From: ameres@mercury.ral.rpi.edu (Eric Ameres)
Subject: Re: CANDYMAN info and a personal ghost story
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 17:56:36 GMT

Candyman is based on a short story by Clive Barker (Who IMHO is one of
the greatest purveyors(sp?) of horror/ghost/supernatural fiction
alive). It was from one of his collections of short stories (I forget
the name of the collection, it was a few years back).  If I recall
the "Candyman" was some sort of supernatural killer who was invoked by
the fear/despair/etc... of his victims.  Perhaps I am recalling this
wrong but I don't remember the mirror tie-in.  Anyone who has read it
(the short story) more recently please comment.

OK now for a ghost story (seeing as halloween approaches):

My wife and I bought an old boarding stable and house in upstate NY
and are still in the process of renovating it.  The buildings
(barn/stable and house) date back approx 60 years and are fairly
ordinary.  The barn is pretty cool and is allways dark and scary no
matter what time of day/year it is thanks to small windows w/ wood
slats in them (I assume to keep the horses from breaking glass etc...)

Anyway, the place was owned by an old woman from the time it was built
until we bought it after her death a few years ago.  (Actually, it was
on the market for a long time and at least one person died after
making a bid to buy the place but that's another story.) The old woman
apparantly didn't have much to do with the neighbors and spent all her
time taking care of the horses that she boarded.  I'm still not sure
of the circumstances of her death (She was in her late 80's though, I
think) but I do know that there were still horses being boarded when
she died.

We bought the farm (sorry couldn't resist the pun) and have been
fixing it up ever since but aren't living there yet.  I have worked
many late hours there by myself and would swear I have caught glimses
of someone's reflection in the windows while inside (i.e. someone was
there with me) as they passed by the window.  

The main strange thing that happened though on one particular evening
back in, I guess, January. As I was working late one night I heard
quite a lot of noise in the barn.  It sounded to me like perhaps some
animal was in there knocking things around.  Since there wasn't
anything of value in the barn, and I was alone, and it was dark, I
didn't investigate.  

The next day I went around the back where the noise was.  I found that
the rear door (where the horses went through) was open but nothing
else looked out of place.  I looked around to see what could of caused
the noise but didn't find anything.  At this point I figured it was
just an animal or something looking for some warmth.  Then, I turned to
leave out the back door and noticed horse tracks in the snow leading
from the barn! They led from the door into the corral (which was also
weird because the gate was closed.  Because of the overgrowth and the
snow I wasn't able to find any trail out of the corral.

I though maybe a deer made the prints but after some research I found
that there hooves are quite different.  I showed my wife the tracks
later on (we arrove at different times after work) but she didn't know
what to make of it either.  To this day we figure it must have
something to do with the horses that were left in the barn after the
woman had died (None of them died but can animals leave those psychic
imprints people have been talking about?)

Nothing too eventfull has happened since and a new snow covered the
tracks that night.  We're still not finished renovating though and we
haven't even moved in yet...

Keep you posted.

Eric
-- 
Eric Ameres,  Software Engineer			ameres@ral.rpi.edu
CIRSSE - Center for Intelligent Robotic Systems for Space Exploration	
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - CII 8313, Troy, NY 12180-3590