Ghost Stories

Dudleytown, Conn., is a cursed village in the northwest corner of Connecticut. It has been deserted since horror and misfortune struck its early settlers in the 1700s. People went mad, were struck by lightning or fell ill. The Penobscot Indian reservation in Maine is haunted by an evil white man who married and intimidated a small Indian woman a century ago as he tried to govern the area. In Warren, Mass.

I found Brian Richard Boylan's Feb. 2 review of Gordon S. Wood's book, "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," almost supernatural. Let me quote from the review: (1) "Thomas Jefferson, for instance, was deeply disillusioned by the failure of the American people to appreciate and follow the enlightened government and society he had given so much to bring to power. He could only shake his head when the violently passionate Andrew Jackson became President." (2) "He was horrified, for instance, that Jackson would throw open the doors of the White House and invite all and sundry to stop in for a drink with the new chief executive."

This isn't just the summer of "The Phantom Menace" and "Austin Powers." It is also the summer for movies about things that go bump in the night. Several ghost stories are hitting the big screen these hot holiday months, including the remake of the classic "The Haunting," which opens Friday, the current release "The Blair Witch Project" and the upcoming Bruce Willis chiller "The Sixth Sense."

During Tito Capobianco's heyday as general director of the San Diego Opera, he persuaded the two reigning international divas--Beverly Sills and Joan Sutherland--to appear together in an opera for the first time. But artistic collaboration between the opera company and other San Diego arts organizations eluded even the diplomacy of Capobianco.

And now for something completely weird. Not weird as in the crackpot relative who likes to live off the grid and eat worms for breakfast, but weird as in spine-tingling, uncanny and vaguely disturbing. We've all had encounters of the weird kind. They're inexplicably unsettling. Without our being able to put a finger on it, they make us feel uncomfortable. "Weird" is often the reason why campfire stories exist and are so effective - they play on our suspicions that not all is as it seems, that there are darker realities to explain things that science has missed altogether.

Many restaurants have a problem with disappearing silverware. But not the McCharles House, at least in its early months. In fact, the opposite was true. Ornate antique teaspoons--in patterns never before seen by the owners--kept turning up mysteriously in the dishwasher and in silverware trays at the restaurant, which is set in a century-old home on a shady side street in Tustin.

Scotland's legendary Loch Ness monster may have a cousin in Argentina, if reports of sightings of a strange lake creature are to be believed. Residents and tourists at the Andes winter sport resort of Bariloche are convinced there is a Nessie-like beast living in the deep blue waters of Nahuel Huapi Lake at the foot of the Patagonian mountains. The monster has been nicknamed Nahuelito, a diminutive of the lake's name, chosen the way the Scots arrived at Nessie for their phenomenon.