Finding My Badass Self

by Sherry Stanfa-Stanley

  Following our horrific winter, Toledo skipped spring entirely. May slipped straight into the hot hells of summer. After taking roughly nine steps, in ninety-degree temps, I feared the humidity might suffocate me. I recalled all those months of my bitching and moaning about the cold and snow. I had probably exceeded my quota of weather complaints. So I sucked it up and pushed on.

  I succeeded to cover three miles that day, but in reality I ran less than one. I managed the other two at a pace no faster than the mud-covered turtle I encountered that day along the park trail. Gosh, this little guy was cute! I paused for ten minutes to take photos of my new reptilian friend, telling myself the break was due to an irresistible Kodak moment.

  Who was I kidding? I needed those ten minutes to catch my breath. The turtle knew this, too. By the way he seemed to sneer at me, I was pretty sure he was a mock turtle.

  When race day rolled around, I woke up after a sleepless night, panicked. I had a two-fer 52/52 Project day planned. Not only was I running in the 5K that morning, I was also slated to take part in a ghost hunt that night. I found myself worried about being unable to run far enough at the first event and fast enough—to escape from spooks—at the second.

  The race starting line was on a blocked-off street bordering the Toledo Zoo. As I took my place toward the back of a sea of hundreds of other participants, I surveyed my competition. It wasn’t difficult to discern most of the hard-core racers from the more recreational runners and casual walkers. I was relieved to observe several people older than me and some in equally questionable physical shape. A number of families with young children were also on hand. I assumed most of them had selected the non-timed walking option. I, however, had elected to be a true race contender.

  I might not be the first to pass the finish line, nor even the 200th. But given the number of seniors and small children, I wouldn’t be the last! Assuming, of course, that I actually finished.

  I never heard the proverbial shotgun start, but I knew the race had begun as soon as the mob in front of me began to push forward. I moved ahead with the crowd.

  Son #2, who recently completed his first full marathon, had advised me that pacing was imperative. I started off at a slow jog and figured I’d pick up speed at a quarter mile. Unfortunately, quarter-mile points along the course weren’t marked. I tried to gauge the distance, and after a few blocks, I guessed it was time to kick it up.

  I ran for five minutes before being forced to put on the brakes. Holy hell! Mama needs a new pair of lungs!

  But I had promised myself I’d run, at least at a Sherry-style pace, for the first mile. No walking allowed until I passed that one-mile marker. Then, I’d alternate between running and power walking.

  I became obsessed with spying that first mile marker sign. It should be just ahead. Or only a few feet more. Or right around that next corner.

  “Hey,” I shouted to the runner next to me. “Shouldn’t we have hit the one-mile mark by now?”

  “No, I’ve run this course before,” he yelled back as he passed me. “We’re only around the half-mile point.”

  I sighed and forced a sprint: of sorts. The sooner I reached that target, the sooner I could give my lungs, and my legs, a reprieve.

  Spotting the one-mile mark sign didn’t prove necessary, since I heard the curbside crowd cheering as we approached. I was surprised how much that encouragement from strangers at each mile-marker boosted my spirit and my adrenalin.

  Wheezing, I slowed to a near stop and walked the next block. After I caught my breath, I fell back into my usual routine—power-walking a couple blocks and then running a few more.

  While not timing myself, I felt pleased with my progress and my pace. Until a woman with a stroller approached from behind me. I smiled down at the baby and then glanced up at the woman: She was at least ten years older than me, presumably out for a brisk walk with her grandchild.

  She grinned at me and shouted, “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh, gorgeous,” I yelled back, panting between syllables.

  “Enjoy yourself,” she chirped, not sounding breathless in the least. She raced past me. I mumbled something about “freaks of nature,” but she didn’t catch that. She and the stroller were already three yards ahead.

  After the two-mile mark, everything began to blur. I huffed and I puffed, and my right knee taunted me. “What-cha think,” it seemed to hiss, “shall I drop us right here?”

  Just as I began to wonder if I’d need to walk the rest, the course wound into the zoo grounds. The final leg! As I passed by the monkey exhibit, I spied a banner ahead of me. This was it! The end was in sight!

  I picked up speed, running far faster than I ever anticipated my lungs and legs were capable. As I reached the banner, I collapsed and nearly wept with relief and joy.

  Someone shouted my name, and I turned to see my neighbor, Lynn, who happened to be manning this race station. In between my hyperventilating, I smiled up at her, anticipating her words of congratulations. I was mistaken.

  “No, don’t stop now, Sherry! Keep going,” she yelled. “This isn’t the finish line!”

  Apparently, the banner I’d just passed under was merely some late-race advertisement by a sponsor. The end was not in sight after all. Race planners are sadistic creatures.

  I have no idea how much farther I ran before I reached the real finish line. Fifty yards? A half mile? That final leg seemed to last days.

  All I know is I managed to make it to the end. And when I did, when I sprinted underneath that last course banner, an amazing feeling overcame me. Maybe those elusive endorphins somehow kicked in, or maybe I was just relieved the trauma had ended.

  As I bent over, managing to remain semi-upright and breathing, I felt my greatest sense of self-accomplishment ever. Yes, I did have to walk portions of the course, but I had run nearly two miles of it. That was two miles more than I ran, cumulatively, in the entire two decades preceding The 52/52 Project.

  When results were posted online that afternoon, I discovered I finished in forty-seven minutes, forty-nine seconds. In my category (women aged fifty to fifty-four), I placed thirty-seventh out of thirty-nine. Sure, I received no accolades for this. But if they had awarded a medal for the participant most out-of-shape and most ill-prepared, that gold would be mine.

  Finishing the race was really all I had hoped for. As pleased as I was with that accomplishment, it was more of a shocker to those who knew me so well.

  “You actually ran?” questioned Son #1. “Honestly, I can only picture you kind of hobbling.”

  Nice vote of confidence, beloved fruit of my loins.

  I hobbled the next two days.

  Chapter 49:

  I DO BELIEVE IN SPOOKS

  A half-dozen celebrity ghost hunters, more than a hundred amateur aficionados, and one paranormal virgin enter a haunted prison.

  Oh, you’re waiting for the punch line? Nope, no joke here, just one weird and eerie experience.

  Lots of folks love a good ghost story. Me? Not so much. Having an aversion to even the fictional forms (see my previous horror movie marathon chapter), I harbored an even bigger fear of ghosts that might actually exist.

  As with most mysterious phenomena—aliens, Bigfoot, the Tooth Fairy—I wasn’t certain if ghosts were real. If they were, would a ghostly encounter prove to be like a Casper cartoon or more like The Conjuring? With no way to know, I found it best to avoid ghosts rather than to seek them out.

  This, of course, obligated me to add ghost hunting to my year of fear.

  I wouldn’t be attempting this expedition solo. Since my goal was not only to seek out ghostly apparitions but also to learn about them, a structured event appeared the way to lose my paranormal virginity. My friend, Marion, joined me on a ghost hunting tour at the former Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. This old prison, which had been closed for about two decades, was the creepy filming location for The Shawshank Redemption. It was notorious worldwide for its spooks.

/>   As we entered the city of Mansfield, our GPS led us into the expansive reformatory grounds. We rounded a corner and passed a “restricted” sign.

  Marion frowned. “Wait, the sign says this area is restricted. I don’t think we’re allowed to be here.”

  “Nah, we’re good,” I told her. “We bought tickets, remember?”

  She squinted at me, unconvinced, but kept driving.

  We circled the prison cemetery, and both of us broke out in visible goose bumps. I assured Marion this was due to “self-induced fear” and nothing more. Not that I believed my own words.

  As we passed a large, newish-looking building for the second time, a patrolling security guard flagged us down.

  “Excuse me, ladies. Hold it right there,” he said. He peeked in our car and sized us up. “What are you doing here? This area is restricted.”

  “Oh, it’s OK,” I informed him. “We paid for a tour.” I pulled the event tickets from my purse and waved them in front of him.

  The guard grimaced. “No. Those things are held at the old, closed reformatory,” he told me in short, halting words, as if talking to a four year old. “This here is the current working prison. You can’t be here.”

  Marion glared at me. She mouthed, “I told you so.”

  Apparently though, two clueless middle-aged women didn’t pose a major security threat. He waved us off, pointing us in the right direction.

  As we rounded another corner, the old penitentiary loomed before us: a magnificent and imposing piece of architecture. As we entered, however, we discovered the inside was something entirely else. The structure contained not just the standard frightening fare of ubiquitous cobwebs but also rotted wood, rusty fixtures, and broken concrete. Ghosts seemed fitting fare.

  Marion and I were accompanied at this event by experts from several paranormal TV shows, including Ghost Hunters and Haunted Collector—plus a hundred and fifty of their fanatic followers. One paranormal group drove in several hours from Indiana in a hearse. These folks were hardcore. I was way out of their supernatural league.

  As someone who watched little TV, I had no idea of the huge following these celebrities had. The visiting pros included Steve Gonsalves, Amy Bruni, Adam Berry, John Zaffis, Josh Gates, and Chip Coffey. They proved to be a knowledgeable and entertaining bunch.

  If there were any ghosts lurking in a dark hallway that night, these guys would find them. And once they did, I planned to fast-track it to the farthest corner, where I would curl up and cry. Sluggish after participating in my first 5K that morning, I doubted I could even outrun the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

  Originally a boys’ reformatory before becoming a men’s state prison in the late eighteen hundreds, the building had a long history of hauntings. These tales, relayed throughout our tour by the TV ghost hunters and seasoned reformatory volunteers, kept us captivated—and paranoid.

  Marion and I learned certain locations within the prison were particularly fraught with paranormal activity. Ghosts were seen frequently in the area where a prisoner had murdered a guard. A vision of a strange woman was often witnessed wandering through the warden’s living quarters; a former warden’s wife had died there when a loaded pistol fell from a closet shelf. Apparitions also appeared regularly in a cell block where an inmate committed suicide by setting himself on fire.

  Marion and I huddled closer together, our eyes darting in all directions, as we listened.

  She nudged me and whispered. “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what?’”

  “Didn’t you just touch my head?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I could have sworn someone was just playing with my hair.”

  “You’re just imagining it,” I whispered back.

  “No, I definitely felt a hand brushing my head,” Marion said. She clutched my arm. “This is freaking me out. This was a bad idea. Why are we doing this?”

  “Wait, you’re the one who watches this stuff on TV,” I reminded her. “Besides, these are just stories. Who’s to say any of this is real? I’m a writer, remember? I make up stories all the time.”

  She nodded. Our eyes met. We continued after our guide, resuming our nervous glances around.

  The stories we heard were only one piece of the paranormal pie. And with so many people roaming through the prison, it was difficult to validate all the strange lights, shadows, or sounds. We managed to disregard many, and we learned that true ghost hunters relied on the results of paranormal tests from equipment such as flashlights, lasers, and “voice boxes.”

  As we stood in the old shower room, an area well known for spirit activity, the guide’s flashlight inexplicably flickered. I shrugged this off. After all, flashlights were temperamental tools. Could be a loose bulb or a dying battery. The fact that the light shut on and off upon command—exactly when the guide asked the spirit to do so—I couldn’t explain that so easily.

  Marion and I wandered a while on our own and then returned to the shower room. Eight people were now gathered around a voice box. Given my limited know-how, I was unfamiliar with these devices, which supposedly transmitted supernatural sounds through radio waves. The group was listening intently and carrying on a conversation through the box with a presumed spirit named Mark.

  Over the next ten minutes, Mark answered endless questions. We talked about his background, the murders he committed, and his experiences while incarcerated here. Some of his responses were muffled and others indecipherable through radio static. But many of his words were coherent. Every time he spoke, those of us assembled would immediately repeat what we thought we heard—and we generally agreed.

  Yet, still, a radio providing unequivocal paranormal evidence? I was fascinated and a bit unsettled by the strange conversation, but the skeptic in me determined it could be staged by either the event’s PR team or a local radio geek getting his kicks.

  When Marion and I later headed up to the sixth-floor attic, we had our second voice box encounter. The attic’s celebrity tour guide, John Zaffis, said he and his last group had been carrying on a long discussion with an inmate spirit. His name was Mark. His age, his crimes, and the other details he provided all matched those of the earlier conversation Marion and I witnessed in the shower room.

  During our meet and greet earlier that evening, John had appeared the most conservative and practical celebrity in the bunch. As we relayed our similar experience with the first voice box, he seemed stunned. He questioned us extensively, as if he didn’t believe this repeat encounter was likely. But “Mark” remained on the air in the attic, talking to us through this second voice box. Although this device was more static-filled than the one in the shower room, Marion and I agreed it was the same voice.

  If it was a scam, it was a well-executed one. I left the attic, in no way convinced but with my mind opened one more notch.

  The secluded attic and basement were the areas where the worst prison atrocities had once taken place. No surprise that these sites of horrific abuse and torture of inmates had the most reported paranormal activity.

  Steve Gonsalves, our guide for this next leg of the tour, warned that due to the basement’s physical condition, including broken steps and a crumbling concrete floor, he couldn’t advise going down there.

  And so, we headed downstairs.

  It didn’t seem a drastic or dangerous decision. After hearing a number of tales and warnings that evening, Marion and I—and a woman named Maria, who had befriended us—figured the basement couldn’t pose any worse threat. We never anticipated the night’s most frightening and compelling supernatural evidence would strike, just around midnight, while the three of us were standing alone in the very dark and very disturbing basement. Without a professional in sight to save our sorry souls.

  “Dark” didn’t begin to describe the basement. With no windows to allow a glimpse of outside illumination and no other passing guests to provide flickers of light, we relied on the narrow beams of our own flashlights while we explored. The
basement was a huge, open area. Unlike the rest of the building, it didn’t contain any twists or turns or mazes of hallways. And, it was undoubtedly devoid of anyone but us.

  After we searched the room’s full circumference, Marion suggested we turn off our flashlights. The basement fell back to black.

  Marion’s voice punctuated the silence. “If there’s anyone out there, we’d like to talk to you,” she said. “We’re just here to talk. We don’t mean you any harm. If you are here, let us know.”

  Suddenly, I felt like a ten year old at a slumber party séance. I giggled. Marion elbowed me, and I covered my mouth, swallowing my last snorts of laughter.

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” Marion continued. “We just want to know if someone is with us. Signal us in some way that you are here. Give us a sign. Knock three times on the pipes.”

  Haha! Knock three times, just like the classic seventies song! I smirked and nudged Marion, to offer my latest commentary and maybe a strain of the song’s refrain.

  But just as my elbow met her ribs, we heard a knock. And a second. And then a third.

  The unquestionable clink of metal.

  I snapped my flashlight on and swung the beam across the room. I swiveled the light across every inch and every corner. No one but the three of us in the basement. I turned and trained my light on the wall behind us, thinking maybe one of us had inadvertently—or purposely—hit some pipes behind us. After all, we didn’t really know if our new acquaintance, Maria, could be trusted.

  Nothing behind us but a concrete wall.

  With my free arm, I clenched Marion’s hand. She clenched mine back. But unlike me, she quickly recouped her courage.

  “Turn off your flashlight,” she whispered to me. “You might be scaring him.”

  Wait. I was scaring him? I cringed, reluctantly switched off my light, and huddled against the wall.

  While Marion continued her efforts to initiate a conversation, we heard nothing more. And then suddenly, she elbowed me. “Stanfa, look to your right. See that light? Holy cow, is that an orb?”