Since it is Halloween today, I thought I would tell a true North Shore Country Day School ghost story. As long as I have been here, there has been talk of a ghost in the theater. (We think it is the ghost of former teacher Ramsay Duff.) If you ask Becky Flory, Michael Querio or Julia Macholl, you might be able to get them to tell you the stories of the ghost in the theater. My only experience with that ghost was when a mysterious fire started in the theater on the first day of school in 1995. It has always been blamed on the ghost as the fire department never figured out how it could have started.
But my ghost story happened to me in the Mac Gym. The Mac Gym is named after Mac McCarty who worked for the school for over 50 years starting in 1948. When I got to North Shore in 1994, he primarily worked in the Development Office and a bit for summer camp. He helped me out coaching JV Basketball and also helped coach Football. He was still quite a persuasive figure on campus although approaching 80 years old.
I was still running competitively in those days, although my body was not cooperating like it used to. I started seeing a massage therapist in Wilmette to try to get my various muscular problems addressed. My massage therapist, Lori, was really good, but also had some unique ideas about the spirit world. She used to tell me that we all had spirits that looked out for us and described a spirit that was always in the room with us as she worked on my issues.
Maybe all this talk made me a little more sensitive to the "spirit world" than I typically am. But Mac passed away in December 2000, and during the weeks that followed I would be alone in the gym and feel a presence over my shoulder. I would quickly look around and no one was there.
When I went to see my massage therapist that January, I decided to make some small talk and tell her about my experience feeling there was a spirit on my shoulder when I was alone in the Mac Gym. She answered "is he about 5'7" tall balding on top with thin hair around the sides of his head." I said yes. To which she said 'he's in the room with us."
Naturally that kind of freaked me out. I never talked to Lori about Mac. Lori had never been on our campus or knew much about North Shore Country Day School. But then it got even more eerie.
Lori said, "he's got a message for you."
She then asked me, do you have some sort of bleachers in your gym that come out from under a balcony. Knowing Lori had never been in our gym, I said yes. She then said, are there three aisles to those bleachers? I said yes. Then Lori said, well Mac says you better check the aisle all the way to the right when you are looking at the bleachers. There is a bolt out on the bottom step, and he is worried someone is going to slip on that step and fall.
Just the way she described what Mac said, I knew it was him! Mac prided himself on being more aware of all the little details in that gym than anyone else. He designed it after all.
So as soon as my appointment was over, I hustled back to the gym, pulled the bleachers out and sure enough there was a bolt loose on the bottom step of the right hand aisle of the bleachers.
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| The bottom step which was loose. |
The next week, I saw Lori and I told her Mac was right. The bolt was out, but now I have it fixed.
She told me she believed that spirits of the recently passed do not leave this earth immediately. They often hang around for a couple of weeks and that soon I would no longer feel Mac's spirit in the building. That was then kind of sad. For the next couple of weeks, I began to get used to feeling someone on my shoulder. That feeling eventually passed. I do not feel it anymore. But it is nice to have this story to share about Mac who kept on looking after us even when he was gone.
Happy Halloween!
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