{"id":4688,"date":"2012-11-09T19:24:20","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T02:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4688"},"modified":"2012-11-12T10:16:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T17:16:45","slug":"just-a-small-town-ghost-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4688","title":{"rendered":"Just a Small Town Ghost Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

An old house in a small town in eastern North Dakota.<\/p><\/div>\n

The house was once a boarding house for railroad workers, so I am told, as well a private home through the second half of the twentieth century and so far in the twenty-first.<\/p>\n

When I go grouse and duck-hunting with my friend G., who has lived there for the decade past, I usually sleep in the enclosed front porch, which is about 8 x 12 feet in size. That room contains a single bed, a desk and chair, a lamp, and a disassembled bookcase \u2014 nothing more. (I like that room because I can take my dog outside easily.)<\/p>\n

In 2011, I left for the 1,000-mile drive home, went about five miles down North Dakota 200, and wondered where my cell phone was. I stopped the truck and looked \u2014 no phone. I went back and with G.’s help searched the 8 x 12 room and the lawn between the front door and where I parked.<\/p>\n

“Clarence must have taken it,” he said.<\/p>\n

Once home, I went through the truck like a drug agent looking for contraband. No telephone. Nor did it ever appear at G.’s house.<\/p>\n

This year, my fifth visit to the house, I kept a close watch on my telephone, and it came home with me safely.<\/p>\n

But then I walked into my temporary bedroom and smelled cigarette smoke\u2014a strong smell, as though someone had just finished their cigarette in the little room.<\/p>\n

I asked G. about it. He was blas\u00e9. He had smelled it, his wife had smelled it, his teenage stepkids had smelled it. (No one in the family smoked cigarettes.)<\/p>\n

And I smelled it four or five times more, at odd intervals, not connected with time of day or humidity or anything like that.<\/p>\n

G. attributes it to one Clarence Bolz, who owned the house a couple of decades ago. Mostly he haunts the workshop attached to the garage, G. said. Small items sometimes disappear, and now and again G. smells Clarence’s cigarettes.<\/p>\n

Such a ghost story would be too minor even for\u00a0Fate<\/a><\/em> magazine’s <\/a>reader-submissions column. But it was the first smell-linked haunting that I had encountered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The house was once a boarding house for railroad workers, so I am told, as well a private home through the second half of the twentieth century and so far in the twenty-first. When I go grouse and duck-hunting with my friend G., who has lived there for the decade past, I usually sleep in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-4688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ghosts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1dC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12523,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12523","url_meta":{"origin":4688,"position":0},"title":"A Libation for the Mother River","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote earlier about the hitchhiker whom I called Travis, a post writen on the 19th of October, mostly at the Twenty Below coffeehouse in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to drive an old friend home to his tiny prairie town after he had been poked and prodded and MRI'd all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/missouri-at-fort-pierre-300x188.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11020,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11020","url_meta":{"origin":4688,"position":1},"title":"Playing Heathen Neo-folk on North Dakota Highways","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I was on my way to a little town in North Dakota where a friend lives about at the intersection of Norway and Washington streets \u2014 can you get any more perfect than that? And every little town is dominated by a Lutheran steeple. A friend in Poland and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"music\"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=music"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/finley-lutheran-church.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1061,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1061","url_meta":{"origin":4688,"position":2},"title":"On the Road","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogging will be sketchy for the next week, as I am on the road, my destination being first, a small town and an old friend in eastern North Dakota -- and then possibly the Turtle Mountain area of that state.Tonight I fetched up in Valentine, Nebraska (more than halfway there!),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"travel\"","block_context":{"text":"travel","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12509,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12509","url_meta":{"origin":4688,"position":3},"title":"The Hitchhiker","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The heart of western South Dakota: US Highway 212 near the town of Faith. Leaving Spearfish, South Dakota, on October 17th\u00a0en route to eastern North Dakota, I decided to skip the Green Bean coffeehouse, as much as I like it, and fueled up on motel-room coffee and a leftover partial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"The heart of western South Dakota","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/US-212-1_5543-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8287,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8287","url_meta":{"origin":4688,"position":4},"title":"Not Dead and the House Is Still Standing","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry about the lack of content. Everything went topsy-turvy on the 17th and is just now returning to normal, or to a \"new normal.\" I left home on the 11th for a trip to eastern North Dakota to go grouse hunting with an old friend who himself was facing heart\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"william-f-schmalsle","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/william-f.-schmalsle.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3285,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3285","url_meta":{"origin":4688,"position":5},"title":"Back at the PhD (Piled-high Desk)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It was good to disappear. I geocached along the Niobrara River, hunted ducks in North Dakota \u2014 where \"to combine\" is the verb of autumn, and you accent the first syllable \u2014 and ended up finally at the Black Hills Powwow in my old hometown of Rapid City. I ate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Rose hips and bufflo berries on the North Dakota prairie","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/rosehipsbuffaloberries%E2%80%94sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4688"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4695,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions\/4695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}