Читать книгу Twin Cities Haunted Handbook - Jeff Morris - Страница 6

FOREWORD

A MONSTER LIVES IN MY BEDROOM CLOSET. The closet itself sits slightly ajar on the wall closest to my side of the bed. I use it for storage. Remnants of my past are boxed and stacked within the small space: report cards and photographs from grade school and high school, souvenirs from summer vacations to Civil War battlefields, a photograph of someone I used to know by a fountain that I no longer recognize, a shard of wood from an old amusement park I wrote about in my first book but that no longer exists except in memory, yellowing pages of a short story I wrote in college about a coded treasure map that held a secret I no longer remember, tangible memories of my past that I never look at but know are there.

The monster has yellow eyes. At night, I’ll sometimes awake from some interesting nightmare and look over towards the closet. Since my eyes have not yet become accustomed to the pitch darkness of the room, all I can see are the thin ovals of the monster’s yellowish glowing eyes as it peers out at me.

Some say that fear is biological and measurable. When one is frightened, certain things happen within his or her body. Adrenaline begins to flow. Eyes dilate to take in more light. Hearts beat faster to give muscles more fuel to fight or flee. Other senses are enhanced. One’s body places itself upon the precipice of action. So why are we so often frozen in fear? Why, despite our body preparing us for confrontation, are we so often frozen in inaction.

Fear is often directed towards the unknown. We cannot act against something we do not understand. All I know about my monster is that it lives in the closet and it has yellow eyes. I don’t know the color of its skin. I don’t know the size of its teeth or its claws. All I know is it watches me silently throughout the night with those piercing yellow eyes.

The ultimate unknown is death. Sure, we struggle to escape the maniacal serial killer or the bloodthirsty creatures that may chase us in the night, but what we fear most is what will happen when they catch us. We know that they will kill us. We know that we will die. What we don’t know is where we will be after we die. Will we wander the earth as a spirit, never completely grasping who we are or in what stage of existence we are trapped? Is there a heaven? Is there a hell?

I’ve heard people refer to those of us who go headlong into haunted places looking for evidence of ghosts as brave. They claim that they would be too frightened if they were to ever actually encounter a ghost. They respect the bravery of those who seem to actually want to find a ghost. I would suggest though that instead of bravery, there is also a degree of cowardice that drives me towards these ghosts. As I’ve said, fear seems to follow the unknown. If I were to find these ghosts and ultimately understand them, the mystery around them will dissipate. If ghosts are in fact remnants of people who have died, this will also ease my own fears of death.

The more people looking for these answers, the higher the probability that someone will find them.

This philosophy is constantly in the subconscious part of my brain. Thinking about it now, it seems that this is somewhat an inspiration for the Haunted Handbook series. These books are essentially travel books. They tell you the history and the ghost stories of the haunted locations in the subject city, but perhaps just as importantly, they tell you how to get to the places and how to look for the ghosts there. The more people out there and the more haunted locations they are exploring, the higher the chances are that people will find that key piece of evidence that gives them another clue as to what is really out there. With this knowledge or even the desire to pursue this knowledge, the fear begins to disappear. Fear is replaced with curiosity and thirst for understanding.

Each book in the Haunted Handbook series has at least 100 haunted locations. These locations are all within about an hour of the subject city. This makes it incredibly easy for anyone who lives in these cities or is visiting these cities to look for these ghosts. This makes the locations accessible. Accessibility was always the thing that I felt was lacking in other books on ghosts. These other books had great stories, but the places were hidden or too far away to go visit. Accessibility is important because, although the ghost stories and the histories of these places are fascinating in and of themselves, there are those of us who like to go out and find out for ourselves what’s really out there. We need to see in order to believe.

I know the monster is in my closet because I’ve seen its yellow eyes. My wife hasn’t seen it, so she thinks I’m making it up.

While finding answers to the issues that frighten us is important, it is also important to understand the path we took to get to where we are. History is important. Ghosts and ghost stories are like a piece of history themselves. These ghosts tell the story of what happened in a place. Ghosts tell the story of past mistakes. In almost all instances, ghosts cannot hurt you. They scare you because you don’t fully understand where they came from or what they are.

Working on the books in this series has taught me a lot. I know more about the subject cities and have learned more about Minneapolis and St. Paul than I ever imagined was possible. I know things about the history behind certain locations that some people who have lived near those places all their lives don’t know. Sometimes, this history is hidden in some metaphorical dark recess and only the dead can tell us what once happened there.

Don’t be afraid of the ghosts. They can be scary. They can jump out at you. They can be strange. They can be deformed and creepy. You can hear them sometimes, or see them, or simply feel them.

When I die, I will leave behind a history. I don’t know for sure if I will return as a ghost. If I do, you can learn about me and my past through my own spirit. I promise I will do my best to come back and haunt those of you who would like to be haunted. If I don’t come back as a ghost though, I still have a tangible collection of souvenirs from my past, a tangible collection of history that simply needs to be collected and documented, so it is not lost to the destructiveness of time. That history is in my closet, guarded by a monster with yellow eyes.

HAPPY GHOSTING!

—Jeff Morris