Seance At Dusk

This little story is from one Pete's neices, Marie (with some help from her sister, me):

Although my grandparents were religious and would sprinkle us with holy water, or have the house blessed, or take us to a healing priest, they also had an interest in the afterlife and ghosts. 

Every couple of years we'd witness the family get together with a psychic who would come and "read" the house and it's dwellers. To us, it was fun and scary at the same time. But, mostly fun because it was explained to us that this was just entertainment. We'd watch through the windows from the stoop as the lights would be dimmed and candles lit. We'd hear the psychics talk about a Captain that lived in the basement or about these spirits that roamed through the house.

We'd mimic this with our friends by bringing out the Ouiji Board and play around a little. But then, Peter got a great idea to make our "seances" a little more exciting.

He told us to invite our friends from the block (Tuggy, Heather, John, Christine, Janet, Howie, Brian, Linda, Joseph) to the basement one Wednesday evening when our grandparents went out and left Peter in care of us. (Marie was about 8 yo, Peter about 17 yo) Sitting on the stoop one evening, told our friends tales about how the basement was haunted (and it was ... sort of).

That afternoon, Peter showed us how to "rig" the basement. We got fishing wire (clear) wrapped it around the cross that was hanging on the wall and down to the door handle. We painted glow in the dark footprints on the ceiling. Filled a spray bottle with hot water with a little red coloring in it. He set up the Ouiji board and instructed us on how to prepare for our seance.

We piled our friends into the basement, lit the candles, turned out the lights and everyone put their hands on the Ouiji board. We asked the board to give us a sign that the spirit we called "The Captain" was in the room with us. From behind a doorway, Peter pulled on the wires and the Cross moved back and forth.

While our friends were all screaming and running for the front exit door, it suddenly SLAMMED. Everyone screamed again, and ran in the other direction to get up the stairs. In the confusion, no one noticed (except us) that Peter came out of the doorway and sprayed the hot red water on  the neck of one of our friends. He screamed and said that something had bitten him and when he looked at his fingers, they appeared to have reddish liquid on them.

We couldn't contain our laughter as our friends went running to their homes screaming about the ghost in our basement. Of course, our GHOST was Peter, but we never told anyone.

This was one of my best memories with Pete. He loved to scare the shit out of people, and now I learned from the best !

Sorry this is only audio. But enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMI7wAtbvj8