{"id":188026,"date":"2025-10-31T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=188026"},"modified":"2025-11-02T09:46:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T15:46:54","slug":"cops-a-guinea-pig-and-a-zither","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/cops-a-guinea-pig-and-a-zither\/","title":{"rendered":"Cops, a guinea pig and a zither"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a ghost story — sorta — by James Thurber<\/em><\/p>\n

The Night the Ghost Got in<\/h3>\n

The ghost that got into our house on the night of November 17, 1915, raised such a hullabaloo of misunderstandings that I am sorry I didn\u2019t just let it keep on walking, and go to bed. Its advent caused my mother to throw a shoe through a window of the house next door and ended up with my grandfather shooting a patrolman. I am sorry, therefore, as I have said, that I ever paid any attention to the footsteps.<\/p>\n

They began about a quarter past one o\u2019clock in the morning, a rhythmic, quick-cadenced walking around the dining-room table. My mother was asleep in one room upstairs, my brother Herman in another; grandfather was in the attic, in the old walnut bed which, as you will remember, once fell on my father. I had just stepped out of the bathtub and was busily rubbing myself with a towel when I heard the steps. They were the steps of a man walking rapidly around the dining-room table downstairs. The light from the bathroom shone down the back steps, which dropped directly into the dining-room; I could see the faint shine of plates on the plate-rail; I couldn\u2019t see the table. The steps kept going round and round the table; at regular intervals a board creaked, when it was trod upon. I supposed at first that it was my father or my brother Roy, who had gone to Indianapolis but were expected home at any time. I suspected next that it was a burglar. It did not enter my mind until later that it was a ghost.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After the walking had gone on for perhaps three minutes, I tiptoed to Herman\u2019s room. \u201cPsst!\u201d I hissed, in the dark, shaking him. \u201cAwp,\u201d he said, in the low, hopeless tone of a despondent beagle\u2014he always half suspected that something would \u201cget him\u201d in the night. I told him who I was. \u201cThere\u2019s something downstairs!\u201d I said. He got up and followed me to the head of the back staircase. We listened together. There was no sound. The steps had ceased. Herman looked at me in some alarm: I had only the bath towel around my waist. He wanted to go back to bed, but I gripped his arm. \u201cThere\u2019s something down there!\u201d I said. Instantly the steps began again, circled the dining-room table like a man running, and started up the stairs toward us, heavily, two at a time. The light still shone palely down the stairs; we saw nothing coming; we only heard the steps. Herman rushed to his room and slammed the door. I slammed shut the door at the stairs top and held my knee against it. After a long minute, I slowly opened it again. There was nothing there. There was no sound. None of us ever heard the ghost again.<\/p>\n

The slamming of the doors had aroused mother: she peered out of her room. \u201cWhat on earth are you boys doing?\u201d she demanded. Herman ventured out of his room. \u201cNothing,\u201d he said, gruffly, but he was, in color, a light green. \u201cWhat was all that running around downstairs?\u201d said mother. So she had heard the steps, too! We just looked at her. \u201cBurglars!\u201d she shouted intuitively. I tried to quiet her by starting lightly downstairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on, Herman,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll stay with mother,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s all excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stepped back onto the landing.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t either of you go a step,\u201d said mother. \u201cWe\u2019ll call the police.\u201d Since the phone was downstairs, I didn\u2019t see how we were going to call the police\u2014nor did I want the police\u2014but mother made one of her quick, incomparable decisions. She flung up a window of her bedroom which faced the bedroom windows of the house of a neighbor, picked up a shoe, and whammed it through a pane of glass across the narrow space that separated the two houses. Glass tinkled into the bedroom occupied by a retired engraver named Bodwell and his wife. Bodwell had been for some years in rather a bad way and was subject to mild \u201cattacks.\u201d Most everybody we knew or lived near had some kind of attacks.<\/p>\n

It was now about two o\u2019clock of a moonless night; clouds hung black and low. Bodwell was at the window in a minute, shouting, frothing a little, shaking his fist. \u201cWe\u2019ll sell the house and go back to Peoria,\u201d we could hear Mrs. Bodwell saying. It was some time before mother \u201cgot through\u201d to Bodwell. \u201cBurglars!\u201d she shouted. \u201cBurglars in the house!\u201d Herman and I hadn\u2019t dared to tell her that it was not burglars but ghosts, for she was even more afraid of ghosts than of burglars. Bodwell at first thought that she meant there were burglars in his house, but finally he quieted down and called the police for us over an extension phone by his bed. After he had disappeared from the window, mother suddenly made as if to throw another shoe, not because there was further need of it but, as she later explained, because the thrill of heaving a shoe through a window glass had enormously taken her fancy. I prevented her.<\/p>\n

The police were on hand in a commendably short time: a Ford sedan full of them, two on motorcycles, and a patrol wagon with about eight in it and a few reporters. They began banging at our front door. Flashlights shot streaks of gleam up and down the walls, across the yard, down the walk between our house and Bodwell\u2019s. \u201cOpen up!\u201d cried a hoarse voice. \u201cWe\u2019re men from Headquarters!\u201d I wanted to go down and let them in, since there they were, but mother wouldn\u2019t hear of it. \u201cYou haven\u2019t a stitch on,\u201d she pointed out. \u201cYou\u2019d catch your death.\u201d I wound the towel around me again. Finally the cops put their shoulders to our big heavy front door with its thick beveled glass and broke it in: I could hear a rending of wood and a splash of glass on the floor of the hall. Their lights played all over the living-room and crisscrossed nervously in the dining-room, stabbed into hallways, shot up the front stairs and finally up the back. They caught me standing in my towel at the top. A heavy policeman bounded up the steps. \u201cWho are you?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI live here,\u201d I said. \u201cWell, whattsa matta, ya hot?\u201d he asked. It was, as a matter of fact, cold; I went to my room and pulled on some trousers. On my way out, a cop stuck a gun into my ribs. \u201cWhatta you doin\u2019 here?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI live here,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

The officer in charge reported to mother. \u201cNo sign of nobody, lady,\u201d he said. \u201cMusta got away\u2014whatt\u2019d he look like?\u201d \u201cThere were two or three of them,\u201d mother said, \u201cwhooping and carrying on and slamming doors.\u201d \u201cFunny,\u201d said the cop. \u201cAll ya windows and doors was locked on the inside tight as a tick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Downstairs, we could hear the tromping of the other police. Police were all over the place; doors were yanked open, drawers were yanked open, windows were shot up and pulled down, furniture fell with dull thumps. A half-dozen policemen emerged out of the darkness of the front hallway upstairs. They began to ransack the floor: pulled beds away from walls, tore clothes off hooks in the closets, pulled suitcases and boxes off shelves. One of them found an old zither that Roy had won in a pool tournament. \u201cLooky here, Joe,\u201d he said, strumming it with a big paw. The cop named Joe took it and turned it over. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d he asked me. \u201cIt\u2019s an old zither our guinea pig used to sleep on,\u201d I said. It was true that a pet guinea pig we once had would never sleep anywhere except on the zither, but I should never have said so. Joe and the other cop looked at me a long time. They put the zither back on a shelf.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo sign o\u2019 nuthin\u2019,\u201d said the cop who had first spoken to mother. \u201cThis guy,\u201d he explained to the others, jerking a thumb at me, \u201cwas nekked. The lady seems historical.\u201d They all nodded, but said nothing; just looked at me. In the small silence we all heard a creaking in the attic. Grandfather was turning over in bed. \u201cWhat\u2019s \u2018at?\u201d snapped Joe. Five or six cops sprang for the attic door before I could intervene or explain. I realized that it would be bad if they burst in on grandfather unannounced, or even announced. He was going through a phase in which he believed that General Meade\u2019s men, under steady hammering by Stonewall Jackson, were beginning to retreat and even desert.<\/p>\n

When I got to the attic, things were pretty confused. Grandfather had evidently jumped to the conclusion that the police were deserters from Meade\u2019s army, trying to hide away in his attic. He bounded out of bed wearing a long flannel nightgown over long woolen underwear, a nightcap, and a leather jacket around his chest. The cops must have realized at once that the indignant white-haired old man belonged in the house, but they had no chance to say so. \u201cBack, ye cowardly dogs!\u201d roared grandfather. \u201cBack t\u2019 the lines, ye goddam lily-livered cattle!\u201d With that, he fetched the officer who found the zither a flat-handed smack alongside his head that sent him sprawling. The others beat a retreat, but not fast enough; grandfather grabbed Zither\u2019s gun from its holster and let fly. The report seemed to crack the rafters; smoke filled the attic. A cop cursed and shot his hand to his shoulder. Somehow, we all finally got downstairs again and locked the door against the old gentleman. He fired once or twice more in the darkness and then went back to bed. \u201cThat was grandfather,\u201d I explained to Joe, out of breath. \u201cHe thinks you\u2019re deserters.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll say he does,\u201d said Joe.<\/p>\n

The cops were reluctant to leave without getting their hands on somebody besides grandfather; the night had been distinctly a defeat for them. Furthermore, they obviously didn\u2019t like the \u201clayout;\u201d something looked\u2014and I can see their viewpoint\u2014phony. They began to poke into things again. A reporter, a thin-faced, wispy man, came up to me. I had put on one of mother\u2019s blouses, not being able to find anything else. The reporter looked at me with mingled suspicion and interest. \u201cJust what the hell is the real lowdown here, Bud?\u201d he asked. I decided to be frank with him. \u201cWe had ghosts,\u201d I said. He gazed at me a long time as if I were a slot machine into which he had, without results, dropped a nickel. Then he walked away. The cops followed him, the one grandfather shot holding his now-bandaged arm, cursing and blaspheming. \u201cI\u2019m gonna get my gun back from that old bird,\u201d said the zither-cop. \u201cYeh,\u201d said Joe. \u201cYou\u2014and who else?\u201d I told them I would bring it to the station house the next day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was the matter with that one policeman?\u201d mother asked, after they had gone. \u201cGrandfather shot him,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat for?\u201d she demanded. I told her he was a deserter. \u201cOf all things!\u201d said mother. \u201cHe was such a nice-looking young man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grandfather was fresh as a daisy and full of jokes at breakfast next morning. We thought at first he had forgotten all about what had happened, but he hadn\u2019t. Over his third cup of coffee, he glared at Herman and me. \u201cWhat was the idee of all them cops tarryhootin\u2019 round the house last night?\u201d he demanded. He had us there.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Previous years’ Halloween stories are here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a ghost story — sorta — by James Thurber The Night the Ghost Got in The ghost that got into our house on the night of November 17, 1915, raised such a hullabaloo of misunderstandings that I am sorry I didn\u2019t just let it keep on walking, and go to bed. Its advent caused … Continue reading “Cops, a guinea pig and a zither”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-MUG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188026"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188241,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188026\/revisions\/188241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}