Ghost

If this story doesn’t get me included in the “he’s playing with less than a full deck” category, nothing will, because it’s a tale about unrequited love and a dybbuk, to the goyim, a ghost. As for the setting, let’s try Davos Ski Lodge, now “Big Vanilla,” outside the small town of Woodbridge in the “Jewish Alps,” Sullivan County, New York.

My friend had a controlling interest in the place and we would head up there in the summers, for it was a pretty cool dude ranch and I loved to ride a big Morgan gelding named, “Coal Tar.” The ranch/ski lodge was in the Catskill Mountains, the air would clear urban sinuses in minutes and the bar was fun and noisy of a night. Seems there was a story about me and another maniac riding our horses through the bar one night, and another of going swimming with them in the pool. It was a rare hot night, but neither the boss nor the guests were amused.

Fred, one of the owners, asked me to lock the place up one strange autumn night, because he had an early flight to catch. I was more than happy to do so. The lodge itself was located on the top of a mountain, not the traditional bottom ,and the road down was dangerous in the winter.

The kids were in the car, both asleep, one on my wife’s lap, the other in the back seat with her friend Debbie, when I walked back to the lodge to close it down. It was divided into three wings. The outer wings were given over to guest rooms and the center one to the restaurant and bar. I turned off the lights and checked to make sure all the rooms were locked on the left wing, checked the center section and paused to look out over the hills on this strange, very mild, yet very windy, last night of October.

The trees were doing a manic dance in all directions at once and there were little dust devils springing up everywhere in the dirt lot behind the lodge. The temperature was in the mid seventies, yet I felt a chill as I proceeded along the first floor of the right wing. But that chill was as nothing compared to a pocket of sub zero cold I encountered mid-point in my chores.

I thought at first that there must have been some air conditioning unit gone berserk, but there were none in that section, yet it was absolutely freezing. I checked the door and moved on and the temperature immediately went back into the seventies. Curious, I returned to the door and again the temperature plummeted. I thought for a moment the door handle would freeze to my hand when I pulled it away and backed off to find myself again in the balmy, yet very windy, seventies.

Proceeding up the side stairs to the second floor landing I continued checking doors until again I was mid point in that wing and again there was that frigid pocket of intense, flat cold. I shuddered and felt a sense of terrible loneliness or pain.

Forgetting for a moment to check the other doors, I proceeded to our large room at the end, opened the door and immediately switched on the light, thinking I was very glad of Thomas Alva Edison’s curiosity and genius. I sat on the bed, lit a cigarette and took half a dozen drags before I reached for the luggage, turned out the lights, closed the door and walked back onto the second floor landing.

I was wired at that point, more nervous than a cat, hot tin roof or not, and proceeded toward that cold spot. Suddenly I was convinced I wasn’t alone. I heard something like a moan, a low cry of terrible pain, and stopped in front of the door. Then I saw what I can only describe as something like light blue smoke slowly swirling five feet off the floor. That just couldn’t be because the winds were whipping everything to a thirty knot frenzy all around me, yet this smoke was moving ever so slowly.

Again I heard the cry, low, full of despair, and I did something absolutely stupid, I spoke to the smoke. I said, “I’m not afraid,” (afraid wasn’t the word for it,) “What can I do?” I repeated this mantra several more times because I couldn’t think of anything else to do or say. The slowly turning, twisting smoke seemed to take on vague human characteristics for a moment, then I felt the slightest touch on my left arm and shoulder. My hands locked on the suitcases and I damned well didn’t think I could move, but eventually, move I did, backwards, always facing the apparition, until I broke free of the cold pocket, turned and headed down the stairs and again walked into the frigid area at precisely the same spot on the bottom landing. Again that sense of something near, something in great pain and despair. It was beyond human capacity to feel as this creature or thing did, and it passed as I now quickly approached the car, threw the bags in the trunk, started the engine and moved out fast.

My wife and kids were asleep but I was badly shaken, so much so that I missed my turn to route 17 and had to turn on a lonely country road. I remember thinking how glad I was that a New York State Trooper lived there and I passed his car with a sense of some relief, as if this poor dude could have explained or done anything about me or my apparition.

We were several miles along the road when Debbie spoke from the back seat. “You know, on a night like this, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a man on a horse with his head tucked underneath his arm.” Without thinking I asked her brusquely, ‘Why the hell did you say that?” and she calmly replied, “Dopey, it’s Halloween Eve, the night witches and lost souls come to call.” I swallowed hard, shut my mouth and didn’t open it again until Manhattan, some 120 miles away.

I told my WCBS TV partner, Tom Dunn, the story the next day in our office and he listened with some forbearance, I thought, and he said sagely, “You oughtta’ lay off the sauce,” and that was the end of that. I knew better than to say anything further until the following Saturday when we drove back upstate for the weekend.

Woodbridge was a small town, with maybe 1,500 people in it, mostly Jews, descendants of the people who moved there toward the end of the 19th century. One such was my friend, Shim Kreiger, Attorney at Law, small investor and a guy who knew the town and its history.

I finally got around to telling him the story and he didn’t say a word for a moment, then swung his chair to face the nearby hills. He asked, “Do you know what a dybbuk is?” and I answered, “Some sort of lost soul in Jewish legend.” He paused, then said without preface, “So you’ve seen it too? You’re the first Gentile to do so but everyone around here knows the story. We rarely talk about it.”

Without waiting for my next question he told me the story of a poor young man who lived around the turn of the century. He dared to love the daughter of a successful businessman and land owner. She apparently returned this passion but the father absolutely refused to permit the match. In despair, the young man climbed to the steps of the synagogue and killed himself. It was a very great scandal and nobody wanted to

discuss it..

Shimmie added, “Years passed and people began talking about strange encounters with this “dybbuk,” but never to strangers. This town depends on tourists and summer residents.” I nodded, then asked, “What does that have to do with this strange, terrible experience I’ve just had?” Shimmie looked at me finally and said, “The synagogue was located precisely at the center of the right section of Davos Ski Lodge. Its foundations are buried beneath that part of the building.”

We both looked at each for several moments, and said nothing.

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