Hallowe'en in March

Today at church the sermon was just the kind of sermon I love, about the supernatural, and about demons, and matters like that. It was because of the Gospel reading.

This Gospel reading today was a great one. Christ talks about how a demon is cast out of a man, and then the demon goes wandering around, seeking rest, but finds none, and so decides to return to the home from whence he came.

Got to love that, the idea of the demon looking for rest and finding none! That is a picture up above of the demon failing to find rest.

Anyway, the demon heads back to the poor guy who had been exorcised. And he finds that the place is swept and cleaned -- in other words, the guy has gotten his act together. And so the demon brings six more demons with him, more wicked than himself, to take up residence there.

The priest said, "From this we may learn that demons are not all alike. Some are worse than others."

That is something to ponder! Along with the creepy old story of the demon that made the phone call.

It was like the season of Hallowe'en, discussing matters of demons and possessions. I was on the same page with the priest because I baked, for the after-mass Coffee Hour, Pumpkin Bars. I cannot link to the recipe because it came from an old Broadway Market Cookbook. But here is the recipe really quick, because the Pumpkin Bars came out really well.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat together 4 eggs, 1 2/3 cups sugar, 1 cup vegetable oil and 2 cups pumpkin.

Separately stir together 2 cups flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. calt and 1 tsp. baking soda.

Mix the dry in with the wet.

Now this is my favorite part! Spread the batter into an ungreased 15 x 10 x 1 inch baking pan. That is a baking pan size I love. This is the Broadway Market cookbook, not Cooking Light. Bake 25 to 30 minutes. Cool. Cut into bars according to your liking.

Frost with Cream Cheese Frosting: Cream together 3 ounces softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup softened butter, 1 tsp vanilla and 2 cups powdered sugar.

The frosting was where I hit the skids. I had everything all ready and baked the cookies themselves on Saturday, because I had to work Saturday night and I knew we would be losing the hour because of Daylight Savings Time. And on Sunday even though I had had only five hours' sleep,  I got up feeling like Leonard Pennario used to before a concert -- flawlessly prepared.

But doh! Even though the butter and cream cheese were softened I could not beat out the lumps. I had to go pick up Dorothy and there was not enough time. I was literally frosting these cookies as I ran out the door.

End result: I took my lumps. Along with the rest of the frosting. It was just butter. What's not to love? And clearly no one minded. The Pumpkin Bars all vanished. It all worked out.

I will have to remember them in October.

Ghosts in the graveyard

It is October which means it is time to visit cemeteries! So while other people were worrying over the Bills game Buzz went to Cheektowaga and wandered among the graves and falling leaves of Our Lady Help of Christians Cemetery.

If you have not heard of this church, its history is fascinating on a million levels. It was built by a man named Joseph Batt who was crossing the ocean on his way to America in 1836 and ran into a big storm. The ship was going down, but future Buffalonian Joseph Batt prayed to Our Lady and the ship was saved. And when he got to Buffalo he built the historic chapel in thanks.

The sweet old chapel that the Batts built in 1853 survives today, tucked in between muffler shops and strip plazas. It is like Big Blue surviving tucked among skyscrapers and parking lots.

There are lots of Batts in this cemetery! Once upon a time you had to assume there were Batts in the belfrey too. (I had to crack a Batt joke before someone else did.)

I found the grave of Joseph Batt. His dates read 1814-1899. He and his wife were both born in Elsass and I realized that must be Alsace, in what is now France. My mother's family comes from Alsace. Hereafter I will say Elsass. I will be like Joseph Batt!

A closeup of the bottom of the gravestone because it has a touching inscription.

"Friede Ihrer Asche," it reads. I would translate that to "Peace upon their ashes."

I was thinking this was the Joseph Batt who founded the church but a minute later I realized no, it was his son. This Joseph Batt would have been 14 when the ship hit that storm.

Here were the old folks.

This is a closeup so you can read the writing.

Joseph was born in 1789 and his wife in 1787. Wow, they were born when Mozart was alive. Barbara Batt was born the year that Mozart premiered "Don Giovanni," in Prague. (A music nerd's life, it ain't no good life, but it's my life.)

They both lived another 50 years after being saved by Our Lady Help of Christians, the Star of the Sea. They both died the same year. She went, and then he followed a few months later.

The inscription at the bottom of the stone: "Emigrated to America in October, 1836."

Once you got into the cemetery a little ways other names began to be mixed in with the Batts. One Batt daughter married Conrad Kohlbrenner, whose name means Coal Burner.

Eventually you had Irish names and Polish names mixed in among the Germans. As the church's Web site says, other immigrants, not only from Germany but from Poland, Ireland and Italy, began to flock to the chapel to give thanks for their own safe arrival in America. Perhaps Leonard Pennario's parents made the trip! It is very possible.

Can you take just one more picture? Urban Batt is just the coolest name, I am sorry.

Anyway, while everyone else was watching the Bills this is what I was doing.

Before I left I felt I should say a little prayer so I said a quick prayer for the repose of the souls of the Batt family who gave us this beautiful little chapel. Stopping back at the grave of Joseph and Barbara Batt, I thought for a minute until I could put my words and endings together, and I said, "Herr und Frau Batt, bitte betet Ihr fur mich."

Which means, "Mr. and Mrs. Batt, please pray for me."

I hope that is what it means, anyway! 

Otherwise I might be in for some kind of October surprise.

Undead ahead

Signs that Hallowe'en is coming before we know it: I tuned into Catholic Radio the other day and the subject was zombies!

Someone called in and wanted to know if the current zombie craze, people running around dressed as zombies, were the work of the dark side.

My heart was heavy hearing that, I admit it. Last Hallowe'en I did a break from the Leonard Pennario beat to do a story for the paper on Buffalo's zombie community. We have a zombie community! All the better cities have them.

Here I am among the zombie undead. That is me on the right, taking notes! The zombies took this picture and Facebooked it to me. I am now Facebook friends with certain of the zombies.

And these zombies to my knowledge were upstanding and very kind citizens who dress up as zombies in their spare time and raise money for charity. Every October they put up a free haunted house for poor kids. I did not see anything wrong in that. Would the radio say I was wrong?

What about in Zumba class, every once in a while we do the Zombie Walk? Would I be told that was off limits like yoga?

In short ...

No!

God love these priests, they took a humorous view of the situation.

One of them gently told the caller, we are sometimes too quick to think something is the work of the devil. Obviously some things are the devil's work. (I can think of a few things off the top of my head.)

But as for zombies, he said, human beings have an age-old tendency to act out things we might be afraid of, things we do not know about. Look at kids playing cops and robbers, he said. And this is not harmful. It is human.

The zombies, exonerated!

The Zombie Walk, exonerated! Again may I express my love for a faith that frowns on yoga but has no problem with Zumba and the Zombie Walk. Catholicism rocks.

This will be a happy Hallowe'en!

School daze

This priest's Web log I look in on now and then reminds me that today is the Feast of St. Agnes, pictured above. That means that last night was the Eve of St. Agnes.

Click on that link and there is a neat podcast where he reads the torrid, romantic poem by John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes," and gives you the background of the superstitions surrounding it.

My friends and I loved that poem in high school!

We decided to do what the girl in the poem, Madeline, did. We scoured the Keats poem for clues as to what this girl did ... we had to find white nightgowns, fast all day, put our shoes in a "T" and then you had to lie on the bed on your back, all kinds of stuff.

Here is a drawing one of my friends did of me trying to get it right.

My dad, being an English teacher, thought the whole thing was a kick when he found out what we were doing. But alas, it did not ultimately work out for any of us. We worried we were tripped up on technicalities. My sister came barging into my room with a flashlight. And my friend Kitty, her father came into her room looking for the paper. Anyway I do not remember any actual dreams of future husbands.

It kills me to remember high school. To remember what it was like to spend hours with your head in the clouds.

I loved "The Once and Future King," which I read when I was 16. I liked the knights-and-ladies songs by Franz Schubert. Schubert is kind of Keats' musical parallel. Both romantic young men who died terribly young. Both of them loved those swashbuckling medieval poems and stories and neither of them grew old enough to outgrow the phase. Schubert continues to be an obsession of mine. Leonard Pennario was also crazy about his music and we used to talk about that.



I loved the Schubert songs about Sir Walter Scott's "The Lady of the Lake."



That is Dame Janet Baker singing.

What the heck, let us listen to the next song.



And the third -- you know this song! The woman who puts together these videos did a beautiful job with this one. I am a big fan of her work. She and I have been in touch.



Look at me, frittering away my Saturday.

I guess my head is still in the clouds!

Scary story 2

Today I was following my brother George to the Clinton-Bailey Market and on the radio I caught an interview with the author who wrote "The Exorcist."

How lucky was that?

I never read that book but one day I am going to. I did see the movie but it was a special edition that came out a couple of years ago. It had some scenes that I guess were not in the original. Holy cow -- or unholy cow, I should say -- I had to sleep with the light on!

Before today I could not have told you who wrote "The Exorcist." Now I realize he was originally this comedy writer who wrote screenplays for Inspector Clouseau movies, among other things.

In the interview he says: "I am hauled out of my burrow every year around Halloween as if I were some furless, aging demonic Punxatawny Phil. It always brings a smile of amusement to my lips."

Asked about "The Exorcist," he also says, believe it or not: "I have zero recollection of any intention to frighten the reader in the slightest." Amazing.

Blatty is 84, I think. I did not get to hear the whole interview on the radio because we got to the market and I could not just sit there in the car with George waiting. But when I got home I found it on YouTube. Fascinating! You get to hear Blatty reading from "The Exorcist" which is priceless.



Blatty wrote the book in a cabin in the woods on Lake Tahoe. That is really amazing. This is not the kind of book I would want to write in a cabin in the woods, I will tell you that. I could see writing about Leonard Pennario while sequestered in an isolated cabin, but "The Exorcist?" I do not think so.

Blatty says several priests told him "they had never seen such a thundering herd of people coming to to the confessional as they did after the release of this novel."

Hahahahaa! Well, really it is no laughing matter. I am laughing becasue that reminds me of something.

A while ago on Catholic Radio there was this priest taking questions, and the talk turned to the occult. The priest -- I forget who he is, but he is very mild mannered, and I think he is local -- told about a time when the rectory doorbell rang late at night and it was a group of teenagers scared out of their wits.

They had been playing with a Ouija board and happened on something, something that scared them. That was why they had come to the church, because they were scared. The priest took them inside and prayed, and I guess the problem was solved. I wish I recalled more of the details, but the thing is, I was too diverted by this one thing I could not help laughing about.

That was the thought of these kids with this Ouija board -- you would just love to have been a bug on the wall and hear who it was that made the call.

"Guys, St. Amelia's is right down the street. Let's just go."

Because they had to be really desperate to show up like that!

Also, I bet they never went near a Ouija board again.

Scary stuff.

Another one bites the dust

I am having a terrible time with priests.

It seems that so often whenever I run into one I especially like, something happens to him. I have this experience on a local and a not-local level.

On a not-local level I liked that celebrity priest Father John Corapi. I used to love his talks on Catholic Radio and they got me doing a lot of good things I might never be doing otherwise.

Then he went down in flames, spectacularly I must say, in a cloud of accusations of having a girlfriend and living with her, owning millions of dollars worth of boats and motorcycles, etc. As usual when you are dealing with the Catholic Church, the whole affair was shrouded in mystery and now it has faded to black and we will probably never hear how it comes out. But the long and short of it is, Father Corapi is gone.

On a local level there was a priest I especially admired who used to say the Latin Mass at Our Lady Help of Christians. His name was Father Bialkowski. I did not know him personally but I used to love his sermons and how he said the Mass and he always struck me as a very good man.

Remember, when I had that Mass said for Leonard Pennario, Father Bialkowski was the one who said it. I even mentioned him.

Then well, he was taken away. Because of a haze of accusations which, they seemed fishy to me, but what do I know. And what does it matter. The long and short of it is, Father Bialkowski is gone.

Now today I pick up the paper and I am warming up my computer and what do I see on the front page of The Buffalo News, albeit small and down in the corner, but there was this new priest at Corpus Christi I liked. Well, he was new last year. I mentioned meeting him on that wild Dyngus Day. Ha, ha! That is still one of my favorite posts. This picture ...

... I should win a Pulitzer for it. Note: That is NOT a priest, at least not to my knowledge. That was just a reveler on the bus.

But anyway. The priest's name was Father Matthew Wydmanski. A few months ago on Ascension Thursday I went to Mass at Corpus Christi and I was struck by the beauty of the Mass and how reverent he was. It was not quite a Latin Mass but it was close. Anyway, I liked this priest, Father Wydmanski, and I remember thinking how much good he was doing on Buffalo's East Side.

Today I read he got arrested for DWI and now he has fled back home to Poland.

That is just dandy, you know?

I had talked to him after Mass on Ascension and I was looking forward to seeing him again this weekend when I go judge pierogies at Corpus Christi. This is a bummer!

I mean, it is better than if he were stuck in the situation Father Bialkowski is in, but still.

The long and short of it is, Father Wydmanski is gone.

Not to sound like my great-grandmother, who according to my mother used to sit perpetually in the corner of the kitchen, praying the Rosary in German. But stuff  like this has to make you wonder if the devil is at work.

I believe the devil exists, I will tell you that right now, and I think he finds ways to rid us of the people who do the most good. Maybe it's this, maybe it's that, maybe they did what they are accused of, maybe they were accused falsely, it all comes out the same. The main thing is, these guys are gone.

Remember the creepy story about how the devil made a phone call?

If he can make a phone call he can do this.

In a weird coincidence not only will The Buffalo News' Web site not give me the story about Father Wydmanski to link to -- but the world "devil" is in the banger headline.

You got to wonder!

The miracle morning

I have been having the wildest day. The most supernatural day.

In case you have not gathered this by the way the Web log has been going lately, my life has been terribly chaotic. Just as an example there is this record I have been trying to find. Nothing important, nothing by Leonard Pennario, nothing I need for work or anything. Just this Mozart record that I bought when I was a teenager that I have been thinking about.

This record somehow came to symbolize everything that is wrong-headed about my life. I actually brought it up a few days ago in my morning prayers. I was complaining about how I needed to get my act together. "I mean, there's this record," I said. "There's no use even looking for it. It could be anywhere. That is how big of a mess my life is. Everything is like that. Everything."

But this story is not about this record. I am just trying to illustrate how nutty things are. The story is mostly about my checkbook.

Well, it is actually about my checks. I was out of checks and I knew I had some more checks somewhere but for the life of me I could not find them.

And I know, I could order new checks, but just the idea of going through that trouble made me want to go lie down. Plus I knew those stupid pads of checks were around somewhere. I knew it!

But I could not find them. Once I got all excited when I found a box of checks inside this old yellow cabinet I have but zut alors, they were for an old account. I actually burst into tears and Howard, who witnessed the whole pathetic incident, had to josh me out of it.

So. That was a couple of weeks ago. Today I was getting ready to go to church and I thought of those checks, as I do every Sunday. I think of them because I have been behind in my church contributions because they have been missing.

My church is St. Anthony. And our priest, Padre Secondo, always tells us to pray to St. Anthony when things are missing.

Usually I would not pray unless it was something really big. But now I thought, why not. We are never told only to ask St. Anthony to find big things. These checks might not be big but they have become a big irritation.

Howard was still asleep and I was by myself so I explained the situation out loud to St. Anthony. I said, "One reason I need these checks is because I am behind in my church contributions. My church is St. Anthony of Padua. That is you." Ha, ha! But I figured that would not hurt.

Then I went back upstairs. And I had a funny feeling to look in that yellow cabinet. This is ridiculous, I thought. The only thing in that drawer was that box of old checks. But I opened it anyway.

And the drawer was not empty. There was an envelope I had not noticed. I opened it.

And in the envelope were my checks!

I had been looking for a box. They were in an envelope and that was why I had not seen them.

It all happened so fast. I just sat there dazed. I mean, I had that prickly feeling you get when you KNOW that there is something out there and you have connected with it. Here I had called on this man who had been dead 700 years and I saw beyond a doubt that he had heard me.

Then something else happened.

I went downstairs and I should have been leaving for church but I was too dreamy and dazed. I drifted over to the record player and began putting away a few records that were out. There was this Ahmad Jamal ...


... record without a jacket and I started leafing through a pile of records looking for it.

And guess what I found?

That Mozart record I had been wondering about!

It was as if St. Anthony said, "Oh, and by the way, there's your record."

Son of a sea cook, that was strange. And after all that I went to church and I did not even tell anyone! My Facebook friend John Callahan showed up again and I got laughing with him after Mass about stuff and I did not think to bring it up.

But now I am thinking about it. I even told Howard about it. Howard is not Catholic but he was impressed because he was there for the situation with the yellow cabinet. I told him if he loses anything to remember that St. Anthony is there.

Howard is so cool. He said, "Now that I know I have an in, I will."

That is St. Anthony up above. It is his famous Sermon to the Fishes. St. Anthony was preaching and all the fish swam up and stuck their heads out of the water and listened to him.

It sounds like one wild story!

But I will tell you one thing, I believe it.

What the devil

Zut alors, alors, alors, I am in such a hurry what with the Leonard Pennario project, and trying to find something to wear now that we are into this in-between weather, and making out my shopping list for Aldi's, that I am almost out of time.

I am back to going to Aldi's! I will report what I get when I go. Right now I am looking at cornmeal and raisins and coffee. I love the Aldi's coffee. The brand is Beaumont.

But even though I am in a rush there is always time for a thought on the supernatural now that is the high-octane month of October. And here is today's:

Who knew there was an International Association of Exorcists?

I heard about this a while ago on Catholic Radio and ever since then I have been turning it over in my mind from time to time. Does anyone else out there in Blog-O-Land believe in the devil? I know I do!

This group has a newsletter too. While I was looking for the International Association of Exorcists the computer kept pointing me toward the International Association of Exorcists Newsletter. I wonder if you could give a gift subscription to someone. That would be an unusual gift!

Perhaps we will explore that newsletter, on another spooky morning.

We shall open the sealed door.

Happy Hallowe'en and welcome to Big Blue.

Please follow us - if you dare - down to the deepest bowels of Big Blue as we breach the long sealed entrance way to what surely promises to be Hell itself.




Please grab a courtesy Stingray bicycle and follow us now.

This passage way was sealed early in Buffalo's history. The dozens of rusty bent nails have served as a stern warning over all of these years.

No man nor woman has been equipped by God to survive the horror that must undoubtedly exist beyond this sealed door.

This is much worse than imagined! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGUUUUUHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The spooky mirror

When do we get back on good old Eastern Standard Time, is what I want to know. Shouldn't that have happened already?

I have a confession to make: I love being plunged into darkness. I love it when suddenly it is 5 p.m. and it has been dark forever and it will be dark forever. That is a wild and unruly time of year! Not only that, but I like gaining that hour. That hour is like the icing on the cake. I can spend it on Leonard Pennario.

Does this election remind anyone else of a horror movie?

I have peeked at Fox TV and they talk about things you could not dream up. I have heard that maybe Barack Obama was not born in America, that he could be thrown out on a technicality. Then there is this voting goofiness. In some states, people have already voted, and in others, loopholes pave the way for them to vote several times. Lastnight I heard that people without addresses could register by giving the name of a bench or soup kitchen.

Then there is that business about Joe Biden predicting that if Obama is elected there will be an international crisis and we will not like how Obama handles it? Will one of our mainstream papers at least mention that so I know I did not dream it? Even if they say it never happened, at least tell me that, you know?

Also, the confusion about whether Obama was born here, even if it is an idle rumor, I would at least like to see that addressed. So I know I am not losing my mind.

Speaking of losing my mind, remember my haunted apartment, on Parkside?

Barack Obama was born there.

OK, just kidding. But there was the matter of the spooky mirror, which was almost as good. It is our subject of our supernatural October tale o'the day.

When rented the apartment, this oval mirror came with it. We found it in the back hall, leaning against the wall. It measured about a yard from end to end.

We put it in the living room, over the couch, because back then if something was free, we never turned it down. I still think that way. I have not changed. In the case of the mirror, though, that was not a good philosophy to have. Because we noticed when people showed up, they always said something about that mirror.

"What's with that mirror?" the would say. A few even came out and said: "That mirror gives me the creeps."

One of my roommates had a pair of dogs named Compton and Witch and the dogs would whine when they went near the mirror. You are dealing with something really spooky if it gives the creeps to a dog named Witch! Witch was a big, dumb Russian wolfhound who never did become housebroken. That was a colorful life I led in those days! In illo tempore, to use a phrase I love from the Latin Mass.

Here was something else that was odd: The dogs always whined in the back hall, and they shrank from going there. They did not like the back hall. That was where we had first found the mirror.

My roommates and I pondered things. We thought maybe over the couch the mirror's angle was wrong. That is how badly we wanted to hang on to this perfectly good freebie. So we tried moving it. But everywhere we put it, the comments continued.

Finally we moved the mirror to the attic and left it there, facing the wall.

I wonder if it is there still.

A message from a spiritualist

This morning I was able to get into a pair of Gap jeans I have not been able to get into for seven years! I can't breathe or eat but as long as I can drink wine all is not lost.

I love the billboard over Hertel Avenue: "Fall is here. Ditch the beer. WARM UP WITH WINE." I needed that reminder!

Not only that, but look at yesterday's comments. We got one from a real live Spiritualist. Anonymous Spiritualist, thank you for reading the blog! It is nice that there are Leonard Pennario fans in the Spiritualist community. I will try to blog about Spiritualists more often.

Also, has Leonard Pennario been in touch with any messages for me? He will have a hard time getting through to me what with Elmore James tying up the line, but you never know.

Spiritualist, guess what? You know how we do a supernatural story of the day throughout the month of October? We have to double up on the supernatural stories tomorrow because today, you are it!

Well, wait. There has been something else on my mind.

You know Tom Bauerle, on WBEN-AM, and his ghost show? Every year he does a ghost show. Well, a couple of them. He did one a few weeks ago and he has scheduled the big one for Halloween itself. Oct. 31, from 9 a.m. till noon, 930 AM. I will be tuned in!

Bauerle promised the other day that he would put a picture of a ghost on his Web page. I am pretty sure that is what he said anyway. He said he would post a picture of the Iron Island ghost. Note to out-of-town Leonard Pennario fans: Iron Island is a part of our district called Lovejoy that is bordered by railroad tracks. It is a magical zone!

There is a ghost at the Iron Island Museum. That is run by Marge Thielman Hastreiter who is my second cousin although she does not want to admit it. I am putting her name so when people Google her, my blog about Leonard Pennario comes up.

The ghost in Bauerle's picture has no legs and no eyes. Brrrrr! I got shivers on the 190 listening to that. Then when I got to work and jumped onto Bauerle's Web page to look at the picture, it was not there. I have checked back several times with no luck.

Well, maybe the ghost disappeared.

Isn't that what ghosts are supposed to do?

The mysterious gem

Yikes, the Bad News Blog! Look at the comments yesterday. My sister Margie writes that she thinks I have a hive full of bees inside the walls of my house.

Please, someone, say it isn't so!

To take our minds off such troubles, let us spin today's story of the supernatural, in accordance with our October tradition.

Remember the trip to Lily Dale I took with two fellow reporters a few years ago? Before I learned that I should not do these things? When I was in Lily Dale one of the mediums had this big book on crystals, gems, things like that. I asked her if she could look in the book for what it said about kunzite. Kunzite is a beautiful pink gem named after George Kunz, who is my brother the gym teacher. Well, actually it was named after George Kunz the distinguished gem expert at Sotheby's. But no one needs to know that.

Wow, reading that link on George Kunz the gem expert, I am struck by the fact that he married a woman named Opal. Isn't that odd? How can the writer not comment on that?

But back to my Lily Dale tale. It is a weird one!

Seeing that I have the same name I wanted to find out what kunzite's powers were. So I asked the medium if she would look it up.

Then this very strange thing happened. The medium dragged this huge book off this tall shelf. It felt like a scene out of "Sleeping Beauty." She opened the book and it opened right to kunzite!

I mean, the book had about 1,000 pages! It opened right to the correct page!

"That is so weird," I stammered.

"What's weird?" the medium asked.

"The book, um, opened right to the page."

"Oh, well, I had been looking for that," she shrugged, or something like that. Something that even made it more weird.

Thinking about it now, I could reason that, well, kunzite does fall kind of toward the middle of the alphabet, so maybe if you open a book the odds are good it might open to that page.

I had a similar experience in the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. Wow, it is a long time since I mentioned the library. Remember when I used to talk about it all the time? The reason I am not mentioning the library is because the fines I owe are so great now that I cannot go back. But back when I didn't owe so much money, I was in the library's reference section, and there was this huge tome on pianists. I dragged this volume off the shelf and opened it up and guess what? It opened right to the page on Leonard Pennario!

At first I was kind of shocked but then I thought, well, Pennario is kind of near the center of the alphabet. Maybe that is why it opened to that page.

But still.

After all that, I wish I could tell you what the powers of kunzite are. But alas, they went in one ear and out the other. I was so astonished by what happened with that book that I forgot to listen to anything that spooky medium said.

I can tell you, though, that kunzite is good for wearing on your finger. When Jack and Jackie Kennedy got engaged he gave her a kunzite engagement ring. Not that that was any model marriage, but you can't fault her taste in jewelry. I have a kunzite ring too. Howard gave it to me before we got married. It was not supposed to be an engagement ring but that is what it turned into.

Come to think of it, he gave me that kunzite ring not long after my trip to Lily Dale. Hmmmm.

What was it that the medium said, that I did not hear?

Voices from beyond

Face it, no family is complete unless someone threatens to haunt someone. That has happened in our family.

My dad once threatened to haunt my brother-in-law David. Why he made that threat is a long story and I almost told it, seeing that my sister Katie never reads my blog anyway. But then I had a rare attack of editor common-sense and I hit "delete."

But here is what is important: I remember saying: "Dad, if anyone could haunt, you could."

And I remember he nodded with satisfaction, confident in his powers and abilities.

Luckily my father never had to make good on that threat. But now that it is October, I am telling daily tales of the supernatural and we have frost -- frost! -- in the offing, I found myself remembering that very odd exchange we had. Is anyone else shivering the way I am? I cannot pile on enough sweaters. But I refuse to turn on the heat. I refuse.

As I have mentioned a couple of times, my dad and I shared an off-and-on preoccupation with the occult. We were intrigued by it. Which, even if you are Catholic, it is no crime, to be interested in that kind of thing. You are not supposed to seek out the other side but it is excusable to wonder what is out there.

Once when I was about 13 my dad took me to see this ancient newsreel about Arthur Conan Doyle. He had read Katie and me the Sherlock Holmes stories when we were younger so I knew who Conan Doyle was. I always remember this grainy old film. It showed Conan Doyle sitting on a bench, wearing a tweed suit, talking about the occult. Conan Doyle was obsessed with establishing contact with some dead person -- I think it was his wife. But no matter how many seances and mediums he tried, he never pulled it off. My father and I chewed on this extensively after seeing the movie. We marveled that Conan Doyle could not do that and we wondered if anyone could.

Later we learned that Harry Houdini made a pact with a friend that whoever crossed the Great Divide first would contact the other. Houdini died first, my dad told me, and the friend never heard from him.

I wonder if after you pass on you do not care about certain things as much as you did on earth. Perhaps in the afterlife you have other priorities.

Personally I would be interested in tracking down Leonard Pennario as soon as I could and start asking the millions of questions I keep kicking myself for not thinking to ask him. So if I go, don't expect to hear from me right away.

But we can hear from the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Here is a video of Conan Doyle that isn't the one we saw but he talks in it about his spiritual leanings and how his interest in the occult has replaced his interest in detective stories.

He says: "I am certain I could fill a room of my house with the letters from people who have telling me of the consolation which my writings and my lectures have given to them, how they have once more heard the sound of a vanished voice and felt the touch of a vanished hand."

At the end, Conan Doyle's dog shakes himself, and the author says: "Well... Goodbye."

That is great October watching.

The East Aurora Horror

Once more, my cry has gone out unto blog-o-land, and once more, my cry has been answered. The other day the question concerned Peter Piccolo, the hairstylist. I now learn he was murdered in his office and the crime is unsolved.

We have Mike Beebe, crime reporter at The Buffalo News, to thank for that answer. Thanks, Mike! Mike said that he was allowed to go behind the yellow crime tape and saw Peter Piccolo's body lying there.

That is no image with which to begin a new week. It is clear to me now why that restless spirit haunted that building on Elmwood so long ago. Perhaps still!

Let us turn our attention today, in honor of our October chronicling of the supernatural, to another haunted building. This is the chicken coop owned by my sister Katie, the left-winger, and her husband, David.

David and Katie live out in East Aurora and to tell you the truth it gives me the creeps to be there after dark. I am just used to more lights. I am like Leonard Pennario in that I am a city person. Being out in the country can make me nervous.

A few year ago when they bought the house they live in, I went out to see them and I remember getting antsy as the evening closed in. We were sitting in their living room and they began telling me about their chicken coop and the strange things that went on in there.

What happened was, David went in to gather eggs, or whatever you go into chicken coops to do, I don't know. And he heard footsteps overhead.

They grew louder and louder!

And there was nothing up there. There is a kind of second floor to this outbuilding that serves as the chicken coop, but it was empty. The footsteps got closer and David, even being an atheist, felt his heart beat faster and his hair stand up.

He flew the coop!

And at the time I talked with him about this, he had found a way of solving the problem: He simply had not gone back into the chicken coop since. Which was wise, to my way of thinking. Who wants to play chicken with a ghost?

Wow, that was one night when I could not wait to get home to North Buffalo.

Things are strange, out there in the country.

"The Birds," the bees and the crystal ball

The secret life of bees is not so secret anymore.

You know all those alarmist stories that tell us that bees are disappearing, soon they won't be pollinating any more fruit or vegetable plants and life as we know it will end? That is bull.

I know where the bees have gone. They are all in my bedroom!

In keeping with our October blog theme of sharing stories from the supernatural, it is like something out of Hitchcock. There is a flock of them on the bedroom ceiling. Every time I kill them, more swarm in to take their place.

Naturally Howard leaves it up to me to kill the bees. I was also responsible for our victory over the great fly invasion of '05. I had to go spray the Raid around the kitchen while all Howard did was pipe in a recording of Wagner's "The Entrance of the Gods Into Valhalla." He leaves it up to me because I am German.

So the other night after interviewing Lynn Harrell about Leonard Pennario, there I am, getting up on chairs, killing bees -- not exactly with my bare hands but with pages of The Buffalo News. Meanwhile Howard cowered, criticizing what I was doing. "Don't drop them!" he told me. "Eeeuw! Do you have to do it that way? Can't you--"

"At least I'm killing them!" I yelled. "What are you doing?"

Then we both started laughing at how dumb the situation was.

These bees have a sixth sense, is what scares me. Five minutes ago there was one sleeping on the ceiling and I took a page of the Wall Street Journal and just went for it. You have to fold the paper up so there are about seven layers of paper between your fingers and the bee. And because the bees have such big bodies -- they are about an inch long -- it is hard to do them in. Do not think I enjoy this. I do not.

Anyway, I labored for a while on this one. I finally was able to ball it up in the paper and get it out of the room. And right away, this bee on the complete other side of the room -- miles away -- starts stirring and buzzing toward me. He knew his buddy was in trouble!

Speaking of little flying objects brings us to the supernatural story of the day. And you thought the bees were it. They are not! I have so many weird tales in my life that I can squander them. I could tell a dozen a day and still have enough for the whole month.

This story is actually my friend Michelle's but I will tell it anyhow because I was with her when it happened. Remember the Lily Dale trip I talked about a few days ago, from a few years ago, when I was still allowed to go to Lily Dale? We were all asking questions about our love lives -- this was before I was married -- and Michelle was told she would meet a guy who flew planes.

We all chewed on this eagerly on the way home. I wondered if it was going to be this cute friend of Howard's, a pilot for US Air. Or maybe it was going to be an executive with his own Lear jet!

A few weeks after that, Michelle goes on a blind date. They meet for dinner at Flying Tigers. Remember Flying Tigers, that crazy World War II restaurant out by the airport? You could watch the planes take off and listen to 1940s radio broadcasts. That was sad when that oddball place closed. All the World War II-era people must have been getting too old to go out.

Michelle did not like her date, as it turned out. I can't remember what went wrong but a whole long laundry list of things did. A few days later a bunch of us gathered over drinks to go over this list. That is the fun of blind dates.

One of the things Michelle told us was: "He's a model plane freak! He told me he has hundreds of them, hanging from the ceiling." We all burst into delighted laughter.

But then the words of the medium came back to us! And we all just froze with our mouths open, staring at each other.

Is that something out of "Seinfeld" or what?

No, Lily Dale is always stranger than fiction.

Great Peter Piccolo's ghost

Ay yi yi, what a night lastnight! No wonder I am writing so late.

We went to a party at Susan Peters' house. Some of you might know Susan Peters, the chanteuse. She sings at Nietzsche's. Anyway, Sue has the greatest apartment, in Allentown on College Street, overlooking Arlington Park. I could not believe the view. I went out on the porch and just stood there and stared. The park looked so beautiful, lined with lanterns and Victorian houses with the moon and the stars overhead. Across the park was the steeple of First Church. And if you looked at the houses next door it was like going back in time. Incredible.

Susan has this beautiful baby grand piano -- Aeolian, was the brand name -- and all kinds of people were taking turns playing. Lounge sensation Guy Boleri played "The Heather on the Hill." That was my request, is why I mention it. Jazz sensation Howard Goldman also played, to great acclaim. The living room full of people went wild.

Then this one woman whose name I never did catch sat down and played Billy Joel songs. At that point I was sitting on the couch next to a guy named Jerry. I do not know Jerry's last name but I do know that he works at Hodge Liquors. Jerry was always keeping a proprietory eye on the wine supply. "I'll go get us more," he kept saying. "Spirits is still open."

Spirits is Spirits of Allentown but it sure goes with the spooky story theme this blog has adopted for the month of October.

I loved what Jerry said when this woman sat down and began playing Billy Joel.

"This is great," he said. "There is a time for Rachmaninoff and there is a time for this."

In other words, as Howard laughed later, a time for Rachmaninoff, a time for rock.

Leonard Pennario would not have agreed with that!

The gingerbread house where Susan lives is home to about seven other apartments. The door downstairs is locked so when you ring the doorbell, what happens is Susan comes out on her pretty little upstairs porch and she hands you down a key on a long rope. Isn't that like something out of the Brothers Grimm? I loved it.

This is also neat: The house was originally built, Susan says, as a dorm for the UB Medical School. That is why the street is called College Street.

Lastnight got me thinking about other Allentown experiences I have had. Note to out-of-towners: Allentown is Buffalo's oldest residential neighborhood, sort of like New Orleans' French Quarter.

Once I worked in a haunted building in Allentown. That was when I worked for Interval International, a vacation time-share exchange service, in the building on Elmwood Avenue near Allen Street where Peter Piccolo used to have his hair-cutting school.

The building was haunted by the ghost of Peter Piccolo. There were sightings, and funny feelings. Peter Piccolo had met some kind of violent end. Now I cannot remember what it was. I tried Googling him just now but all I got was: "Maxwell Davies, Sir Peter. Piccolo concerto study guide.." Not what I was looking for!

We are all getting so dependent on Google. If I can't find something by Googling it I do not know what to do. Does anyone out there know what happened to Peter Piccolo? How did he die? I can't remember.

But I do know this: I would rather hear it from someone out there than from Peter Piccolo himself.

The Parkside Avenue ghost

Every day, such adventures, such discoveries! Interesting comments yesterday including one from correspondent Kimberly, talking about her dad having played in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Kimberly, what was your dad's name? What did he tell you about playing with the orchestra?

Leonard Pennario played several times with the Chicago Symphony but that would have been a little after the era when Kimberly's father played with them, I am thinking.

Isn't it fun taking a little time out every day from our busy schedules to think about things like this?

It is better than thinking about the news, I will say that. My personal stressful news item o'the day concerns St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, splitting from the Episcopal Diocese. The reason they're breaking away doesn't matter. What matters is that they are losing their church building, so they are going to be buying...

(Drum roll...)

.... Temple Beth El, on Eggert Road! It is so blah and suburban!

Normally I wouldn't care. Worship in a CVS if you want to. But come on. With the Catholic diocese's tragic and unethical downsizing, there are so many historic churches going begging. My old church, St. Gerard's, a scaled-down model of St. Paul's Outside the Walls, has been left for dead at the corner of Bailey and East Delavan. St. Gerard's was named for beer brewer Gerhard Lang, who donated the land. St. Bartholomew is the patron saint of beer brewers. That seems to me a match made in heaven.

Think about it, St. Bart's! Then have a beer and think about it some more. Here is your chance to be a hero and to save something irreplaceable that is about to be lost forever. Do it!

Beer reminds me of my supernatural story of the day. We are telling spooky stories every day for the month of October, in observance of Hallowe'en. Howard tells me I should keep explaining that because otherwise people who stumble on this blog will think I am some kind of a witch. Witch I am not. With witch, today's story:

In my UB days I lived for a few years in a downstairs apartment on Parkside. When my roommates and I moved in, we noticed some child's writing on the kitchen wall. In a corner, in small letters, someone had written:

"This house is haunted. Whoooooooooooooooooo"

We didn't think much about it until weird things started happening. Doors began opening by themselves. Friends who visited would get a weird feeling. Once my roommate Mary Ann put a necklace on her dresser and when she woke up the next day it was broken into three pieces. That is what she told me anyway.

Also there was the matter of the creepy mirror. But that is a whole separate story for another day. So is the one time when I actually thought I saw the ghost. I will have to deal with that separately too.

Here is what I would like to tell about today. When I went home to see my parents I would tell them about our ghost. My father was very interested. He loved stuff like that. But my mother had less patience for my stories.

"You kids, your ghost has a name," she told me, "and its name is Schlitz."

Looking back, I wonder if she was right. Because the years pass, things happen, I move here, I move there, I get jobs and quit them, date, break up, date again, break up again, meet Mr. Right, get married, meet Leonard Pennario, go to California ... all these things pile up, so now, when I remember the Parkside ghost, I am not sure any more that I saw what I saw and felt what I felt. That is the way ghost stories go.

But it sure seemed real at the time.

A meeting with a medium

This is turning into Cello Week for my book. It is so exciting! I got an email from the son of the great cellist Joseph Schuster. Leonard Pennario made a beautiful Rachmaninoff album for Capitol Records with Joseph Schuster, and Schuster's son says he has very happy memories of Pennario, on stage and off.

Joseph Schuster was for years the principal cellist for the New York Philharmonic, so you know he had chops. Only the greatest musicians recorded with Leonard Pennario.

Back to Cello Week. The other night I was honored to speak with Lynn Harrell, one of the world's great cellists. Remember, he was the one I was hoping was calling me about a month ago, but then I picked up the phone and it was that schuft from HSBC instead. I invite you to revisit that situation with me. It still makes me mad. Since then I have taken the money out of that account and put it somewhere else instead. I am not kidding.

Harrell's answering machine has his name Hahr-RELL. But Pennario always said it in flat Buffalo style, HAIR-ell. When I talked to him the night before last, I alternated between one pronunciation and the other, and also called him Lynn a few times because that was how he had kindly signed his email, and also it was 10 p.m. and at that hour formalities tend to fall by the wayside.

Wow! Here is a video I found of Lynn Harrell talking and playing in what appears to be his 1970s-era rec room. As you can see, he is a brilliant man and beautifully spoken. But unlike in that video, when I talked with him he had his hands full with a 2-year-old. "Hannah, no," he kept saying. "Hannah, I'm on the phone." I loved that.

Lynn Harrell performed with Pennario on a number of memorable occasions. They met for the first time in Aspen at the home of Robert Wagner and Jill St. John. Do I choose the right musicians to write about or what? I ask you.

Imagine if I were writing about Gary Graffman. I would not be having this much fun.

Thinking about my book's progress brings me to today's tale of the supernatural. This involves my trip to Lily Dale about three years ago.

I would never go to Lily Dale now. Well, maybe just to look around. It is so weird there! Kind of musty, shabby, extremely odd. There is only one store there, to my memory, and that store sells crystals and candles and that is about it. They might sell pop too. I can't quite recall.

We will return to the subject of Lily Dale several times during the course of this month, because every day we are discussing different spooky stories and Lily Dale figures in a number of them. But what I am recalling now is this time I went there three years ago with my reporter friends Michelle and Jane, from work. We were doing a Halloween story. The plan was that each of us would visit two mediums (media?) and report on how they did.

This was a bad plan, for a variety of reasons that will emerge during the course of this month. There is a reason the Catholic Church tells you to stay away from this kind of thing. I can see that now.

But at the time we just blithely went ahead, la la la la la. And one of the mediums I visited said something about "L.P." I am 90 percent sure of that, anyway. She said that I was going to undertake a project with a very elegant person and it was going to be extremely successful. And she gave me those initials, I am pretty sure. Maybe not in direct connection with that project she mentioned, but she did mention those initials during the course of our meeting, I am pretty sure. Listen to me. I cannot believe I am referring to "our meeting." I sound like someone out of Washington Irving, meeting with a medium.

Periodically I think back and I wonder if she really did say "L.P." There is a long complicated series of reasons why I think I remember those initials were the ones she uttered. The funny thing is, I could make sure. I have a tape of our, uh, meeting kicking around somewhere. I think I know where it is.

But I won't let myself listen to it. I would rather just go my merry way without assistance from the dark side. The book will succeed no matter what. I do not have to worry about that.

Tomorrow I will tell why the stricture was handed down in our family that we should never go to mediums.

It is a true story!

Close encounters at the Roycroft Inn

Charles Haupt

I am loving this month of October. I love the smell of the air in the morning. And the sounds of the crows and the geese. And the bottle-for-a-buck sale at Premier. And the spooky stories!

Yesterday, to find out someone out there in eerie Blog-o-Land took Mason Winfield's tours of Saratoga Springs! Anonymous commenter, we laugh at things we do not understand. I took Mason Winfield's tour of the sleepy, creepy town of East Aurora and when he pointed out one house and told us what apparitions had been seen within, I actually got tears in my eyes.

Today I will tell the story of that East Aurora ghost walk and what happened to me that night.

Mason was leading that tour and the tour group was convening at the Roycroft Inn -- a site chosen, I suspect, because it is home to the ghost of Elbert Hubbard, who went down on the Lusitania. Note to out-of-towners: Buffalonians get to drop names like this into casual conversation and everyone you talk to knows what you are talking about.

I tried to get Howard to go with me to East Aurora but at that time Howard was being a schuft -- I will use Beethoven's spelling -- and was not going anywhere. This was before we were married, about seven yeard ago. Howard has since learned not to be a schuft. Anyway, I had never been to the Roycroft before and it seemed very strange and beautiful, all polished and glowing on this chilly night. The doors are carved with a very odd saying. I think it is: "Choose Good People, The Rest Follow." I pushed the doors open and went inside.

And as soon as I walked in I got really happy. I will always remember that. This lovely big room, with rugs, pianos and wooden beams, the whole place suffused with a beautiful aroma of fine food and cigars. Wow, Leonard Pennario would hate my mention of cigars. He hated any kind of smoking. We had an argument once in La Jolla when we went outside and I admired out loud the smell of a nearby cigar. Pennario would have none of that.

But Leonard Pennario was not with me at the Roycroft, either. Perhaps he was being a schuft then too. So I felt free to admire the smell of the cigars, and the food -- oh, and in the bar, there were all these handsome men, in impeccable suits, drinking Brandy Alexanders. That is what I imagine they were drinking, anyway. I was so struck by the sight of these gentlemen that I wafted into the bar to find out who they were. They were from Moog. They were having some kind of meeting there at the Roycroft that night.

Interesting people were on the tour including Charles Haupt, then the concertmaster of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and his wife, Irene Haupt, the photographer. That is when I met the Haupts for the first time, on that tour. We laugh about it.

After the tour we all returned to the Roycroft to lounge on the couches, drink beers and discuss what we had heard and seen. Mason Winfield loves the Roycroft. It is like his center for gravity in Western New York -- a place where all kinds of latitudes and longitudes come together and spirits are free and loquacious. Again, walking into the place, I felt that sense of warmth and happiness. Sitting there with Mason and a Heineken, I confided that in him.

Mason nodded, understandingly.

He said: "People often feel that way about the paranormal."

A dark missive from Philistine Hall

This morning my alarm didn't go off and my body, clearly in revolt over its usual pre-dawn waking hours, went on and slept like a pig until I do not want to say what hour.

There go two hours of work on my book about Leonard Pennario, right out the window! Every day, it seems, it's two steps forward, one step back.

That reminds me of a new word I have learned. My mom and I were at the Wehrle Restaurant the other day eating spanokopita before going to hear Michael Feinstein at UB. And she started telling me about my Uncle Howard, whom I never remember meeting. He died when I was maybe 21. I remember that because I was on the phone with my boyfriend and the operator cut in. Remember when operators would cut in if the call was important? Wow, I am sounding like my grandmother.

Anyway, Uncle Howard. My mother was telling me that he caused tension in the house. She said her parents would worry about him and fight over matters involving him.

She said: "He was a..."

Then she paused, and I am wondering what I am in for, if Uncle Howard was gay, or what. In our family you never know. We have gay people.

Mom said, uneasily, "Have you ever heard the word.... schuff?"

"No," I said, delightedly. "But I can guess what it means. Is it kind of shiftless?" She said yes, that was exactly what it meant. And immediately it dawns on me, what schuff --pronounced schoof, rhyming with "hoof" -- means. It is not quite "loser" but it is something parents could fight about.

Those old German and Yiddish expressions, they are the best. We cannot let them fade away. About five years ago I did a recital where I played the Piano Sonata by Alban Berg and there was a part where Berg wrote: "Nicht schleppend." Don't schlep! I loved that. Keep the music going, don't schlep.

I am kind of schlepping these days when it comes to my piano practice. And I schlepped today, sleeping in. But I would not go so far as to say I am a schuff. Not yet, anyway.

I have another spooky October experience to share.

Yesterday I got a message from Mason Winfield. A message from Mason Winfield in itself is a spooky story. It is the equivalent of a message from beyond. It was addressed to "My friends in spirit."

Which was one of those phrases that made me pause in appreciation of life and all it has to offer. Lots of people live out all their days without ever once getting a message addressed "My friends in spirit."

Mason is the greatest. He is this sunny blond preppy tennis-playing cutie but he has this unbelievable dark side. I mean, check out his Web site. If you dare. Brrrrr!

Mason reports on all the ghostly doings in Buffalo and surrounding environs in his books, like "Shadows of the Western Door" and "A Ghost Hunter's Journal." I wonder if any other town has its psychic phenomena so impeccably chronicled. I very much doubt it. As I continue to share October stories of the supernatural a couple will probably touch on experiences I have had with Mason, because let me tell you, there have been some strange ones.

Here is what Mason wrote yesterday to his friends in spirit:

Algonquin mystic Michael Bastine, author Mason Winfield, and others have founded a new society devoted to the study and preservation of the sacred/spiritual legacy of Western New York. SPIRIT WAY PROJECT is a chance for any of you to help us in our mission, even to participate in research and investigation. We have two October meetings scheduled for anyone either curious about SWP or simply looking for conversation with like-minded individuals. One is Monday, 10/6 (convened by Mason Winfield and and the other Monday 10/13 (convened by Cassandra Butler-Bauerle and Mysha Webber-Eakin). Both are held at 7 p.m. in Philistine Hall, 21 S. Grove St. (on the Roycroft Campus), East Aurora NY.

Note to out-of-towners: Here in Buffalo we take names like Philistine Hall for granted and toss them around in conversation during the course of our everyday lives. "We convene at 7 p.m. in Philistine Hall." Isn't that fun to say?

I am afraid I will not be able to make it because now as a trad Catholic I am discouraged from seeking out the company of ghosts and hobgoblins, not to mention schuffs.

But I hope someone else reports to me on what happens at Mason's meetings!