Have you heard the one where I went on a three-minute date with a time-traveling princess from the Old West?
Brittan makes for a good story.
She arrived forty years too early.
My coffee was still hot, as was she.
Her hand-carved ivory cameo brooch winked and whistled at me.
I was delighted.
This beauty, though, was less than thrilled.
She expected a much younger man.
I was already child-like with my gray hairs and white whiskers.
Our minds tried to meld, but my hands could not grasp the reality she was offering.
In the blink of an eye, she vanished, and I became older than my many years.
I wish she’d left my dog behind.
Loneliness does not suit me in any world, off-or-on.

They were surprised to see me.

Between them sat a large, old-fashioned ribbon microphone. I could not see what it was connected to.

The duo opened their mouths, and as one, they spoke. A deep guttural voice came from their throats as spittle gathered at the corners of their mouths, “You have made it this far.”

“But I’ll have to go no farther,” I returned.

“I’ll burn this house down to kill you!” they screamed.

“No you won’t,” I said. “Besides, we’re not finished with you yet.”

“We?” they demanded.

Picking up and speaking into the microphone, I answered, “Patience.”

“You can’t tell us to be patient!” they shouted.

I ignored them, pushing the heavy red velvet curtain aside, revealing a spiral staircase that I followed upward to a small, unadorned door at a recessed landing.

When I opened the door, I stepped into the parking lot. And as I walked up the hill, I heard their screams and Patience’s laughter as she set about her chores.

“Now, to figure out what to do about this head,” I said, though there was no one I was talking to.

Later, I would realize that I had forgotten to take even one photograph or a single note.

The head was on the third step down from the landing leading to the basement museum.

The plaster dust and wreckage in the narrow stairwell were undisturbed. There was no blood or gore around the severed head and no sign of a body.

Still, I stepped toward it with caution. The stairs quivered slightly beneath my foot.

When I reached the head, I lifted my foot to step over it, and a dry chuckle caused me to pause.

“Turn me over,” came a muffled command.

With the toe of my boot, I did so. I found myself looking into a desiccated, older version of myself.

“How do I look?” the head asked me.

“Dead,” I told him.

The head coughed and laughed at the same time, “Did you think you could ever end up like this?”

“You’re not me,” I replied

“But I am,” the head grinned. “Will you take me with you?”

“Nope,” I answered.

The head glared at me, “Why not?”

Without a word, I stepped over him, as the head swore at me in a cheerful tone, and continued to do so for as long as I could hear him.

He stopped me along Six-mile Canyon to pass on a bit of news.

Bill had been born and raised in Virginia City and, when he was old enough, he had joined the Navy and left town about as quick as he could. When he was thirteen, he had the misfortune of watching a drunken miner kill his saloon-keeping father.

Eventually, Bill returned, and he settled down, but not in VC. He had taken up residence in Dayton, but he did find occasion to come into VC now and again.

I was looking for a news story when Bill pulled up beside me, his wife and their children with him.

“Jus’ the man I want to see,” he said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Passed by St. Mary a few minutes ago,” Bill said. “The doors are open, and it looks like they’ve been open all night.”

“The priest?” I asked.

“No sign of him,” Bill said. “I took a quick look inside, and the place is pretty busted up.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” I said.

Bill tipped his hat and drove off.

I capped my camera lens, felt for my pen and pad before driving towards the historic old church.

My Cousin Elmo says, “My life is entering a new chapter too bad the pages are stuck together.”

My Cousin Elmo says, “I think we’re normalized enough. It’s time we start paranormalizing.”

My Cousin Elmo says, “There isn’t much difference between having a lot of patience and not giving a shit.”

Her mother drowned in the lake while saving her. For that, the six-year-old suffered both verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her father.

Daily, he shouted and cursed her, calling her a witch. In the evening, while drinking, he beat her with his hairbrush.

By the time she was ten, Sally believed that she deserved the beatings because she was a witch. Soon she began to dabble in the black arts, trying to learn any spell that might keep her from being harmed any further.

Time and time again, she tried one curse or another. Nothing seemed to stop her father from abusing her.

One morning, as Sally lit the candles she’d place on the points of the upside-down star, hidden beneath her bedroom rug, she hit on an idea. She could reuse the melted wax to create a doll of her father.

Throughout the day, she collected, heated, and molded the wax into the shape of a man. Then she found his hairbrush and pulled as many hairs from it as she could.

That evening she cut and sewed scraps of his old clothing into pants and a shirt. Once dressed and with hair in place, Sally knew she had the perfect doll for the next step in her plan.

The following day her father, hungover from the previous night, came down the hall to see her curled on the couch in front of the fireplace, holding the newly created doll. At the sight of this, he grabbed the figurine and dashed it into the flames.

She laughed wildly at his screams of pain, and his body both burned and began to melt.

“And you did it to yourself,” Sally smiled as the blaze became an inferno.

Without spilling names, I had two incidents involving the spirit world and one involving the Holy Spirit. I’ll discuss them in order of occurrence.

While seated in a Virginia City, Nev., bar, I saw a man in what I believed to be a black trench coat on the far side of the saloon. The next thing I know, this man was next to me, leaning his face into mine as if he were trying to intimidate me.

When I looked towards him, he was not there, and then I knew he was a spirit and not corporale. I also realized that it was malevolent.

Three times this entity rushed me. I could feel it press me as if it wanted to fight.

All three times, I told it to leave me alone in the “Name of Jesus Christ.”

Since I would not be intimidated, it scratched the right side of my neck.

The second incident happened at the same saloon a few minutes after my initial run-in with this thing. While talking to one of the bar owners, his tumbler glass moved half an inch across the bar without being touched.

“Did you see?” he asked.

“I sure did,” I answered as I examined the glass to see if it had moisture beneath it.

It was completely dry where the glass sat. Further, it had moved towards the open doorway, the only draft available.

About 10 minutes later, the same thing happened. Only this time, the glass moved farther, and it spun in a counter-clockwise direction.

We decided it was time to find something else to do; he had a bar to run. I needed photos and quotes about the Hot August Night automobile event filling C Street.

Later, after the sun had dipped behind Mt. Davidson, I was seated on an outdoor bench chatting with friends, including a couple I had never met before. He did not talk very much, but she had plenty to say.

“I don’t know why, but I’m supposed to tell you this,” she started, “but don’t quit.”

Stunned, I looked at her and asked, “Quit what?”

“Don’t quit writing,” she returned.

Confession time — due to frustrations throughout July, I had thought of resigning from the paper and permanently archiving my blog. But after what she said to me, I have since reconsidered.

Standing at my office window, I could do little but watch as the situation moved from bad to worse. By the time I grabbed my first-out bag and made it to the scene in front of my house, it was nearly over.

He had fallen on his back when I rushed from the room. By the time I made the front door, the woman was facedown in the road.

Their little dog was happily running in circles. The big dog was running after the little dog.

All this began when the Rottweiler slipped his collar and leash. He had run back to the couple with the small dog to say ‘hello’ to the dog.

His size belies his gentle nature, and the couple mistook his running towards them as aggression. I know this dog, his name is Rosco and he’s a sweetheart.

The man stepped in front of Rosco and got knocked down for his trouble. The woman then tried to stave off the ‘attacking dog,’ and tripped over her own dog’s leash, falling.

She was bleeding heavily from a finger on her left hand. Stitches needed.

Neither she nor her husband wanted to take the time for me to bandage her up. Instead, they hustled off down the road.

So I went over to help the woman get the collar back on Rosco. She was shaking and crying, mumbling about getting rid of the dog.

“I’ll take him,” I said as she hurried away without a word.

That was two days ago. This morning I saw Rosco’s human again sans the dog, and I had to ask what had become of him.

“Oh, he’s at home,” she smiled. “I was jus’ angry and embarrassed when I said that. I didn’t mean it.”

“Good,” I said.

“And thank you for helping and offering to rehome Rosco,” the woman added. “You’re a good neighbor.”