I should have guessed as much—the church we bought from made you go around the back and knock on a locked door to get in. You practically needed a password just to buy pierogies! Once we were inside, a woman politely took our orders, then went in the back to put them together. As she went through the door to the kitchen, I saw a woman—a ghost—come out.
I’d seen this spirit around before from time to time, but I’d never made contact of any kind with her. I was mulling over my pierogi-recipe plan and thinking of asking her when another ghost came into the room behind her—a ghost that looked exactly like the first one.
Twins, I breathed to myself. In all my years, I couldn’t remember seeing twins, at least not twins who had both failed to cross over, haunting the same place. They even had the same clothes, the same hairstyle, and the same sour, disgusted look on their faces. They were also the same age, I realized, which meant they must have died at nearly the same time.
Recovering from the mild shock of seeing twin ghosts, I was about to catch their eyes and let them know I could see them when the one who had entered second looked at her sister and said harshly, “Listen, Helga—I told you that’s not the way you make it!”
The first ghost I’d seen rolled her eyes and replied, “That may be, Olga. And it may be that you’re the better cook, but I’m a better baker! And I know you can make it that way!”
“You can’t, you horrible woman!” Olga spat back. “Why don’t you ever listen to me!”
I couldn’t believe it. Having just gotten over the fact that they were twins, now I was standing listening to them argue—loudly. Ted couldn’t see or hear a thing, of course, which honestly amazed me—they were going at each other at top volume, presumably bickering over some recipe or other. I was probably gaping at them by this point, and I know I was staring because Helga cut herself off mid-sentence and looked right at me. I just couldn’t look away.
“Olga?” she said in a loud whisper. “Olga! That lady over there? I think she can see us!”
“Yeah?” Olga replied with a glance in my direction. “I think you’re crazy.”
“No, she can see us!”
“Yes I can,” I said. “And I can hear you, too.” Ted was still oblivious to the whole thing. One of the blessings of my calling is that I communicate with these spirits in my head, so at least I don’t have to go around mumbling and talking to the air.
“Well, what do you want?” Olga snapped, suddenly giving me her full attention (and not to be outdone by her sister, no doubt).
“How about a recipe?” I asked. “For pierogies?”
“No!” they answered curtly in unison without hesitation.
“We’ll never give that away,” Helga added. “That’s a family recipe and it died with us.”
“How did you die?” I wondered, trying to soften the mood. Olga explained that they died in a house fire. From what I could gather, they must both have been overcome by smoke before they died, because neither of them could even remember there being a fire. They also explained that this had been their church and that they just liked hanging around, seeing what the ladies were cooking.
“There might be an even better kitchen if you cross over,” I offered. In truth, I have absolutely no idea what’s on the other side, but they didn’t know that, and a really great kitchen is as good a bet as any!
At that moment the woman came back with our orders. While Ted was paying, I asked the ladies again for their pierogi recipe, but the declined. So I offered them a trade: I’d make the White Light so they could cross over if they gave me a good recipe before they left—not pierogies, but something worth sharing nonetheless.
“Okay,” they agreed, so I asked them to follow us into the parking lot, where they gave me the following recipe.
Sweet Cabbage with Caraway Seed
2–3 ounces salt pork or bacon, minced
1 medium onion, minced
2 small heads white cabbage
2–3 teaspoons caraway seeds
3 tablespoons bouillon
Salt and pepper to taste
Salted boiling water
2 teaspoons flour
½ teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet
Cut cabbage into small sections, cut and core, and parboil in salted water for 10 minutes. Drain. Heat salt pork until transparent; add onion, and continue cooking until onion is lightly brown. Add cabbage, caraway, bouillon, and seasoning. Simmer, tightly covered, stirring occasionally, until soft (about 1 hour). Dust with flour and add Kitchen Bouquet; stir and let simmer another 5 minutes. Serves 6–7.
TENNESSEE CORN FRITTERS
THE THING I LOVE ABOUT VISITING with all these ghosts is that I get to go to all these neat locations to meet them. I’ve been all over the country helping people and helping earthbound spirits cross over—sometimes I think I should forget the ghost stories and just write a travel book! And even though the bulk of my work has been local to me, in Ohio, I’ve still visited some pretty neat places right here in my own state.
Take Barbara, for example. She lived on a real dude ranch practically in my backyard, complete with cowboy hats and horse wranglers. She raised show horses for kids to show at competitions, and she employed about five or six hands to help her. She’d not been having a lot of problems, but she had actually been seeing a ghost with her own eyes, and her hands had been complaining that they kept bumping into someone in the kitchen, except there was no one there to bump into.
“She doesn’t look dangerous,” Barbara said of the ghost. “She’s sort of, you know, roly-poly. She has scraggly hair and she’s missing some teeth, but she’s always laughing. Looks like she’s having the time of her life!”
“Are the hands seeing her, too?” I asked her when I got out there. I was looking around, but I couldn’t see this roly-poly woman anywhere.
“I don’t think they’ve seen her,” Barbara replied. “But they are pretty wound up about it. They said I had to do something, so I called you.”
“I don’t see her anywhere, Barbara,” I admitted.
“Oh, she’ll be down in the kitchen. My husband, Bruce, is down there now cooking dinner for everyone—that’s usually when she shows up.”
So we went down to the mess hall and sure enough, there she was. She did look quite disheveled but, just as Barbara said, not dangerous. In fact, I’d have said she was jovial, if anything. As soon as she realized I could see her as well as hear her, I got her fully attention.
“What’s you name?” I asked her.
“Tilly.”
“Tilly, do you know anyone here?”
“No, no,” she laughed. “I came up with my horses.”
“You did what?”
