considered the options tactically, and eventually decided on the most optimized strategy: skip my immediate neighbors in the court initially. A bold move, you might think. What if you get too tired when you’re the furthest away, decide to head home early, and miss the opportunity for the low hanging fruit (candy) of those who live right beside you? Never get in the way of a girl with a plan; I knew what I was doing.
18
OCTOBER 2021
NORTHERN WILDS
I will never forget when my partner and I moved to Atikokan. There was not a lot of places for rent but luckily for us, we were able to find a little bungalow on Gorrie Street. I had never lived in a small town before and the first thing that stood out to me was how quiet it got in the evenings. But even more unsettling was the feeling that Jon and I were not alone in the drafty two-bedroom house. My partner is one of those have-to-see-it-to-believe-it fellows, and unable to witness what I was sensing, he quickly concluded that my discomfort had nothing to do with a pesky spirit.
But the feeling of being watched by an unknown presence intensified to the point that I took a risk and told my coworker what was happening. “I know this is going to sound crazy. But I swear to you Cathy, that the ghost of an elderly man is in our house. I can’t see him. But I feel him around all the time. And he has the grumpiest of energies.” She listened respectfully but offered no real response, so I just assumed Cathy thought I was losing my mind. But I could not have been more wrong.
Everyone in the neighborhood got my best smile and the sweetest “trick or treat.” Nothing less than the most amiable wizard here. The pillowcase expanded and my little bicep flexed. Rounding the corner of the court at the end of the night, I knew we were in the home stretch, and I dug deep. These people knew me, and they would be happy to see me. In not more than two houses, I knew that my strategy had legs: because it was the end of the night, these adults were furiously trying to ensure the miniature sugar bombs weren’t there to tempt them the next day. Their calories saved were my sweet, sweet victory. The wizard had worked her magic.
The next morning, Cathy excitedly told me that she had shared my story with her spouse. He immediately remembered an old man living and dying in the house that Jon and I were renting. And he had had a reputation for being hostile towards the children in the area. Grateful to have my suspicions confirmed, I could not wait to share this with my partner. Jon would not come right out and say that maybe he may have been a little hasty in dismissing my feelings. But from that moment onwards, when I would encounter something that he could not personally experience, he was far more receptive to my observations. And of course, he too was also right, because I did come to cherish living in Atikokan. As for the ghost, things got much better there too because once I understood that it had been his house first, my fear of him vanished. And from that moment onwards, the ghost never went out of his way to make me feel unwelcome.
