Storymania - The Cold Afterglow At The West End by David Soriano

The Cold Afterglow At The West End
David Soriano

I live in McKean, Pennsylvania - an old oil town- and teach at the local college. Over the last ten years, I have come to really enjoy my walks through the adjoining cemetery with my family. The new addition to the group- our ten-month old Bernese Mountain Dog- is currently enjoying the sights, smells, sounds of her first spring. The cemetery- we will call it "Birchwood"- was originally run by a local church , but was taken over by a private organization back in the early thirties. As much as cemeteries can be, it is a beauty. It is situated in a park-like setting with oaks, hickories, beech, birch, etc. Over the years, I have observed deer, fox, beavers, raccoons tc. going about their daily routines. There is a small stream nearly bisecting the layout , in half , which empties into a pond - the home of ducks and geese for much of the year. Some of the most beautiful sunsets can be seen from this location, particularly in the early winter- ice-blue skies, at dusk, with the barren oaks and hickories exhibiting ominous, black silhouettes in the foreground. I am fascinated by the large igneous boulder , in the burial grounds, which
Has a crack in the middle with a tree growing out if it! The boulder, my geology colleague tells me, was carried, ions ago, to this , its own resting site, by the last
great ice-age. You see rock formations, patterns like this at Gettysburg, but to
a much grander and more picturesque level.
     To gain convenient entrance to the west -side of the cemetery, the neighborhood people usually walk through a hollowed -out entrance which exists between some majestic pines. The owners of the adjoining property don't mind and it allows all of us to avoid the busy main entrance to the locale. What intrigues me most of all, however, about the place is the intense cold spot that seems to perpetually hang about this particular entrance- this is the main theme of my tale, and I will return to it in a few minutes.
   There is a mausoleum, the only one in the cemetery, located at the northern end in a rather desolate , heavily- wooded section. The local "yokels" have perpetuated a tale of ghostly haunting at the "St. Mark's" site which has been around for fifty years. What possible identity could a cemetery have without a ghostly legend or two? I have never seen anything strange around the site myself, but I can personally testify to rather heavy traffic around the shrine. Many of the people that I have observed around the mausoleum are not known to me, but I swear that some of them are up to some kind of "ghost-busting" activity- the kind Ray Parker, jr. described to you in the song. This kind of "ghost-busting" deals with a certain white powder that comes in a bag. Just last night, for example, we saw a young blonde lady come out of the woods and head straight for her late- model car without acknowledging us- very strange in that it had just rained heavily and she was also quite alone. About fifteen minutes later, a pick-up truck pulls in and a fellow gets out and goes behind the mausoleum. After a minute , or two, he gets back in the truck and drives away. I'll make it a point to check out the dates of interment tonight- maybe they were just paying their respects on a certain anniversary , but I doubt it.
    Now let me take you to the main point of this story- the cold spot around the entrance.I can't claim to have any particular psychic abilities, but I have always sensed that there was something not right about the spot. My wife , also, has always pointed out the cold spots which can occur, perhaps, 75% of the time. It can be a night in mid-July, in the nineties, but the cold spot will be there. It does seem to move around a little bit, but give-or-take 20 feet in any direction, it is right around the location. Just drive up W. Lincoln St., one block past the duck-pond, turn right and drive up about six houses. Look to the right and you will see the hollowed -out entrance. Once past the trees, look for the arrangement of rocks in a semi-circle. You can't miss it! About two years ago, I noticed the arrangement of rocks under a pile of leaves and a few seasons of accumulated pine needles. After removal of the brush, I noticed the simple bronze plaque: "Janet: had only lived to her twenty-seventh year . I also noted that she was buried in isolation at this west side of the cemetery. I instinctively knew that something was wrong here. For a person to be buried , in isolation, near the perimeter meant that there was a social disgrace of some kind. A half century ago, for example, Roman Catholic suicide victims could not be buried in hallowed ground. You will find their remains frequently buried on the outer side of the cemetery wall. I did an internet search on the cemetery history/ records and, sure enough, found that Janet had died a suicide. A call to the cemetery association confirmed that a coroner's report indicated that she had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in August, 1946. A local library search of the obituary record for that date revealed little else about her situation. I did notice, however, that she was buried rather quickly and no surviving family members were reported in the account. It pays to be a freemason ( I am a Master Mason) in a small town. I was able to gather some background on Janet from an elderly widow of a Mason. The lady, in her nineties, is very sharp and enjoys detailed conversation ( several people have since corroborated Tess's testimony about Janet). It seems Janet arrived in McKean, which at one time had more millionaires than any other town in America, in mid-June, 1945. The war in Europe was over and Japan was on its last legs. She was able to procure a position as a maid for a local oil baron without any difficulty at all. What was unusual was the fact that Janet had been a very successful and talented grammar- school teacher for the last three years in Philadelphia. Her references were checked and were found to be glowing and impeccable. Why would she want to become a maid , with her educational background, in a small town , far from Philadelphia? This was most unusual for the times. In our era, we read and know about highly successful people, "in the fast lane", walking away from it all and obtaining low-paying, but emotionally satisfying jobs in many small towns across our country. They, of course, are just tired of the "rat-race" and all that goes with it. In any event, Janet was quite intelligent, refined and was, as mentioned earlier, in her late twenties. A medium height individual with raven-colored hair, charcoal eyes and very pale skin. She proved to be a shy, withdrawn person who did not enjoy speaking with her employers about her private life and past experiences. Shw was skilled in playing the piano, and seemed to lean toward Mozart compostions. She read and spoke French fluently and spent most of her free time reading. You could gain insight into her intellectual level of existence by learning that her favorite author was Aldous Huxley and her favorite work "Crome Yellow" by the same author. She proved to be an uncommon , reliable and trustworthy employee for the family. The oil-baron, by the way, was at one time, one of the wealthiest men in the country. He actually made his fortune in the oil-well supply industry and built a three -million dollar mansion in town at the turn of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the mansion burned to the ground in the late nineteen-eighties.
  Janet also was an accomplished cook. Filling in for the family cook, on occasion, she was able to prepare meals that would attract the attention of French cuisine writers- seemingly with very little effort. She kept to herself for most of the year that she spent in McKean. She claimed that she was never married and, although approached by several eligible young men, rebuked their polite overtures . In August , 1946 the young life came to an end. She was found in the woods, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. The place that she chose to end her life was not fifty feet from the mausoleum that I described to you earlier. There was no particular reason for the suicide and she exhibited none of the signs of depression as known at the time. She was not known to use any alcohol or other drugs and there was no indication of moral depravity or related instabilities. She left behind no note of rationale for her final act and there did not seem to be any significance to the particular site chosen for her death- or was there? One of the people buried in the four -person mausoleum was a local high school principal and well-respected person in the community. He was buried there twelve years before she arrived in town. The question then becomes: was there some tragic occurrence in her life involving another teacher? Was she being controlled by someone in Philadelphia that was in education. The occupation of principal , one of control and authority, may have had sub-conscious symbolism in her thoughts .
   In any event, the local "yokels" claim that they see, on occasion, a blue flame near the mausoleum and the fleeting outline of a female ghostly image. Regardless of this conjecture, however, I do know that the cold-spot never seems to move away from the general locale of Janet's final resting place. May you find peace, Jan.