A Ghost Story About My Grandparents and Me and a Haunted Recipe

Oh! The Horror! Baked Mashed Potato Witch Fingers (for writers and other weirdos)

Photo by Šimom Caban on Unsplash

It’s Halloween season and it’s time, my friends. It is time. So, I present to you an old Halloween podcast, a scary story, and the recipe to end all recipes . . . .

FIRST THE PODCAST FOR YOU FICTION WRITERS OUT THERE

NEXT THE STORY

Canadian Geese

By F.M.B.

Oct.2, ‘91

In the dim light of twilight you suddenly appear.

In swift and silent formation,

Determined in your flight to reach your destination,

Oh! Tell me who directs this urge

Never failing in direction?

Where are you now wondrous birds?

You break my heart headed for the land I love.

I shall remember you always

Indelibly imprinted in my brain.

Your silent flight guided by your leader.

When I was born, my mother was 35 and my father was 42, and he was the youngest child, too. Forty-two plus 18 equals 60, so my dad was 60 when I was 18. My Grammy Barnard? She was 33 when she had my dad. She was 75 when I was born, if that puts it into perspective. That’s like the age where when you die people say things like, “Well, she had a good, long life.”

She lasted in this world a lot longer than that.

My Grandfather Barnard? Not so much.

He was 82 when I was born and died six years later. He was grim, austere, and full of edicts and judgements. He once ran for office as a communist. He’d been a stockbroker before that. He was not a kind man according to my mom.

My only memories of him are fear. I was terrified of his loud voice and his dark suits and his edicts. I was terrified of how he’d bark orders at Grammy Barnard, at Mom, my dad, everyone.

He had a stroke in the bathtub and drowned, but my mom liked to pretend like Grammy Barnard finally had enough of his crap and held him under the water. My mom told this version only to me. She also would say, “You are so lucky to not know that man. He had a copy of Mein Kaumpf in the basement and when I called him on it, he said that it was good literature. Evil bastard.”

“Hitler or Grampa Barnard?” I usually asked.

“Both,” she usually said.

Grammy Barnard’s family had been Jewish to put this into some extra perspective. They came into the country from Moravia, changed their last name to Shrembersky and Faltin, the only evidence a few photos with their real last name on the back. A Hebrew last name. I do not know what religion she thought her ancestors were. I only know that she did not believe in religion. God maybe. Religion? No.

The point here is that I’d never known Grammy Barnard young.

The other point is that I’d never known Grammy Barnard not pining for youth.

The other point is that I’d never known her not stressed about death especially after her husband died. I’m pretty sure she didn’t want any sort of afterlife if she was stuck with him.

She would cry over the beauty of a tomato. She would cry over the pains in other people’s hearts.

Grammy Barnard Poem #2

March 11, 1927

A Wish

Love, she goes hand in hand with spring,

To thoughts of this girl then you will cling,

Go dear, and to her tell,

Of the desire you have in her heart to dwell,

Tell her while sweet spring is here,

Tell her while she still is near,

Tell her of moonlight, tell her of flowers,

Tell her of love, and its wondrous powers.

When she died she was 104. I was 30.

When the terrifying ex-communist, ex-stock broker, also known as Grampa Barnard died, my parents were already divorced. Everyone decided that my dad couldn’t handle living by himself very well. He was prone to melancholy, according to Grammy Barnard. My mom liked to say he was depressed. My dad would just say he “gets sad.”

He went to a therapist to talk about the divorce and how it made him sad and how his dad’s expectations also sometimes made him sad. He’d only made it to second grade. He could barely read. He was smart, but he was dyslexic before people really talked about dyslexia.

He was a sweet man. He forgave people anything. He forgave people everything. He was like a little hobbit who watched a lot of PBS and news shows. He would ask you insightful probing questions that would hit right to your soul. He could create tools for car engines. He could make a tree grow fast and strong in ways that honestly don’t seem human.

Anyways, Grammy Barnard had lived with my dad since I was six or seven and she had always been old to me.  When I went over to their little ranch house, she always took my face in her hands and said things like, “Ah, look at your skin. It’s so beautiful. The beautiful skin of youth.”

This was awkward for six year olds.

“Let her have it,” my mom would say, having had to live with that man for so long.

Grammy Barnard was about four feet eight inches tall and had a hump in her back. She wore silk blouses and liked pickled herring. I’m not sure why these facts seem important but they are somehow important.

She was tiny.

She also wrote poems and made paintings and had no faith in either. She had no faith in herself. Her husband had whittled that away.

Still, my sweet dad liked to announce, “My mother is a poet. She is an artistic person. She cries at the beauty of a tomato.”

She’d roll her eyes and say, “Lew.”

And he’d say, “You are, Ma.”

And she’d say, “My art and poems are rubbish.”

“They are not.”

“They are!” She put her hands over her face almost always, hiding from the kindness. “I despair of them. I can’t come close to recreating the beauty of this world.”

Grammy Barnard Poem #3

Truth, May 19, 1927

They say how we think so we are

And I from my guess room not afar,

From the truth of the feelings you have for me

My sensing heart does well know when yours is on a spree

Delicate instrument ticking like the clock,

Accurate recorder of each emotions shock.

Timid quaking little hart,

This man who tore your life apart.

And then she died. At 104. I was 30.

I eventually took the money she left me and used it to help pay for me to Vermont College of Fine Arts to get a Masters in Writing for Children and Young Adults. I was going to try to be something that she was afraid to be.

When I got to Vermont, I heard all about the ghosts in the college. The stories didn’t bother me. I’d heard about ghosts before. But one night, during the first residency after Lisa Jahn Clough convinced me to not quit. I’d been feeling despondent because all the other students were so much more knowledgable that I was about pretty much everything.

I came from the world of poetry and newspapers. Sports writing. Columns. Play reviews. Stories about planning boards. Deadlines. Quick turn-arounds. Hard facts.

And here I was surrounded by people who were splurting out phrases like “objective correlative” and “emotional resonance” and “desire through lines.”

I was sure I didn’t belong, especially after one student berated my lack of confidence as an insult to all women everywhere. That didn’t help my confidence, by the way. Tearing people down for not being confident enough, usually isn’t the best policy for building them up.

Ask Grammy Barnard about that. Ask my mom.

Anyway, Lisa convinced me to stay. But when I looked out the window an hour or so after our talk, I saw in front of me down on the snowy Vermont quad, under the light that lit the walkway, my grandfather, angry looking, wearing his austere clothes, blood coming out of his ear, trailing down his neck and onto his shirt collar. He was not wearing a winter coat.

I was on the second floor and my grandfather was dead, long dead, and he stared at me with the most hateful eyes. I could tell he was thinking that this was a waste of time and money, that I was a waste of time and money, that I did not belong there.

And then, I heard the voice of my grandmother behind me, loud and strong, “You are not rubbish.”

I whirled around. She wasn’t there. I turned back around towards the window and there was no creepy old grandfather full of judgement. He was gone.

Ghosts resonate. Their words—angry and kind—can worm their way into who you are. Don’t let them unless you want those resonations, unless what they are telling you is beautiful and good: that you are the tomato, that you are not rubbish, that you deserve to make art and story and life the way that makes you as full as you want to be.

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THE SPOOKY RECIPE

Stuff That Goes In It

• 1 large Russet potato, cooked and mashed
  

• 2 tablespoons oil or vegan butter
  

• Salt, to taste
  

• 35 skinned and roasted almond halves
  

• 1 teaspoon red chili powder or paprika
  

• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric (optional)
  

• 1/2 tablespoon cornflour (optional)

How to Make It

• Oh, it’s a scary day when you have 35 skinned almond halves, isn’t it? It’s okay. Find a bowl, baby writer. Do not forget to look behind you as you reach into the cupboard. You may never know what’s lurking there.
  
  You okay?
  
  Is that heavy breathing yours?
  
  Maybe look around the kitchen one more time.
  
  In a bowl, put the mashed potato and oil and salt and cornflour together and mix it all up so none of the evidence (I mean ingredients) are recognizable.
  
  Preheat oven to 400°F. Check first to make sure there aren’t any creepy things in there like zombie heads or you know . . . spiders.

• Find a baking tray, line it with parchment paper. Do not think about how that parchment paper is like skin in that Hannibal Lecter movie.
  
  Take calming breaths.

• Scoop that potato dough out 1 tsp at a time. You’re okay. Was that a noise from the other room? A growl maybe?
  
  Ignore it so the tension increases and now roll that dough in your palms. Shape it so it looks like a finger.
  
  Look over your shoulder.
  
  Jump because every good horror recipe/book/movie needs a jump scare.

• Get the almonds and put one on each of the fingers like it’s a creepy fingernail.
  
  Hear another noise. Check your cell to see if you have coverage. YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY BARS!
  
  Keep cooking so that we have even more tension.

• Put all those fingers on the skin (I mean parchment). Do it till you’re done.
  
  Realize that maybe there’s a vengeful spirit here in your abandoned house where you are the last person cooking who has been waiting an eternity to exact revenge on the time when their mom didn’t let them have any mashed potatoes (which haven’t existed since the beginning of time, but whatever. Horror can have plot holes).

• Look at the fingers. Make knuckle marks with a knife.
  
  Clutch that knife and turn around because you hear creepy whispering.
  
  Aw. There’s nothing there. Awesome!

• Bake those fingers in a 400°F temperature in an oven for 20-30 minutes. Clutch your knife, put your back up against a wall and whimper for awhile as the silverware flies out of the drawers.
  
  Don’t take those fingers out until their bottoms are browned. The insides should be mushy and soft, kind of like yours right now, am I right?

• Take them out of the oven and put them on a wire rack to cool.
  
  Offer them to the ghost. Make friends. Release them from their eternal quest for potatoes. Chill together.

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Notes

• I found this brilliant, creepy recipe that I’ve adapted over at the fantastic https://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/baked-mashed-potato-witch-fingers/

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