Like shallowly turned soil in a field...

October 23, 2016 12:48 PM

We Salted Nannie. A small tale of ghosts and spirits both real and semi-real, and what lies buried in the past.
posted by 1f2frfbf (20 comments total)

There was some talk of a cracked heat exchanger, but nothing was done until the old outside unit stopped working altogether in early summer.

The original fireplace mantles, probably sold off, were replaced with fairly plain and badly constructed substitutes.

I wonder if they ever checked carbon monoxide levels in the house.
posted by zamboni at 1:22 PM on October 23, 2016 [13 favorites]

And I'm wondering if they had it checked for mold. Whatever the case may be, this is a great October story!
posted by limeonaire at 1:30 PM on October 23, 2016

This is fairly local to me (the author is a member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers) and a friend of mine dug up the real estate listing--it's currently for sale for over 600,000 dollars! I wonder if they had to disclose the ghosts!

(I also thought this story was SUPER creepy!)
posted by leesh at 2:07 PM on October 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Ohhh, does the listing have any pictures, because that would totally make my Chilly Autumn Sunday!

Also: for what it's worth I have Opinions on spirits and ghosts having once lived in a cold dark house with Unexplaned Things. But you'll have to buy me a cold beer in a warm and snug bar on a blustery cold night to hear those tales...
posted by 1f2frfbf at 2:25 PM on October 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Not a bad little story. As a skeptic, I'd love to experience a ghost, because I'm sure that some little blob of energy playing pranks on me would be less terrifying than the idea of rotting in the ground after you die. I'm not holding my breath on that, though.

Spirits or no, it does sound like that house (and really that whole area) played host to many awful events throughout American history.
posted by codacorolla at 2:35 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I want to on some level to but do not in practice care for this genre of Reddit-inflected psuedojournalistic podcast horror. I appreciate genre- and register-bending, but the tone makes no sense. Like, the author and his family might really be so ghost-woke as to encounter—in addition to the anticipated ambulatory mists and shadows—half the cast of Dead Colonial Williamsburg, some kind of bow-legged betentacled shimmying ooglie-booglie, and Slenderman's disembodied Spinster Aunt, and respond with little more than mild alarm, but the blasé telling doesn't do much to cultivate dread in a narrative sense, nor does it make the events described seem any more plausible.

To that point, this Cultural Approprition-ween season and every day, it remains gross to dig up and drag out legacies and specific instances of genocidal violence for no other reason than to give a mediocre ghost story some "local flavour" and the cheap veneer of historical authenticity. The tongue-in-cheek, "It can’t help […] that it stands, quite literally, on Indian burial ground" doesn't justify reanimating the racist cliché, nor do the botched attempts at sensitive language ("the aboriginals…"), nor do any meaningful glances shared by the author's wife and the apparitional-buckskin-warrior-turned-handsome-stag.

I thought the point of supernatural horror was to unnerve by upending (however briefly) our understanding of how things are supposed to be? I think there's so much potential in a kind of Post-Colonial Gothic, both in a literary and political sense, to engage with and renegotiate painful histories and entrenched power dynamics. Instead we get white authors summoning the ghosts of brutalized Brown people to perpetually re-perform their own victimization. It's not scary, it's just sad, and a comfort to those who perceive that as the natural order of things.

And seriously tf with the gratuitous "rape house" vignette? Introduce a woman's account of sexual assault because it "[makes] a terrible kind of emotional sense," but be sure to qualify, "We didn’t know if the Rape House story was true". Bleagh! Humbug!
posted by wreckingball at 3:18 PM on October 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

half the cast of Dead Colonial Williamsburg

If Colonial Williamsburg doesn't do some kind of halloween season event with all their regular cast members done in zombie or undead makeup, they're truly missing a marketing opportunity.
posted by hippybear at 3:24 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ohhh, does the listing have any pictures, because that would totally make my Chilly Autumn Sunday!

Honestly, it just looked like a nice/fancy house! Good lighting does a lot?
posted by leesh at 6:08 PM on October 23, 2016

Haha Tom Maxwell oh man. He's kind of a trip to work with, so I hear from reliable sources.

I liked this story till I read wreckingball's critique, and now I don't know. Maybe it's trying to be not-racist but fails?

I never know how much disbelief to suspend in ghost stories, because I don't believe at all in any of that stuff so it's all equally implausible, so yeah, the people in the story act weird, well maybe they would?

So I tend to judge them more on artistic effect/themes. It was a little rough, but I liked the oogie boogies and the less-explainable ghosts. The deer guy might have been overkill, but again: ghost story. Deer guys, sure, why not.
posted by emjaybee at 6:31 PM on October 23, 2016

The fact that this author wrote "Hell," a song I will dearly love forever, makes a great deal of sense now.

I enjoyed the depth of his research, but now I see that it comes across as making the story about him and his white family's suffering and insight, which is not good. It's a locus of actual horrors; it shouldn't have to involve anyone's wokeness.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:12 PM on October 23, 2016

Yeah guys remember your hallucinations and spiritual encounters should always be progressive-approved. If you are having low grade carbon monoxide poisoning or experiencing a spiritual event just remember that #ghostlivesmatter at all times.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 7:54 PM on October 23, 2016 [8 favorites]

I find it hard to believe a girl would not tell her friends about a ghost. Or that they wouldn't already know. I grew up in an area with lots of really, really old houses and superstitious adults and I was a girl at the time and if there was even a whiff of a ghost story we were SO THERE. We went down the haunted mine at night for gods sake. Girls may like ponies and boy bands and crap but girls love the occult.

I'm not saying he made the whole thing up for an article but I'm just saying I found that detail went a bit too far into the unbelievable....................
posted by fshgrl at 8:57 PM on October 23, 2016

Instead we get white authors summoning the ghosts of brutalized Brown people to perpetually re-perform their own victimization. It's not scary, it's just sad, and a comfort to those who perceive that as the natural order of things.

I always thought the persistence of this trope was due to its tapping into a repressed knowledge of the original sin of colonial forbears and the sense that, therefore, we may very well have it coming haunt-wise.

I do find this particular story a little confused about what it's trying to say.
posted by atoxyl at 12:40 AM on October 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

.. the blasé telling doesn't do much to cultivate dread in a narrative sense, nor does it make the events described seem any more plausible... no other reason than to give a mediocre ghost story some "local flavour" and the cheap veneer of historical authenticity

.. comes across as making the story about him and his white family's suffering and insight

..detail went a bit too far into the unbelievable

.. a little confused about what it's trying to say

On second look, yes, it is confusing! I'm going to assume that it's not meant to be believed at all as a "real" ghost story. The author may or not have succeeded, but I think the supernatural stuff is supposed to be a long metaphor for remembering all the wrongs of history that culminate in a big leaky house of a modern society.

So...the question remains about whether the story is successful. Some of it did seem gratuitous, but from a point of view that the ghosts were the central characters. Now I might have to read it again to decide.
posted by TreeRooster at 6:55 AM on October 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I assume most of it is explained by imagination plus lying, but as remarked above, to the extent the author believes his story (who can say) it's probably because of this:

"Although we kept the thermostat at 55 degrees, our February gas bill was still over $700. There was some talk of a cracked heat exchanger, but nothing was done until the old outside unit stopped working altogether in early summer."

Duh, they had a leak. Which means combustible gas, sure, but obviously they also had a carbon monoxide problem. Which would not only explain the hallucinations, but the seemingly lethargic reaction to them.

I mean if a huge tentacly goblin-type monster appeared to me in my home, in an apparent attempt to scare the shit out of me, I 100% guarantee you it would succeed. I would run 300 miles up the highway in my underwear before I stopped screaming, and I most certainly would not be still lounging around the house smoking and commenting "oh, it's probably just a tentacly goblin monster of some kind" in a tone of low-level ennui.

Also, stuff like this:

We began feeding scraps of vegetables and fruit to The Deer People, who looked more miserable than us. At first, Brooke would put the food on the ground and leave. But the deer, generationally used to humans, were not afraid. Soon the animals were eating the food in her presence.

really doesn't make sense. Deer People? He may have mentioned deer people earlier, but I didn't catch it. It's only later that this is elucidated when someone sees a guy in buckskin pants running behind a tree and reappearing in the form of a deer. I know it's supposed to be a nonlinear narrative, but it was exceptionally difficult to follow; nonlinearity is not supposed to be an excuse for not having a coherent story. Things like the gratuitous inclusion of the rape anecdote are no help, and I found that part rather offensive not only for the obvious reasons but because that part, just like the rest of the story, was told in the tone of someone leaning against a bedroom doorframe while dangling a cigarette between their fingers.

It's like... IDK, someone with a factitious disorder recounting the most harrowing experiences in a jolly-hockey-sticks tone. It's dissonant. Combined with the possibility that at least some of this really did come from carbon monoxide poisoning and is written as if some of the impairment lingers on. Even if we're not meant to believe any part of it and are just meant to say "cool story, bro" the vagueosity is a dealbreaker for me.
posted by tel3path at 9:51 AM on October 24, 2016

I had low level carbon monoxide poisoning from a blocked heater vent in a crappy old house, that later became severe enough to give me massive stomach cramps and a near miss, where after baking cookies in a muffin tin (I was that disoriented), I nearly passed out on my bed, but somehow fought my way out of it and went to work, only to come home and find the carbon monoxide alarm blaring . Before the level was severe enough to set off my alarm, I was horribly groggy and out of it for an entire winter, and I often, while half awake in bed, had the distinct feeling that someone was standing in the hallway outside the bedroom. But I definitely did not have that level of hallucination.

I'm generally a skeptic, but have known enough people who have sworn they've seen ghosts to wonder if it is possible. I almost want to believe this story...the weirder ghosts with the distorted appearances were so delightfully odd. But the Indian burial ground trope? And the dismissive aside about maybe his friend's friend not actually telling the truth about a rape left a bad taste in my mouth. Was this 'true ghost story' supposed to be believed? It read like a badly misunderstood vacation to the Ye Olde Southe.

As an aside, after my carbon monoxide poisoning experience, I learned that most detectors only go off when the carbon monoxide level is reaching a very dangerous height. But the low level amount over time was pretty hellish. It's worth investing in a more sensitive carbon monoxide detector.
posted by branravenraven at 12:22 PM on October 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Re: Carbon monoxide poisoning. If it were so drafty that heat leaked out (and ground was visible between floorboards), how could carbon monoxide build up enough to cause damage? And if it were carbon-monoxide-based hallucinations, how would they all three see the same thing, all year long? They saw them often enough to give them nicknames!
posted by jhope71 at 12:49 PM on October 24, 2016

jhope71, I find that theory suspect, too. What they supposedly saw is so specific and also a shared experience, which seems unlikely to be carbon monoxide poisoning.
posted by branravenraven at 1:16 PM on October 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

tel3path, there was a passing comment earlier in the article that they called the deer that congregated in the fields around the house "the Deer People". So yeah, he was just talking about deer at that point.
posted by arha at 1:52 PM on October 24, 2016

So I think the key to what's happening in the story is it's not really a ghost story as such. The author's mention of tulpas: spiritual beings created by the human mind. Also, it's worth noting that while lots of dire things are mentioned in the area, nobody actually was murdered in the house. So in the story, you have a place of bad spiritual miasma, into which a bunch of modern, sensitive white people wander. Thus the phenomena have such a varied and modern appearance- they're things the people have conjured up. On the other hand, they seem to seal a single something in the house. Hmm.

That was in story. Out of story, I think the appropriation and building on of cliches is intentional, and is saying something about ghost stories and the culture of the US. Ghost stories are inherently appropriative of the past- they take historical tragedy, real and imagined, and make it into entertainment by revealing it to unwitting people in the present. The same thing happens in real life- the modern US is built upon centuries of exploitation and cruelty, which we deliberately remain largely ignorant of, or turn into entertainment (it's no minor side-note that the house was moved to become a steak restaurant). Sure the idea of a house being built on an Indian graveyard is a cliche- but they ARE all over the place. Hell, my friend was digging in his yard not to long ago and unearthed a Native American skeleton.

I think that's why there is such a flat emotional level in the modern times. We take history and remove the horror- why shouldn't the same things happen to a modern family experiencing horror?
posted by happyroach at 8:42 PM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]