COLUMN: It's Just a Country State of Mind: The cellar

I grew up in an older house built sometime around the 1940s. Our house was like a lot of the other houses of the day in that it had an old cellar beneath it. Cellars were usually used for storing things like fruits and vegetables, and it also housed the furnace that heated the house in the winter. Our cellar had a coal furnace. It had to be fed coal and had to be stoked at least twice a day. And as if that wasn't enough, the ashes and embers had to be emptied every day.

To make matters worse, the doors to some cellars were on the outside of the house. Ours was no exception. Our cellar was like something out of an old horror movie. Just looking down the old stairs made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was very dark down there, and there was almost always a spider web or two hanging from the ceiling. It was an eerie feeling to say the least. When you finally got to the end of the stairs, you had to fumble for the light to turn it on. The light only served to illuminate the room enough to make dark shadows appear across the cellar wall.

There was a back room where the coal was stored, and it was really dark back there. Naturally, as a child, I had a very active imagination. I was convinced that some kind of monster lived back in that coal room. I was sure that it was the same monster that made the shadows on the wall and the sounds that I heard at night coming up through the heat register in my room. My bedroom happened to be right above the cellar. When I would lay in my bed at night and try to go to sleep, almost invariably the noises would begin coming from the cellar. This continued off and on all through the night.

My mother was the one who tried to convince me that the noises were from the furnace, but I was skeptical! What about all the other noises that went "bump in the night?"

Eventually, I developed a peaceful coexistence with the monster in the cellar. I decided as long as I stayed upstairs, and it stayed downstairs, it could make all the noise it wanted. But soon, my truce with the cellar and its inhabitants would end.

The day came when my father announced that I was old enough to start tending to the furnace. Translation: I would have to go down to the cellar by myself. I tried to convince my father I wasn't ready but to no avail.

The next morning, I was on furnace duty. I will never forget the first time that I went down into that cellar alone. All those years of imagining what was down there had finally turned into a childhood fear. As I walked down the cellar steps that morning, I could hear every pop, crack, creak and groan that the old cellar had ever made. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, it was total darkness. I reached for the light and flipped the switch. The dim light lit up the room. There were dancing shadows on the wall. The window in the door on the furnace glowed bright orange. But all I saw was the face of a monster. I was out of there quickly.

Yes, of course I had to go back. With a flashlight in hand, my father accompanied me back into the cellar. We examined every crook and cranny of the place, which was my father's attempt to convince me that there was nothing to fear.

Eventually, I got used to going down in that cellar. And I returned to my peaceful coexistence with the furnace monster. It wasn't long before the old furnace was replaced with a new oil furnace. Years later, I realized that my father had me go to that cellar to attempt to get over my childhood fears.

Time certainly changes things. Children grow older and turn into adults. And furnaces get old and get replaced. But I think that the "things that go bump in the night" will always remain as long as there are children with active imaginations. And of course, those old cellars that house furnace monsters!

Happy Halloween!
-Susan