The question that’s inevitably asked whenever someone connects me to the Book. By now, I have a stock answer at the ready. I learned early on that one is necessary, and so I always keep it handy, like something carried in my toolbox.
“I don’t really remember anything about that time.”
The receptionist arches an overplucked brow. “Nothing at all?”
“I was five,” I say. “How much do you remember from that age?”
In my experience, this ends the conversation about 50 percent of the time. The merely curious get the hint and move on. The morbidly interested don’t give up so easily. I thought Wendy Davenport, with her apple cheeks and Banana Republic outfit, would be the former. Turns out I’m wrong.
“But the experience was so terrifying for your family,” she says. “I’d surely remember at least something about it.”
There are several ways I can go with this, depending on my mood. If I was at a party, relaxed and generous after a few drinks, I’d probably indulge her and say, “I remember being afraid all the time but not knowing why.”
Or, “I suppose it was so scary I blocked it all out.”
Or, a perennial favorite, “Some things are too frightening to remember.”
But I’m not at a party. Nor am I relaxed and generous. I’m in a lawyer’s office, about to be handed the estate of my recently dead father. My only choice is to be blunt.
“None of it happened,” I tell Wendy. “My father made it all up. And when I say all of it, I mean all of it. Everything in that book is a lie.”
Wendy’s expression switches from wide-eyed curiosity to something harder and darker. I’ve disappointed her, even though she should feel grateful I’m being honest with her. It’s something my father never felt was necessary.
His version of the truth differed greatly from mine, although he, too, had a stock answer, the script of which never wavered no matter who he was talking to.
“I’ve lied about a great many things in my life,” he would have told Wendy Davenport, oozing charm. “But what happened at Baneberry Hall isn’t one of them. Every word of that book is true. I swear to the Great Almighty.”
That’s in line with the public version of events, which goes something like this: Twenty-five years ago, my family lived in a house named Baneberry Hall, situated just outside the village of Bartleby, Vermont.
We moved in on June 26.
We fled in the dead of night on July 15.
Twenty days.
That’s how long we lived in that house before we became too terrified to stay a minute longer.
It wasn’t safe, my father told police. Something was wrong with Baneberry Hall. Unaccountable things had happened there. Dangerous things.
The house was, he reluctantly admitted, haunted by a malevolent spirit.
We vowed never to return.
Ever.
This admission—detailed in the official police report—was noticed by a reporter for the local newspaper, a glorified pamphlet known as the Bartleby Gazette. The ensuing article, including plenty of quotes from my father, was soon picked up by the state’s wire service and found its way into bigger newspapers in larger towns. Burlington and Essex and Colchester. From there it spread like a pernicious cold, hopping from town to town, city to city, state to state. Roughly two weeks after our retreat, an editor in New York called with an offer to tell our story in book form.
Since we were living in a motel room that smelled of stale smoke and lemon air freshener, my father jumped at the offer. He wrote the book in a month, turning the motel room’s tiny bathroom into a makeshift office. One of my earliest memories is of him seated sideways on the toilet, banging away at a typewriter perched atop the bathroom vanity.
The rest is publishing history.
Instant bestseller.
Worldwide phenomenon.
The most popular “real-life” account of the paranormal since The Amityville Horror.
For a time, Baneberry Hall was the most famous house in America. Magazines wrote about it. News shows did reports on it. Tourists gathered outside the estate’s wrought-iron gate, angling for a glimpse of rooftop or a glint of sunlight bouncing off the windows. It even made The New Yorker, in a cartoon that ran two months after the Book hit stores. It shows a couple standing with their Realtor outside a dilapidated house. “We love it,” the wife says. “But is it haunted enough for a book deal?”
As for me and my family, well, we were everywhere. In People magazine, the three of us looking somber in front of a house we refused to enter. In Time, my father seated in a veil of shadow, giving him a distinctly sinister look. On TV, my parents being either coddled or interrogated, depending on the interviewer.
Right now, anyone can go to YouTube and watch a clip of us being interviewed on 60 Minutes. There we are, a picture-perfect family. My father, shaggy but handsome, sporting the kind of beard that wouldn’t come back in style until a decade later. My mother, pretty but looking slightly severe, the tightness at the corners of her mouth hinting that she’s not completely on board with the situation. Then there’s me. Frilly blue dress. Patent leather shoes. A black headband and very regrettable bangs.
I didn’t say much during the interview. I merely nodded or shook my head or acted shy by shrinking close to my mother. I think my only words during the entire segment were “I was scared,” even though I can’t remember being scared. I can’t remember anything about our twenty days at Baneberry Hall. What I do recall is colored by what’s in the Book. Instead of memories, I have excerpts. It’s like looking at a photograph of a photograph. The framing is off. The colors are dulled. The image is slightly dark.
Murky.
That’s the perfect word to describe our time at Baneberry Hall.
It should come as no surprise that many people doubt my father’s story. Yes, there are those like Wendy Davenport who think the Book is real. They believe—or want to believe—that our time at Baneberry Hall unfolded exactly the way my father described it. But thousands more adamantly think it was all a hoax.
I’ve seen all the websites and Reddit threads debunking the Book. I’ve read all the theories. Most of them surmise my parents quickly realized they’d bought more house than they could afford and needed an excuse to get out of it. Others suggest they were con artists who purposefully bought a house where something tragic happened in order to exploit it.
The theory I’m even less inclined to believe is that my parents, knowing they had a money pit on their hands, wanted some way to increase the house’s value when it came time to sell. Rather than spend a fortune on renovations, they decided to give Baneberry Hall something else—a reputation. It’s not that easy. Houses that have been deemed haunted decrease in value, either because prospective buyers are afraid to live there or because they just don’t want to deal with the notoriety.