Deep Fried Curiosities

Following Thomas Browne's 17th century line of thought concerning keeping a "cabinet of curiosities", I thought that perhaps my own blog could serve as a kind of "cyber-cabinet" of my own odd experiences. Most of these little narratives have simply been tucked away in my memory for years now, just waiting for the right medium to come along to unleash them.

It's no secret that ghosts are big business. It seems that every time I turn around, there's some "10 Scariest This" or "15 Creepiest That" show on that purports to tell us that all the enticing details of places inhabited by, as my dad would call them, "haints." Well, the other day I was working on the computer and half-listening to the t.v., and the Travel Channel was running a thing about haunted restaurants. At the top of the list was "Catfish Plantation" in Waxahachie, Texas.

I've actually been to Catfish Plantation several times (as a kid). I had heard the hype (you know, the typical redneck-on-the-street interivews where people say things like, "that ghost threw a piece of broccoli clear across the room and hit me in the head!") on a local news station and, as kids are wont to do, I informed my mother this place was a must see. She agreed.

So, we went--I must have been thirteen at the time. (The food there is actually fabulous, by the way, if you're into "down home" southern fried stuff--I think this is actually the first place I ever had fried pickles, but I digress...) We ordered cheese sticks as an appetizer. At one point, when I happened to be looking away, my mother gasped in horror and swore up and down that some unseen entity had made one of the mozzarella sticks disappear and caused the tissue paper lining the basket to "float up." I did not count the cheesesticks before the incident, so I had nothing really to go on, but I bought into the idea that our foodstuffs had been violated by an apparition. It was thrilling.

Before we left, we passed the guestbook in which patrons write brief descriptions of their alleged encounters with C.P. ghosts. I read through a few--many were elaborate narratives focusing on some romanticized vision of a woman in a white flowing gown or a man in a suit that made him "look like he was from the 1920s." I brazenly added my own succinct experience into the mix. It read, "Ghost stole a cheesestick." Nothing more, nothing less.