THE QUICK AND THE DEAD AND THE SIX O'CLOCK NEWS
By now you've read the papers and all those New York City magazines, all having a good laugh over Granite Cove. The Great Granite Cove Ghost Hoax is what most of them call it. We're not pleased to be made out a town of cheats and swindlers yet the fact is, we get along right well with our ghosts and hard as things were on us, for them it was a proper horror.
No one in Granite Cove claims to know just what it is that makes our town so homey to the dead and departed. Whatever the reason,Granite Cove has haunts thicker then flies at the fish market, There's so many and mostly so well behaved that unless you've lived here a spell it's hard to tell some from the living and breathing.
Not that there aren't some Roarers among them. Whenever it storms it seems to blow old Captain Ansel Mason up from the sea bed, shouting and banging on doors and generally being a nuisance. Almost as bad is Art Bellow's great-great grandfather Miles Bellows. He'll sit in broad daylight atop Higgins Wall, just grinning and tipping his hat to the Ladies. Then, for no reason at all, he'll take his hat off with his head still inside it. Everybody agrees it a real heart stopper the first time you see it.
Most are like sad old Heinrick Von Kemple, still banging away at his blacksmith's anvil even though his shop burned down with him in it in 1903 and the Granite Cove Rexall sits smack over the ashes. Or Gladys Nunn, died of the Pox back in 1856 and still trying to join in at choir. There hasn't been a hymn sung in church for one hundred fifty three years without her ghost whisper floating all off-key and a full beat behind the congregations. The balance of them glide about silently, fading in and out of the moonlight and minding their own affairs. It's a shame some people don't follow their example.
Ed Warner's a fellow like that. Being editor and owner of the "Granite Cove Spokesman" and head of the Chamber of Commerce besides, I suppose he can't help it. Yet you've never seen such a body for knowing all the township's business and having an opinion about it.
For years Ed has had it in his bonnet to make Granite Cove some fashion of high end tourist town. One of the things Ed's always wanted to do is have a big town festival; sort of like Havingport's Lobster Days I reckon. Only Ed wants to promote our ghosts and advertise the town as the most haunted one in the country.
It's so outlandish a notion that not one of us took him seriously but serious he was.
Anyway, he talked one of the Boston stations into sending a crew. They kind of poked around town, sticking microphones in everybody's face. Mostly we ignored them, except Ed who had them over to the Spokesman for an interview and a look at the paper's files.
That would likely have been the end of it but the Spokesman's office sits smack next to Higgins Wall and Miles Bellows picked that day to materialize on top of it. It would have been nigh impossible for them to miss him and they didn't. Mostly he just cackled but they filmed him all the same and when they were done the lady reporter thanked him. Being a gentleman, Miles tipped his hat.
Now, we've all seem Miles do his trick a hundred times and was so used to him taking off his head that we forgot what an outsider might think of it. That lady reporter let out a scream that must have carried clear to Randolph and last we saw her it was shrieking down the street, high heels clicking sparks and that camera fellow so close behind they looked like a four legged sack race. We laughed until our sides stitched: Miles included.
Shame was, it didn't stay funny very long. We scarse drew our breath back before we was invaded.
CNN was there - FOX too - and the entire alphabet soup of call letters from stations all over the place. They gathered at Higgins Wall and must have shot a million feet of video tape before Miles grew tired of being a celebrity and disappeared with a "pop".
Of course all they got was a lot of pictures of Higgins Wall - ghosts being about the most un-photogenic of critters this life or the other.We figured they would get tired of wasting film and go away but they didn't. It got worse.
Others started to come; scientists and folks claiming to be para-something or others.They were holding seances and camping out in the cemetery. Then the Tourists showed up, some of them from far off as Ohio, come to see the ghosts and darned mad not to be met by a delegation of them!
We made the best of it. Mable Hendricks got triple fare for a hotel room and the menu at Tillie's Grill went up twice in a day. Young Ollie Roberts made a bundle selling tickets to see the haunts until Sheriff Donahue put a stop it it. He and his constables were kept busy filling the town jail with trespassers while Justice Brenner did wonders for the town treasury passing out fines for everything from illegal parking to disturbing the peace. Yet still they came; more every day!
Things got so confused that poor Ansel Mason was banging on doors when there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Heinrick Von Kemple's hammer kept beating faster and faster and you could hear him muttering in German whenever the traffic died off for a spell. The ghosts that did show themselves looked weary, haggard and down right unhappy.
We were in much the same mind. You couldn't get a phone line out or a booth a Tillie's without standing in line. We'd had outsiders right up the gills but, short of driving them out with shotguns, nobody knew what to do.
It was Sarah Pembroke who came up with the best notion. Seems out west somewhere, Utah or some-such, there had been two fellas she'd read about that claimed a Big Foot Monster had slept in their barn. They had footprints and photos to prove it and had made a peck of money before admitting they'd made the whole thing up from plywood cut outs and a monkey suit. The reporters had cleared out in a huff and that was the last of it.
We pointed out there was some difference between a fake Bigfoot Monster and a lot of genuine, weepy ghosts. We tried to get Ed to claim he'd made the whole thing up as a publicity stunt but by then he'd been invited on Larry King and there wasn't a thing to be done with him. So eventually we tacked back to Sarah's idea.
Well, it worked like a charm. Sam Trevor drove off one night and came back with a carton full of Revolutionary War uniforms and some glow in the dark paint. It wasn't hard to get caught parading about in them on the Common and admit right off the whole thing had been Ed's idea. Even those that had seen Miles or the other haunts were right happy to be convinced the whole thing was a hoax. They packed up and left to go say unkind things about us but that was OK.. Calm fell over Granite Cove like a comfortable old blanket.
Ed Warner sold his paper soon after and moved to Havingport. He never did get to go on Larry King and we figure he'll bear us a grudge until his dying day and likely enough beyond.
Yet the Haunts seem to know and be grateful. Sarah found fresh flowers on her nightstand and you can be sure none of us snook in and left them there. It's all peaceful again, Heinrick's hammer ringing measured and musical in the twilight and the ghostly promenades flittering and fading through the Common on starlit evenings. Miles seems a bit put out at no one fainting away at his antics but you can't please everyone.
And that's the way we like it in Granite Cove.