Birthday party on the patio of our old house.
My older brother is on the far left and I’m next to him with my mouth open.
My younger brother is between the kid in the blue shirt and the smiling kid in the white.
Mark B. is the hulking brute in green on the far right.
We would go over to the basement of his house and play Dungeons & Dragons while listening to “Back In Black.” We’d also make prank phone calls to people from his kitchen and record them on his reel to reel cassette player.
His family was Mormon and there are lots of stories about them and his Mom, who was a bit of a troubled woman.
She always wore a dressing gown around the house and was on some type of medication. One time she was gorked out of her head and decided to go for a drive. So, she backed the car down the driveway and then hit the gas and didn’t stop until she hit a rock in her neighbor’s driveway across the street, barely missing some of the neighborhood kids.
She died in the house a few years later.
I talked to my Mom last week who said they had a visit the previous day from one of our old neighbors in Downington.
The neighbor told my Mom that Mark B.’s house was haunted.
They said multiple families had moved in there since we moved away in 1985 and all reported it being haunted. They said the last family who lived there had no idea anyone had died in the home but had to move out when they kept seeing the apparition of a middle-aged woman in a dressing gown…
Downingtown, Pennsylvania (1983)
Song Of Ajax 