Thursday, November 01, 2007
The Ghosts of Halloweens Past
Belgrade Lakes, Me.
THE house in which I grew up was haunted by a cloud of cold mist, a mysterious woman in white, and an entity we called “the conductor,” since he walked around wearing a mourning coat and carrying a baton in one hand.
For the most part, these spirits manifested themselves in what I suppose is the usual manner: as mysterious footsteps in the attic, as doors that opened and closed by themselves, and as clouds of sentient fog.
The house, in Devon, Pa., was creepy, to be certain. Still, it wasn’t exactly the Amityville Horror. As a teenager in the 1970s, I found my house’s ghosts mostly a social embarrassment. It was humiliating to have to explain to my friends spending the night in the Haunted Room: “Now don’t worry if you see a blob come out of that closet. Usually it will go away if you whistle Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. If that doesn’t work, try the Ninth.”
Our house was known as the Coffin House, built by one Lemuel Coffin in the 19th century. It was a three-story Victorian eyesore that at one point had had a pointed tower on the front, although this had been removed in 1944. One of my neighbors explained that this was because someone had been killed up there.
“Who?” I asked. “Who got killed?”
“Nobody,” he said, and shrugged. “Just some kid.”
•
The most discouraging of our specters was the woman I called Mrs. Freeze. She appeared, occasionally, in the mirror of a third-floor lavatory. This was known as the Monkey Bathroom because the family who’d lived in the Coffin House before us, the Hunts, had kept a monkey in there.
The monkey’s name was Jesus.
One night, coming home late from a friend’s house, I looked into the mirror and saw her standing behind me. Mrs. Freeze was a middle-aged woman in a white nightgown. Her eyes were small red stars. Cold mist rose from her hair and shoulders.
I turned around, but of course there was no one there.
I probably saw her about a half-dozen times in high school, usually a day or two before some calamity befell the family — my father’s diagnosis of cancer; a sibling’s unfortunate wedding. Once she materialized on the night before an overflowing toilet on the second floor flooded the whole house as we slept. In the morning, there was a river rushing down the stairs; all the downstairs ceilings bent, and then collapsed, beneath the weight of water.
My parents went to considerable expense to renovate the house. The old wallpaper was steamed off and replaced, the floors sanded and stained, the walls repainted. By the time I went off to college, the whole place had begun to seem considerably less creepy, a process that coincided with our family’s migration from working to middle class.
As the years went by, I began to wonder, as I looked back on my adolescence, if I’d imagined the whole thing, if the house’s haunting was something I’d invented out of perversity, or boredom, or sheer loneliness.
•
I went back to the Coffin House last year with someone whom I can only haplessly describe as a paranormal investigator. The woman, a cheerful, round Philadelphian named Shelly, was associated with an organization called Batty About Ghosts. When I asked her to check out the house, she’d said she’d be glad to. “Actually,” said Shelly, without a hint of sarcasm, “this is my dead season.”
Shelly came through the front door and stood there for a moment holding her hand over her heart. “Holy cow,” she said. “There’s a lot of activity here.”
We busted ghosts for an hour or two, with mixed results, until we arrived in my parents’ old room. My father had died in that room on Easter Sunday 1986, from malignant melanoma. The Ninth Symphony had been on the radio that morning. Two days before, on Good Friday, he’d told me that the conductor had come into his room. The conductor wanted my father to go away with him, and conduct his orchestra.
“But I couldn’t go,” my father said. “Because I did not know the music.”
Shelly raised a pair of copper divining rods, which immediately began to spin around wildly, like the blades of a helicopter. “Is there anybody there?” she asked, but I could already sense my father’s shy, gentle presence.
“It’s my father,” I told Shelly.
“Talk to him,” she said. “Talk to him just like you used to.”
This was more difficult than it sounded, since I’m transgendered, and had morphed, since my father’s death, from the entity known as James to the current one, known as Jennifer.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, and felt the tears coming to my eyes. I felt as if he’d never truly known me, that only now, as I approached age 50, was my father seeing me for the first time. What I wanted to say was, I’m sorry, Dad, if I’ve been a disappointment to you.
But then, incredibly, I felt his hand on the side of my face, and heard the sound of his voice. There, there, he said. That’s enough of that.
•
A few months later I talked to the four Hunt children, all grown up now, who’d lived in the house before me. One of the boys, Al, who’s grown up to become a well-known journalist, said he’d never detected the presence of anything disembodied in the house. “That was totally off my radar, Jenny,” he said.
His siblings Bill and Babby hadn’t seen any ghosts either, although Babby did provide me with further information on the life of Jesus. Apparently the monkey that lived in the bathroom was allowed out one day a year, on his birthday.
I wanted to ask her, “What day was Jesus’ birthday?” But then I realized I already knew the answer.
Christmas.
As for the youngest Hunt sibling, St. George, he said he’d seen plenty of spirits on the third floor, near the Haunted Room. One time, one of them managed to convince him to jump out the window. He’d gotten one leg out the frame before his father arrived on the scene and asked him what he thought he was doing. St. George didn’t have an answer.
Would he spend a night in the house alone, now, I asked? Not for a million dollars, he said. Not for any price.
•
My mother still lives there, all these years later. She’s never seen anything untoward in the house; for her it’s a museum of bright moments, the place where she and her husband raised their children and lived good lives. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, either, which might be one reason she’s never seen them.
Last summer, late one night while I was visiting her, I went into the Monkey Bathroom to get ready for bed. It had been a long day, and I was filled with the usual rush of melancholy and nostalgia that always accompanies a visit to my boyhood home.
And then, as I looked into the mirror, I saw Mrs. Freeze, just as in days of old, a middle-aged woman in a white nightgown. For a moment I felt my skin crawl, wondering what disaster was now imminent.
But then it occurred to me that I was seeing my own reflection. After all this time, I was only haunting myself.
I realized then the thing that the stranger might have been trying to tell me, for all these years. Don’t worry, Jenny. It’s only me.
Classroom spotlight: "Gender and the Stage"
MCGS 315 or THEA 315, taught by Katie Whitlock
By Ashley Marshall
10/31/07What makes this class unique?
The class discusses how society views gender through their roles on stage, such as through Shakespeare characters. Students will also learn about the evolution of women's roles as they have changed throughout time and the role of drag kings and queens.
How does this class integrate both men and women?
This class isn't just for women. Men can join the conversation by first asking themselves, "Why do we know you're a man?" It will give them the opportunity to learn that we don't have to portray only masculine or feminine characteristics, and this class will help them do that comfortably.
What can students expect to take away from this class?
A stronger understanding of how gender is performed. They will also learn to accept the different roles that men and women play, whether they are transgender characters or not.
What activities will students be able to participate in through this class?
Students are required to attend many performances including Ballet Trackadero, an all male ballet cast, in order to learn how to view gender differently. Films portraying various gender roles are also shown frequently to students.
Is acting required?
Students are not required to act in the class. They may act if they feel comfortable enough in order to help the class better understand the role of gender through performance.
Something Fishy Going On With Pittsburgh's Fish?
In his study, Dr. Conrad Dan Volz, from the University of Pittsburgh 's Cancer Institute Center for Environmental Oncology, found it was difficult to identify the gender of 70 percent to 80 percent of the fish they caught in the rivers.
"The problem is we're developing intersex fish - they really don't have a gender - but they have properties of both genders," Volz said.
He blames it on chemicals that mimic estrogen, or pharmaceutical estrogens, which are discharged into our rivers after women urinate.
"We're talking about women who use birth control pills called EE2- and we're also talking about a large number of women who are on hormone replacement therapy," Volz explained.
So if it affects the fish, could it affect our drinking water?
"I'm not suggesting people quit drinking their tap water. Generally Pittsburgh tap water is very high quality," he said.
But Volz says there might be a link between ingesting a lot of estrogen and some cancers, so he wonders about the future.
"I think it is a potential public health concern on the horizon," he said.
Volz says sewage treatment plants do a great job but they still don't get all estrogen out and they're not required to test for it.
It's not a problem in just Pittsburgh 's rivers – it's been found all over the world.
There's already an advisory against eating catfish caught in the Monongahela and Ohio rivers and a limit to what you eat from the Allegheny River.
The Struggles of Homeless Trans Youth
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| Jen Rude, a youth outreach professional with The Night Ministry, at a recent youth street outreach event in Lakeview. _______________ Homeless LGBT youth face increased difficulties compared to their heterosexual counterparts both on the streets and within the shelter system, according to a study the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force report, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness,” which was released in January 2007. According to the report, LGBT homeless youth are more vulnerable to mental health issues, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior and victimization. The report states, “A study of homeless youth in Canada found that those who identify as LGBT were three times as likely to participate in survival sex than their heterosexual peers,” and The National Runaway Switchboard reported, “LGBT homeless youth are seven times more likely than their heterosexual peers to be victims of crime.” Shelter systems do not ease many of these risks for LGBT teens. “The majority of existing shelters and other care systems are not providing safe and effective services to LGBT homeless youth,” the report states. For trans youth the barriers increase. “Transgender youth are disproportionately represented in the homeless population. More generally, some reports indicate that one in five transgender individuals need or are at risk of needing homeless shelter assistance. However, most shelters are segregated by birth sex, regardless of the individuals gender identity, and homeless transgender youth are even ostracized by some agencies that serve their LGB peers,” according to the document. Trans youth experience and fear violence, harassment and discrimination within the shelters and, for many, staying in a shelter can be less safe than spending the night on the street. Over the past few years, individuals working with homeless youth in Chicago note several positive changes for LGB teens, as more shelters work to understand the complex issues facing these youth; however, trans youth are still experiencing disturbing difficulties. . . . |
A first: Transgender turns TV host
SHE WALKED into the hall with the grace of a film star, apologising for the delay. But Rose, even before the opening of her first TV show, is already a star. She will be the first transgender to host a show on Indian television.
The 28-year-old from Chennai will be hosting Ippadikku Rose (Yours, Rose), a weekly programme, from December. The show on Star Vijay, a popular Tamil channel, will discuss social issues that are taboo - like her misunderstood sexuality. An engineering graduate with two Masters degrees from a US university, Rose was born a boy. "I used my male identity to complete my education and only three years ago I announced 'my coming out' as a transgender," she told a crowded press meet on Thursday.
Articulate in English and Tamil, Rose hopes her show will convey the correct picture about transgenders, most of whom have been forced into begging or becoming sex workers by a society that shuns or ridicules them. "Even today there is a misapprehension that trangenders are born with deformed genitals. We are like normal human beings except that we are females trapped in male bodies or vice-versa," said Rose.
Most films or TV programmes only depict trransgenders as objects of ridicule and cheap humour. "If my emerging as the first transgender star helps my community to change this image, I'll be happy." Rose's family, who rejected her when she "came out", have now accepted her, grudgingly.
Rose is a web designer and is associated with the "NGO industry" on issues like HIV/AIDS and transgenders. "Since we will not have families, all I need is food, clothes and decent place to sleep."
Dr Jaya Shreedhar, a popular writer on HIV/AIDS, said: "I am certain Rose will be a fabulous TV personality who will bring a greater openness to sexuality in our society." Pradeep Milroy Peter, programme head of Star Vijay, said an institute that trains social workers introduced Rose to the channel. "As soon as Rose got talking about what she wanted to do, we knew we had a new star. True, the novelty of the programming is a transgender hosting it, but the focus will be to bring into the open issues hushed up by society."
