When my father was in his late teens, around 1920, he and his two younger brothers decided to have some Halloween fun. At that time they lived in Carpio, North Dakota, a very small farming community not very far from the Canadian border. There was an old abandoned two-story farmhouse on a road near where they lived so the boys could not resist a bit of mischief. After dark they snuck into that house carrying white sheets and candles. They went up to the second floor and opened all the windows facing the road. When they saw a wagon, or someone on horseback, or pedestrian, or even a car (they were very rare), they draped the sheets over themselves, lit the candles and walked very slowly past the windows, moaning, with an occasional scream. Well of course this stopped all traffic, as people gaped up at the windows with the ghosts strolling past. Definitely a haunted house.
Next day the word spread around town about the scary creatures and strange sounds at the old house. And that night there were dozens of Carpio citizens plus some from nearby towns out on the road as Dad, Irvin and Earl did their ghostly walk and moans and screams. It was all great fun for the performers and the audience.
The next night was Halloween so the boys convinced their oldest sister to join them for a grand finale: four ghosts and a chilling female scream. The road was packed, people all over the place. Then a large flatbed truck came roaring down the road, stopped directly in front of the house’s front porch, and about a dozen men climbed out carrying shotguns and rifles. As these mercenaries headed up onto the porch and toward the front stairs, the four ghosts quickly shed their sheets, blew out the candles, scurried down the back staircase, out the back door and ran home, keeping very low and very quiet.
It wasn’t very long before the whole town learned the ghosts’ identity and everybody had a good laugh, except my grandfather Christian Johnson who was not at all happy about his kids’ antics. Dad always loved telling us his ghost story and how that Halloween Eve was the first time in his life that he was really, really scared.
