Ghosts I Have Known

COLUMN ONE:

Ghosts I have known

By Paul Greenberg
Sunday, August 17, 2008

LITTLE ROCK — It could have been a scene out of Ghostbusters, only instead of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, it featured Alan Lowe, 55, of Roland, Ark., and his volunteers from Spirit Seekers Paranormal Investigation Research and Intervention Team.

(“Where the Here & the Hereafter Meet,” to quote his business card.)

Instead of wandering around the Biltmore or deep in the bowels of the New York Public Library, these Arkansas ghostbusters were spending most of a dark if not stormy night in the friendly confines of the state Capitol, which must get spooky after the lights go out. Those long, echoing marble halls are a little scary even in broad daylight, especially when you remember some of the legislation being sneaked through. (Remember Pensions for Pals?)

Alan Lowe and his impressive team of eight came fully equipped with video and audio equipment, though not the 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Ambulance, aka Ecto-1, featured in the movie. Or even the particle accelerators that toastedmy favorite character, the huge Stay Puft Marshmallow man. Ummm, he would have been delicious over a campfire complete with, natch, ghost stories.

So what did these intrepid souls from Spirit Seekers Para. Invest. Res. and Interv. Team come across during their eight-hour sojourn in the Capitol one Saturday night?

Voices so faint they couldn’t be heard with the unaided ear.

Floating orbs with comet tails.

Sounds like the psychic remains of some appropriations bills that should have been dead on arrival.

There were no signs of Slimer or the Terror Dogs from the movie, but it’s all pretty suspicious nevertheless. “We’re still reviewing,’’ says Mr. Lowe, Spirit Seeker No. 1, “but there’s something paranormal in there.” And the Legislature’s not even in session.

The great god Gozer of Ghostbusters fame wasn’t encountered during the night; neither was a vision of the late but still formidable Paul Van Dalsem, who could probably have chewed up ol’ Gozer and spat her out in little pieces.

But there were a couple of actual sightings and soundings. A spectral figure, after a grunt or two, identified himself as “Edward,” and another, on being asked if he’d been a state senator, pleaded innocent. “Real lightly and faint in the background,” reports Mr. Lowe, “you can hear ‘No.’ ”

It couldn’t have been Jeff Davis, the Wild Ass of the Ozarks, who never spoke lightly and faintly about anything. Especially the state Capitol. In the early years of the last century, that legendary senator and governor was not at all eager to build a new Capitol in the image of the federal one on the site of the old state penitentiary. (Talk about inviting ghosts!)

If this haint had been ol’ Jeff Davis himself, he might have consented to reciting my favorite, crowd-pleasing routine of that populist Demosthenes:

“The Helena World says that I’m a carrot-haired, red-faced, load-mouthed, strong limbed, ox-driving mountaineer lawyer. That I’m a friend to the fellow that brews 40-rod bug juice back in the mountains. Now, I have a little boy, God bless him, and if I find that boy is a smart boy, I will go and make a preacher out of him. If I find that he’s not so smart, I’m going to make a lawyer out of him, but if I find he has not a bit of sense on this earth, I’m going to make an editor out of him and send him to Little Rock to edit the Arkansas Democrat.”

Here’s one of the many savory ironies of Arkansas’ colorful history: When the tumultuous Davis died in 1913-of a fit of apoplexy, of course - he would be succeeded by a newspaper editor. John Netherland Heiskell of the old Arkansas Gazette, his long-time antagonist, was appointed to succeed him in the U.S. Senate, where Mr. Heiskell enjoyed a distinguished 24-day tenure.

Jeff Davis’ most serious/comical charge against the Gazette was that it was “a Republican sheet.” I told you he had a sense of humor. Although there is a shocking rumor around that the Gazette once supported a Whig for president. Now both Jeff Davis and J. N. Heiskell are buried in Little Rock’s Mt. Holly Cemetery, where Arkansas’ historical elite eventually meet. What a small, wonderful state.

Alive or dead.

Not till Huey Long came along was there a more entertaining demagogue on the rollicking American scene than Arkansas’ own Jeff Davis. Naturally he was careful not to correct any unreconstructed Arkansas voter who confused him with the Jefferson Davis of Confederate fame. As one old boy is supposed to have said of him, “Not only is he a great man, but a mighty long-lived one!”

But any comparison to Louisiana’s irrepressible Kingfish is unfair. Of course Governor/Senator/Drum Major Long would be able to tell more stories about political corruption, being from Louisiana and all.

As for ghosts I have known in my time, I can’t be sure that’s what they were. (The headline on this column was just to get your attention.) They were certainly not frightening.

Anything but. I suspect they weren’t ghosts at all but angels, for the ones I’ve encountered emanated nothing but pure love and care.

I’m thinking of a recurrent vision I used to have of my grandmother peeking in my bedroom door to check on me the way she used to do when I was a child. Then there was that conversation with my long since departed grandfather after I’d had too much of the Sabbath wine and was doing a vigorous hora at a religious retreat. It was as if these ghosts had come to assure me that all was well in this world, and the next.

As an old black man down in Louisiana once told me, “It ain’t the dead folks who’ll hurt you.” He had a point. It’s the living who scare me.

Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at:
pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com

Perspective, Pages 91, 93 on 08/17/2008