Ghost Stories

I learned a lot from my last camping trip with Mum and two of the boys. Mostly that campfire Ghost stories are just as tough as I thought they would be. I have a new appreciation for the Imaginations of my predecessors.

The best part about camping with Dad and Uncle Crazy Legs had to be the Ghost stories. They had a vast repertoire; from the Humorous to the Benign; all the way into tales that could make the blood of the most worldly seventeen-year-old run to ice.

And you always knew when it was time; the fire was brightening against the chill of the mountain summer's eve, and Dad or Uncle Crazy Legs would start like a distant howl on the wind...

"WhoooooHoooooooooooo..."

It was campy, but it always worked. Every kid, any age sat with rapt attention until the story was done. Very often one or two had eyes squeezed shut, or left in fright all together. It was glorious.

Naturally the mark of success for a ghost story was how hard it was for which kids to fall asleep. You'd be amazed at how much spookier the bush is at night after one of their better tellings. I hope you went to the bathroom before it got dark, because, believe me... you aren't interested in leaving the camper now.

A little taste of moonlight plays through the trees and throws faint shadows that move with the boughs in the breeze... really - just stay in your sleeping bag. The terror is delicious.

We actually tried, as kids, to record some of these stories for posterity, with varying success. I must admit though, that success has diminished given that those recordings, to my knowledge, have passed into legend along with the stories themselves.

Dad did start writing a manuscript about 20 years ago. He never finished it; there was always one more hill to hike up, one more trail to ride down, and that's really the way it should have been. I have that manuscript now, and the technology to convert it back to a usable form... and the collected memory of a dozen now-adult cousins to flesh out the stories. And, it turns out, I have something else.

I was sweating bullets, and I had researched the history of the area for three days... but on our last camping trip, I told my boys a ghost story of my own devise.

Kid Two didn't admit to much, but it kept Youngest Kid up that night.

Thanks, Dad.

The Grizzly-Moose

Over the course of a recently-completed Very Long Drive, I had the occasion to pass along a little bit of Kootenay lore to a friend of mine.

We were moving my RV through deepest, darkest Western Ontario and I was driving. Chris was Shotgun, and my lovely wife was lounging in the back. It was twilight, and we were hoping to make Thunder Bay before calling it a 17-hours-travelled day.

Ontarioans will tell you that that part of the province is lousy with wildlife. Wildlife that appears to find leaping across a busy highway - like the Trans-Canada - the most sublime sort of sport.

So I was driving at twilight in something as sporty and maneuverable as a school bus, but not nearly so solid, constantly scanning the sides of the road ahead.

"Grizzly-Moose" I grumbled.

Chris looked at me ~ a look that indicated my sanity may be in question. "What?"

I've noted for some time that my casual common expressions tend to be somewhat... obscure... to MostPeople. I attribute this to rather a backwoods upbringing in the sticks of the Kootenays in British Columbia - and formal education in English, which evidently only High School teachers get.

I'm not a High School Teacher.

So I, naturally, launched into a dissertation on my personal cryptozoological experience.

"My Dad used to tell me stories about the Web-footed, Beaver-tailed, Grizzly-Moose.

It's a fascinating creature, native to the Kootenay region of B.C. It has the head, shoulder hunch, and body like a Grizzly bear, palmated antlers and a bell like a Moose, webbed feet like a duck - but obviously larger, and a broad, flat tail reminiscent of a Beaver.

This, of course, is not the interesting part. What makes it interesting is that it innately, instinctively knows when it is being looked at directly, and then instantly turns into a rock, or a bush, or a stump or some other inanimate thing in order to escape detection. So, naturally, you only see them from the corner of your eye, when you aren`t quite paying attention."

Oddly enough, Chris seemed skeptical. I attributed that to his youth and city upbringing.

"Dad actually saw a pelt for one in the early 80's," I went on. "Evidently there was one mounted in a pub somewhere in Montana, just south of Wardiner in the east Kootenays."

Now, to be honest, I had always been a little suspicious of the veracity of Dad's story about that. Everybody knows that a creature that can instinctively change into an inanimate object to avoid detection will almost certainly do so as its dying act. So what did He see? a pile of bark?

The truth is lost to history. I do know, however, that in (I think... it's been 30 years) 1981 a story ran in the Fernie Free Press on this very subject, penned by the most venerable and sage PipeDreamer himself, the late Bruce Ramsey - and it features my Dad telling the story of the discovery of a stuffed Grizzly Moose.

But you travelers are at least now aware. You swear you saw that stump move a second ago, right? That dark spot in the copse of trees up ahead - it looked at you, didn't it?

It's not your imagination. And I thought they were native to B.C. ~ turns out they've expanded their range.

"What's that?" Chris says suddenly, alarm in his voice as he points to a tan deer shape in the deepening twilight. As we approached, it resolved itself into a rock.

"Grizzly-Moose" I shrugged.