MONDAY, 27 MARCH, 2000, PHILADELPHIA

Pinch and I are both expatriots of New Orleans and have been indulging our nostalgia shamelessly via email for a while. When talking about New Orleans, the subject of hauntings and other spooky shit is inevitable. I was going to tell her this story, but then thought perhaps I should write it up properly and post it here as it’s mildly interesting. On the corner of Toulouse and Royal in the French Quarter there’s an art gallery which has since closed — or at least changed ownership. And I’m not surprised that the old gallery shut down. The building is plagued by a most annoying ghosty. I was excited to be there. It was my first job in N.O. Accounting. That’s the closest I could find to a “technical” job at the time, this being Louisiana. I even had a computer! A 286 with an amber monochrome monitor running the latest in high-fashion software like Lotus-1-2-3! Woo! The accounting office was the top storey of the house behind the gallery. It was populated solely by myself and Kevin, who seemed an affable, if not somewhat closested queen. We had our own smoking balcony up so high we could see the “Natchez” riverboat on the mighty Miss in one direction, and see (and hear) the street performers on Royal in the other. There was a little touristy gift shop across the street that had a bubble machine in its doorway, and all day long bubbles would be flying about the windows, and inside our office if the wind was right. Très Lawrence Welk. There was a little window in the attic of the next house that you could see if you leaned over the railing of the Smoking Balcony. (The little window on the left in the picture.) It had a deeply recessed sill and the window opened by hinges at the bottom, cracking the top a bit for air circulation through the neighbour’s attic. Obviously, this comes into play later. Kevin told me on my first day that the accounting attic, as it was referred to, was inhabited by a ghost. I politely nodded and rolled my eyes when he turned away. People are so quick to say things are haunted — ‘specially in the Quarter which exudes a dark sense of history and scandal and wrongful deaths. But still, c’mon guys. Chalk it up to your imagination and let me know when you’ve landed back on earth. I guess things started with the coffee maker. Every morning, the coffee maker would have somehow come unplugged. And I would jam the prongs back in the socket (for it was not in any wise a loose connection) and assume that Kevin unplugged it. Until one night I was the last to leave, locked up, then was the first to arrive in the morning and found the coffee maker unplugged again. “Why are you unplugging the coffee pot, Kevin?” “I’m not.” Hmm. Okay. Whatever. Then things spread throughout the other electronics and appliances. February was cold that year and we had our space heater running constantly, the room being draughty. One time Kevin and I left the office for a meeting in the gallery and came back to find the space heater switched off, the air conditioner on full, and the room a freezing cave, obviously. “What the hell did you do?” Kevin asked me since I was the last to leave the room. “Er, uh, nothing!” I said, switched off the A/C, turned on the heater, then went to get more coffee and found it unplugged again. This went on and on. Whenever Kevin and I were both out of the room, anything vaguely electrical would get fucked with. In the spring when it starts to get unbearably hot, we would find the space heater going full blast when we left the room. I even once found a few characters typed into my beautiful amber monochrome monitor. “jf;” or something like that. We didn’t really talk about it, but we were both curious to see what we would find in the morning when we got to work. Then one day I needed to see someone in the gallery. I left the accounting attic, went down the winding stairs, and through a storage room packed full of the paintings that weren’t currently on display. Damn fine paintings, too. Original Picasso’s, Miró’s, other high-ticket art from that era. Our little electrical ghosty was the last thing on my mind as I walked through the storage room — then stopped. I felt something — I really don’t want to get too dramatic about this; I attribute a lot of weird shit to my hyperactive imagination — but I thought I felt something … slither past me. Something cold and wet and slimey. And I fuckin’ freaked. Darted out of the storage room into the showing area and just at that moment, the entire ceiling of the storage room came crashing down, main beam in splinters, ubiquitous electrical wires buzzing and crackling and dancing about, hanging down like live intestines. Oh, sorry, I said I wasn’t going to get dramatic about this. But puh-leeze! How can I understate an entire room collapsing on my head? “FUCKIN’ STOP IT!” I yelled into the storage room. People came running up from the downstairs gallery to see what the crash was. I, somewhat dazed, went back up to the accounting attic, plugged the coffee maker back in and told Kevin, “the damn ghost just tried to kill me.” “WHAT?!” “The ceiling of the storage room is no more.” Kevin darted downstairs to survey the damage. Strangely (and, quite honestly, it’s a miracle) not one of the multitudinous paintings was harmed in any way short of plaster dust and debris, though the floor was gouged where the mainbeam fell. So I sat in the accounting attic, alone. And I thought, well, what the hell — and started talking to the room. “I come in peace. Take me to your leader. I wish you no harm. Na-nu na-nu.” Whatever. Bullshit like that. Nice stuff, but annoyed stuff. I felt really lame, so I stopped soon The jist was, I am not fucking with you; you do not fuck with me. The next day at work, I was out on the balcony. I leaned over to look at the exceptionally gorgeous spiderweb that had been spun the day before in the small opening at the top of the neighbour’s attic window. The spiderweb was still there intact, but there, on the ledge, three storeys up from the street and recessed a foot or two from the façade of the building, was a “bouquet” of sorts of dead flowers, tied with a very faded and tattered ribbon. I just stared and blinked, wondering how on earth such a thing could get there. If the window were opened, the spiderweb would have broken. Besides, the hinges were at the bottom of the window and the window opened by falling out and down. I went inside. I went back outside. They were still there. I called to Kevin, “I think we have a little apology prezzie or something.” This freaked Kevin out more than the ceiling thing I think. We got a broom and leaned over the balcony to retrieve the little bunch of dead flowers. We hung the flowers on the wall of the accounting attic, and from that day until I left that job, there was not a single instance of further electrical mischief or major structural damage. The coffee maker stayed plugged in, the climate control settings made sense, and the ceiling stayed above the floor.