Author and Columnist
Here is what I know of the Mansion. It has more than a few myths and legends associated with it, not all of which I believe.
The thing with myths and legends is that they are not always lies, but the truth can be trickier to pin down on its edges.
I more or less think that there is a tiny bit of truth in all of the stories that might eventually blossom into a full-blown fact. But here I present what I have heard and witnessed.
The myths are paranormal at their core. I am more willing to criticize your relationships with the young women than I am to the spookiness you introduce into your life. You are more capable of approaching objectivity with the latter. Though I have made a career milking knowledge of the supernatural, you remain more skeptical of hidden worlds than that you act justly in your interactions.
I attended the first meeting with Jen (whom I was highly crushing on)
I am trying to understand why. I don't want to disparage the girl now, more than two decades later, but I do have to ask. She was not the prettiest girl to end up pantless on your bed. She was not the one fondest of you, going so far as to withhold the possibility that she might love you six months into the relationship. She was not the easiest, though you would insist this was not a metric you considered. (You don't per se, but you regard a lack of interest in kissing and fondling as rejection, something you cannot handle.)
Jen was sexually compatible with you. I cannot contest that, but I likewise can't place why. Her kisses felt better than most girls you had made out with beneath bleachers or on a mattress in the middle of her parents' rundown apartment (that one was weird).
You tried to date her for a few days when you were in tenth grade. She declined to date you further via circling a tiny "no" on a note you passed her in first-period chemistry. Still, in those few days, you became her first kiss.
You decided to date again in October, helped by her giving you a few hickeys before you were to see your actual girlfriend.
So, why Jen? Why not one of the other girls who always floated in your periphery, those kinder, sweeter, more exciting, and more clever? I would not struggle to name some, but you would have scoffed at the idea.
We began working there every weekend. It became the obsession of Jen, Nick, and me to the extent that we referred to school as the period between the Mansion. Jen and I both acquired significant others during the Mansion, I Coley and she a mental midget who we will call RKO.
Jen said one of the reasons she never pursued you is that you always seemed to have a girlfriend. You retorted that you had girlfriends because she wouldn't date you. That minimizes the women you dated, with whom you shared kisses that had nothing to do with her.
I envy the excitement you felt at belonging to the Mansion. I cannot think of another situation where you felt you belonged as much as you did there. You were a teenager and did not know how to love moderately, even places and experiences.
RKO was having sex with one of your mutual male friends for the brief duration of his relationship with Jen -- indeed before and after -- while insisting it did not count since he was not gay. We can discount the degree to which he minded Jen dumping him. She also dated a sleazy guy at the Mansion. I cannot fit that into the timeframe of your infidelity.
About halfway into the Mansion, she and I realized how severely we burned for one another, though we were not together. We blamed the Mansion for exciting our passions.
I remember the exact moment.
You were on the school bus going to Dutchess Community College for a filming of Scholastic Match-Up, an interscholastic game show recorded for the benefit of DCC's Communications department. I cannot guarantee it appeared anywhere else, though possibly some local public access.
You were sitting beside one another. You were not thinking about anything romantic or sexual with Jen. To your knowledge, it had never occurred to her to see you that way.
Then she did. Then the air between you turned solid. I do not know that either of you said anything to provoke it. You jokingly took out pictures of your actual partners, but you knew the trouble.
When did you kiss after this? When you returned to the Mansion and were confined to some room together for hours. Maybe before.
Jen and I were working a moving set, and thus were hidden and free to roam between scenes. Her boyfriend RKO was off in another room, so Jen and I were kissing against a wall.
I faintly regret that I laughed at this and deleted where I called you horrible. You could not keep your hands off each other, and the spice of cheating so baldly only made you want it more. (I doubt you would have done this if it had been Coley rather than RKO. You liked her far better than she liked RKO.)
Incidentally, I have told this story in interviews, touching on the cheating but only to substantiate the ghost's context.
There I saw a small girl dressed all in white.
Half of me thinks the ghost was an illusion of the low light and fake smoke. The rest is willing to allow that it was all too vivid to have been a mistake of perception.
I whispered to this girl, whom I did not recognize, that she should not be here as a group was about to stumble upon this hallway. She cocked her head to one side, curious. I grabbed for her shoulder to push her into a hidden alcove so she wouldn't be discovered. My hand went through her and she faded away. It was like putting my hand through cool, statically charged cotton.
We have covered your inclination to exaggerate. That never extended to anything that brushed against the strange. So many years later, I tell this story this exact way.
The ghost was not some slavering ghoulie. It did not say anything cryptic. You felt no fear. It only cocked its head and melted away.
Whenever you encounter an anomalous experience, you are always as factual as possible. You will cheerfully speculate about what other people say. Your own encounters are as grounded in details as you can make them.
I told her that I had seen the ghost. She regaled me with a story of how years ago, she and the owner of the Mansion were locking everything up at the end of the night. No one could have been in the Mansion, save them. Suddenly they heard laughing that turned to screaming. All of the sliding panels of the hallway there were in opened up and the screaming got louder. She screamed, "We aren't scared of you!" All of the panels shut and the screaming stopped.
You regard this as an entertaining story, but it didn't happen to you, so it did not connect to your ghost. You could not verify whether Jill was doing anything other than playing with you.
Jen, Nick, and I were lying on one another. Suddenly a picture flew off the mantel. The metal frame landed feet from my head. The glass fell straight down and broke into three pieces. The frame and picture were leaning against the wall. No one was near it and the guards quickly came and removed the glass.
And what is this really? In a plywood structure, something fell. You tease this as spooky, but I doubt you believe it and would not mention it in exclusion.
One story went that a little girl, whom we shall call Anna for the ease of telling (the first year I worked there, the focal point of the activity was in a scene called Anna's Room), got lost in the dense forest and froze to death on the old foundations. When the Mansion moved one hundred feet over, she moved with it. There could be truth to this, it doesn't sound outside the realm of probability, though I have yet to unearth any facts.
There is nothing to verify. You checked. It is a ghost story and nothing more.
When they returned to put some finishing touches on the now dry paint, they were greeted with what appeared to be an open, empty casket surrounded by gravestones on the black wall.
We are a pattern-recognizing species; even that much may not have been true. Pareidolia is a hell of a thing.
we got very lost
One of the best things to ever happen to you -- and this is not an exaggeration -- is the widespread deployment of personal GPS in cars. Being lost terrifies you in a way not commensurate with its threat. Shortly after Emily leaves, you use your new GPS for the first time to get to sympathetic former classmates. It is as though your world at once opened.
We were carrying our bags in when I said something about entering at their behest. She retorted, "Well, it behooves us... Bees with hooves?! Good Heavens! They'll trample the roses!!!!" This was my secret joy all weekend.
It has been decades, and I still think of this line when I use the word.
The Rabbi spoke about Moses, and explained that God gave him term limits and Moses left when his term was up, alluding to Giuliani.
I regret to inform you of the degree to which Guiliani does not quietly bow out of the public eye, but I mildly delight at how beyond farce he will become.