'There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long long ago'

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following column by Fred Schuszler was originally published in The Paper on Saturday, Dec. 22, 2023.

We know that the second greatest Christmas story (Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”) is essentially a ghost story (with that great opening sentence: “Marley was dead: to begin with.”)

I also enjoy reading Christmas mystery stories during the holiday season. In that spirit (no pun intended), I would like to share some mysterious, creepy occurrences that happened to me when working some nights at First Baptist Church of Morganton over my many Christmas seasons there.

Maybe Christmastime is one of those seasons that the ancient Celts thought of as “thin places” — where the barrier between the physical and spirit world is “thin,” or more easily crossed.

A growl in the night — A wolf at the door

I was working in my office later than usual one mid-December night. As far as I knew, all the doors were locked and everyone had long gone home, but I heard voices and the thud of footsteps in the hall.

I tentatively came out of the office and in the dimly lit hallway saw to my shock a wolf running toward me at full speed! Its guttural growl echoed down the hall as it quickly closed the distance toward me.

I must have been frozen with fear because I just stood there watching in terror instead of doing the sensible thing of running back into my office and bolting the door.

“I’m just having a nightmare,” I thought. “I must have fallen asleep at my computer, and this is all a nightmare … I will wake up soon.”

But as much as I blinked to dispel the mirage, the dark beast and his low, threatening snarl were still very real — and gaining on me!

Suddenly, two dark human figures turned the corner from the stairway. They turned on the fluorescent hallway lights and gave a halt command to the approaching “wolf” (which turned out to be a trained K-9 German Shepherd).

The public safety officers wanted to know just who I was and what I was doing lurking in the church so late at night. They looked suspiciously in my office, and I was afraid they would see the mess and exclaim, “Ahah! We caught him trashing the Lord’s House!”

But I quickly explained that I was one of the ministers and just happened to be working late. In the most respectful voice, I could muster I asked why they were there. Had an alarm gone off or something?

They said that someone driving by the church had reported “suspicious activity” and lights on at the church at that late hour and thought there may have been a break in.

“By the way,” they said, “did you leave your jacket upstairs in room 305?”

“Jacket?” I replied, “why do you ask?” Motioning toward the now docile K-9 they said, “Because he got a hold of one up there and tore it up pretty good.”

Since I was wearing mine, I figured it must have been some other unfortunate soul’s garment. I figured I would somehow get blamed for the ravaged jacket.

I worried it might be the brand-new jacket of a prominent Sunday school teacher, who might quit in anger and complain to the deacons about me letting the youth run wild in the church playing their favorite game — the raucous, but “pious” version of hide-and-seek called “Underground Church.”

The officers, their K-9, and I (in what was admittedly a sort of skittish Barney Fife impression) proceeded to check around the church to see if there was anything to the false alarm of suspicious activity.

To my relief and their satisfaction there was none. In my relief, as I returned to my office, I remember absent-mindedly humming the main theme music from Peter and the Wolf.

An eerie chord and an errant coin drop

There were other minor mysterious noises over the course of my tenure at FBCM — I just can’t explain them. I leave the mystery to you, dear reader, to solve.

One Wednesday night during the Advent season, after everyone had long gone home, I was turning off lights in the nursery. Down at the other end of the hall was the Choir Room. I distinctly heard one piano chord. Just one chord, but very clear and very loud.

Thinking a choir member or ministerial colleague was still there after all, I proceeded down the hall to the music room. I didn’t hear a door to the outside close and heard no other sound at all, but when I got to the choir rehearsal room, there wasn’t anyone there.

It did feel a little colder in that room, however, and if you have seen the movie, “The Sixth Sense,” you know what that means.

Another time, I was locking up and turning off lights in the church fellowship hall after a youth event that concluded at midnight. All the youth had been picked up by parents and the last chaperone had just left.

It was quiet; too quiet. The kitchen is attached to the fellowship hall. In the kitchen area I heard what sounded like a coin drop and go around and around and around in a ghastly circle of menace.

Realizing I was all alone in that darkened space, my imagination conjured up — not a ghost, but a very human intruder lurking in the kitchen — maybe spilling the coin as he reached in his pocket for a knife.

I was just brave (and stupid) enough to look in the kitchen to make sure all the lights were out — and thankfully didn’t see or hear anyone in there — before making a break for the outside door and a beeline for my car.

I can only assume the sound I heard was a small piece of hardware dropping off some of the kitchen equipment. At least, I hope so.

Ghostly white noise

I went up to the church late one Sunday evening to get a jump on the busy Advent activities coming up that week. I noticed, even at that late hour, that there were many lights on in the old house attached to the church (we called the Kistler House Annex).

After finishing my task, I wandered over to see why so many lights were on in the Kistler House. The place was aglow with every light on, including the Christmas trees (plural) and electric candles in the extensively decorated area.

I remembered that earlier the youth had begun their progressive dinner party at the church before setting off to other dining locations and caroling.

Apparently, no one was in charge of turning off lights at the church. In my best cranky Scrooge impression, I grumbled to myself, “Back in my day as Youth Minister we used to turn off lights before leaving the church property.”

Although it was late and I was tired and just wanted to go home, I dutifully proceeded to turn off the lights, and instead of grumbling managed to thank the good Lord that I no longer had youth ministry responsibilities, so this was a small price to pay.

When all lights were off, I started to leave but noticed a light on that I had missed in a fine old display cabinet in the hallway. I sighed and carefully walked through the dark to turn it off.

When I turned it off, I realized I was plunged into deep darkness until my eyes could adjust, which made me a tad nervous in the place I had heard — and told — many stories of ghost encounters.

The instant I turned off the last light — almost as if summoned by the pitch darkness — I heard a scratchy noise like nails on a chalkboard! The timing of being plunged into complete darkness and the strange noise honestly “freaked me out” and I moved quickly (I should more accurately say, stumbled in panic) to the nearest exit.

I would have made an exit (like I had seen in the old Little Rascals shorts when a scared person made a body-shaped hole in a wall when trying to escape some would-be threat) if there had not been a door close by.

As I high tailed it to the door and the weird noise continued, I finally identified it as “white noise” from an intercom in the elevator/lift we had installed in the old house. The intercom was in case the lift got stuck there would be an emergency way to communicate the crisis to someone outside the lift.

The other intercom receiver/speaker was on a table in the hall. So, when I realized what the noise actually was, I laughed in relief. But to this day I wonder what caused the white noise from the intercom that I had never heard before or have since.

Also, that it happened precisely the split second when all the lights were turned off remains a mystery.

Later that night when I was — as the Visit from St. Nicholas poem so delightfully expresses, “just settling down for a long winter’s nap” and drifting off to sleep, I recalled the incident.

It suddenly dawned on me: what if there was someone stuck in the lift, and they were trying to communicate they needed help — and the static on the intercom was their anguished cry for assistance!

In what I admit was a lapse in Christmastime goodwill, I couldn’t face thinking about that scenario and dismissed it outright. I thought “nah,” pulled the covers up, and soon “visions of sugarplums danced in my head.” (Fortunately, that was not the case, and no one was trapped in the elevator.)

My wish for you, dear reader, is that the only spirits you encounter during this bright and blessed season are, like those specters who visited Scrooge, all to your benefit.

In the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us all, every one!” And in the words of St. Nick in A Visit from St. Nicholas poem: “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!”