A Dark Figure in the Fog with Mr. Ruda

Buckle in LFHS, this is a long one, but it’s worth your time. If you want it to be told the correct way, by Mr. Ruda himself, you can watch the video.

While he also doesn’t believe in ghosts, Mr. Ruda tells a story about a spooky experience he had while he lived in the annex of an airplane hangar at age 23.

“So, you asked me to tell a ghost story, but I don’t believe in ghosts. At all. Let me just tell you that. Except this one time when a ghost visited me and made me question whether or not I believe in ghosts.

 Many of you do not know this, but (this is all a true story) I lived in airport hangar. But it was sort of an Annex to the hangar. So although you could see the airplanes from where I was, it had its own little door and its own little window. I moved in, and I was renting there. I was a kid: probably 23 or 24 years old. Just a kid. I like the airplanes. They were very romantic moving objects that somehow fought against gravity and won, so I was always fascinated by airplanes. So, the place is way out there, 60 miles west of Chicago. Grass strip, 2600 feet long. Beech 18s tied down. Beech 18: how do you describe this? This is World War II airplane with two propellers, one on each wing, giant Whirlwind engines, all aluminum, giant tail dragger, held about 13 people maximum. And that reminds me of another story that could be pretty ghostly. Well, here we are, chapter 1. The Beech 18s… they were haunting. Mist would shroud around them. They had the split tail – it looked a lot like the plane that disappeared that Amelia Earhart had flown. Very much alike it. Very much like it. Anyway, alright. Airplanes tied down, tail draggers, rad wings, gliders, sail planes, the whole airport was a sailplane operation. We gave rides, we gave instruction – sailplanes get towed up by these little power planes. If you’ve seen the movie Planes or have been driving through farmland you’ve seen that Piper Pawnee. We had a couple of those also, and they were in the hangar. I love the smell of gas… gas and oil and wet fabric with the morning dew on it. 

Anyway, it was the first night. I was moving out there to the airport hangar. College degree and all, my parents were thrilled, as you can imagine. My friend Elliott – he’s a character. Later on went to get his doctoral thesis in the history of buttons. Thats right, the history of buttons. A doctoral degree! Huh. Now he teaches remote art classes from Flat in London. Elliott. He had this Subaru… was it a subaro? No, no, an El Camino. El Caminos were those things from the seventies thst couldn’t decide if they were trucks or cars so they were both: truck cars. El Caminos. They just looked mean. They came in two colors: black and charcoal. Elliott had some beat up used one. He was always buying beat up used things. He had a Motoguzzi that he was restoring. He was a collector of junk, Elliot was. One of his main hobbies was restoring furniture. So, he had found this beautiful chair, this beautiful office chair – weighed about 489 pounds. A 489-pound chair. And what he did was he threw it in the back of the El Camino with some of my stuff, and I was moving to the airport Hangar office – let’s just call it an apartment for me. It was an apartment. Yes, you can wake up in the morning, have your coffee with your friends press, mosey on down to the hangar door, open it up, push out the plane and fly it. That was the life! That was the life I had read about in Richard Bach, the barstormers, and you know, I thought I was one. 

So, we get out there, Elliot helps me lug this chair up the stairs to the apartment. Creaky wooden stairs, you know the deal. Old things creak. Around and around we go till we get to the second floor. We move it in. There’s this old desk sitting in the corner with no chair, some Aviation charts on it. A lot of dust. There was an old lamp, but you could see. Later that night I come to find that you can see the moon, the moon was fine, shining right in. It wasn’t it a full moon or anything. It was your typical October moon. It was right around this time of year. We get the things situated, there was a couch, two couches in sort of an L shape. You know the deal, like that. The old couches that wanted to be leather, but they were too cheap to be leather, so they were just kind of that terrible… almost felt like a rubber glove. What do you call it? Vinyl. There were tears and rips and pen marks and what not. 

Elliot moves in, and he’s gotta go. He’s got his eye on this Motoguzzi, which I told you he was restoring, so he had to go down to Watermen, get this Motoguzzi, or at least negotiate a price on it, so he’s out of there. I got no car, but I got a bicycle. It wasn’t my bicycle, but it was the bicycle, you know, the airport bicycle. You have to have a bicycle. And if you wanted to go to town, 3 miles away, to get a sandwich at the gas station, you needed a bicycle. Ride it along the side of this little two-lane highway. Well, I look around, I see the airplanes, it’s a very cloudy day, I know the airport isn’t gonna see much action, everyone’s gone home, as a matter of fact, the other flight strip’s instructors are there, the tow pilots are gone. I see the light in the hangar go out across the way. It means Dan Miles… he’s a classic. Silver handlebar mustache, slicked back hair, always smoking black cav and dishing his pipe. He got a scar and went home. He was the bookkeeper, and an instructor, a fantastic instructor. All those guys at the airport were big characters. Big. I hope to tell you about them one day. 

So, I was bored! I said alright, I will ride to the gas station three miles away, at the Casey’s. The Casey’s was the gas station – don’t know if you’ve heard of them. And I got myself some beer nuts, cuz all they had left was stale bread and donuts from last Tuesday. I got myself a nice, fresh packet of beer nuts. Come to think of it, I think that’s why I have a bad stomach to this day. And I keep riding. I mean, I don’t need to go back to the office, my loft, and chew some beer nuts and look out, you know, for mice crawling around. That’s the only action I’m gonna see. I leave the office in pristine condition, by the way, when I go. Got my new chair set up, the desk with dust… I forgot to mention about the couches- But before I left, I threw some fitted sheets onto there. You know, I have brought some fitted sheets from my dorm room. Yeah, it took me about seven years to graduate college, not many of you know that either. So, I still have my dorm room sheets from freshman year, and I put them on the couches, fitted them real nice. And I had one knitted blanket too that my grandmother had made for me. In fact, my great grandmother had made it for me. Knitted, ya know? I think they used to call them Afghans, real soft yarn. Wool. 

I go past Caseys to the lake… I hear there’s a lake out there. Big lake called Shabbona. Look it up! It exists! It’s probably about 66 miles due west of the Chicago Loop. I go out there, ride the bicycle, get to the trails, find my way to the lake, find my way to the shore of the lake, and it’s really misty now. You could see nothing but the pine trees. And you could only see like 75-200 yards away from where your’e standing. And it’s a big shore and I’m just kicking around, and I figure I’ll walk maybe a half hour, maybe 45 minutes, then walk back get on the bike and ride home. You know, I definitely didn’t wanna be riding around on the side of highway on an old crappy bike with no reflectors after the sunset. So I was mindful of the time, being the cautious person that I am. And responsible, I might add. I’m walking there, and I’m looking at the stones on the shore, and I’m thinking maybe I’ll find a good piece of driftwood. There’s an old Sherod Santos poem called driftwood, and it’s a terrific poem. It’s hanging in my classroom. It’s on a piece of Driftwood as a matter of fact, schlacked right on there. But I didn’t find any driftwood worthy of collecting when I was walking along the beach. I did however find a stone or two, some sea glass, lots of beer cans, crumbled up Budweisers, Schlitz, Pabst, Blue Ribbons, cigarette butts, crumpled cartons of Camel, pull tops on the ground in the sand, which was really kind of a muddy sand. 

I found a nice rock. Something about it caught my eye, maybe it was the weight of it when it hit my toe. So, I pick it up. And it’s interesting, it almost looks rectangular. So, I find a big tree log sitting there and I tap, tap, tap, tap, tap out some of this mud that’s sitting in this stone. And I come to see that there’s kind of a hole in it, on one end. So I get a little tiny stick/twig, and I’m poking it in there, poking it in, and I’m like wow, this thing’s hollow on the inside! And then out comes some more sand and dirt out of the top. And I say, ‘Holy cow, this thing looks like a whistle!’ It’s got a good weight to it. I said, ‘I’m keeping this, this thing looks like a whistle!’ But it’s not a whistle, because it’s made of stone. I dust off the bottom, just sanding it as I’m walking like this, brushing off the lake dirt and the cruddy old sand, and I see there’s writing there. And I think maybe it’s French. Maybe it’s Portuguese. It certainly is not English. But if it is English, maybe it’s old English. Maybe it’s Gaelic. I come to find later that it was Latin.

Al Frede, the owner of the airport had it translated for me. He worked over at Caterpillar, but he was retired. He was an engineer – a real smart guy. Took Latin in college. So, he translated what that had said to me and had I known that it said that, I probably wouldn’t have blown on the whistle! It was a whistle! And I blew it! And it was like whoooo, whooooo, whooo. Well, I can’t make a whistle sound right now.

But it was like when you blow into a bottle: it’s got a hollow sound that resonates and it’s kinda deep, but it’s like a mini fog horn, kinda thing. But it really resonated, way more than I expected. I was like Woah! That’s got a nice ring to it! I mean it’s not like a cowbell or ACDC or anything like that, but it’s a unique instrument. Well. I put it in my pocket. I turn around, I’m like yeah! I’ve got my find for the day. Let’s go back to the apartment loft in the airport. So, three miles down the road, I’m at Casey’s, another three miles down the road, I’m at the airport. 

So, as I was walking back towards the bicycle, back in time here, I turn around. I blow the whistle. I turn around. I start walking back toward the bicycle. I can’t see- everything is shrouded in mist now. Everything’s shrouded. And you know that silly old feeling you get when you feel like if someone’s looking at you, you know? You can tell? Now, I don’t know where that comes from. There’s gotta be no science to it. Nothing to back it up. Just like there’s probably no science to intuition. I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe in the people who read your fortune, and your lifelines on your hand, and cards, and magic, and Ouija board. That stuff’s for the birds, frankly. I’d rather be reading a good Hemingway novel. That’s a waste of my time. Ok, so. Speaking of authors: Edgar Allan Poe? He’s kinda a scary guy. He wrote some really scary stories. Check it out sometime. Porphyria’s Lover? That was a poem. But I don’t think that was Poe – that was Robert Browning.

Moving on. I get the feeling someone’s watching me! No one’s watching me towards the bicycle, or where I think the bicycle is. When I turn around, no one’s watching me. But was that a shadow I saw, in the fog? Was that a dark figure of a human being? Was that Elliot? Had he found his Motoguzzi, saw the bike was gone, and came looking for me? Could’ve been Elliot, so I stood and lingered there. Well then, I got that bad feeling and I said, “what if it’s not Elliott? And what if it’s a man?” It is a man, I’m pretty sure now, I’m pretty sure the figure’s growing darker, but he stopped when I stopped walking. Long distance- 75 yards in the fog. So I stopped. I said, “if that’s not Elliot, then I don’t wanna meet that guy”. So, you know, I don’t want to act spooked or anything, so I continue walking along the shore, seeing what I could do, acting natural, kicking some more stones. 

I got this bad feeling, I can’t shake it, that I’m being followed! Well, I turn around. And there’s that dark figure in the fog as the fog comes in and out. And he’s standing there, watching me. I can’t see his eyes. I can only see a black figure of a human being. Black shadow… more like a shadow of a human being following me. But he stopped, as if he wasn’t walking… as if he stopped, and he was the same distance, he had to have been following me! But I didn’t see him walking at all, I just know he stopped when I stopped! So he didn’t want to get any closer to me, did he? Well, I said enough of this farthing about, and I hightailed it to this bicycle and I climbed on it. It was a Raleigh. A 1977 Raleigh, steel frame, bluish steel 10 speed or 12 speed. Anyway, only 7th Gear worked. I got on that thing and I rode home like a madman.

 I can feel that whistle rubbing on my thighs, chaffing on it. But, I wasn’t about to stop. I didn’t look behind me, and I ditched the bike around Terry Ross’ farmhouse by the woodpile. Climbed in, shook off my boots, put them by the Pawnee, went up the creaky stairs. There was a wash basin up there, you know, it wasn’t too primitive. It was a toilet. I got my shoes off, I got my socks. It was a little cozy so I put my wool, fish-net sweater on. It’s definitely dark, and the moon isn’t fully up yet. But I could still see around. I saw new chair that Elliot and I had set up and lugged up there, from an Old Chicago chair Factory in 1934. Made of wood, you know, swivel steel wheels on it- very cool, I gotta say. And it was facing the desk, just like someone would sit down there and work on the charts and plan a flight. Check the weather with the telephone. Call flight service. We didn’t have computers or Google or email back then. 

So, I washed all the rest of dust off of the whistle, and the sand, and it’s really cool, and you could really see that Latin inscription. Which I couldn’t read at all. But you can tell it was letters, definitely letters, and you could definitely tell it was a whistle, I blew it one more time. And set back on the wash basin counter, with the two couches and the bed, grabbed the Afghan- was getting pretty darn cold, and as I said it’s October. I crawled up onto this vinyl-y, crinkly, loud sounding, scrunchy scrunchy couch. And I folded up some clothes to put behind my head to use as a pillow. I hate sleeping without a pillow. And, I go to sleep. That was my first mistake. I go to sleep. 

I’m a light sleeper. I hear some creaks and pings, and this, and that, and sometimes airplane engines, when they’re cooling after they’ve been flying for a long time make cooling pings and dings. Everything’s making noise! The wind is making noise, mice are making noise, you know. But I’m awake now, mildly awake, and Elliot’s chair, the Chicago chair, I’m going to call it, goes “eeeeeeee” and it turns away from the desk that it was facing. And it’s facing me! I’m like, I know that chair was facing the desk, and now it’s facing me. So, I go back to sleep. I haven’t solved the mystery. I’m a science guy; I solve mysteries. I’m sleeping. And I hear the chair kinda creak…it rocked like this, so if you were to lean forward, it would creak as if someone were getting up and out of the chair. And I’m like, I’m too tired. I don’t believe in ghosts. This has been an exhausting day. I’m not opening my eyes. That’s just stupid. 

You know how lizards are cold-blooded creatures, and if you hold them, they are not warm at all? So, this not-warm thing.. I’m in my sheets, under there… this thing crawls into bed. But it’s not a lizard; It’s the size of a human-being, kinda like a 70-year-old man. Real frail, skinny, big egg-headed skull, crawls into bed with me and tries to spoon me on top of my sheets. So I’m like ah! Ah! So I wake up, and I’m like, ‘get off of me!!!’. And I look around, and no one’s there. No one’s there. Everything’s cool. The couch next to me is still intact, the sheets are there, and you can see a little bit more cuz of the Moon. Well. I go back to sleep. I’m like god dammit ghost, but I was just dreaming, and that probably was not a ghost (I’m sorry for swearing- I know this is a school website). Well fiddlydoo, there was this old man ghost trying to spoon me right there. But that’s not where the story ends.

In the night, I’m sweating a little bit, a little feverish. I don’t know. It was a long hard day, you know it’s October, and sometimes you get a little feverish in October, when the leaves all start falling, etc. etc. You got the heat, the cold, the rain, the ice, the fog, frankly, I’m allergic to the fog. There are people who are allergic to the fog, and I’m one of those people. I would be a good candidate for one those Fishermans Friend throat lozenges, and that sorta thing.

In the middle of the night, let’s say 3:00 in the morning, between 2-3 in the morning I hear all this tossing and turning. But I’m tossing and turning, so I say I’m hearing myself! But I’m like fighting my sheets; I’m too hot, I’m too cold, I’m twisting and balling the sheets and remembering that there was some old ghost man, as cold as can be trying to spoon me for warmth. The next thing you know, it’s morning. I wake up… sun’s coming in the windows. I’m like oh yeah, I moved into the airport hangar. The first time with my own apartment. I’m cool. I’m a big shot. So, I’m feeling good. I get up to get some coffee. 

I looked over at the couch, and the sheets on that couch are all balled up and twisted up and sweated up and gross, and hanging off the couch. And I know I didn’t move around the L-side of the couch, I mean, I could be a restless sleeper, but I’m not like that! So, I’m like, someone must’ve come in the night, tried to get on my couch, found that there was a person there, and slept on the other couch! So I’m thinking, obviously the previous tenant wasn’t out yet! He was supposed to be out, but he wasn’t out yet. 

So I go banging on Terry Ross’ door. I wake him up. He’s this old drunk of a human being- comes out in his bathroom with a cigarette: ‘What’ya want? What’ya want? Ruda! What’ya want? You know what time it is? 6:45 on a Sunday. That’s what time it is.’

I said, ‘Terry! Sorry to bother you, but you said this guy – what was his name? Tim? This guy that was living there previously, you said you kicked him out, and that he was gone, and I moved in yesterday, and you knew that, and you didn’t say anything, and yet he came home last night, probably stumbled in from the bar, tried to get in bed with me, I shook him off and yelled, and obviously he slept in the couch next to me. And I know, because the sheets were perfectly made, and now, in the morning, they’re all crumpled up, and the chair was this way, then it’s that way…’ and Terry Ross said, ‘Well, Tim doesn’t live here any more, he moved out like at least 30 days ago, maybe more.. 60 days ago. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ruda. Get used to it. You know, it’s windy. Maybe the mice took the sheets and balled them up. I don’t know.’

Al Frede comes. I get washed up, the fog’s all gone, it’s gonna be a good flying day, you can smell it in the air. We’re only open until November… November 11th or so. We always close before Thanksgiving cuz the gliders don’t have heat in them. So in other words, it’s cold. So Al Frede gets there, and I’m like, ‘can you tell me what this whistle says?’ he looks at it and he says, ‘that’s a stone!’ I said ‘no, it’s a whistle!’ He said, ‘what is this your third grade school project? get to work Ruda. Thousands of people waiting to fly, and you’re dusting roses? Get to work!’ I’m like, ‘No, Al, uh, Mr. Frede, I will get to work, but see this writing on the back? I mean what is this. French? Hebrew?’ He’s like, ‘no. that’s Latin.’ and then he rattles off this phrase: blah blah blah (sorry Mr. Woodruff, I don’t know Latin, still).

And I’m like, ‘That’s great! What does it mean?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m a little rusty, but let me think about it for a minute… whistle… it says ,‘Whistle, and I will come to thee, my lad.’’

Whistle, and I will come to thee. “