A Spirited Entry in Packrat

Happy Halloween Eve!

Appropriately for the season, it’s gray and raining out. A chill is in the air. Atop my printer is a ghost changing colors, and another haunts me from my desk, next to my keyboard. Still another ghost, wearing a bow on its head, hovers at my filing cabinet. And finally is yet another ghost standing guard on top of my refrigerator, one who came back with me when I went to Savannah - “Savannah” is etched across its chest, but then, for all I know, Savannah is its name.

A black cat with a jack o’ lantern torso and the top of the pumpkin on its head sits on my computer tower with other black cats. More black cats crouch on my desk top. A tiny dragon takes up residence on the tower while a bigger dragon sits in front of it.

The two ghosts first mentioned are new; all others stay here year round. Ghosts are forever, I say. The dragons are images of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon but cat-related: Toothless has mannerisms like my doctor cat. The pride lounging on my desk are there because they look like the pride lounging in my house; one in particular is the image of the “Bastet cat”, an Egyptian goddess, the goddess of joy and the protector of women. I named one of my cats Bastet for her.

The Halloween cat is a gift from the Dolphin Girl.

No bonfire, no campfire, no roasting marshmallows, but the clouds hang dark and low, the wind is chilly, and the moon is in its full moon phase.

Story time!

But not scary - it’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m inside with my heater on under bright lights.

Oh, well.

Actually, these are incidents from the tribal offices rather than stories, but true.

Witnesses who were in the government building saw the ghost of a little girl in pioneer dress on several occasions. She disappears when seen. When we as a people were first moved here an Indian agent watched over our affairs. He was an agent working for the federal government. When we arrived here in 1869, an agency town grew up around us. One year an epidemic took the lives of several children, so a pioneer girl’s ghost is possible.

Joining her are other children who can be heard laughing and playing in our community building when it’s empty or around the social services building where I worked. Our editor heard them there when our offices were in that building. One day he had just come in when someone who had been there a bit earlier asked him what the ruckus was on our side of the building, and he had to answer that the building but for her had been empty before he got there.

In the same building another employee saw a woman in tribal dress who wasn’t there an instant later, and she heard her name called from my side of the building when those of us there heard nothing.

My cousin on security said there are lights on our pow wow grounds that security knows not to check out.

In our clinic is a female spirit who turns on lights after hours and whose presence is known by her perfume.

One late night after an after hours meeting, when the doors had been locked up, an employee saw a little boy looking out the doors.

One chief died during his term in office; the office he used can never get warm, and one night a janitor opened the door, flicked on the lights, and saw him sitting there!

The casino started here in one of our oldest buildings; at 2 a.m or 3 a.m after the casino shut down for the night the surveillance cameras caught the image of a woman in the building.

In the same building people used to hear crashing noises when there was nothing to cause those noises.

The office intercom picked up moans from someone’s office - when that office was locked and empty because the person who used it was out for the day.

Security heard moans come from another office after hours.

Back in the days of typewriters, one could be heard after hours when almost everyone was gone.

Chill out, y’all!