THE LILAC GHOST

I don't believe in ghosts. That's what makes this such a curious story. It's about a close encounter, of the eeriest kind, with an apparition in an old building which, to this day, I have trouble making much sense of. To understand where I was and why, I refer you to an earlier blog called “How to Quit a Job,” which tells, what you might find to be, a very entertaining story of how I walked out of a job at a small radio station after putting on a record that was completely out of format and listened in my car on the way to my new job. You may enjoy finding it and using it as a precursor to this tale. Not a necessity but a fun read. The new job was at a beautiful music station in downtown Hartford and I was hired to do the 6pm – midnight shift. The station was in a very old house, referred to as The Mansion and I would be there by myself for six hours nightly. The Mansion, at the corner of Wethersfield Ave and Wyllys St, was the former Borden (Milk Company) town house for when the family was in the city. It was hundreds of years old. A plush red-carpeted curved stairway led the way upstairs from the lobby, past two beautiful stained glass windows. There were Italian marble fireplaces in every room, including the Control Room, which was in the second floor master bedroom. The original engineer had set up house speakers in the flues of the (non-operating) fireplaces, and the "beautiful music" seemed to come from everywhere. The "On-Air" light was an electric candelabra just outside of the studios. The owner kept a bachelor pad on the third floor and it was the engineer's job, aside from keeping the radio station running, to be sure his water bed was filled and set to the proper temperature when he would be in town from his other abode – a yacht, anchored offshore at Hilton Head, Hawaii. WKSS was a background station with innocuous music from the likes of Mantovani and the Clebanoff Strings. Non threatening versions of the popular music of the day sans any instrumentation that may be deemed offensive such as guitar or drums. Easy listening versions of rock and roll classics that would make Pat Boone's white bread interpretations of classic songs seem downright soulful by comparison. Imagine, if you can, Jefferson Airplane's “We Can Be Together” played by Zamfir. You just can't unhear the phrase “up against the wall, motherfucker,” when it's played on the pan flute. My job was to monitor the 3 hour long tapes and to break in twice an hour with weather updates, news headlines and station identifications. I would answer the phones according to formatics, “Kiss, WKSS, how may I help you.” The listeners would request songs that I knew we didn't play and I would promise to try and get them on, pre-programmed tapes notwithstanding. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those folks are still listening, even though the format has changed 5 times over the years. They were that dedicated. The stories of a ghost in the mansion never really bothered me. I don't believe in ghosts and took them with a huge grain of salt. Tales of the old lady in the grey sweater who would show up whenever the sweet scent of lilac enveloped the house were plentiful but I paid them no mind. I was alone in the mansion, in the second floor studio. Occasionally, I would hear sounds coming from the third floor. I knew we kept boxes of records up there that would never be played. I just assumed that, occasionally, one of them fell. At midnight, I would have to go down to the basement and set up the automation tapes that would keep the station on the air until the morning people would come in and begin the process anew. It was dark and cold and, non belief aside, I often felt a chill when I went down there that would only go away once I was in my car and on the way home. I may not have believed in ghosts but I have always had a pretty vivid imagination and could conjure up all kinds of goblins and ne'er-do-wells hiding in dark basement recesses, waiting to confront the person who was making sure that this awful music would continue to permeate the building despite the absence anything mortal other than the plants in the lobby. I suppose my disavowal of anything otherworldly gave me an almost perverse pleasure in making sure that if, indeed, they did exist, they had to listen to this crap too. I had been working in the mansion for about 9 months when I was included in a small cocktail party they were throwing in the lobby for advertisers by virtue of the fact that I was on the air at the time. I was allowed to come down, have a glass of punch and schmooze with clients until it was time to go back up to the second floor to change a tape and read a temperature. Then, I could go back down to join the folks in the lobby. I was standing by myself, looking for a conversation to join, when I was suddenly overcome by the unmistakable bouquet of lilac. I wasn't bothered by this in the least. Lilac is my favorite fragrance so I closed my eyes and took it in, not thinking much of it. When I opened my eyes, there, in the middle of a group of people, stood an old lady in a grey sweater. She looked at me and I, her. I then looked around to see if anyone else had noticed her but, when I turned back around........she was gone. So was the lilac. That was my last night in the haunted mansion. I quit the next day and began studying acting in New York before resuming my radio career, a couple of years later, at a small station in Plainfield, New Jersey. A station that was in an office building in a strip mall that no respectable ghost would even want to haunt. The owner of WKSS soon sold the station and the format was changed to rock & roll. I never heard another word about the old lady in the grey sweater who left a trail of lilac wherever she appeared. I suspect she was finally able to rest in peace once she was no longer forced to listen to lush, orchestral arrangements of Led Zeppelin songs in favor of the real thing. Apparently, she found a Stairway to Heaven that worked for her. I still don't believe in ghosts but I will swear on a stack of bibles that this really happened, although, it would be a moot point since I also don't believe in bibles.