I had the park almost to myself until he appeared. A little boy with an adorable round face and a big question.
"D'ya know 'bout da ghost house?"
Not everyone starts a conversation with a stranger that way. But he had my attention. In the year we'd lived in our new community, none of the locals had said anything about a haunted house.
He'd crossed the road to ask me his question. He'd ignored the swings, the slide and the fire-pole and more equipment kids love. He'd strode right up and spit it out, as though he'd been sucking on it a while, and it had left a foul taste in his mouth. As though he needed to let it run amuck in the mind of someone bigger.
"No," I said. "I don't."
He nodded, raised his hand, pointed east, and continued. "Way ovah dare. House way back. A boy lived dare. Fust 'e kilt his mommy, den 'e kilt his daddy, den he went ta da bon 'n hunged his own sef."
Ever since the night in my childhood when my prankster mother dressed up as a ghost and wafted past my cousin and I in the dark, I haven't been big on ghosts. I started to say something like that, but the little fellow hadn't finished.
"Now if ya go dere, da do is open, and ghosts are dust streamin' out da house. DUST STREAMIN'!" His eyes grew wider as his words got louder. His small hand waved in an expansive sweeping motion, as though tracing ghosts in the air himself.
His story startled me. But it's not ghosts I fear - it's the murderous images haunting that child's mind. I shudder for those. "I don't believe in ghosts," I recall telling him. I can't remember what I else I said, but he seemed satisfied enough and wandered off.
What I really should have done is sing him this little Sunday School song:"The Devil is a sly old fox. I'd like to catch him and put him in a box. I'd lock the door and throw away the key, for all those tricks he's played on me!"
The Bible is pretty clear on this: God doesn't permit the spirits of the dead to remain to haunt the earth.
So-called hauntings are deceptions from Satan (the father of lies) and masquerading fallen angels.
"No darlin'," I'd tell that child. "People don't come back from the dead. The devil plays tricks to make people think they do. But God is WAY bigger. Way more powerful. You can't see him, but he's with you all the time. And he loves you SO much!"
Jesus, well acquainted with Satan's deception, included this phrase in the Lord's prayer: "Father in Heaven... deliver us from evil." Why? Because God is good, and living in fear isn't.
Wish I could tell that little guy that. It's the best treat of all.
