REV 4/09
Release Date: Winter 2009
The green Chevrolet pickup truck stopped momentarily in front of the Gasper Estate, located at 1127 North Laurel Street, the corner of 8th Street. It continued ahead, and then turned right on to 8th Street, slowly wheeled into the weed overgrown driveway and stopped in front of the broken down garage.
“You know Dad, this place is haunted,” Jason stated with his thirteen year old wisdom. A wisdom he acquired from the “Playground Information System”, so he knew it had to be correct. After all that’s were he learned how to smoke a cigarette, sticking your tongue in a girls mouth was called “French Kissing”, and grabbing a “Booby” was getting to first base.
Jim paid little attention to his son’s comment; he was preoccupied visually canvassing the Gasper Estate’s old house and property, while reaching behind the seat of the truck for his clipboard.
The Gasper Estate covered an entire city block. A three story Victorian style home, built one hundred and twenty years prior, but now sat empty for the last twenty. The wood sided, cedar shingled dwelling loomed of neglect. Once this estate housed a prestigious industrialist, a money man of his era, but now it was the home for way-ward pigeons and stray alley cats.
Rebuild, renovate, or raze, were the recommendations made for the Gasper Estate’s future, by the Hazleton City Council, after selling the city owned property. The new land owners - a less then obvious land barren, Hazleton Saint John’s Medical Center- decided the latter suggestion, razing it.
The demolition of a building was not new for Saint John’s. In the course of seventy years, starting as a local hospital, but morphing into a major medical center, the corporation managed to acquire most of the neighborhood, one home at a time. Then systematically tearing down buildings for new parking lots, or utilizing the structures for extra office space.
Jim Cannon located his clipboard from behind the truck seat and started to page through the specification requirements for the demolition. The Gasper Job - as it was dubbed - needed to be price-cost by morning, and the sun was at its setting. “Look at this,” he stated, as if his teen son would care, “Sixty-five pages on how to tear down one damn house!”
Jason, while looking hypnotically at the building asked, “Dad, you’re not going in that house - are you?”
In an arrogant tone, arrogant toward the paperwork not his son, Jim answered, “As soon as I get these papers in order, I am.”
Jason turned and looked directly at his father, a deep concerning look. “Old Lady Gasper is still in this house, she’s a ghost,” he said with a slight twinge in his voice while watching his father get organized. “Weird stuff is always happening in there, I heard all sorts of stories.”
Jim chuckled, “You can tell me all about it when I come out.” He grabbed his flashlight from the console and with clipboard in hand he got out of the truck. “Stay in the truck, I’ll be right back,” he commanded and headed towards the house.
“But Dad, I’m telling you-!”
“Just stay in the truck,” he repeated. “If I see Old Lady Gasper I’ll tell her you said hello,” Jim practically yelled while he headed closer toward the house, and then mumbled under his breath, “Sixty five pages of paperwork, ghosts in the house, what’s next?”
Jim’s thoughts were that the house became the pinnacle of dilapidation as he cautiously walked up the front three steps onto the rotted porch. He jiggled the broken handle of the front door and pushed, it wasn’t locked, but the door didn’t budge. He stepped back one pace, picked up his foot and kicked next to the knob, shattering the jam. The door flung open hitting the wall, and then slammed shut again. He reached for the knob to enter, but the door was still stuck solid.
“Damn, maybe this place is haunted,” he said in a whisper. He held the knob and shouldered the door until it opened into a near pitch-black house. What little light glistening from the sun could not penetrate the crusted and partially boarded up windows. He placed his clipboard just outside the door, clicked on the flashlight and headed inside. The two reasons he had for looking through the old house were, structural integrity, and salvage value.
The flashlight beam scanned the walls and floors of the first room, a sitting room in its earlier years, but now showed years of graffiti. Though the house sat empty, it was not unused. Along with the wall writings, the room housed old furnishings and mattresses, empty beer cans, used condoms and an array of garbage. He cautiously stepped over the debris, entered the former kitchen area and found most of the same interior decorations.
The first floor tour yielded little hope for any salvage. The plumbing pipe work that would have been sold for scrap had long been ripped out of the walls. Any antique fixtures for possible resale were either missing from their locations or smashed beyond recognition. But, the first floor did show that the structure was still sound. The lack of bowing and cracking to the walls, flooring and ceiling showed a well built home.
Daylight being a commodity, Jim waved the second and third floor excursion of the estate and made his way to the basement door off the kitchen. The basement held the main key to the strength of the building. He opened the basement door with caution hoping that there wasn’t anybody actually living in the house like a squatter or “home-dweller”, as he called them. He called out, and then started to make his way down the steps.
He continued calling, “HEY, anybody down here,” and then followed it with a whistle. Recalling past experiences, where meeting up with home-dwellers wasn’t so pleasant. If the dweller spotted a person coming they would seek refuge in the basements. “Anybody home,” he barked inching his way down, trying to avoid any form of attack.
Surprisingly, the stair treads made little noise as Jim walked down hoping not to make an acquaintance, and reached the bottom step uneventfully. He policed the area in amazement; except for a few cobwebs the place was spotless from debris.
The room lacked any partitioning walls giving it an open, airy feeling. The entire room ran the full length and width of the house above. The only thing keeping this room from becoming a dance hall were the dozen or so columns holding up the structure beams, and the old coal fire furnace positioned in the corner.
“Wow,” he muttered to himself. He stepped off the last step onto a concrete floor that looked as though it was freshly poured concrete, looking down he stated again, “Wow.” The area was in astonishingly good condition.
He stated out loud and to himself, “A new home foundation under an old home structure, go figure.”
The flashlight beam slowly scanned, scrutinizing the three main steel structure beams, the nine steel sub-structure beams and the fifteen steel columns holding up this massive house. Three things ran through his mind; how much is the scrap value for the steel, how difficult it will be to get them out, and how did they get there in the first place. Knowing the age of the house, it would have been impossible to have this quality of support in this aged structure.
The light beam continued to the walls, much to his surprise they where constructed with concrete block. A house of this age would have been constructed when large quartz based rocks were used for foundation walls, prior to the use of concrete block. Again, he thought, how did the block get here and why?
Jim wanted to look above the block work for clues to why the basement was constructed in this manner. He looked around for something to stand on for a closer examination, but found nothing. He walked close to the wall, grabbed hold of a beam with both hands holding the flashlight under his thumb, and did a chin up but failed to see anything of value.
The second attempt to get a better look worked. He stood facing the wall and started jumping up and down feeling with his free hand above the block work. In doing so he realized that this house had two foundations. Someone installed a new foundation wall inside the old walls and set the new beams on the new walls. He noticed a section of the block work that looked repaired. He concluded that the repaired block must have been where they slid the beams in from the outside.
Jim was still jumping around the basement in the dark stabbing the nooks of the walls with the beam of light when the horn from his pickup truck sounded. He stopped his gymnastics, shined the light on his watch and realized he’d been in the house for forty-five minutes. He took three more hops and made his way to the steps, he quickly walked up the stairs and out of the home picking up his clipboard from the porch.