“‘cause it just hasn’t gotten weird enough for me yet”, Hunter Thompson.
The veil must certainly be thin, we’re in between moon phases that are conducive to spiritual encounters, the geomagnetic field is quiet, yet Corda woke up to voices moving at breakneck speed at 5:19 a.m. yesterday. Like Alvin and the chipmunks played at 78 r.p.m. might be a good way to describe the sound. I heard them the night I said goodbye to the Harsens Island Haunted House. We had sold the place and I went to ask the spirits there if there was anything they wanted to say to me, since I wouldn’t be coming back. It was daytime. I had been visiting late at night to take pictures the past few months. I’d leave my job at the club, drive to Sans Souci, enter the house in the dark, go up the stairs, open the attic door and sit down on the bed with my camera and wait to get creeped out. I began praying before I pulled into the driveway. Prayer had been the only weapon I had that worked against the house. When I felt totally creeped out, I’d take a few pix. Now it was broad daylight, I felt the house’ gaze upon me blocks before getting there. Up to my usual spot outside the attic, I sat down and asked, “do you have anything that you want to say to me, I’ve sold the house and won’t be back again.” My ears picked up a faint buzz that sounded like a mosquito near my ear. The buzzing grew louder, like a fly, a bee, a bumble bee, then it was inside my head. I began to pray out loud in earnest. The voices were unrelenting though, louder and louder the buzzing in my head got until I could feel the pressure building inside my head. I began to wonder if there was any chance of doing damage to myself and decided to leave before finding out. I started to bolt for the door but thought better of it and walked calmly to the door, the crescendo still building in my ears. Once in the van I got scared, the pressure and noise was continuing to build, I started my vehicle and put the van in reverse. I couldn’t drive in this condition so I looked around the van to see what had accompanied me from the attic, there was nothing I could see. I eased the van back into park but stopped short of shutting the engine off. After about 5 minutes the ringing began to subside. I left the Harsens Island Haunted House for the last time. That was my experience, Corda was woken up twice with a buzzing in her ears. Later the same day, I was watching Most Haunted Live around midnight when the grandmother clock on the buffet began to chime, the clock read 4:30. I wondered why Corda had wound the clock and not set the time. The clock hasn’t been wound in 5 months. At 1:30 I went to bed. There were sounds all over the house, sounds like someone walking on the roof, creaking from every corner of the house and at 2:30, I was still awake. Corda got up and I said to her “is that you? There sure are a bunch of noises in the house tonight”, “of course it’s me” she replied and as she laid back down the clock began to gong, 10 times it gonged. When we got up this morning it was still working, the pendulum swinging to and fro, the clock, as yet still unwound. We talked about the events during the night and she set the clock, it read 3:30 when we got up, it’s keeping perfect time but the gong has yet to sound since winding the clock. The clock is very old, made in Germany and belonged to Cordas’ mother who got it from her sisters, Cordas' spinster aunts, who probably got it from Cordas’ grandmother.
UPDATE: The clock stopped at 12:23 p.m. 11/02/06 60 hours after it started running by itself. Corda's mother Pauline Jane Wolff died 12/23/96

Robert came down the stairs in a hurry. “ Ma, can I change rooms?” Even I took notice this time, he had asked the same question before. “You’re not wearing that to school,” said ma. “ Dad, can I switch rooms with David?” “ Eat your breakfast, did you get your homework done,” I avoided the question. Dave had sanded mud in the upstairs bedroom at the end of the stairs for weeks. I’m not much of a mudder, there may be those who’d disagree with that but when it comes to muddin’ drywall I suck. It is the largest bedroom in the house with beveled ceilings on 2 sides, a window on the west end, and walk-in closets on either side of the stairway landing. All of it drywall but the window and the built-in dressers on the south side of the room. Dave had asked if he could have that room and I saw it as a way to get out of a ton of sanding. “Sure Dave, you help finish it up and the room is yours”. I never figured he’d actually do it. Both his older brothers made themselves scarcer than hens’ teeth when I was lookin’ for help around the house, but Dave still liked helping dad. To be fair, both his brothers had more years of helping dad. There were always projects going on in and out of the house. And there was the woodstove. A fire belching bottomless pit that had to be fed constantly through the long island winters. All 3 of the boys had to bring in wood twice a day, and they hated it. Can’t really blame them. They do blame me for buying a house with a furnace and a thermostat as soon as they moved out on their own though. The musical chairs/rooms music had stopped again. Terry never complained about his room on the east end of the 2nd floor. Well, he complained about the drafts, but that was the reason for the drywall job. Sealing up all the leaks in the house was a constant. When you live on an island the wind blows like most folk can only imagine. It drove many a pioneer crazy, but that was before cable. Amy wouldn’t sleep in the west end 1st floor bedroom. From the day we brought her home from the hospital, the only way she’d sleep in that room was if we let her fall asleep then put her into her crib. Renegade, our dog wouldn’t go in that room unless we took Amy in, then he’d stay at the side of her crib ‘till she woke and one of us came and got her. “Robert, why do you want to change rooms with David,” I blurted out, my mind lost in the discussions’ planning stages, ready to tell Bobby that Dave had worked his butt off to get that room, and he hadn’t. “All my stuff is folded up under the bed again.” When he said that we all looked up at Robert. He was in his pajamas, trembling.

Roberts’ room. We may as well call it that now. It had been Terrys’ since we had bought the place in the 70's. Terry had moved out and Robert took his room. Robert had been sharing the large room upstairs with David for a few years and wanted his own room. It was about this time that we started to notice strange things happening in the house. It also coincides with the time that the boys began using a Ouija board. The yell up the stairs, “what are you boys doing up there?” was more of a threat of dad coming upstairs than an actual question, but dad should’ve paid attention to the answer. In retrospect, “playing with the Ouija board” seemed an innocuous enough pastime for teenage boys, talk about naive. I learned much later at a reading by world renown psychic medium Gabreael, that the boys had opened a door to a shadowperson, a dark spirit that was drawn to a generational curse the men in my family have endured for, well, generations.
We first noticed the shadow that crossed the kitchen from the couch in the livingroom. We’d be watching t.v., the footsteps coming down the stairs would draw our eyes to the stair landing to see which kid was up this time. As your coming down the stairs there is a door to your right that goes to the back bedroom, a door directly in front of you that goes to the side yard, and to your left is the kitchen. Some nights there would be no kid that would appear peeking into the livingroom to see what was going on, but a shadow that would cross the kitchen and disappear behind the island that held the television, the refrigerator, and a closet that used to be the old front door. Robert began reporting that he heard footsteps coming up the stairway and into his room and that his bedding would be folded neatly and stacked under his bed when he woke up. There were other changes too. Dark changes in my personality and demeanor. I had always had an addictive personality but had been able to keep it in check. I began a spiral descent that nearly ended my life.

When Amys’ toys outgrew her room we moved her to the large room upstairs. She had been sleeping in our room anyway, and Robert had been sleeping in the livingroom. David had not been bothered in the west room on the 2nd floor, he had done a share of the reconditioning work on that room and it seemed that any work done on the house was rewarded by being left alone. Robert started sleeping downstairs after waking up nose to nose with a bearded old man hovering above his bed. Dave wasn’t happy about relinquishing his room upstairs but went along with the move. Dave never spent a single night in the downstairs bedroom known to some of the paranormal investigators that visited the house in Sans Souci as the choking room. For years I had explained away my waking up paralyzed in that room as a problem with my health. Brain tumor, sleep apnea, I really didn’t know what it was but was sure it was me, not the house. I would wake up unable to move or even scream for what seemed to be an eternity. When I could finally muster a muffled whimper Corda would wake up asking what was the matter. I’d be drenched in sweat, terrorized by not being able to move for so long. It felt as though I’d been pinned down by the neck, and at the same time paralyzed. I never saw anything, or heard anything while this was happening to me, but have never been more scared in my life. After we moved Amy from the downstairs bedroom, Renegade refused to go back in the room. When Dave lived in the house, after we had moved downriver to the flatshaus, his dog, a rottweiler also refused to go into either downstairs bedroom and never once went up the stairs. Dave also had a cat that would jump 6 feet into the air for no apparent reason, and the cat would attack the walls downstairs for no known reason on a regular basis.
As Amy grew up she spent more and more time in her bedroom, a lot of it in the closet that backed up to the attic. And she talked and talked all day long. To whom, we didn’t care and didn’t inquire. We were just happy she was such a happy child that kept herself amused most of the time. After Gabreael’s suggestion that I close up the house, Corda told Amy that she(Corda) would take a group of Amy’s friends to the house. Unwillingly I took her friends to the house that had been closed up for half a year. I felt very bad about going but thought I was better equipped to handle the house than Corda was if anything was going top happen. The paranormal investigators that had been at the house were making things much worse, or at least much harder on me. With every new visit something more violent, more physical would happen to the investigators, and the house would give me more grief. Electrical problems were a problem. A problem that always fixed itself. Ominous feelings of dread were extremely strong and Gabreael’s suggestion that I pray while at the house was allowing me to occupy the building for short periods of time. Next. Amy’s Visit to her old bedroom.

1/03/1991

First writing of the new year. Concerning upcoming events; kind of scared, apprehension reigns, war seems eminent. I started watching C-Span, boy is that scarry! We made over 7 1/2% on cash reserve mutual funds in 1990. Stocks are really low. I'd like to switch our modest investment to bonds or stocks but have no faith in "the shrubbery"(George Bush), I've been wanting to call Congressman Bonior since before the holidays, mabey today. It seems I just can't suggest anything without it sounding extreme, e.g. impeaching the shrub.

Laying down now, serial pain, as I like to call serious pain, once it lets up I'm going to do some more winterizing. Plastic on the windows. Dad was right. Christmas he suggested covering the windows on the front of the house with plastic, even though they have storms on them. I did one side and was amazed at the difference.

An idea for a story about the next century. Possible title; Too Many Variables. No right, no wrong, a reason for everything. It's been coming. Due to specialized research, given any idea, one can explain anything anyway they choose, with enough specific research. We shall all be lawyers, soon.

Late note 7/10/1991; Should've put our pennies into Ultra Investors Mutual Fund. 61% for the last fiscal quarter.

Top of this page reads "St. Vincente in the Antilles", must have been dreaming of more temperate climes.

Stories from 1991:

Gary Brusates Eulogy

The sun set around noon today. It wasn't really dark, just dusky, dreary, and damp. They buried Gary in the rain. I don't ever remember going to a funeral when it didn't rain. Does it rain on everyone elses hero's bureals, or just mine?

Gary Brusate was a hero in every sense of the word, and he died a heros' death. His 72 year old father strapped to his back, he waded through the 38 degree water, fighting the waves, the bitter cold, the worst that the lake could throw at them. I wasn't there. No one was there. If there were anyone else there, we'd be burying them today too. But if someone had lived to tell the the story, they'd tell the story of a hero. A man that couldn't leave his father to save himself. His dad would have said, "go Gary, you've got a chance by yourself." We have to guess that this happened, but we don't have to guess Gary's answer. His solution to their life and death struggle involved both men. They'd both make it home tonight The strap that bound them stands as testimony to his selflessness.

To a real American Hero. We salute you Gary.

Note: Gary and his dad were checking on their cottage in Anchor bay. On the boat trip back to Anchor Bay Drive a sudden squal flipped their boat. Gary, a Clay Township police officer was found off the North Channel, his father strapped to his back. His dog was never found.