Living near a creek, we occasionally do get visitors. These fine ducks decided to take a break in our front yard on their way back home. They were enjoying the warm weather.
A few years ago, I was walking around the neighborhood when I realized that someone was watching me.
After saying goodbye to my new friend, I kept walking. A few blocks later, I realized that I was being followed.
As soon as I turned around and looked at him, he ran away.
It’s been years but I still think about the two of them whenever I go for a walk around the neighborhood, the proud cat and the curious dog. I’m glad that they both had a home and happy lives. I’m glad the cat enjoyed staring me down and I hope the dog enjoyed following behind me. Human don’t deserve animals but I’m glad they put up with us.
I stood out on the front porch and watched as the sky went from being blue to being dark and gray in a matter of minutes. That was the year that fall came early and almost all the leaves were gone by the end of October. But just as the leaves fell early, so did the storms arrive ahead of schedule. It rained hard during the afternoon and probably panicked everyone looking forward to spending the night collecting candy.
The rain stopped before evening came and that night, costumed searchers and their parents walked up and down the sidewalks, running up to houses and shouting, “Trick or Treat!” I was alone that Halloween so I dressed up like a cat and handed out candy. Everyone was extra grateful because they knew that if the storm had started just an hour later, there would have been no Halloween that year.
One day, not too long ago, I was walking around the neighborhood with my camera when I came across a deserted house.
I decided that, since I had my camera with me, I might as well explore.
The window were broken and the backdoor was unlocked.
As I walked through the house, it seemed to be deserted but it soon became obvious that someone else had recently been there. The doors were all open. The ceiling fans in the kitchen were still spinning. There was a chair, like the one pictured above, in almost every room of the house. I started to feel uncomfortable so I decided to leave the house. As I stepped back through the backyard, I noticed a pile of bricks lying in the backyard.
As I walked away from the house, I noticed one last thing — the remains of a bicycle in the front yard.
Eventually, someone bought and refurnished the house, fixing the broken windows and, I assume, the broken door as well. I still wonder who owned that bicycle.
One day, I was exploring my town with my camera. I found an alley sitting behind a row of store and I took pictures as the day passed. Today, I look at these pictures and I think about the things that I did not consider while taking them. What is behind the closed doors? How does the difference of an hour change the way a place looks and feels?
A few blocks from my house, there is a historic cemetery, one that is over 150 years old. It is surrounded by a fence. Behind it, there is a bus station. Across the street from it, there is a gymnastics center and several warehouses. Other than the fence and the gravestones, there are no markings and I think most people drive by without ever noticing it.
I first noticed it one day while I was driving to the library. I came back later with my camera and I took some pictures. At first, it was difficult to concentrate with the sound of traffic in the background but the longer I spent standing outside the gates of the cemetery, the less I heard of the traffic.
Later, I learned that the people buried in this cemetery were among the first to build a town on this land. Without these people, who came from across the country, these roads and warehouses and the new gymnastics center would have never had a place to be built.
As I left, I saw an American flag raising over a nearby used car lot. I made sure to get a picture before I went home.
I don’t believe in ghosts but I may have seen one when I was 18.
It was the summer after I graduated high school and I was in Italy, discovering what the world outside of both high school and America looked like. That night, my sisters and I were staying at a hotel in Rome. I had a room to myself. The Vatican was nearby. At two o’clock in the morning, I could still hear the sound of motor scooters roaring past on the streets below my window. I naturally wanted to go outside and see what was happening but I had promised my sisters that I would not leave the hotel and wander around Rome late at night. As they pointed out, I didn’t speak Italian so, if I got lost or into any sort of trouble, there would be no way for me to ask for help. As well, we were visiting the Vatican tomorrow morning. I didn’t have to sleep, they knew better than to ask me to do that. But I did need to stay in the hotel.
So, I took a shower, I put on my usual late night outfit of a t-shirt and underwear, and I lay in bed and I listened to the scooters outside. When I got bored with the scooters, I turned on the TV and I watched an episode of an American soap opera that had been dubbed into Italian. I could follow the plot just fine and I found myself wondering if maybe my sisters had been exaggerating the language difference.
Finally, I decided that, even if I couldn’t go outside, there was no reason why I couldn’t step outside of my room and walk up and down the hotel hallway. It would give me a chance to stretch my legs and work off my restlessness. Plus, it was two in the morning. Every other guest at the hotel was probably asleep. I’d have the hallway to myself.
I stood up and walked over to the door of my hotel room. As I approached, I felt a chill in the air and I shivered a bit. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was due to me being underdressed and that maybe there was just a random cold spot in the room. I put my hand on the door knob, turned it, and slowly opened my door.
There was a woman standing directly across the hall from my room. She appeared to be in her forties, short and slightly heavy-set with long, jet black hair. She was wearing a shapeless brown dress and her dark eyes narrowed at the sight of me. What I immediately noticed about her was that her skin was an ashen gray.
I stared at her for a few seconds, not knowing what to say but fully aware that she was glaring at me.
Slowly, she asked, in perfect English that carried not a trace of an accent, “What are you doing here?”
I still didn’t know what to say.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?” she snapped.
I tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come.
“I OWN THIS HOTEL!” she yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?”
She started to move towards my room. I slammed the door shut and locked it.
I stood there for what seemed to be an eternity, listening for her. I was expecting her to start pounding on the door and screaming at me to come out but she didn’t. Instead, after I shut the door, I didn’t hear anything in the hallway. I didn’t hear her breathing. I didn’t hear her walking away. I didn’t hear anything.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably just a few minutes, I open the door a crack and peeked outside. The hallway was empty. The woman, whoever she had been, was gone. Still, I wasn’t going to take a risk. I closed the door again, got back in bed, and I didn’t get out of bed until the next morning.
When I asked my sisters if they had seen the woman, they had no idea who I was talking about. They hadn’t any seen any woman fitting the description at the hotel. They told me that I should have called them or the front desk for help and they were probably right but, at that moment, I had been too frightened to do anything. I had seen enough horror movies to know that calling for help was usually the least effective thing you could do when confronted by a maniac. It was my sister Erin who told me that the woman was probably a ghost, maybe the former owner of hotel demanding to know why I was in her home at two in the morning. Maybe she was. I don’t believe in ghosts but if I ever did see one, it was probably her.
This nature trail is located a few miles away from my house. When the weather is just right, I like to go down there and walk along the path and just enjoy the peace and beauty of nature.
What many people do not know, even those who visit the park on a daily basis, is that if you take a step off the nature trail and follow an overgrown path through the trees, you can find a historic cemetery that has sat in the park since the town was founded in the 1850s.
It’s rare that I visit the nature trail without also visiting the cemetery. It’s a reminder of the people who were here before me and who lived on this land before it became a park where people jog, ride their bicycles, and look at their phones when they should be looking at the world around them.
One evening, four years ago, I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Two blocks away from the house, I saw that something that I hadn’t seen before.
This run-down RV was parked against the curb.
The closer I got, the more obvious it was that the RV had seen better days. The tires were flat. The windows were broken. Though the picture above may be blurry, you can see that some of the back paneling was forcefully removed from the vehicle.
The front of the RV was not much better. The hole in the windshield was probably made by a rock many years previously and I wondered who had thrown it and why. The orange ticket was a notice that the RV would be towed if it wasn’t moved but I knew that the RV had only been sitting on the side of the street for an hour or two so I wondered when the ticket had been taped to the glass. The ticket itself was from the city but the line for the date had been left blank. The license plate said “Go By By.” Someone had once probably loved traveling in this RV.
Because the side door was missing, I took a peek inside.
I didn’t go inside, though.
The next morning, I went outside to check on the RV and it was gone. I guess the city towed it away but I didn’t notice any tow trucks in the area the night before. Ever since that evening, I’ve wondered who owned the RV and why it ended up parked off the side of the road.
Through the Shattered Lens 