Every morning, I take a 24-minute walk around my neighborhood. There are a lot of abandoned homes along my route, but this one really stands out to me.
There is something about that chair, with its ragged torn fabric hanging about it that makes me think of movies about ghosts and haunted places. With my mind’s eye I can almost see an old man sitting there, taking in the neighborhood sites, maybe even giving a wave or two to passers-by.
As I walk by, I can imagine teenagers or even young college students being dared to spend the night there. I can see the young couple, like in a movie, holding hands late at night, sneaking in. Maybe the boyfriend does something to scare the girlfriend, so she hits him on the shoulder.
To the side of the house, you can look into the backyard. There, on the clothesline, is an old raggedy blanked and a set of white plastic hangers. Did people leave this place without packing all their belongings. The windows are boarded up. If they weren’t, would I see furniture and wilted flowers sagging from a vase on an end table?
These are things that genre travelers see with their genre-colored glasses. They look at what to others might be everyday objects or locations and they see the fantastical, magical possibilities.
