char *(null)="
electric.mist
electric.mist
From: livengoo@bcvms.bc.edu
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: More Electric Mist
Date: 19 Mar 95 13:05:15 EDT
Okay folks, I'm going to have to confess, I doctored Electric Mist. Yes, it's
true. Please don't cast me out into the ghost-storiless cold, mea culpa
mea culpa maxima. The underlying event did happen and I have seen the culprit,
but added myself for dramatic and narrative fun. I got caught out when some
soul flattered the living daylights out of me by asking to print it, when I
confessed my evil deed. He couldn't print a fictinalized version so I've
rewritten it in the true, real and verifiable form you will find below. If
any of you live in Richmond, Kim Lewis still lives there, on Grove Ave.
although her number is now unlisted. If you meet a small woman with a mop
of curly hair, a great sense of humor and good taste in beer that might
well be her. Give her my best and tell her she owes me a phone call!
That I'll come visit again sometime and we'll climb over the brick walls
and sneak through Richmond's ritziest backyard gardens like we did last time. I
hope you all can find it in your hearts to forgive my fictionalization -it
was easier to write - and will enjoy this version, the true one, cross my heart
and hope to die. It took a little work to figure how to write myself out then
in so I could deliver my punch line, but I think you'll be pleased with the end
result . . . Jyl
MAIL> reply
To: IN%"STRANGEmag@aol.com"
Subj: RE: In the electric mist
Enter your message below. Press CTRL/Z when complete, or CTRL/C to quit:
Let's see what we can do: I do have this little tale from my best friend, to
whom it happened, and have personally witnessed the offending humidifier. If
this goes over well, I'll have to work up my very own, the headbanging ghost
of Richmond, which happened to me, myself, when I lived in the apartment of a
suicide in the Fan.
******************************************************************************
This story of spectral hi-jinks was elicited under influence of superb beer
and good food, and I have myself witnessed the culpable parties. My friend,
Kim, was embarassed to confess to this but a couple lambics have a wonderfully
soothing effect.
Kim Lewis staggered into her apartment about 2:00 am, and found her way to the
lamp by the moonlight cutting through the blinds. The inventory and customer
reports had taken forever, but were done at last and Kim was already
savoring the pleasure of sleeping until noon.
She wandered into her room and fed her pet bunny, and turned on the humidifier
to fight the dry heat of the radiators. Her Richmond apartment's twelve foot
ceilings and hardwood floors were an urban dream, but the radiators DID dry the
air something fierce. Easily dealt with. She changed out of her suit, too
tired to fuss with the clothes the way she usually did, turned off the lights
and crawled into bed.
She never knew what woke her. It might have been the rabbit, it might have
been the wind rattling the trees against the second floor, or traffic's soft
murmur might have changed on the street outside. The faint, green glow of the
clock told her it was 3:00 and that she'd been asleep barely an hour. She sat
up in bed and combed her curly mop out of her eyes - and froze. By her window
a pale, ethereal form shivered in the moonlight that slid past the slats of
the blind. Kim felt the hair rise on her neck and arms as she watched it, a
scream caught in her throat. Marshalling her will, she slowly reached towards
her bedside lamp. The phantom made no move, took on no clearer form, but
merely hovered at the window. Kim switched on her light and let out her breath
to find herself alone in the ivory glow of the light. The only sounds at this
time of night were her pet rustling in its cage, the intermittent rumble of the
rare care and the faint hum of the humidifier. She trembled for a moment then
giggled and turned off the light.
The giggles caught in her throat. The moment dark fell she was no longer alone.
Her spectral visitor was back, suspended in the silvery bars of moonlight. It
was vague, formless, but indisputably there. A misty, white shroud of a form
through which the window sill could faintly be seen. In this city of the Civil
War, in this old, converted building, that form could freeze the blood in
your veins. Kim stared, tranfixed, for an endless time that was probably less
than 5 minutes. Her voice cracked as she finally addressed it, asking what
it came for, what it wanted. No answer came back, only the sounds of her room,
her life, around her. Her courage was faltering as she reached for the lamp
again, and the click of the switch was like thunder. In the light of a hundred
watt bulb everything was restored to the twentieth century, to life, but now
Kim had to know. She gathered her wits and her robe around her and crept to the
window, running her hand through the air where her visitor had hovered. It
came back chill and damp with mist. She shuddered. The jumped as the water in
the humidifer burbled a bubble and erupted in mist again.
By the time she got back back to bed her ribs hurt from laughing so hard and
the humidifier mist in the dark launched her into giggles again, chortling
into her peaceful sleep.
When Kim told me about this I sprayed beer halfway across her room and
dissolved into helpless guffaws on her floor. When I finally recovered she
showed me the haunted humidifier and we watched the phantom shimmer to "life"
in the light of the silvery moon. I don't know if the dead walk in the
electric mist in the South, but I sure know that sometimes the electric
mist walks like the dead!
Jylene Livengood
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