Ghosts

We were on vacation last week, in Florida. In Tampa, to be exact. Along with Disney, we did several other tourist things, which got me thinking about souvenir albums — you know, those old books with construction paper pages and all sorts of postcards and paper glued into them along with hand written notes on what they did and thought… The ones that force you to page through them at the estate sale so long that you have to buy them so you can take them home and really read them. And in doing so you experience the trips taken by persons long gone, to attractions (if not actual places) which may also be long gone… But in those faded pages the spirit(s) still live.

I get goosebumps just thinking about those old scrapbooks.

I wanted the kids to make such scrapbooks, but they had no interest in it. They never really have. Nothing short of forcing them would make it happen, and vacation memories at gun-point isn’t exactly the sort of charm I was going for.

If they wouldn’t do it for me, they certainly had no interest in doing it for some future collector. And that made me a little sad. At first.

I wondered if we just weren’t making vacations good enough — or at least “like they used to,” but then something happened…

In our condo’s packet of stuff to see and do, I found a brochure for Tampa Bay Ghost Tours. Boasting “All The Best Haunts”, I called and made reservations for the whole crew, including the kids (ages 7 through 18), without asking any real questions. I didn’t ask what the tours were, how long it lasted, or anything that (apparently) sane people ask. I just thought we’d all enjoy it and booked a date.

Now perhaps I should preface all of this by saying that the kids are, among many things, into ghosts.

Along with having hysterically historical parents (both in terms of our ages and our love of history), they are themselves imaginative as well as scientific in their approach to such things as ghosts. (Our household not only watches History Detectives & MythBusters, but Ghost Hunters too).

And it should be noted that one of the favorite Disney attractions was the Haunted Mansion. It was such a favorite, my personal souvenir from Disney was the book, The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies; certain to be a favorite for it’s ghost theme as well as (especially by the eldest) its information on theatrical effects. Oh, and we’ve officially got at least one goth kid. :sigh:

So while I may not have known much about the Tampa Bay Ghost Tours, I did — and do — know a lot about our kids. So I felt confident booking the evening walking tour along the boardwalk at John’s Pass, called the Maritime Mysteries & Pirates of the Pass tour.

The tour itself was everything I could have asked for — and so much more.

It was over an hour of ghost stories, told to us against the backdrop of the beautiful boardwalk at sunset. The stories or legends are of real people who lived in or around John’s Pass, documented and researched by Deborah Frethem who has authored Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pinellas County: Tales From a Haunted Peninsula — a book available in the tour’s gift shop.

Books I eventually purchased.

Yes, “books” — because, for reasons I shall soon explain, each of the kids and myself, needed a copy.

You see, the tour was very cool, but what really made the tour so neat was our tour guide, Quartermaster Moe.

A large, physically imposing man dressed as a pirate (but not in an over-the-top way), his deep voice and mesmerizing storytelling had all three of the children, as well as we adults, spellbound. I can’t really say enough about Quartermaster Moe without further embarrassment of my family or the Quartermaster himself, but will say that Tampa Bay Ghost Tours has a goldmine in that pirate.

He so fascinated the children that when we returned to John’s Pass to purchase books the next day (the gift shop being closed by the time the tour ended), that I had an idea… I’d ask if we could get the quartermaster to sign our books. I wasn’t sure if this would be possible that day, but driving there I figured I could shoo the children to grandma for a few minutes and sneak into the gift shop and ask. Even if it meant having the books sent to us via mail, I imagined how happy each child would be… But when we arrived at the shop, who awaited us outside? Quartermaster Moe!

The kids were falling all over themselves at the sight of him when I asked him if he’d mind signing our copies of the book. He was surprised and said he’d never been “honored” with such a request before, but he’d happily do it — and shouldn’t we have photos of that too? At which time one of the other ghost tour guides offered to take a group photo of us all.

Well, long-story-short, he signed all three kids books and my own copy (because the kids wouldn’t have it any other way) and that, my friends, was the high-light of the day if not the trip. Girls clutched the books like they were pirate booty and even the seven year old boy who normally cannot be bothered with books outside of school sat down to read it!

From a collector’s standpoint, Quartermaster Moe’s signature may have no value — but to our family it sure does. In those bits of ink, the spirit of our family and our vacation are collected. Just like those old scrapbooks. Even if it is something a future collector would scratch his head over…

For unless this article makes Quartermaster Moe famous or something, researching that name will be rather difficult.

And that makes me rethink every book I own, ever seen, which has an unknown or seemingly unrelated inscription… Who might that person be/have been and what secrets does it hold?

It wasn’t until later that I noticed the books had also been signed by the author. Then I felt a twinge of guilt. I was marveling at what will likely be “meaningless” or intrinsic personal value of Moe’s signature and oblivious to what is perhaps the autograph with monetary value.

But then I realized (or at least hope) that Frethem would get our family’s love of such quintessence — she, after all, spent a great deal of time researching and writing about similarly powerful but oft unseen mysteries: ghosts.

Her collection of ghosts, or at least their stories, is a preservation of more than History with a capital ‘H’, but the specters of the past which are as incoherent yet potent as any other memory. And collecting them has value.

Last night, as if in a hazy dream, a spirit visited me in my chambers — it did not appear malevolent, despite its parachute pants, mullet, and wide lapels. This curious shade hovered around the end of my bed, waiting for my terror to subside, before identifying itself.

“Derek!” it exclaimed with a deep, wavering voice only belonging to the most tortured of the undead, “I come to you to show you the errors of your ways! I Am The Ghost Of The Future Of Christmas Presents Past!”

“Wait,” I said, “aren’t you going a little fast? There’s supposed to be a fat guy, and then a grim-reaper-thing –”

“NO!” the ghost bellowed, glowing flames rising from its aura and the faint tones of Roxette playing in the distance. “I am not here to show you the errors of your whole life — I’m to show you how the presents you had been given in your youth would have been worth more, if not for your reckless ways!”

“Oh,” I replied.

“…and there’s not enough ghosts to go around for everyone, so we do triple-shifts. Christmas is a busy time of year, what with everyone taking vacation…”

I nodded understandingly. Suddenly, the room fell away, leaving me floating in space, as my life flew by, in reverse, until we stopped at Christmas, 1978. We hovered close to the ceiling, as young me unwrapped a large box. Beneath the wrapping paper and cardboard was a giant robot named Raydeen, a toy I had made a big fuss about in Dayton’s a few weeks before. Here he was, in all his 2′ tall glory — one of my favorite toys of the day.

“Your beloved toy — whatever happened to it?” the spirit asked.

“I still have it — it’s really beat up. The fist broke pretty quickly, and I chewed on the rubber point on the shield, and I don’t think it has any more stickers…”

“Do you realize what it would be worth today, if you had not wrecked it?”

“Well, it was the 3rd generation Mattel, without the epaulets, so it’s not as uncommon, but with the box…”

“TELL ME!” the shade demanded.

“Probably around a hundred, hundred-fifty?”

The trailer house we lived in began to swirl and glow, slowly replacing with my grandparent’s basement — Christmas 1980. I’m sitting on the couch, watching little red dots bounce around on a small screen. Little beeps and electronic squeals emitted from the black plastic housing.
“Oh, man, I forgot about that — it’s hockey! Two people could play it, but my brother was a little young still. ”

The ghost gave me a serious look, and asked, “And what happened to that game? Tell me.”

An embarrassed look overtook my face. “Well, a few years later I got a soldering gun, and…”

“AND WHAT?” His preternatural voice boomed.

“Well, I took it all apart — all the LEDs, the switches, I pulled everything off its motherboard, and put them in a box. I think I threw them all away when I moved out.”

“And what of the other handheld video games — all quite collectible — that you owned at the time?”

“Um….well, I took most of those apart, too. Well, Microvision never worked right…the one we got was broken in the packaging, and we couldn’t return it for some reason. I think Mom still has it. ”

“If you still had them,” the ghost said with a chastizing tone, “just THINK of the collection you’d have today!”

The world fell away beneath us again, moving to our house on third street, Christmas 1983. Semi-transparent bue and green action figures were strewn about the floor, as I fiddled with a flimsy blue transparent thing.

“Crystar! Damn, that was a trippy toy!” I exclaimed.

“Just look at all of this — it’s the entire line.” The ghost said.

“I know, I think it was all marked down to nothing at K-Mart before Christmas, to get rid of it — nobody wanted it — and mom bought one of everything. Oh, that castle! It was made out of the same stuff blister-packaging is, so it broke pretty quickly.”

“But you had the entire line?” the ghost demanded.

“I think so — everything that they show on collector’s websites, I had…a couple versions of, I think.”

“And what happened to them?”

“I think I still have some of them in a box, somewhere, but like the castle they got beat up pretty quickly — is that all you’re here for, foul demon, to chastise me for playing with my toys?”

“I’m here to show you the error of your ways!” he shrieked, rattling his chains menacingly. “Those toys would cost you thousands to replace today, when you had them in your grasp once upon a time!”

“Did you ever have kids, cursed spirit?”

“Um….well, I was pretty busy at the antique mall, and…”

“– wait, you’re a dealer? I get it — this is your curse! You get to spend eternity watching kids wreck and ruin these collectibles, so you try and convince parents like me to teach my kids to leave things in the box?”

“Well, would that be so bad?”

I looked at the ghost incredulously.

“At least have them save the packaging — it doubles the value! And keep the Hot Wheels out of the sandbox, nothing good comes of that.”

“Accursed spirit of estate sales and auctions, if you understand one thing, remember this: If it weren’t for the thousands of kids that beat the living snot out of their toys, the few remaining ones wouldn’t be worth so much money. Kids can be taught about collecting, but forcing them to keep their toys in collectible condition is far more cruel than the curse you bear.”

“FAIR ENOUGH,” the spirit bellowed. “I understand that you do not recognize the errors of your ways — and for this, I place a curse on you. ”

“What? Why?! What kind of curse?!?”

“Er…well….OK, I can’t really curse you, but I promise, every time you see a Raydeen go for hundreds on eBay, you’ll feel a little twinge of remorse.”

“Probably so, but I can’t regret the fun I had.”

The world began to swirl and twist, and suddenly I was back in my bed-chambers. I lept from bed and tossed open the sash, to see a small child outside on the walk, marvelling at a mint, unopened McFarlane’s Twisted Christmas action figure.
“You there, child — what day is it?”

“Why, sir, it’s Christmas day!”

“Then open that toy, and play with it — that’s what Christmas is all about!”

“But….but the seconday market value!”

“Child, worry about that when you’re a grownup — today, that evil Santa needs to be free from his blister packaging!”