Southern Oregon

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Next week I travel to the Charles Selberg Institute South of Ashland near the Cali border to film some interviews. My car will be full of camera gear and maybe the Haggis Killer, if I can find room for him.

[Drunk Monk]

tell HK to post here. we miss him.

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So, I just finished my eleven hour drive from the Selberg Institute, which is just south of Ashland, Oregon.

Haggis_Killer and I went up there to do more interviews and to search for some missing photos. But that is for another story.

I arrived early Thursday and HK arrived late Thursday. The Institute is split level. Hk opted to sleep downstairs, while I chose my closet to sleep in upstairs. (It's called a closet for the Building inspectors because some regulations make it unsuitable to be a bedroom. Plus, it's the only room with a door) Now, sleeping downstairs was a mistake on many levels for HK. The first of which was hearing me walk up and down the stairs many times to go to the bathroom. Plus, I get up early, really early. And DM can tell you what it's like to hear me get up in the morning.

Anyway, after one of my forays down to the bathroom and back, HK cracked an eye open as the light above the stairs popped on. He had heard me settling in the room, so he didn't know what caused it. A minute later, the light turned off. Weird for the HK. Weirder still, a few minutes later the light switched on and off again.

In the morning, HK asked me if I had been using the lights when I had gone to the bathroom. After I said 'no and what are you talking about', he explained to me about the mysterious light above the stairs. So, HK and I then went to find the switch for that light to see what the problem was. Well, we tried every switch in the house and there were a lot of switches. None of them turned on the light. It remained stubbornly dim above the stairs.

HK and I joked it was the ghost of Selberg playing pranks on us.

When it's bright outside, these jokes are kind of amusing. But when you are walking down the stairs the next night on your way to the bathroom, it's not quite as funny. I'm creeping down the stairs in the pitch black darkness, HK has moved to the upstairs official bedroom, and all I can think is how freaked out am I going to be if that light flicks back on? The answer being pretty freaked out because I am already freaked out by the mere thought of it. But nothing happens.

On Saturday, the house caretaker, Maia, drops by and we tell her about the problem of the light or the presence of Selberg's Ghost. We try the downstairs switches to show we can't get the light to go on. I go upstairs to prove we can't find the switch. But as I flip on a switch, we have tried with no success before, the light comes on. Maia gives us the boys are stupid look. We talk some more about the light. As we do, the light goes off. No one was near the switch. HK tries the switch at the top of the stairs. Nothing happens. Maia joins us in befuddlement. We all agree something is wrong with the electrical.

On Sunday, HK leaves in the afternoon to get back to his family. I'm going to drive back to LA so I'm going to leave early Monday. When I get back from doing some filming around the Colestine valley, I clean up the mess from our lunch guests and start loading stuff into the car. After I finish, I settle down on the couch to have dinner and do some reading. I look over to see that the light is now on again above the stairs.

Now, I saw all the horror movies. I have an active an imagination. I'm in a home in the woods miles from the nearest neighbor. I resolve in my mind to continue to think about the faulty electrical system that Michael the handyman is going to fix.

As I go to bed, I turn the light on and off several times. It works like a charm. I get up in the middle of the night for the long trek down the stairs. Moonlight illuminates the wooden treads through the skylights above. If the light had flicked on at that moment, I wouldn't have had to complete my trip to the bathroom.

Certainly, there is no such thing as ghosts. But tell that to the hindbrain when you are alone in a home miles from anyone when a light is acting up.