Page 5 of Shake Your Boo Thang

“And what are your plans for today?”

I pull out Daddy’s old pocket watch, my most treasured keepsake from him. Nine o’clock on the dot. I grin. “Well, I’m fixing to start with one of those double-decker bus tours of the city. Get the lay of the land, so to speak. I’m a tourist, after all, and since it’s my first time here, I do intend to visit all the attractions I can.”

And, of course, I have my own separate itinerary of haunted locations I plan to visit while I’m here. But I don’t share that with Miz Edna or the ghost in the corner who’s still watching me.

Part of the reason I’m here is to do research for my podcast, but it’s also to satisfy my own curiosity about what ghosts in England are like, some of whom are probably a hell of a lot more famous than the ones back home.

There are loads of online accounts of locals and visitors encountering ghosts from hundreds of years ago, but as with most things on the internet, you can’t trust everything you read. Instead, I am coming to the source and trusting my own senses. After all, they’re a lot more attuned to the supernatural than those of the average person.

Miz Edna gives me a couple of suggestions for places where I might want to find dinner and then I head out into a chilly October morning. It’s damp and gray outside, just like I expected. I’ve read plenty a novel set in England, and I have a bit of a fascination with some of the BBC’s cozy murder mystery series.

To be honest, the cooler weather is a nice reprieve from what back home has been like. Right now, we’re experiencing a heatwave that’s made summer feel never-ending. Here, however, fall is well underway.

I’m my mama’s son, so I’m prepared. With a smile, I zip up my waterproof jacket and inhale the crisp air tinged with the unmistakable odor of dead leaves and a faintly smoky scent. What I’m really hoping for while I’m here is some of that famous London fog. A real “pea souper,” as they call it. Wouldn’t that be something?

It isn’t long until I find myself on a much busier thoroughfare than the quiet side street where the B&B is. I check my phone for the nearest Tube station that’ll take me to Piccadilly Circus.

There are some really interesting names for places here. When I was riding a train the other day, I saw someplace on the map called Cockfosters. I have to wonder what that place is all about!

When I enter the Tube station, I check the wall map to figure out which direction I need to be going. It’s much easier to read than pulling it up on my phone. Hmm. It might be neat to get a copy of the Tube map and have it framed back home.

Once I figure out where I need to be going, I mosey along. Thank goodness I watched a couple of YouTube videos about navigating the infamous London Underground before I came over here. I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent and resourceful man, but even I find the London Underground a little intimidating.

The trickiest thing for me is remembering that the flow of foot traffic on the stairs goes opposite to that back home. I suppose it must be because they also drive on the other side of the road. I found out the hard way that those stairs can be deadly if you’re not going in the correct direction. The bruise on my hip’s been reminding me daily.

Once I get to my platform, I stand a good distance behind the yellow line and wait for my train. The platform isn’t terribly busy at this time of morning. I made sure I took my time getting out the door so I didn’t have to compete with the rush-hour crush.

“Oi! You got a light, mate?” a voice says.

With a sigh, I turn and study the ghost beside me, who looks to be a young man in ripped jeans and wearing a leather jacket over a T-shirt. His hair is done up in a spiky punk-rock look.

“Sorry,” I say softly, keeping my voice low. “I don’t smoke.”

“Bollocks,” he mutters, and wanders off.

I heave a quiet sigh of relief.

The dead are never consistent in how they behave toward someone like myself. I may have what Mama calls “The Gift,” but being able to see and hear the dead is both a blessing and a curse, as she likes to say.

When I was a child, I struggled to distinguish between the living and the dead, often talking to what seemed like nobody to my peers. I learned to be more circumspect as I got older, but there are times even now when I can’t avoid communicating with a spirit in the presence of other living people.

Some spirits are in a kind of strange, repetitive loop of behaviors, much like this ghost. I study him as he continues to approach others waiting for the train and asking for a light. None of them, however, can hear him. He just moves on to someone else, his cycle going forever.

I shake my head sadly.

Many spirits stuck here are confused about where they are and what happened to them, and a lot don’t recall exactly how they died. There are often gaps or missing pieces. If I spend a lot of time talking with them, sometimes they kind of feed off my energy and manage to recall more details, but this often stops short of the grand finale. Perhaps we can’t handle revisiting the moment of our own demise. Humans do tend to be a bit fragile when it comes to the subject of mortality. I’m more sanguine on the issue than the average guy, especially since I know that we continue to exist in some fashion even after our physical bodies die. But spirits stuck in this realm, for whatever reason, aren’t ready or willing to move on to what comes next.

Sometimes, when a spirit has enough sense to understand they need my assistance, I try to help them along. But there are far too many spirits lingering in this world for me to handle all by my lonesome. I naively thought I could when I was young, but reality soon disabused me of that particular notion. Now I just try to live my life and do all I can for those I come across.

My train soon arrives, and when the doors whoosh open, I hurry inside and manage to find a seat. Thankfully, my train carriage doesn’t have any lingering spirits on it as far as I can tell, so I settle back to enjoy the short ride.

When I emerge from the Piccadilly Circus Station, I can’t help but look around, wide-eyed. It takes some real effort to shut my mouth as I stare.

London is a place unlike any I’ve ever been in my life. Granted, I haven’t visited too many places outside of Alabama, but the sheer size of the city, the age of some of the buildings, and the overwhelming number of people are a lot to take in.

The roundabout at Piccadilly Circus looks a bit like a kamikaze racetrack, with cars honking and narrowly missing one another as they merge in and out of the circular loop with daredevil-level intensity. It makes me whistle and then chuckle, reminding me of National Lampoon’s European Vacation and that infamous scene when the Griswolds get stuck driving in endless circles.

For the safety of myself and all the innocent people in England, I have no plans to drive a vehicle over here. That would just be asking for disaster. I know my limits, and that is definitely one of them.