Hector and I camp at ‘The Memphis Goatee’ despite warnings about the sickly, disoriented birds that nest there. It doesn’t seem like a mistake until the mistake is obvious. The birds return to roost around sunset and, because the forest has warped their sense of direction, they aren’t at all prepared for our tent being in the way.

Most of them zip by, well above us, but the flock arrives so thickly that the low-flyers whip into the tent fabric and bounce back onto the ground, chirping angrily. It happens a couple times before I grab Hector and huddle down against the opposite side of the tent, which works until the fallen birds realize we’re there and attack us, taking little pin-prick bites of our clothes and skin as retribution. The tent goes down but, by then, we’ve ducked and dodged our way behind a tree- far enough away that the birds aren’t willing to chase us. It’s over in five minutes but it feels like much longer and then it’s dark and the tent is torn to shreds.

There are no clouds but the world never passes up a chance to rain on an unprotected camper.

‘Looking for a frivolous use of money and land? Already seen Mt. Rushmore? Try, then, ‘The Memphis Goatee,’ a massive swirl of transplanted woodland an hour east of the city itself. It’s a Seussian forest, by design, made up by trees that have been taken far from their lands of origin and twisted by inbreeding and, some say, genetic or chemical interference. The altered trees grow taller and thinner the nearer they are to the center and, in order to maintain form, they’ve begun to curl and spiral and entwine, each relying on another for support.

A goatee was the literal intended result of this project- a goatee that could be seen from space. Archives suggest a rogue committee at the county level reached out to equally deranged politicians in Australia and South Africa (antipodes to either side) and came to some sort of clandestine agreement that each would create a forest to simulate the hairstyle of a balding man with a goatee on the earth itself. The pieces of the project that made it onto paper are heavy with phrases like ‘global unity’ and ‘shared sense of human delight’ and ‘breaking down borders (figurative only).’ Needless to say, only Memphis kept up their end of this deal.

The author hesitates to argue against any project that promotes or preserves nature, but ‘The World’s Goatee’ is not a healthy place. It is bloated on water that is needed elsewhere and crawling with invasive species. Its brittle trees break unpredictably and those animals that choose to live there behave just as erratically, torn between what evolutionary instinct tells them should be true, and what Memphis has made the truth.’

Trees have collapsed over the road we came in on. Signs suggest this happens all the time and encourage visitors to enter the woods with several days of food. Luckily, the forest floor is so starved for light that little grows there and I’m able to maneuver the bike around the blockage. Night is darker inside ‘The Memphis Goatee.’ Leaving it early is a relief.

-traveler

‘Say you were passing a car on a dark stretch of highway and, noticing the driver neglected to turn their brights down, you flashed a polite message with your own. Say the passing car has whipped across the lanes in a dramatic U-turn and now pursues you close behind, flashing their own headlights and swerving side to side.

What is that car trying to convey?

The answer may surprise you and, assuming you survive the encounter, the answer can be found at ‘Headlight History,’ a museum of sorts that deals with headlight-related trivia. Though much of ‘Headlight History’ is devoted to wall-space for the many code-like light configurations that supposedly have significance to the asphalt underground, its central attraction is a series of interactive exhibits that allow a visitor to drive a simulated car along the same highway several times over. There, they are presented with various coded headlight signals and asked to respond by indicating with their own lights or swerving to escape.

Having been open to the public for five years as of this edition, it’s more or less common knowledge that, no matter what decisions the driver makes, all of ‘Headlight History’s’ simulations end gruesomely. Those that don’t finish with some sort of quick collision introduce a colorful variety of serial killers that press the driver from the road, pop-up from the backseat, or leap dramatically through the windshield to stab the driver to death.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Officially called ‘The Afterlife: A Spiritual Retirement Center,’ the facility off the I-70 and just outside Baltimore is more commonly referred to as ‘The Ghost Hotel-’ a misnomer for many reasons. Residents of ‘The Ghost Hotel’ are permanent, for instance, and it’s currently impossible to pay for a room. It is a strictly non-profit enterprise, held together by sparse government funds and sizable, if less reliable, private donations. Most of these donations come from families who are able to recognize a resident within ‘The Ghost Hotel’ and feel the facility is doing good work.

‘The Ghost Hotel’ is a place for the dead rather than the living. Occasionally the source of a haunting can be isolated to a single object or a room and, when this happens, those totems can be shifted to ‘The Ghost Hotel’ for the benefit of the haunted party and the haunter alike.

There are rooms for the relatively self-reliant ghosts, say, your translucent rocking-chair grandma or your window-waver. There are rooms for poltergeists, filled to the brim with small, tidy objects for thrashing about or intricate stacking. Employees take turns stepping into said rooms to act surprised and to ultimately put everything back where it’s supposed to go. For the outright murderous ghosts? Well, that’s how a traveler gets a cheap room for the night.’

There’s a long waitlist for volunteering at ‘The Ghost Hotel.’ Hector and I are halfway across the country when we get the call but we turn around anyway and make it just in time. I sign a whole sheaf of papers at the desk, most of which attest to my cardiac and metal health history. The woman hands me the keys without any real ceremony and points me to the sort of sliding-gate elevator a person expects at an establishment called ‘The Ghost Hotel.’

I hesitate. “Anything I should know about room, uh, 14?”

“You much of an actor?”

“Not really.”

“Then the less details you get, the better. They know when you’re faking it. Best advice is to pretend to die early.”

There is a small guide to being haunted on the bedside table that says much the same.

A resident is assigned a weapon tailored to their historical preference. These items are harmless. Theatrical deaths among volunteers are discouraged. Most residents resorting to would-be fatal attacks are signaling exhaustion. It is best to let them finish.

Room 14 is a taxidermy room. None of the decorations have horns or teeth of significant size but there are several stuffed rabbits on display. I think about calling downstairs to complain, to see if we can switch, maybe, but Hector doesn’t seem to mind so much. I put the rabbits up on a high shelf just in case.

When I come out of the bathroom a few minutes later, the rabbits have been placed on the bed. All of the taxidermied heads have turned to glare at the toilet. The lights flicker.

This won’t be a restful night.

Hector and I are plagued by animal noises well into the evening. Shadows crawl in and out of our peripheries. The rabbits won’t stay still- the resident ghost honed in on that discomfort right away. They’re never where I leave them. They move stop-motion when I blink. It’s admittedly pretty creepy. I wonder what makes this ghost so mean. Was it a murderer or something? Does it hate animals? I try to write messages in fog on the mirror but it just shows up as a dark shadow behind me before blinking away. The guide suggests this is pretty normal. Ghosts get set in their ways. They don’t want to talk.

I wake up in the middle of the night when one of the stuffed rabbits clatters to the floor. It’s pretty clearly baiting me. I take the blanket off and step across the creaking floor. I bend over and hear the taxidermied animals all creaking, each moving a leg or a jaw or a neck. The shadow flicks across the glass as my fingers graze the rabbit’s fur and I look over in time to watch it coalesce into the figure of a man. It drives a knife down into my back and I feel the blade click into the handle.

I hesitate, probably too long for any real sort of believability, and then slump over on the floor. The stage knife drops near my face and I see, reflected in the rabbit’s glass eye, the shadow receding into the darkness. After a moment I stand up and brush myself off. I set the knife and the rabbit back up on the shelf and sleep the rest of the night, undisturbed.

-traveler

‘Perhaps best described as a novelty pod hotel, ‘The Backseat Bed and Breakfast’ has taken a motley fleet of vehicles otherwise destined for the junkyard and repurposed them as strange little rooms within rooms. Stripped of their engines, the cars and trucks sit in tight garages and on custom hydraulic frames. Though one might pay a premium for finer upholstery or wider cars, the core experience of ‘The BBB’ is that of hucking one’s belongings into the trunk and curling into the backseat while the proprietary hydraulics gently rock the car from below and a simple light show mimics the headlights of an occasional passing car or the overhead streetlights of a quiet suburban neighborhood. Engine noises can be toggled and custom ambience, based upon preferred locales, is available upon request. One is welcome to consider what other backseat experiences might be relived at ‘The BBB,’ though the owners insist it is strictly a family friendly establishment.

Breakfast includes burned coffee and copycat items from popular fast food menus that taste so alike their inspiring dishes one must assume ‘The BBB’ employs a fast driver rather than an ingenious chef.’

My family had a boxy old sedan of some sort- I’ve never been much for makes and models. Business is slow enough at ‘The BBB’ that I get a little tour of the available rooms and find something similar at the lowest price tier. It isn’t a nice car- I didn’t expect it to be.

Hector spends the night in the passenger seat, sniffing at all the cracks and crevices before settling into sleep. I do some reading and click the overhead light off around nine. By then I can hardly keep my eyes open. The backseat is as I remember- only just wide enough. The precipice threatens each time I shift against the belt buckle of the middle seat. The plastic door creaks each time I try to find the room to stretch. It isn’t comfortable but I sleep anyway, smelling cigarettes and coffee in the fabric under a rolled up hoodie ‘The BBB’ provided as a pillow.

The car lurches and tosses me to the floor at seven sharp: the wakeup call I asked for in the form of a simulated speedbump. Hector hops onto my body from the front and tries to settle in for sleep again before I push him off and extricate myself. We eat our egg sandwich and hit the road, feeling as though we never really stopped.

-traveler