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Where We Left Off:
The agency reopened a file on the cowbirds to study their recent behavior. There are more questions than answers.
The Haunting of Well House:
I fully admit that I’ve used The Haunting of Hill House as a case file code name before. It was too good to pass up when Gus alerted me to suspicious activity at the old well house on the property. His behavior showed how captivated he was by noises coming from this small structure. I expected it to be a one-day mystery, but alas, ’twas not. Gus continued to inspect the well house for days, listening and sniffing for clues.
Another confession is that I only read a few issues of Locke & Key (the comics created by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez) which became a TV series. I loved the premise a lot, but it was a little too graphic for me. The reason I bring it up is because I remember there was a terrifying shapeshifting character named Echo who gained enough power to crawl out of a well. I could be remembering that wrong, but the creepiness of the character stuck with me. It also brings to mind the famous painting Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. And I was reminded of that because my writer friend and fellow adventurer, Thomas Pluck, wrote a short story inspired by the painting in an anthology called Alive in Shape and Color.
It’s important to note that the well house is not the well itself. It’s a shelter to house the electrical stuff like the pump to drive water from the well to the house. Even with this structure, the pipe would freeze a few times every winter. All it needed to stay warm enough was a light bulb utilizing the Easy Bake Oven technique. At some point in the last few years of utterly non-linear time, the lines were moved and now they aren’t supposed to freeze.
Gus and I were outside inspecting this shelter which has the garden hose on a spool on one side and spigots on the other. The Grumpy Old Man came over to discuss his vision for this spot. He’s been talking about these plans for many years. He already tore down the old garden shed next to the well house (there’s still glass all over and the cement foundation) decades ago. He wants to take down the well house too. He wants to then install a 20 x 20 foot shed which would have 12 feet enclosed and 8 feet as a type of porch. Reality tells me that there’s nothing about it that would be a porch. Instead it would probably be piles of whatever can’t fit inside it.
But, I digress. This isn’t about future plans. This is about the bone-chilling fear one feels when looking into the present day well house. Gus and I have no ideas about who or what made the hole next to the door handle and sliding bolt lock. Something in there has made noise. Both of us heard sounds coming from the inside.
I had Gus with me so I felt braver than usual and unlocked the hobbit-sized door. There was full sun that day so we had clear views down the cube-shaped shaft. Water rested at the bottom. The walls are peeling and splotchy with colors of rust, filthy white-grey, and wet cement. I leaned myself over the step to get a better look. That must have been when I got spooked by the cave crickets. I jolted and my sunglasses slid out of my shirt collar and kerplunked into the water and out of reach. So long, sunglasses. You served me well for a few years. Not bad for a roughly $22 investment. I contemplated finding something to reach down into the water, but talked myself out of it. It was time for new sunglasses anyway.
Gus was more interested in the hole of the cinder block exterior than in my plight. He was ready to move on and talk to Oliver about the possible entities that could be lurking inside the walls of the well house. Ollie was on his observation deck so we walked over and asked him to begin the research. For days, Gus snooped around the well house trying to catch whatever was in there. That behavior is what led me to make this little horror vignette of his investigation. I can’t actually call it a story because there was no ending at the time of filming.
“It’s a darn good thing you didn’t harm those cave crickets,” Oliver told me later that first day when we met for snacks.
“Why? Cave crickets are scary and I feel like I’m in an Indiana Jones movie when they’re around,” I said to him.
“Don’t you remember how my favorite human acts when there’s a cricket in the house?” Ollie referred to The Cook’s adage that crickets inside the house are considered good luck and that you shouldn’t kill them. The rule does not apply to cats who love killing and eating them.
I never heard anyone but the women in my family talk about crickets and good luck. Finally, Oliver presented some information from folklore websites that backed up this belief. In China, crickets were important for telling farmers when to take action on their crops. There was also something called cricket fighting—a bizarre pastime that still goes on today—in both China and Japan.
“The fight ended when a cricket managed to flip its opponent over, when it lay down with the loser held over its body, or held the loser in its jaw, raised high. The cardinal rule in all these matches was that a losing cricket would not be allowed to fight again – people loved crickets too much to risk permanently damaging them.” –G. Iyer
Oliver explained that in India, there is a belief more closely related to the one The Cook has said for her entire life. As opposed to keeping crickets for their singing or fighting skills, in India, one would never kill a cricket in the house if someone was pregnant or trying to get pregnant.
“All right, you’ve taken us down a weird path about crickets,” I said, “but is that what Gus and I have been hearing coming from the well house?”
“I saw a bee go in the hole, not a cricket,” Gus finally said. “Then it disappeared. There doesn’t seem to be a hive in there unless it’s impossible to see.”
I’ve seen TV shows where exterminators remove hives from underneath house exteriors. Those can be massive! The well house has some wood in the framing, but otherwise, it’s not drywall and aluminum siding. It’s cinder block or something like it with a plaster type coating. It’s like a basement.
When trying to find online information about crickets and ghosts, the only thing that kept coming up was about the other kind of cricket. The sporty ball game that’s kind of like baseball. Apparently many of the world’s cricket players stay in haunted places. That wasn’t what we were looking for.
We went back to the drawing board and focused on wells. There’s a famous haunted well in Maine, the Sabbatus Well, that has captured people’s interest for generations. Unfortunately, there’s not enough to go on for us to tie supernatural activities to a well house in New Jersey. Japan, however, has probably the most frightening of ghost stories like Okiku or The Ring. If Okiku can count from one to nine from a well in Japan, how unusual would it be for something just like that to happen in New Jersey, USA?
Gus gave us his thoughts on the possibilities. “We’ve already had a few cases of murder and tormented abuse on this mountain going back a to the 19th century. How many violent deaths could there be in one place?”
Oliver said, “Think about it: we might not be talking about a murder here. There could have been an accident easily enough. Someone, especially a small, young person, could have fallen into that well house over the step and ended up landing head first.”
“I agree. I think what we have here is a tragedy, but not murder,” I said to the detectives.
Case Findings:
Gus and his human heard strange noises coming from the well house and spent days inspecting the structure. The only things found stirring inside it were insects that weren’t making any noises at the time. After thorough research into the sounds of crickets and possibility of a bee hive, it was determined that neither type of bug was the source of the sounds. Instead, the Winchester-Nabu team believes that the sounds are an echo or type of haunting from a person who accidentally fell down the shaft and died as a result.
Case Status: Closed
Resources:
Iyer, G. (2017) More dangerous than bodyline: The violent history of cricket fighting in China, Scroll.in. Available at: https://scroll.in/magazine/832574/more-dangerous-than-bodyline-the-violent-history-of-cricket-fighting-in-china (Accessed: 17 May 2023).
Unknown (no date) The folklore and mythology surrounding crickets, CrystalWind.ca. Available at: http://www.crystalwind.ca/mystical-magical/legends-fables-and-lore/folklore/the-folklore-and-mythology-surrounding-crickets (Accessed: 17 May 2023).
Fandino, D. (2022) The girl in the well: The Ring and Japanese ghost stories, Journey to the (Wired) West. Available at: https://journeytothewiredwest.com/history/the-girl-in-the-well/ (Accessed: 17 May 2023).