I'm Looking Through You
Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir
Chapter One
Dirty Deeds
I was in a biker bar. There were worse places. My colleagues, who had names like
Lumpy and Gargoyle, thought no less of me simply because I was an English
professor. It's nothing to be ashamed of, one dude suggested. It's what's inside
your heart that counts.
The venue-the Astrid Hotel, in Astrid, Maine-was famous not only for the
skankiness of its patrons but also for its ghost, an undead girl who walked its
tattered hallways weeping in her pajamas. She'd drowned in the twenties, in the
nearby Kennebec River. The girl was determined, supposedly, to find her father
and her sister, who'd been guests of the hotel, back in the day. Hey. Don't you
know I can't swim?
I had come to the Astrid to play with my friends in an R&B band, Blue Stranger,
up on the hotel's grandiose stage, in what had once been a fancy ballroom. Now
it had a cement floor, fiberglass tiles on the ceiling. On one wall was a
rough-hewn mural of the north country. There were lumberjacks hoisting logs with
skidders, fur trappers t ... read full excerpt from: I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted ebook
