Scareforce

by Charles Hough

  On subsequent nights when the sergeant returned to his quarters late and stayed up to read or listen to music, the ghostly walk and knock were repeated. He could never find the culprit. He mentioned it to other tenants of the TLQ, but they just laughed and said that he must have done something to make the ghost mad. Their sleep had not been disturbed.

  Finally one night, as the ritual was repeated and the loud knock was echoing down the hall, he said out loud, “Okay, alright, I’m going to bed.” He did, and the footsteps were not repeated. From then on he found that if he didn’t stay up too late, the ghost would leave him alone. It was almost as if he were being cared for by a nanny who wanted him to get his rest and would brook no disagreement.

  In another room in the TLQ, at another time, a couple brought a young baby with them. The child was ill and cried a good deal of the night. The mother had to be up most of the night almost every night. She could look forward to only short minutes of sleep broken by the crying of her child. Her husband had to have his sleep to be able to work and the mother would not disturb him. But the nightly routine was having a serious effect on the mother’s health. One night she fell into bed exhausted, looking forward to only a few precious minutes of sleep. She woke with a start and was amazed to see that she had slept undisturbed for several hours. Even more amazing was the lack of any sound coming from the child’s room. Suddenly she was worried that something might have happened to her baby. She rushed to his room, but stopped short at the door. By the glow from the night-light she could see a form bending over the child’s crib. The form was indistinct but had the appearance of a woman looking at the child with some concern. She seemed to be patting the child gently on his back. The baby was making small sounds of contentment. The mother watched for several minutes until she became aware that the shape had faded completely away. She returned to bed and completed her first full night of sleep in many days, entirely confident that her infant was perfectly safe.

  One of the most amazing supernatural occurrences in the manor house took place in broad daylight in front of a large group of people. The base had planned an outing for the newly arrived service members and their families. They were taking a tour bus to a seaside resort and several families were hurrying to join the trip. A little three-year-old girl was at the head of a group coming down the grand staircase. Disobeying her mother’s caution not to run, she was in full flight. As she rounded the last landing her flight became literal. Several shocked people watched in horror as the little girl tripped on the rug and launched herself headfirst into the air. Disaster seemed unavoidable. A woman screamed. Suddenly her headlong flight to certain injury or even death was arrested. It was as if she had been caught under the arms by an adult with amazingly quick reflexes. She hovered in midair and then, before a dozen bewildered and astonished observers, she was lowered gently to the ground. She skipped off to the bus as if nothing had happened, leaving in her wake a lot of speechless witnesses.

  No one knows what ghost or ghosts haunt the old manor. But all of them know what kind of ghosts they are. The best. By all accounts, the very best.

  SCARY MOVIES

  A military base is a strange thing. Part-city, part-neighborhood, it gives you a sense of place like no other locale I have ever experienced. The facts of the following story always added a little extra thrill to watching scary movies at one particular base theater. I have used the name of a base that no longer exists, but the real base and the real theater are still in operation. Maybe you ’II find them both some dark and stormy night.

  Modern military bases are a lot like cities. Most everyone knows that they have housing, offices, and places to store a lot of military hardware. Some people who deal with the military know that there are a few other facilities of the type that you’d associate with a city. Tilings like service stations, municipal utility offices, and a police force. But you have to be in the military for a while to get to know how much like a city a base really is.

  Few outsiders know that the military provides several types and classes of housing—everything from motels, to unmarried personnel apartments, to duplexes, to family homes, to luxury suites fit for a king… or a president.

  Bases usually provide all the services you’d find in a comparably sized town. Everything from grocery stores to department stores, swimming pools to dry cleaners, hospitals to mortuaries. They can supply you with food, drink, clothing, furniture, reading glasses, automobiles, recreation, fun, and excitement. And, like any small town, a military base can sometimes provide you with the unusual, the strange, and the supernatural. You see, the bases are communities of people, both living and dead. Just like any town full of people, the dead sometimes come back to make life more interesting for the living.

  Just about every base in existence has a base theater of some sort. The base theater usually serves as a multipurpose auditorium, furnishing a meeting place for commanders to brief their troops; a forum for visiting dignitaries to meet the base population; a large classroom for mandatory training sessions; even a stage for little theater groups. In spite of all this activity, they still get around to showing movies.

  The theater on Kinchloe Air Force Base was no exception. It was being, and always had been, heavily used day and night since its construction more than a decade ago. And, as the new theater manager learned, it was also being used after hours for a purpose that the designers had not intended. For the theater at Kinchloe was home and playground to a ghost.

  Staff Sergeant James Reynard was a professional weapons system specialist. He’d had a wealth of experience in his field and was considered resident expert. Levelheaded and rational, he was the last person you would expect to believe in something as unscientific as ghosts and hauntings.

  But Sergeant Jim learned about the realm of the supernatural quickly after taking the part-time job of base theater manager. He had been on the job for a few months before he noticed the unusual occurrences. They started mildly enough. Several times theater patrons had complained about someone moving around behind the screen during the showing of films. They said that they could hear the footsteps and see the curtains on the side of the screen move and shake. And during quiet times in the films they would sometimes hear laughter coming not from the audience but from behind the screen.

  Jim was reluctant to take the complaints seriously. He thought that they must be mistaken. The sounds probably emanated from somewhere in the audience. The moving draperies were just caused by errant breezes circulated as people came and went from the theater. The area behind the stage could be reached only from a single door at the back of the building or from the stairs leading up out of the audience seating area. After the complaints the back door was always found to be securely locked. And certainly no one had entered from the house. Jim himself acted as usher during the showing of films whenever he could and he had never seen anyone attempt to climb the stairs and go back in the wings.

  As the complaints increased, he kept a more vigilant eye on the premovie activities in the house. It was during one of these nights, as he was watching the house fill up for a film, that he witnessed an occurrence that convinced him that something strange was responsible for the disturbances. While surveying the audience, he glanced up at the stage. He was astonished to see the curtain on the side lift up and continue up until it was at least five feet off the ground. It was if someone standing behind had lifted it up to get a look at the arriving audience. But anyone lifting the curtain like that would be in full view to everyone out front. There was no one behind the curtain.

  Jim seemed to have been the only one to notice the curtain move, or at least the only one to understand that it was impossible. He signaled to the projectionist to hold the start of the movie for a few minutes and proceeded to search the area behind the screen thoroughly. He found the door locked and the area behind the screen totally empty of any living thing.

  On another occasion, Jim had been advised by the environmental health office that a sister theater on an
other base had been severely reprimanded by the inspector general for all manner of candy, gum, and old popcorn found under the stage. The garbage had been thrown there by hyperactive children and was drawing in mice and rats from the neighboring fields.

  Jim hired a young airman to clean under the stage. The area was reached by way of a small door set in the center of the stage and usually nailed shut. Jim was in the office of the closed theater catching up on some paperwork while his part-time janitor cleaned.

  After about half an hour, Jim heard the doors from the audience area bang open. He was surprised to hear a loud, “I quit!” from his new worker. The airman didn’t stop to explain. He just left by the front door as rapidly as possible.

  Jim ran into the young man later that evening in the recreation center. It took a large pizza and couple of beers before he would tell Jim what had precipitated his hasty departure.

  He said that he was under the stage, deeply engaged in scraping out the antique residue from the snack bar. He had a trouble light with him but he had moved a few feet away from it. As he reached forward for a handful of trash, his hands passed through a cold area. It was shocking enough for him to draw his hands back. Suddenly, from right next to his ear, he heard a loud voice say, “Get out of here!” The voice sounded very angry, but there was no one with him in the crawl space. He left so rapidly that he didn’t notice until later that he had received several scratches and bruises in his haste to leave. He displayed the injuries to the sergeant. Jim was not able to convince him to return to the theater. Jim ended up cleaning the area himself, without incident.

  The most recent happening in the theater, and one of the strangest, took place on another late night after the theater had closed. Jim was in his office, finishing up some paperwork. His office was a tiny alcove, just big enough for a desk and chair. He was concentrating on some figures when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement. “It was as if someone had poked his head in the door, bent over, and glanced around at me,” he said. “At first it looked normal and didn’t really register. It was only after it had happened that I realized that he couldn’t have poked his head in the door to my left: the door was to my right.” The visitor Jim had seen would have had to poke his head through a solid wall. Jim concluded that he had done enough work for that night and quickly closed the theater.

  There are many reasons why a theater on a base might be haunted. Young men and women entering the military are often sent far from home. They’re forced to be grown-ups almost overnight and they’re isolated from friends, family, and, on some bases, even from the local town. It’s natural for them to gravitate to a place like a theater. It’s cheap, fun entertainment and a great place for meeting others of their age. They go on to different assignments and too often to war and an early death. They may carry with them fond memories of the base theater. Maybe some are even drawn back after their time on this earth has passed.

  Whatever their reason for being there, Jim continues to run the theater the best he can for all the patrons. He did add that the motion picture Ghostbusters was an enormous hit. Professional appreciation? Who knows?

  TRANSATLANTIC GHOST

  YOU can argue the relative merits of divisions, regiments, and brigades, but any military member knows that the strongest unit in the Air Force is the family. Without families, few could handle the pain and suffering of a military career. True military families understand the sacrifices necessary to keep the country strong. As the following story demonstrates, family love transcends the normal boundaries of time and space… and life.

  In the old days the military was not a place to be if you were a family man or woman. The top sergeant used to berate those so inclined with the adage, “If the Air Force wanted you to have a wife, it would’ve issued you one!” That attitude has happily died away with the advent of the modern Air Force that “wants to join you.”

  Business learned long ago that a happily married worker is a stable and loyal worker. It just took the military a couple of hundred years to get the idea. Now, convinced of the value of the military family, they go out of their way to accommodate families. But even with all their good intentions, the reality of military life sometimes places great hardships on families.

  The Freemans were such a family. Ted, the father, was a respected and professional sergeant. He was an electronics specialist, a profession in demand virtually everywhere in the Air Force. His wife, Vikki, was a teacher and a new mother. Their son, Teddy, was barely seven months old and already the favorite of numerous uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents.

  Ted had spent an arduous three years working at a stateside base getting a new system on-line and running. His hard work had been rewarded with a plum assignment.

  Lakenheath was a US military base in Suffolk County, England. It was in a beautiful part of Great Britain, not far from London. It was the kind of assignment that young families like the Freemans dreamed of. Even the form used to request assignment to the base was jokingly referred to as a “dream sheet.” It was everything that they wanted. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

  The Freemans’ assignment arrived in the same week that Vikki learned her father was afflicted with a particularly ravaging form of cancer. He was indeed dying from it. There was no hope. And there was no accurate way to determine how long he had left to live.

  The minute Ted found out about his father-in-law’s illness, he wanted to cancel the assignment. He was ready to apply for a humanitarian reassignment, one of the finer inventions of the military. He wanted Vikki to be with her father during the trying times to come.

  Vikki’s father wouldn’t hear of it. Being a former soldier, he understood the value of an assignment like this.

  “You take your family to England. It will be an experience you’ll never forget. It’ll help your career. And you never know, I just might decide to hang around regardless of what the doctors say.”

  Ted knew his father-in-law was right. To ease the pain of separation he arranged to take a long leave before departing for England. They spent as much time as they could with Vikki’s father.

  During the final week of their vacation, Vikki was gratified to see that her infant son had formed a very close attachment to her father. When her father sat down to read or talk, Teddy was content to sit beside him. At mealtime he wanted to be where he could see his grandfather. At night he wouldn’t go to sleep unless grandpa said good-night. It was a precocious fixation but a pleasant one for Vikki and her father.

  Time for moving came much too quickly, but Vikki’s father did his best to make it a happy time. He hid the pain of his illness with amazing success. When the Freeman family left for England they were almost convinced that her father would be waiting for them when they returned.

  England and the assignment were everything that the Free-mans could have wanted and more. The job was perfect for Ted. He excelled at his work and his supervisors were appreciative of his talents and expertise.

  The family moved into a rented cottage in a little town some distance from the base. They found the people friendly and the countryside beautiful. It was almost an idyllic time.

  Little Teddy thrived on the brisk English weather. He was growing and changing every day. He was a happy child who continued to demonstrate a precocity beyond his young age. Everything seemed perfect.

  Then one day about two months after their arrival at Lakenheath something happened. Teddy woke up in the morning crying. This was highly unusual for their normally happy child. He cried continuously. Nothing would quiet him. He was not hungry and would not eat. He didn’t need to be changed and showed no interest in his toys. Being held and walked and cuddled by either parent had no effect.

  Ted was reluctant to go to work and leave his wife with the child in such a state. Vikki insisted that it was a passing phase brought on by a nightmare or maybe the beginning of a minor illness. She insisted that Ted go to work. She could handle it.

  But as noon appro
ached with the child still crying, she was not as sure of her ability to cope. When Ted called and learned that Teddy was still upset, he directed Vikki to take him to the emergency room of the clinic immediately.

  Ted met Vikki at the clinic just as the doctor called her name. The young pediatrician checked the child over thoroughly and pronounced him healthy. There was no physical reason for his distress.

  He asked if Teddy had been severely frightened recently or if he had been separated from a favorite friend or toy. The negative answer left him as perplexed as the parents. He told them to take the child home and he gave them a prescription for a mild sedative that would help Teddy sleep.

  The prescription quieted the child somewhat, but he did not fall asleep. His crying diminished to a sad whimper. His grief was almost unbearable in one so young.

  His mother finally fell into exhausted sleep after the baby quieted, but Ted stayed awake, checking on the child every half hour. It was just after one of these checks that he lay back on the bed to try to get some much-needed rest. As he lay there wide-awake, his hearing tuned to the slightest change in his young son’s distress, a strange thing happened. He clearly heard the living room door open and someone walk across the room. He jumped out of bed and grabbed the nearest thing that could be considered a weapon. It was a bullwhip he had purchased as a souvenir of a recent trip to Spain. So armed, he crept to the bedroom door. He listened as the footsteps came up the stairs. They were slow and measured, but definitely determined. As they reached the landing outside the bedroom door, Ted wrenched the door open and leapt to confront the intruder.