I Survived the 2006 Maritime Writers’ Workshop and Literary Festival – It Was A Dark and Stormy Night in Mem Hall

Yes, it was a dark and stormy night in Mem Hall. Lightning crashed across the ceiling. Thunder roared through the halls. Rain pelted the faces of eleven idiots messing with the forces otherworldliness. We were in search of the Ghost of Memorial Hall, reputed to be the sister of a soldier killed in combat during World War 1.

In the Hall’s theater, she erected a stained glass monument to him, upon which is inscribed the word FAITH.

It was to become her name when she died, and she was destined forever to play the piano on the second floor sometime between the hours of 11 PM and 5 AM. Sometimes she would favor an unsuspecting late night worker with the haunting fragrance of her rose water perfume.

Security guards approach only when they have no choice. Staff members balk at the thought of late working hours. Mice gather their furry brood and shiver till sun break.

But we, fool writers, makers of worlds, lords of lives, and masters of metaphor (and epiphanity) ventured into the Hall in hopes of just a bar or two of piano, a fleeting wisp of rose water.

Fool Writers. From southwest to center, Jean Paul Sartre and Anais Nin.

Little did we know what horrors awaited us.

We gathered in the main hall – wind, rain and lightning slashing into our souls – and eyed each other fearfully. I looked at Jean Genet and thought, “That bastard’s trying to steal our souls.” Virginia Woolf plucked Hemmingway’s eyes out and screamed, “Everyone … to the ice house!” Just as panic threatened to devour us in our own uncertainties, we heard a noise. Was that piano music? “No,” said Dashiell Hammett. “It’s my stomach. I ate too many hard boiled eggs.” We pounced upon him and drank his blood.

We were doomed. A mood overtook us and, as a single object of dread, we walked slowly up the stairs to the second floor, wind and water pummeling our faces and causing havoc with the arrangement of our hair.

We visited the room with the piano. Nothing happened. It was chillingly calm. We waited, breathless. Webster and Shelley died from lack of oxygen. Taking their cue, the rest of us resumed breathing and made our way in dreadful oneness to the second floor hall where Thompson told of strange happenings at the Algonquin Hotel. Several nameless writers peed their pants.

Have you ever seen humanity more at the brink of unnatural disaster? The very walls breathed a strange quirkiness.

And then it happened.

(To be continued…)