The northern forests of Vermont take me the nearest I’ve been to another country in quite some time and I make it a point to drive out toward the border into Quebec just to have a look. It’s occurred to me that I may be squandering an amount of my youth (what remains of it, anyway) in this aimless reiteration of the United States, but the journey has always been about completing the book and the book winds and winds within the borders but never compels me to leave them. Hector and I share a sandwich and head back the way we came, stopping by ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ to see how things could always be a little worse.
‘For all that Americans like to tell their ghost stories, the only ghost that has been certified as real by the Federal Government currently resides at ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ in Vermont. Advertised as ‘Felicia Gonzales’ little slice of paradise,’ ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ is an old mansion maintained in a perpetual state of disrepair as an homage to the early days of Gonzales’ haunting, when she terrorized a succession of families who sought refuge from the city and were naïve enough to overlook the too-good-to-be-true price tag. Each family’s attempt to exorcise the old woman from the house involved the destruction of her remaining personal items and, eventually, her mortal remains which had been exhumed from the grounds for the detection of ‘satanic or otherwise devilish iconography,’ none of which was found. Given these circumstances, little is known about Gonzales as she lived which is the primary reason that she has been stripped of her humanity in death.
The close secondary reason for the stripping of Gonzales’ humanity is the supernatural patience with which she bears disgrace. The burnings, for instance, seemed to annoy the ghost but did nothing to decrease the frequency of her hauntings. The only indications of anger noted in this period were perceived as increasingly frequent side-eyeing as Gonzales acted out the final hours before the fatal lightning strike that would kill her. Whether this patience is borne of the otherworldly state, or whether the woman has always been willing to turn the other cheek is hotly debated by resident parapsychologists, both sides of which test the lengths of her calm unendingly.
The final culprit in Gonzales’ dehumanizing is the operation of ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department, which is standard procedure for most reserves, natural or otherwise. People aren’t really accounted for in the department’s wheelhouse and, given Gonzales’ unique situation, they’ve had no blueprint from which to work. In the absence of novel solutions, the department proposed that ‘The Supernatural Reserve’ be treated like any other. Visitors are kept to certain numbers and the mansion is kept exactly as it was found, the cracks neither fixed nor allowed to widen. Gonzales is left to fend for herself in her ‘natural habitat,’ with the exception, of course, of the researchers who sometimes dress in period clothes or leap from closets in an attempt to jar her from her cycle, all the while assuring their superiors that the process is all quite scientifically sound.
It’s easy to see that Gonzales has become a harried specter. Her side-eyes have become frantic, as though she’s wrestled just that from the loop she treads each day and sees, now, the shuffling crowds in her peripheries. The loops have become long and erratic, never changing, exactly, but often freezing or repeating in the middle like a lazy plotline. Her clothes have become tattered and unwashed and they hang from her form. She is, by all accounts, dying and nobody seems to know what that means for her.
Paranormal activists have drawn parallels between Gonzales’ behavior and the pacing of a tiger kept too long in a zoo. They’ve joined the researchers and the tourists at the site, organizing rallies and sit-ins, sometimes breaking into the mansion in the evenings to steal items they believe Gonzales may be anchored to. The ghost carries on in the meantime, seemingly oblivious if not for the wide-eyed gaping with which she performs her mortal chores.’
Hector is not at all impressed with ‘The Supernatural Reserve,’ intuiting something in the smell or aura of the place that eludes me. I had suspected an amount of tackiness and am surprised by just how understated the grounds really are. If not for signs and a few ADA compliant structures for leveling out the forested approach, the mansion would look like any of a number of derelicts I see off the side of highways.
Gonzales is in the kitchen, which is where all the current visitors are as well. Signs in the preceding rooms point out historical motifs that were added along the way by the families that attempted to live with the ghost but, as expected, nothing of Gonzales’ remains. A family peels off from the group as I arrive and I slide neatly into an opening with which to view the woman. She’s feeding something into a fireplace- wood, I assume at first, but as she continues to shudder and loop I see it’s more likely invisible food fed into a pot that no longer hangs there. An official stands nearby and whistles each time one of the children present attempts to run a stick through the apparition.
“Save it for the yard,” he shouts.
The yard is the only portion of the grounds at which visitors are allowed to interact with Gonzales. Interact, in this case, means further whipping of the stick through her form, trying to kiss, hug, or scare the woman, and, for one man at least, lying on the ground in her path to ascertain whether or not he can see up her dress. Gonzales does not appear in pictures so the march is free of that, at least, and compared to the time she spent in the kitchen I can’t help but feel as though she hurries through the yard to be done with it all.
“That’s intermission, folks,” the man calls and he climbs into his truck to smoke.
Intermission occurs when Gonzalez retreats to the outhouse to relieve herself, a scene that live-in families found so unseemly that they tore the structure down and replaced it with a nearby boulder. For the last half-century, Gonzales is able to disappear into the boulder for this business, at the very least, and she spends the vast majority of each afternoon in solitude before finishing up the last few chores and combusting. Researchers have lobbied to have the boulder removed, arguing it’s historical only up to a point, but the operators have remained opposed, citing their current ‘as-is’ procedure with a particular sneer. Activists pile books, magazines, and other reading material around the boulder to express the woman’s need for privacy.
With Gonzales solidly entombed, Hector is a little more willing to take a walk and relieve himself as well. I consider waiting for ‘intermission’ to end but worry, already, that Gonzales has seen me among her tormentors. I’ve had enough of ghosts already and wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end when the patience with which she performs her scenes turns to wrath. Hector and I dive back into the Midwest, instead, no more or less haunted than before.
-traveler
