For someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts, I’ve sure had a hell of a lot of hauntings.
This month is the 30th anniversary of Fast ‘n’ Bulbous. I don’t have the appetite for a big site refresh or anything yet, and my summer month off of chasing down new album releases extended to two months, and I realized it might be time to pivot and follow my muse. My modified schedule of getting off the computer by 9:30 or 10 and reading for about an hour before bed not only helped my sleep health, but also resulted in more vivid, memorable dreams, which in turn seemed to get the creative juices flowing. I felt I might be finally ready to finish my Peculiar Adventures of Ozzy and Lo book
I still have a bit of a psychological wall to crawl over to get that going again, and this story just came together recently, running a thread through some actual real life events. I managed to scare myself enough to have a mostly sleepless night afterwards. Not great for sleep health, but it’s a good sign that this just might be at least a bit scary!
Enjoy your nightmares!
Part I: Jolene and Black Sabbath
Dubuque was a once bustling small industrial city in Iowa sat at the nexus of Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois in the Mississippi Valley, in economic decline. The Dubuque Packing Company was struggling, laying off workers and would soon close, and John Deere Dubuque Works was also in decline. The 1970 census says there were 62,496 people, and in 1980, it would be just 62,891. For about every baby born that decade, someone either left, died . . . or disappeared.
It wasn’t the first time the population in that area stagnated. French-Canadian fur trader Julien Dubuque married Chief Peosta’s daughter after arriving in the area in 1785. Gaining the trust of the Meskwaki tribe, he was allowed to mine lead in 1788, securing a land grant from Spain by 1796. After his death in 1810, the tribe refused to let any other white people from using the mines, but after the Black Hawk war of 1832, the tribe were forced out to a reservation in Kansas, after their ancestors had inhabited the area for 10,000 years.
In October of 1977, I was eight years-old, my mother and I moved from my grandparents’ house to an apartment. It was government subsidized housing and she had to be on a wait list. When one became available, we moved right away, even though I was a month into my school year. It wasn’t far from the old house, but I had to change schools. There was an outgoing neighbor girl across the hall named Jolene who took me under her wing and introduced me to classmates and made my jarring transition slightly better.
She showed me the woods that wind along a creek for nearly two miles, and an area where if you’re lucky, you could find an old arrowhead and other artifacts from the Meskwaki tribe and their predecessors. I did indeed find an arrowhead and was thrilled. Jolene said she found something even more interesting earlier that year, and would show me when we got back.
As she dug into her closet for her hidden treasure, I browsed through the records in Jolene’s living room. They were left behind by her deadbeat dad years before. Among them were the first three Black Sabbath albums. At that point, I only knew music that my grandparents, uncle and mother had – some big band jazz, polkas, country, some Elvis singles, and the 60s basics of Stones, Beatles, Dylan, Doors. The name and album art looked sinister, and I was fascinated. Jolene emerged holding a small obsidian stone. I couldn’t tell what it was made of, but it seemed to be the absence of light. But careful examination revealed a symbol carved into it. It was fairly intricate, a series of shapes – circles, triangles and rectangles, made to look like some kind of creature with a curled tail. The body looked like a YMCA logo tipped over on its side, with a key inserted into the creature’s back. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jolene, “but isn’t it beautiful?”
Perhaps, but it frightened me too. It seemed to mesmerize her the same way the Black Sabbath albums did for me. I asked if I could borrow them. Jolene’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “No.”
“Why not? I’m right across the hall. I’ll take good care of them.” Jolene said I would have to listen to them there, and only if I did what she said. Both our long-suffering single moms were still at work for at least a couple hours after we got home and as latch key kids, were used to being left to our own devices, and somehow trusted not to burn the apartment building down. I almost did that, but my mom was home. I was bored with my chemistry set and had a homemade candle sitting on the carpet in a tin can. I sprinkled some random chemicals to see the flame turn different colors, but not much else happened, until I idly spit on the candle, perhaps to see if I could put it out that way. Instead, a tower of flame roared from the candle to the ceiling like a jet, and I quickly slammed a book on top to put it out. What the actual hell? The can got so hot it scorched a hole in the carpet, and there was a mark on the ceiling. Later I did some more controlled experiments outside to make sure my spit wasn’t made of jet fuel, and confirmed it wasn’t.
“What kind of things do I have to do?” I asked Jolene nervously. She had a feral quality to her smile that unnerved me, but I didn’t know why. She seemed to be a perfectly normal girl, blonde hair in pigtails, a face that was probably considered empirically cute, but I was a few years away from caring about that. She imperiously informed me that I was to play dolls with her, and perhaps some house.
“House? What’s that?” She just smirked in response, meaning I’ll find out when it’s time.
It didn’t seem quite fair, as she had no interest in doing anything I like to do, like play with my Hot Wheels cars, or make Shrinky Dinks and watch the plastic shrink in the oven and, in hindsight, emit intensely carcinogenic toxic gases. But it was an early lesson that one must make sacrifices for metal. So I played my part in her Barbie mini-dramas, but all the while 99% of my brain was occupied with the sounds of Black Sabbath, spinning on the turntable, casting a more powerful spell on me than any girl could at that point of my life. After few days of this, she grew tired of my distraction, she decided it was time for me to be her dog. “You want me to bark at you?”
“Not if you want to hear my records. You have to be a good dog.” I had considered just swiping the records, but, well, she knew where to find me, so I surrendered. At first I just had to curl up on the floor at her feet and she scritched my head, while I listened to Ozzy singing about witches at black masses. So not at all unpleasant. Then she poured cereal in a bowl and I had to eat it like a dog. Who doesn’t like an afternoon snack? As I tucked in to some Peanut Butter Capn Crunch, I didn’t notice she had left in the room. Then the strangest thing happened. Side one of Paranoid had just finished with “Iron Man,” and before I had a chance to get up and flip the record, the ominous sounds of rain, thunder, and a church bell came on.
The thing was, that song was on an entirely different album, the one the spooky witch on the cover. How did that happen? Paranoid was in its sleeve like it hadn’t even been played that day. As I puzzled over this, I sensed movement without sound, and looked up to see Jolene stark naked, her arms extended out away from her sides like an inverted Y, seemingly gliding, her feet not touching the ground. Even more terrifying, I couldn’t see her eyes. Where her pupils should be, it was just white. Then she said in a voice far too low to be her own, “EAT ME, SLAVE, BEFORE I EAT YOU.”
I was frozen for a second, Capn Crunch milk dripping off my chin, almost ready to ask what she meant, because I had no clue. I regained my senses and sprung up, scrambling to the door. I opened it but only a few inches as it stopped short as the chain was somehow on. Then a face appeared in the gap and I screamed bloody murder. It was Jolene’s mother, shouting, “What the hell is going on? Open this door!”
I unchained it and at a loss for words, pointed toward Jolene. She was no longer hovering with vacant eyes, however, but rather streaking past me into the hall, screaming. Her mom shouted at me, “What did you do to her? Leave her alone!”
I still had no words, but as she went after Jolene, who was zipping down the hallway and up the stairs, I ducked into the safety of my apartment.
Later, I heard her and my mother arguing in the hallway, and to her credit, without even grilling me, she never doubted my innocence. I avoided Jolene in the following weeks, and she seemed subdued, and looked right through me whenever we crossed paths. By Halloween, her had her mom and moved out, and I never heard from them again. When the apartment was being cleaned and prepared for the next tenants, it was open and I wandered in. All evidence that Jolene and her mom lived there was gone, except in her bedroom. In one corner on the wall there was the strange symbol from the black stone, drawn using what looked like blood red nail polish. While I enjoyed drawing things like cats, alien and spaceships, I had never seen Jolene show any interest in drawing anything. Later that day the painter came and whitewashed the symbol away, before I had a chance to copy it down.
I never heard from her again. I thought about her now and then, and even asked my Magic 8-Ball if she was okay. It’s answer was noncommittal: “Reply hazy, try again.” I’d try again and it said, “Ask again later”. I kept trying. “Better not tell you now,” “Cannot predict now,” “Concentrate and ask again.” I know it’s just a toy with a randomized 20-side floaty, but it would never give a clear answer, positive or negative. Not until years later, when I was visiting home from college, and sorting through old toys and books to give to my younger cousins. I found that 8-Ball in the closet, and asked it again, “Is Jolene okay?” “My sources say no.”
Part II: The Mysterious Floating Wade
A couple years later, I had made friends with Wade, who lived in another building in the apartment complex, also with a single mom, and an older teenage brother who was never around. On Saturdays I’d sleep over and we’d stay up late watching Saturday Night Live and make popcorn slathered with an entire stick of butter. Wade had shaggy blonde hair and a nose for trouble. We’d spend a lot of time outside in the woods that Jolene first introduced me to. Teenagers would terrorize us younger kids on their motorcross bikes, and once we came upon a fire that the degenerates left burning amidst empty beer cans and garbage that was just about to get out of control. We put it out, and decided to call ourselves the Fire Eaters. This included a couple other neighbor kids, Ron, a quiet but unusually strong kid, and Shawn, a complete raging asshole who would probably end up in prison someday. Our first act as a kind of environmentalist-terrorist gang was to knock the arsonist offender off his cycle with a rope, hogtie him, put a sack over his head and drag him into a 200 meter long tunnel that goes under JFK road, which is filled with bats and rats. We set off some firecrackers and left him in the dark scared out of his wits.
During our so-called patrols, we extended our explorations into a corn field on the other side of the woods. The stalks were nearly eight feet tall, soon time to be harvested in September, and we got good and lost for nearly an hour, as if we were in a dense forest in northern Europe. We finally emerged into a clearing with a barn and small farmhouse, both of which appeared to be long abandoned. We could barely see through the windows inside with all the cobwebs and dust, and could barely make out a kitchen table that seemed to still have dirty plates on it. Without discussing it, Shawn busted a window with a rock and reached in to open the door, no doubt the beginning of an illustrious career of crime. They went in and I hovered outside, reluctant to go in. Shawn berated me for being a chicken, and I eventually entered. There were small bits of fossilized remains of food. Whoever lived there left in a hurry.
We explored upstairs and found in one of the bedrooms a hole in the wall with dark brown stains around it and on the floor. Is that blood? Wade asked. It was hard to tell, as it was pretty old, but it sure could be. I said we should go before it got dark, and Shawn told me to stop being a baby. I told him he’s welcome to stay there, but I’d rather not wander the cornfield all night. After some huffing, namecalling and arguing, somehow we ended up with the group dare that we’d all come back and spend the night there. Shawn said I wouldn’t show because I’m afraid of ghosts. I said I’d seen some things, but don’t really believe in ghosts.
Once the weekend came, we came up with the standard round-robin lie of telling parents each of us are staying at another’s place, snuck out and met at our usual spot in the woods, equipped with sleeping bags, flashlights and snacks. It was Ron who didn’t show, so the three of us made our way into the cornfield. We had previously left some markers to be able to find our way back, and was at the abandoned house before dusk. The bickering, joking, making random noises trying to scare the others, lasted hours after we’d camped out on the bedroom floor, just feet from the hole and stain. Eventually, we all were exhausted enough to drift to sleep. Late into the night, however, I woke up when I felt something brush against my sleeping bag.
A faint light came in from the waning gibbous moon through the dirty window, enough that I could tell that Wade’s sleeping back wasn’t where it should have been next to me on the floor. Instead, it was about three feet above me. I turned on my flashlight, saw than Wade was oblivious and asleep. I kicked Shawn and he snarled at me until I pointed at Wade, and tentatively poked his sleeping back. It didn’t budge. I asked Shawn if we should try to wake him up, but he was gone, running down the stairs and out the door. Freaked out to be the lone, awake, non-floating entity, I gave Wade a firm shake and he woke up as he fell to the floor, with him squawking with surprise and irritation. When he demanded an explanation I said he was floating, and Shawn got freaked and fled.
He accused us of lifting him up and messing with him and insisted that did not happen, and Shawn was clearly not in the room when he woke up, and I wasn’t strong enough to lift him up, as he weighed a good 20 pounds more than me. I urged him to get out of there with me too, but he dismissed me, rolled over and went back to sleep. Unable to sleep, I huddled and watched him in the moonlight. About an hour later, I saw his sleeping bag rise again. I tried to shake him awake again, but when he opened his eyes, I only saw white. I yelped and backed up against the wall, as his rigid body rose upright until his head nearly hit the ceiling. His arms splayed out in the inverted Y position, and his mouth opened wide as if controlled like a ventriloquist dummy.
Out of his mouth came three notes. Not his voice, but what sounded like the entire brass section of an orchestra, at the same volume as a concert hall. I recognized those notes. It was the intro to “Black Sabbath” or in retrospect, a hybrid of that and Gustav Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War” from The Planets suite.
What is happening? Huddling in the corner, I tried to think of what to do. Too terrified to go out into the night, and unwilling to leave my friend behind, I was afraid to interfere with him, as I could barely reach Wade’s feet, and dropping from that height could injure him. So I pulled the dirty mattress off the bed and positioned it under him, hoping it would break his fall if he dropped from that height. The music eventually stopped, and his mouth and eyes closed, but he remained in the air. I retreated back to the corner, unable to do anything but stare at this impossible event.
I somehow ended up asleep, and woke when Wade shook me. He seemed fine, and when I asked him if he remembered what happened during the night, he just repeated his version of Shawn and I lifting and dropping him. Something in his eyes expressed some doubt however, and I didn’t press it. I just wanted to get out of there.
Shawn avoided us and never spoke to us again, and my friendship with Wade would wind down a few months later with his mother moving them out of town for a job. Years later I tried to get in touch with him, but heard that he had disappeared when he was still in high school. He was never found.
Part III: Phantom Lover
Fifteen years later I was living in a studio apartment in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood on Clark street. The building had been a bank earlier in the 20th century, so the walls were reinforced with steel and were very solid and nearly soundproof, ideal for someone who liked to play loud music. The apartment had rooftop access and even a working fireplace. Shortly after I moved in, I had a repeated waking dream that a woman was sitting on my couch watching me. She had long blonde hair and a dress. I couldn’t tell enough detail to know the era it was from. It could have been from the 1920s or 1980s. But she seemed familiar. It was always around the same time at night, about six hours after sunset, and she would fade away as I stared at the couch and became fully awake. I continued to see her over a period of years, and she seemed to appear only when I was alone, usually when I was not in one of the three relationships I had that lasted between 8 months to a year each. Each time I’d strain to place her face, which always tickled a long-buried memory which never fully surfaced.
Eventually more poltergeist type events started to occur. One evening there was a loud pop in the middle of the air in the apartment, with no apparent cause. The one of my Finnish beer mugs began spinning on it’s own. The next night objects had been moved to different locations while I slept. Another time, while I was in the shower, the light went out, though the ventilation fan remained on, even though it was on the same circuit and switch. I yelled out, “cut that shit out and tell me who you are and what you want!” The light came back on.
That night I had a date and after dinner she came up to the apartment for a drink. She said she felt an odd presence in the apartment that made her feel uneasy, so we brought our drinks up to the rooftop. I told her about the mysterious woman I’d seen, but didn’t mention the other supernatural activities, as I didn’t want to scare her. After I walked her home and came back, she called me, her voice trembling, and told me the something followed us to her home and tried to choke her.
“Do you mean someone broke in to your apartment?”
“Not a person. It was invisible. I think that woman you see at night is dangerous, like some kind of jealous lover.”
I assured her that I’ve never slept with a ghost that I was aware of, and had no plans to.
“You might want to tell her that, but maybe get some help from a spiritual cleanser.”
“But I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“That may be so, but it believes in you.”
Whatever was going on, it was officially interfering with my love life, so I was willing to try anything. My friend Angelica I knew mainly as an artist, but to pay the bills she was also a dominatrix. That colorful occupation aside, the important thing was that she grew up in Panama, and was a fourth generation practicing Obeahwoman. I called her up and asked if she could help me out, and she agreed.
She arrived with her bag of herbs and oils that she sprinkled around the perimeter of the apartment. Angelica paced around, getting a sense of things, pacing in some kind of pattern. “Hrm, this is one bad bitch,” she said. She lit a candle and sat on the floor and was silent for a long time.
“On further thought, she may not be what she seems, but something more ancient and evil. This will be tricky.”
She guided me through a ritual to have me meditate on my past and how it might be relevant to what’s happening, and then tune my thoughts toward what positive outcome I’d like to manifest. I was thirty-two years old, and tired of bad dates and drama. I wanted to get past the weirdness and find a partner to build a life with.
“Alrighty then,” Angelica claps her hands together then brushes her hands together as if brushing off dust, “that’s a wrap!”
“What, that’s it?”
“Well not quite for you. Whatever this entity is, will manifest one last time. Your job is to reckon with it. Figure it out who it is, or at least what it wants. Good luck, my man, be strong!”
She gives me a fistbump and says, “I’m outtie.”
Be strong, like Faust. That’s slightly ironic advice I’ve given other friends dealing with challenges. I spent some time at the computer writing while listening to music, a daily activity that gets me out of my head for a bit. Too agitated to sleep, I read a book for a long time until I finally drifted off.
In my dreams, a little girl said in a gruff voice, “Hey cookie. Me want to eat you eat you eat you. Me want to munch you munch you munch you. Me want to crunch you crunch you crunch you.”
That was a Cookie Monster bit from Sesame Street that used to crack me up and . . . I opened my eyes and looming over me was the blonde woman, this time her arms in the inverted Y position that I had long ago seen Wade in, and . . . “Jolene!”
“Jolene is that you? What happened to you? I tried to find you after you moved away but it was all dead ends.”
In response, her mouth opened up and out came that damned tritone, sounding like trumpets.
“Fucking hell, that’s enough! How about you stop messing with me and fuck right off? I did you no wrong. All I wanted was to borrow some goddamned Black Sabbath records! But I also wanted to be your friend. That’s it! What the hell is up with this shit? I’m sick of it!”
The music was so loud I don’t even know if she/it could hear me over it, but then it stopped and her mouth turned to an alarmingly wide grin, showing a hint of pointy teeth. Then with the same loud pop that I had heard previously, she was gone.
The next morning on the couch where the spectral woman would always sit, I found a matte black card with a message written in Latin:
I immediately recognized the symbol as the very same as what I saw on the black stone, and painted on Jolene’s bedroom wall. I looked up the words, which translates to…
“Jolene, she were full sour of countenance,
Yet Wade, he tasteth as honey on the tongue.
Thee I do spare, in fair exchange,
For thy kindness in revealing unto me
The cunning riffs, wrought by Master Iommi,
Bracing rhythms, by Master Ward’s own hand,
And grislye poesy from Messeigneurs Butler and Osbourne.
Licks and tritones,
Amdusias”
I still don’t believe in ghosts, but I sure as hell believe in Amdusias.
Dedicated to Ozzy Osbourne and the lost Fire Eaters.
This story is based on true events. However, characters, live people, dead people, undead people and demon sock puppets are used fictitiously or changed vastly by the author’s twisted imagination.
The tritone is the musical interval that spans three whole tones, like the diminished 5th or augmented 4th. The gap between two notes played in succession or simultaneously was known by medieval musicians as Diabolus in Musica – the Devil’s Interval. The Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages forbid the use of the tritone, believing it was the work of the devil. Nevertheless, the tricky tritone made appearances in Beethoven’s Fidelio, Giuseppe Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata, Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, even West Side Story’s “Maria.” Often harmonized in thirds in the harmonic minor scale, it produces a feeling of dread. It creates a spooky tension that can either lead to a major chord resolution, or simply leave listeners dangling over the abyss of despair.
The goetic grimoire known as the Ars Goetia, or The Lesser Key of Solomon, compiled from various anonymous authors going back to at least the 10th century, describes 72 demons. One of them is Amdusias, a Great Duke with twenty-nine legions of demons under his command. Some believe he’s one of the seventy-two fallen angels, the Spirits of Solomon. He is associated with music; he can cause trumpets and other instruments to be heard, but they cannot be seen. A nocturnal demon, he’s at his most powerful during the sixth hour of the night.
Some contemporary occultists interpret goety as a psychological practice, viewing the “inner demons” as representations of a magician’s own repressed aspects rather than external entities. But I’m no magician, and I certainly didn’t eat Jolene and Wade myself.
A part of me was worried that continuing to listen to Black Sabbath would lure the demon back. Not listening to Black Sabbath was not an option, so I deemed it worth the risk. So far so good. I can probably credit Black Sabbath for keeping a demon from eating me, so thanks mates!
Rest in Pieces Ozzy Osbourne. For your sins, if you did end up down below, I know you have a big fan in Amdusias, who will treat you like the royalty you are.
A.S. Van Dorston
October 23, 2025
Spooky Season
