WITH ONE HAND MRS MCGILLICUDDY TIGHTLY GRIPPED the polished wooden banister as she heaved herself up the staircase. With the other, she clutched her long skirts out of the way. She tutted as a young woman in a shorter, drop-waisted, sleeveless gown descended at a clatter, her bobbed hair bouncing with each springy step.
At the landing the older woman paused for breath. She shook out her fan and fluttered herself a wee breeze. “Second floor,” she muttered, clucking her tongue. “No place for a beauty parlor! What in heaven’s name were they thinking?”
She strutted down the hallway, checking lettering on the frosted glass of each door until she found the beauty parlor a friend had recommended. She swung the door open with a jangling of the bell and made her grand entrance.
One of the hairdressers scurried over. “Good morning, ma’am,” she said, then whispered, “Please say, ‘Good day to you, Kevin,’ before you take another step.”
“Who is Kevin?” Mrs McGillicuddy looked around.
“I’ll explain in a moment. Please just say it. Now. First thing.”
“I will not! If this Mister Kevin wishes to greet me, let him come out and present himself. Common courtesy demands it.” She strode toward the station the hairdresser had just come from.
The unoccupied chair spun three times, and a comb fell off the counter.
“Please, ma’am!”
Mrs McGillicuddy halted only briefly, then grabbed the chair back to steady it, swung her bulk around, and plunked her well-padded derriere into place.
The gas lights flickered.
“Oh dear!” murmured the other hairdressers, and their clients as well. One woman, with pins and curlers still in her hair, sprang up and left the parlor. One hairdresser backed against the far wall, knocking the 1923 calendar from its hook.
A window blind, shielding against the morning sun, let loose and whirred up with a rattle and bang against the upper window frame.
The heating pipes gave an answering boom then fell silent.
“There goes the boiler,” the third hairdresser said as winter chill crept into the room.
“What is going on?” Mrs McGillicuddy huffed.
The first hairdresser timidly approached her station. “It will be fine, Kevin,” she crooned, darting her glance around the room. “She’s new. We haven’t had time to explain—”
The door to the hall burst open. Curling papers swirled from every station to whirl in a papery dust devil out to the corridor.
“Who is Kevin?” Mrs McGillicuddy demanded.
The hairdresser gulped. “He’s our, um, ghost. If only you’d greet him politely, all this falderal would settle down and we could take care–“
“A ghost?” Mrs McGillicuddy snorted her ridicule.
A brush hurled itself through the air, missing her by barely an inch.
“Our regular patrons all know to greet him the moment they come through the door, and then the, um, ‘weather’ will be fine.”
“Weather?”
“Yes. I believe a ‘storm’ is building, you see – he’s a mite offended now – so if you’d please just—”
“I declare! To hear such nonsense in this modern age!” Mrs McGillicuddy clutched handbag and fan and hoisted herself up from the chair. “Why Mabel would recommend your establishment I cannot guess.” What she meant as a dignified and indignant exit turned to panicked flight as a barrage of hair curlers pelted like hail from every station.
Mrs McGillicuddy went down the stairs much faster than she had gone up.
Based on accounts from patrons and staff at a second floor beauty parlor in an old bank building on the main street of Independence, Oregon. I don’t know at what point Kevin (who at one point introduced himself in an eerie whisper) started haunting the establishment, but a full century before this posting seemed as good a setting as any!
text: © 2023 Joyce Holt
artwork: 19th and early 20th century paintings. Public domain info here.
Hindsight 