Hey, It’s Spring
It was touch and go for a while, but the lilacs are finally blooming, the ovenbird has resumed his mid-wood teachings, and the cemetery groundskeeper is once again out there on his riding mower,...
Author: John P. O'Grady
Historic Home
One June day some years ago I made a trip to Vermont to visit The Robert Frost House Museum. It’s just up the road from Shirley Jackson’s Hill House and isn’t haunted in the...
The Course of Empire
When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, I spent a lot of time dreaming of escape to the Land of Rip Van Winkle. I didn’t have a car or any easy...
Breathing and Listening
Monday, May 3rd, 1965. I’m seven years old, running home from school with my chums. I can’t see their faces anymore—they appear shrouded as if in mist—but I know they are there. We’re all...
A Nursery Tale
A sunny day in spring, the air redolent of fragrant promise. Blue sky overhead put me into the mood to buy a new lilac shrub for the yard, so I drove down the mountain...
Rustic Cabin
A long time ago I lived alone in a rustic cabin located well “off the grid” in in the faraway California woods. It was a sweet spot on the western slope of the Sierra...
A Dog Story
I wanted to try my hand at writing a dog story. First, I needed to get a dog. What kind of dog? A collie. But why stop there? I told my wife that we...
The Old Coot
They say a ghost haunts Mount Greylock. It’s the highest peak in Massachusetts and popular with hikers. When I heard about this singular phantom, I decided to investigate the matter for myself. No, I...
The Genius of Kaaterskill Falls
[The other day I was cleaning out some files and came across this ghost story that I heard when I was growing up. I wrote it down—to the best of my memory—twenty-five years ago....
Tweed Never Goes Out of Fashion
A fine Harris Tweed sports coat had been hanging in my closet for a long time. I bought it in the early nineties, back when I was living on the West Coast and my...