Magikal
A few years ago I wrote a feature column about area psychics and fortune tellers. I didn’t know it at the time but Grand Haven was crawling with them. I met one who did a crystal ball reading in the fitting room at the store she worked at downtown (when she took the crystal ball out of her bag it was wrapped in a diaper); one read tarot cards at her kitchen table while her kid did his math homework one foot to my left; and one read tea leaves and said I would one day find fame and fortune so, ya know, she missed.
But Psychic Number One was a guy named Dave when he bussed tables at the Rendezvous Restaurant but named Daev Magikal on his own time. I met Daev in his upstairs apartment about five blocks from my house and was immediately impressed with the crazitude I encountered. There was a tree stump in his living room with a bunch of numbers and symbols burnt into it, there were decks of Tarot cards everywhere, and he was wearing a brown hooded cloak.
He started out by reading my palm, then he read some Tarot cards, then took out a Ouija Board and suddenly three guys came running out from behind a blanket that acted as a room divider, I wasn’t really expecting that part. Apparently the guys were his roommates and they were all excited because, and I quote, “The last time he used a Ouija Board his arm caught on fire.”
I wrote the story and my editor wanted pictures. He called me and said Kendra Stanley Mills, who was sort of my assigned photographer, wanted to meet me at Daev’s apartment for a photo shoot. I asked him “What time?” and he said, “She’s there now,” and I said, “She’s dead.” There are a lotta places women shouldn't go and this apartment was one of them; it wasn’t Daev I was worried about, it was the three guys behind the blanket. Daev was a sweetheart, the Musketeers were a teense sketchy.
So I hopped on my bike and I FLEW over there hoping they hadn’t had time to dismember the body yet, but when I arrived it was just Kendra and Daev. Daev had a rat he had dyed blue and Kendra was trying to get a shot of Daev with the rat on his head.
Just another day in Tracyland.
The shoot went as well as can be expected and as I was leaving Daev said “Watch out for the dogs,” which I thought was kinda weird since I didn’t know he had a dog. All I ever saw was the blue rat.
A few weeks later I was writing a piece about The West Michigan Ghost Hunters Society. We met out at the Grand Haven cemetery to see if we could spot “The Blue Man.” Legend had it that a blue ghost would occasionally appear at the grave site of Admiral Ferry; the WMGHS determined this was the night.
We parked our cars and started walking towards the gravesite which sat up on a dune because what ghost would haunt a grave on a flat spot near the parking lot. About halfway there I noticed three dobermans about 200 yards away running straight at us with bad intentions. Panic ensued because, to use a sports term, the dogs had the angle on us. We didn’t know whether to run, stand our ground, or shove the fat chick out there as a sacrifice. It was actually a very terrifying moment because we had ZERO protection.
As the dogs got closer, like fifty feet away, they ran down into a small gully and never came back out. They just disappeared, vanished, gone. We stood there in a huddled mass for quite some time before heading back to our cars and the dogs never returned.
I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for three dogs evaporating but I’ve never been able to come up with one. Everyone there saw the dogs and everyone there saw the dogs go away. It was then I remembered Daev’s warning and got a major league chill; “Beware of the dogs,” he said. Maybe it was a coincidence or maybe the guy really was ... magical.
Printed by permission of the author. Email him at Lorenzatlarge@aol.com.
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