This is a story of the greatest battle known to mankind: a haunted house versus a ten-year-old girl and her AM/FM radio. Let’s meet the competitors.
First, we have the house. You may have an image of what a haunted house looks like: perhaps a dark, weathered mansion atop a hill, surrounded by dead, charred trees. Ominous organ music plays in the background. Now imagine a more incognito enemy, a red-brick house with a stone-stucco arch around a friendly green door. There’s a minivan in the driveway. Tall trees shield passersby from the intense Georgia sun. Inside, there is a little front room full of shoes, an old but pleasant kitchen with a black-and-white checkered floor. A stackable washer/dryer set. A haunted house in disguise.
On the other side of the ring, we have the ten-year-old Lucy (yours truly) and her AM/FM radio. Imagine me: bright freckles, orange hair and dorky glasses (nowadays I wear cool glasses). Then there’s my pink-and-white flowery boombox with the AM/FM radio antenna.
The radio is not the hero of our story, nor am I. The radio is merely a vessel. Allow me to explain. Just as its appearance disguised its nature, its control was subtle and nuanced. No ghosts, no wailing women in the night. Nothing that tangible.
But at night, everyone in the house had disturbing dreams. The same story entered my mind as I slept: someone dangerous was coming down the hallway. I tried frantically to get under the covers in my dream, where safety must be. As soon as he entered my bedroom, I woke up. Every Saturday night, without fail, for years, this dream returned. I sleep, and he is in the house. I wake up; he is gone.
Sometimes, when I was all alone, I went into my room and clicked on the light switch, but the lights did not turn on. I tried again, again. Nothing. Terror filled my body; I turned and ran upstairs to safety. I waited an hour and returned. The lights worked now, mocking me. This happened several times, all the time.
In this way the house teached me to fear my lavender, sun-soaked room. At any moment, a deep pit of fear may sink into my bones. A chill. A pit in my stomach.
Enter the pink-and-white radio. It’s inherited from my older sister, though I can’t remember why exactly she passed the radio down to me (it seems like a very valuable token in 2000s lore). I brought it to my lavender room, tuned to a station and this is where we meet our hero.
The magic song had something special in it. It filled the air with joy, making it impossible for a human body to remain sedentary. You must dance. Any fear was gone, replaced by the bliss that only the magic song could invoke. The house didn’t stand a chance.
There was one small problem: I did not know what the magic song was called. I could only hope it came on the radio. My protection against the house was finite, inconsistent in its protection.
I spent my free hours flipping between stations, waiting to hear the magic song. I began an investigation to uncover the name. I wrote down the lyrics in a dedicated journal, searched iTunes for any possible title. I tried everything I could think of, with no success. The house cackled deviously.
Some months later, my friend Liliana came over to play. We went to my lavender room, and I put on the AM/FM radio. The magic song played! I explained the magic of the song to Lilianna, and my subsequent fruitless investigation to find its title.
“Wait,” she said. “I know this song. I have it on my iPod.”
Um. That is AMAZING.
Before long, I had the magic song loaded into my own iPod; steely protection against the haunted house which threatened my psychological room-safety.
The magic song served as hero, forever protector of my realm. Even when my family sold the house and moved to another (not-haunted) home, I still had the magic song with me to remind me of my fearlessness.
Lucy Yates (23C, she/her) is from Atlanta, Georgia, majoring in Sociology and History. Her interests are in medical sociology and public health, particularly maternal care access. When she's not writing for the Wheel, Lucy is reading magical realism and perfecting her family's pumpkin muffin recipe.
