PREVIOUS HOUR | NEXT HOUR

 Hour 10/02

2007 | Psychology Today

Prognostications in time:
The Curious Case of Stavvy D

By Dr. Campbell Dunstan, with Jack W. Franklin

WITH THIS ISSUE of Psychology Today’s focus on the paranormal, extrasensory perception and the occult, a majority of articles have been contributed by professionals in the fields of neurology, theology, social science and, of course, psychology. This much-needed factual examination of sensory matters too often shrouded in superstition, exaggeration, coercive suggestion, trickery or downright lies is intended to separate the real from the seductive surreal, fact from fiction. Everyone, at some point in his or her life, has experienced a feeling of déjà vu, or has been gripped by a sense of foreboding, or has dreamt of an event that later occurred. Some lucky (or unlucky) people have even been able to “see” into the future, as though time were a two-way street. Science has long been interested in parsing such paranormal abilities, and this month we explore those researches, both clinically and philosophically.

But clairvoyance and other alternate sense modalities are, first and foremost, deeply personal experiences. While science can quantify and codify, the emotional impact of extra-real instances is perhaps best described through accounts shared by those who undergo them. This article presents one of those instances. Its narrative comes from TheQuill.org, the site hosted by Media Ink, a national writers group for journalists. The site features unpublished essays, news stories and personal histories from editors, reporters, editorial writers and other news professionals, and this piece, written by Jack W. Franklin, recounts a childhood experience with precognition.

Franklin describes several prospicit warnings, their troubling manifestations and his subsequent efforts to reconcile the irreconcilable. No devotee of the occult, Franklin was a beat reporter for several New York dailies, and was twice nominated for a Pulitzer for his investigative work on PCB contamination in the Hudson River. But he was deeply affected by unexplained events that he experienced as a boy, and this memoir, written several years before Franklin’s death in 2005 at age 53, provides an example of the unquantifiable nature of the paranormal as it can occur in daily life. The narrative necessarily circumvents the rational discourse of science, supplanting those dispassionate observations with an immediacy that is as genuine as it is compelling. It’s a also a narrative with which, coincidently, I share a connection.

The story is reprinted here by permission. Some names have been changed to protect privacy; others have been replaced for legal reasons.

IN THE SUMMER of 1962, I had just turned ten. I lived with my parents and three younger siblings in Spring Glen, NJ, a well-to-do bedroom community for Manhattan businessmen and their families. That June, I was going to spend a month at summer camp, the first time I would ever be away from home for more than a few days. Camp Crockett was a YMCA camp in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, a remote, 1,400-acre campus with its own lake, miles of hiking trails, numerous ball fields and groups of rustic cabins for campers aged ten to sixteen. My grandfather, father and uncle had all been campers at Crockett, and I was the vanguard of the next generation. It would be a memorable summer.

But not only because it would be the first of eight summers I would eventually spend at camp in the Berkshires. Two other things happened that July that I remember because I could not entirely explain them. And still cannot to this day. Both were life threatening, and more than one may have actually resulted in death.

As a city desk reporter for the Herald-Intelligencer, a daily newspaper serving the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, I have covered my share of stories involving mortality. There was the spry senior I interviewed on his hundredth birthday who was found dead three weeks later because the neighbors noticed an unpleasant odor coming from his apartment. For a series on battling cancer, I got to know a courageous young mother who passed away just a few days after the first of the stories ran. Then there was the campaign to clean up city neighborhoods by getting drug users into rehab, and I profiled the few who opted to remain on the street. They were all gone within six months. Those instances were personal for me, but there were also gang shootings, armed robberies gone bad, fatal car crashes and the occasional loaded gun mishap. Death was and is news, and my job was to report the news.

That summer long ago, though, was different. I had just finished the fifth grade, and mortality was as foreign to me as the dark side of the moon. No one in my family had ever died, and what little I knew of death involved a sudden spin and drop in a cloud of dust, the result of a sheriff’s quicker draw in the Westerns on TV. Those extirpations were unequivocal in their propriety – clean and well-deserved. The plot quickly moved on.

But death is the ultimate mystery, and not one generally encountered at summer camp. Certainly not by a skinny kid who had just racked up his first decade. At Crockett that July, though, I came face to face with the mystery, and the plot has definitely not moved on.

CAMP CROCKETT WAS established in 1903 as a summer camp for boys by a division of the Young Men’s Christian Association based in Boston and Providence. Located in the remote Berkshire Mountains near the village of Crockett, the camp was a product of the YMCA’s late-19th century efforts to instill in the nation’s young men a healthy sense of individualism, moral rectitude and civic duty. In the decades since, it had grown from a rural outpost of makeshift tents in the piny woods, reached only by a four-mile trek on foot from the Crockett train depot, to a sprawling facility of rustic cabin “villages” with several waterfronts, a library, yacht club, nature center, dining hall and grand pavilion for music and theater performances. The camp thrived between the war years with its summer population eventually exceeding 400 campers, and by 1950, Crockett had gained a national reputation as a place where boys could grow spiritually and mentally, maturing as young adults while having a great time in the process. The end of the decade, however, saw a gradual decline in camper applications. Waning interest may have been the result of cheaper air fares and improved air conditioning, but it was clear that parents suddenly had other options for their youngsters’ summer months. The start of the 1960s saw Crockett’s administration struggling to keep the camp’s operations solvent, and in 1962, a new director was hastily brought in. He was charged with reviving Camp Crockett’s legacy – and its financial viability.

I, of course, knew none of this. All I knew was my father had gone to Crockett, spending not one but two months there as an eight year old. He had fond memories of his many summers there, and he and my uncle, his brother, would laugh uproariously over remembered incidents while singing boisterous camp songs at family gatherings. I learned a few of those tunes myself and would join in, thinking about the day when I, too, would have my own camp memories.

That day arrived on the last Saturday in June. My parents loaded my trunk into the family’s Volkswagen bus and, with my brothers and baby sister in the back seats, drove me from Spring Glen up the Garden State Parkway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge to Interstate 84 in Connecticut. The trip to Massachusetts took a little over two hours, and we arrived at Camp Crockett by mid-morning. Dad parked the bus on one of the camp’s ball fields, and we joined the scrum of parents and campers unloading gear and inquiring about cabin assignments. By noon, my family had departed and, as an official Crockett camper, I made my way over to the dining hall, having been told that a distant trumpet call – “Soupy,” they said – meant it was time for lunch.

I found my cabin’s table at one end of the cavernous room and took a vacant seat, joining my cabinmates and our counselor, a college senior from Maryland named Nick. The din of rustling chairs, clattering tableware and voices struggling to be heard filled the big hall until the camp director, standing at a podium at one end of the hall, caught our attention. Speaking into a mic, he welcomed both new and returning campers, saying that he had every expectation that the summer of 1962 at Crockett would be the best ever, and that friendships made over the next few weeks were sure to last a lifetime. “The memories created during your days here at camp will remain with you always,” he said, concluding his remarks. It was an assertion that, in my case, would prove truer than I could have imagined.

The meal was a chaotic affair, with campers and counselors getting acquainted while passing platters of sandwiches and bowls of soup. Campers designated as waiters wended their way around the tables on trips to and from the kitchen, and village directors visited their cabin groups, introducing themselves, chatting with counselors and explaining the afternoon’s activities. The dishes were soon cleared away and, as plates of cookies were passed around, I noticed a man – a dad −at the side door. He looked around for a moment, and then signaled to our village director. They exchanged a few words, and then the VD pointed to our table. The dad turned and pushed open the door, and after a moment in stepped a boy – a very strange looking boy. He was thin with delicate features, his pale skin and silvery hair giving him an almost spectral appearance. That he was dressed completely in white, with long sleeves and pants, only contributed to the apparition. He might have been an albino, except that his eyes were gray. They were also ringed in red, and he looked as though he had been crying. Father and son made their way over to our table.

Nick stood and greeted the newcomers. “Boys, this is Stavros Drabardi. And Mr. Drabardi,” he said. We all nodded, not sure what to make of this odd looking kid with an odder name. Mr. Drabardi pulled out a chair for his son. “Hello, boys. We’re a little late, sorry.” He looked at his son. “Stavvy?” The boy sat, looking up imploringly at his father. Mr. Drabardi ignored him. “You boys have a great summer,” he said briskly, and then turning to Nick, “My wife and daughter are waiting in the car, so I’ll be off. Thank you in advance for everything.” He turned and was gone. Stavvy stared at his hands and said nothing.

After a rousing round of camp songs, the camp director dismissed us, and we ambled back to our village for a “siesta” period in the cabins before the afternoon’s activities. I couldn’t help noticing, though, that Nick hung back, his arm around the newest camper. The counselor was leaning over, talking quietly to him, and the boy was looking down, saying nothing. I remember thinking that one kid in our cabin was probably not going to have a great summer.

OVER THE FIRST week, we all adjusted to the camp routine. I passed my swim test and picked campcraft, archery, nature lore and boating for my weekday activities. We went on hikes as a cabin group, had after-dinner village campfires, played baseball and soccer, and generally had fun. I made a few good friends in the cabin and we spent most of our free time playing a game with a dodge ball called foursquare or battling for supremacy in tetherball tournaments. Because Camp Crockett was largely a communal experience, campers did nearly everything together. We ate meals, participated in activities, played sports, had rest periods and bedtimes, even showers and toilet visits, as a group. There were times spent alone, quiet times with a book on the library porch or paddling a canoe out on the lake after dinner. But those were the exceptions. Crockett campers were, as a camp motto averred, “All for one, and one for all.”

But not for one of the all, at least in our cabin group.

From that first day, Stavvy Drabardi kept to himself. He spent most of his free time reading, either on his bunk or sitting on a log outside the cabin. He said little unless spoken to, and never stood in line waiting his turn on the foursquare court, or tried his hand at tetherball. He was terrible on the ball field and lagged far behind on hikes around the lake. His appearance also set him apart. The colorless impression he made that first afternoon in the dining hall was borne out in the days that followed with striking uniformity. It seemed his trunk contained nothing but white shirts, pants and socks, and he invariably looked like he’d just come from Sunday School. He made no effort to make friends, and consequently had none. Nearly every aspect of Crockett life he regarded with aloof passivity.

But there was one thing that could get a rise out of Stavvy. He was deathly afraid of water, and at the waterfront he would remain on the dock, shrouded in a towel. No amount of cajoling could convince him to jump in and join the fun. We soon began to regard him as a “weirdo,” and before long he became the target of some of the more aggressive boys in the village.

One of those was in our cabin. Chad Stark was a big farm kid from rural Vermont who was good at sports, not too bright and something of a hell raiser. He boasted that he and his dad were avid hunters, and for a Hershey bar or a box of Milk Duds, he would show us the scar on his thigh, a wound from a .22 pistol that he said accidentally went off. Because of his size, he was more than a little intimidating, and he was quick to make fun of anyone he thought vulnerable. I mostly stayed out of his way, but our odd cabinmate couldn’t avoid him. On the second day of camp, Chad tripped Stavvy on the ball field, calling him “Spazzy,” a nickname that instantly stuck. From then on, he rarely missed a chance to humiliate the spectral camper. Nick would intervene, but his reprimands only seemed to make things worse. Whenever the counselor was not around, Chad would resume tormenting Stavvy, whether by spreading pine needles in his bunk, tying his shoelaces together in knots, pouring water in his trunk or hiding his current book. The rest of us couldn’t help finding these pranks funny, and Chad would encourage our laughter with additional taunts as “Spazzy” silently tried to sweep out his sheets or untangle his laces. I found myself feeling sorry for the pariah, but I was also relieved that I wasn’t a candidate for the farm boy’s cruel jokes.

Chad Stark wasn’t Stavvy’s only nemesis. There was another camper several cabins over who also took pleasure in teasing the boy. His name was Bobby Morrissey and he was a tough kid from Brooklyn. He delighted in embarrassing Stavvy in the bathhouse. Whenever he’d catch him there, he’d start right in.

“Hey, Spazzy, you gotta winkie-tink?” he’d shout so all could hear. “Girls bathroom is over in the dining hall. Girls can’t piss here. Boys only!” Stavvy would try to close the stall door, but Bobby would force it open. “Hey, let’s see if you even have one. C’mon, Spazz, pull your pants down. Show us!” Other boys in the bathhouse would smirk, staring in anticipation. The arrival of a counselor would quickly defuse the situation, but Stavvy wasn’t always so lucky. Usually, Bobby wouldn’t stop until the pale boy pushed through the crowd and bolted out the door. Then the bully would laugh menacingly, whirl and knuckle-punch the nearest bystander’s shoulder. “You see that? What a crybaby!”

Once, though, something odd happened during the New York kid’s bullying routine. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later it took on greater significance.

Bobby caught Stavvy in the bathhouse and, as usual, began harassing him. “I thought I told you, you can’t come in here, Spazz-o,” he said. Boys at the sinks stopped brushing their teeth and turned to look. “Don’t you understand English?” Stavvy, looking down, said nothing. “Can’t you even talk?” Bobby barked. “How come you never say nothing? You chicken?”The pale camper stood mute. “Talk, chicken! Talk!” Bobby flapped his arms. “Buk-buk-ba-kawk!”

Stavvy looked up, meeting his tormentor’s eyes. “A great height,” he said almost inaudibly.

“What? What did you say?” Bobby shouted, moving in. “Say that again, chicken!”

The chicken said nothing for a moment. Then, “A great height. You’ll fall.” He smiled. “Oh, yes. Yes, you will.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Bobby sneered. “You’re really crazy, you freak!” He shoved Stavvy. “Get outta here, or I’ll kick your ass up a great height, weirdo!”

A FEW DAYS later, I was waiting for Soupy with several cabinmates in the shade of one of the big maples that ringed the village, and Chad, who had been playing foursquare, came over and joined us. We talked about the morning’s activity, a loss to one of the other cabins on the ball field, and then Chad said something that got our attention. “Spazzy woke me up last night.” What? Stavvy woke him? What did he mean?

“I’m asleep, like, it’s the middle of the night, and I suddenly wake up, and that kid’s standing there, right by my bunk,” Chad said in a hushed voice. “Really creepy. His white face, you know? Like a spook.” Stavvy was out of bed? After taps? What did he do?

“He didn’t do nothing,” Chad explained. “He just looks at me with this queer smile. ‘Whadda you doin’?’ I say. ‘Get away from me!’ But he only says, ‘It’s a deep pit.’ Then he goes, ‘A deep pit. You’ll be in it.’” Chad shook his head. “That’s it. Spazzy goes back to his bunk and I’m layin’ there thinking, ‘What the hell?’ Totally weirded out. I couldn’t get back to sleep for the longest time.”

Before we could ask more, Soupy blew and we headed off to the dining hall. I was reminded, though, of the incident in the bathhouse with Bobby Morrissey. Stavvy Drabardi suddenly seemed stranger than ever.

Then one rainy afternoon I was in the cabin, sitting on my trunk and reading the latest edition of Mad magazine. Stavvy came in and, taking off his rain slicker, turned to me. “What’s that?” he said. “What, this?” I replied, surprised. “It’s the new Mad. Don’t you know Mad?” I’d never met a kid who didn’t know the magazine that featured “humor in a jugular vein.” “No,” he replied. “I don’t know it.”

“Well, if you want, you can read it when I’m done,” I said cheerfully.

He just looked at me, and then he said quietly, “A bus?”

“A … what?” I was, confused. Was he talking about something in the magazine?

“Your family’s car. A bus?”

“Uh … yeah. A Volkswagen bus, that’s right.” I had no idea how he knew.

“Look out for a fire. A great fire,” he said ominously. “You could be in it.”

“What? Me? In a fire? What are you talking about?” Another odd prediction, this time directed at me. I suddenly felt uneasy. He just smiled.

“Yes. I’d like to read your Mad when you’re done,” he said. As he climbed onto his bunk, he added, “Thank you.”

THE STRANGENESS surrounding Stavros Drabardi came to a head midway through the season’s third week. The day had dawned hazy and humid, with the sun the color of a blood orange as it rose over the lake. It was uncharacteristically hot by late morning, and we sweated through our cabin activity, happy that the chore of gathering firewood for the weekend campfire took us into the shade of the surrounding woods. By morning swim, we were all in our suits and down at the waterfront, waiting for the whistle so we could jump into the lake’s cool waters. At siesta following lunch, I was so drowsy from the heat I fell asleep for nearly an hour. My afternoon boating class provided some relief as we practiced climbing into a canoe from the water without swamping it, and even though it was still hot, I was feeling much better when I got back to the village. Though nearly everybody was headed to the waterfront for the afternoon swim, a few campers were halfheartedly batting the tetherball around. They looked easily beatable, so I opted for a match or two on the dusty court. As the cicadas buzzed in the village treetops, I waited for a turn.

I never got one.

While I stood watching, our counselor Nick suddenly jogged by, heading toward the waterfront. Several other counselors soon followed, and then the village director sprinted past. The boys on the court stopped swinging their paddles, the tetherball on its string slowly circling the pole and coming to a stop. “What’s going on?” said one player to no one in particular. Kids were now streaming up the path from the lake, towels over their shoulders.

“Hey, what’s happening?” I asked one of my cabinmates as he passed. “Don’t know,” he said. “They just told everybody to get out of the water.” The village green quickly filled with wet campers, each asking the others why the swim period had ended so abruptly. No one knew for certain, but someone said they thought a kid might have gone under. Really? Which kid? No one knew that either. In the heat of the afternoon, the air, heavy with humidity, seemed to absorb all sound, and in the silence, we stood doing nothing but waiting and watching. Fifteen minutes slowly passed.

Then, coming quickly up the waterfront path, was one of the camp’s aides. As we watched, he emerged onto the green, headed over to our cabin and began closing all the window shutters. He then propped the door open and, without looking at the assemblage on the green, hustled back down the path.

“What was he going into our place for?” said Chad. He’d found me in the crowd, and he looked annoyed. “Jeez! I gotta change outta my bathing suit for waiters call.”

Before I could answer, the village director came up the path. He was red-faced and breathing hard, and as he crossed the green in our direction, he shouted, “Boys! I need all of you to move away. Move over to the flagpole. Let’s go! Now!” He gestured rapidly, arms outspread, pushing us back while ignoring boys who shouted questions.

Next up the path came Nick. He had three other counselors with him, and they were carrying something. As they crossed the green, we saw they each had a corner of what looked like a makeshift stretcher. Whatever was on it appeared to be heavy and was completely covered with a blanket. They struggled with their burden up the steps and into our cabin, and then quickly closed the door. We all looked at one another.

“What the hell?” said Chad, now more alarmed than angry. “What were they carrying? Some kid? What are they doing in there?”

Several other counselors joined the village director on the green and began organizing campers, sending them to their cabins to get changed for dinner. Clothes were fetched for the swimmers from our cabin, and they were told to change in the bathhouse. Chad complained that the shirt they’d given him wasn’t his, but he left for the dining hall anyway when the trumpet call for waiters sounded. The rest of us milled around the flag pole, not knowing what else to do while keeping an eye on the cabin with the mysterious occupant. It remained shuttered, and no one offered us any explanation.

At dinner, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except that Nick was replaced at our table by one of the camp aides and one chair remained conspicuously empty. Stavros Drabardi was apparently missing. When we asked, the aide just shrugged. “I really don’t know anything, guys,” he said. “Better ask Nick later.”

Back at the village, our cabin was open again, as though nothing had happened. Nick was talking with the village director when we arrived, and we peppered him with questions. What had happened at the waterfront? Why did they close up the cabin? And what was on that stretcher?

“Boys, OK, OK!” Nick said, holding up a hand for silence. “I know it seemed pretty dramatic this afternoon, and I’m sorry you all were confused. But what we were doing was simply a simulation, a practice session.” He said the camp staff were testing out emergency procedures in the event of a waterfront accident. They were seeing how quickly they could respond to a potential drowning, and how effectively they could resuscitate a victim. If necessary, they would take the person to a safe place and summon medical assistance. That’s why they’d commandeered our cabin. While we were all at dinner, the camp nurse had come to evaluate the “patient.” “We had to keep you in the dark to make it as real as possible,” Nick said with a smile. “Sorry about that. But everything’s really OK.”

It was Chad who spoke first. “Yeah, but where’s the Spazz? Was that him you were carrying? The drowned guy?”

Nick nodded. “Yes, Stavvy played that role.”

“So where is he? Where’s all his stuff?” Chad asked. “How come his bunk’s cleared out?” I hadn’t noticed, but now I saw that Stavvy’s bedding, books and trunk were gone.

“Oh,” said Nick. “He’s over at the nurse’s station. He’ll probably be there a while. We may not see him again before the end of camp.”

It wasn’t a very convincing explanation. We knew Nick wasn’t being entirely truthful with us, but nobody wanted to press him on it. Over the next week, we avoided Stavvy’s bunk like it was taboo. No one wanted to be reminded of him or of what had happened that afternoon. It was too unsettling. By the end of camp, though, nearly everyone had forgotten all about the “drowning” practice and its apparent victim. And, just as Nick had predicted, we did not see Stavros Drabardi again. Camp ended without his ever reappearing.

CAMP CROCKETT wound up the 1962 season with a gala banquet in the dining hall and an all-camp campfire followed by a candlelight procession as campers dispersed to their respective villages. The following morning, we packed up, said our goodbyes while exchanging addresses, and then headed over to the ball field to await our parents’ arrival. It was a bittersweet morning, with many of us sad to see camp end. I had thoroughly enjoyed my first season as a Crockettite, and as I piled dirty clothes and other belongings into my trunk and joked with my cabinmates one last time, I suddenly noticed something. A Mad from my pile of magazines was missing. It was the one I’d lent to Stavvy, and I suddenly remembered seeing it on his bunk the day before he disappeared. When he packed up and went to the nurse’s station, why didn’t he return it? Knowing Stavvy, I was sure he wouldn’t have taken it for his own. But if somebody else had gathered up all his stuff, they wouldn’t have known it was my magazine. Why would somebody else gather up Stavvy’s stuff?

“Hey, Nick. Have you seen a Mad, the one with the Alfred E. Newman target on the cover?” Our counselor was helping one of the boys heft his trunk out the cabin door.

“Target? On a Mad?” he replied over his shoulder. “Yeah, I think that was Stavvy’s. He must have taken it when he packed his things.”

When he packed his things. But I was pretty sure he hadn’t packed his things. Someone had done it for him. Nick, maybe? Probably because Stavvy couldn’t do it for himself. And why couldn’t he? That was something I didn’t want to think about. “Oh, OK,” I said. “I never did finish reading it. No big deal.”

No big deal … except the fate of Stavros Drabardi suddenly seemed like a very big deal.

MY PARENTS ARRIVED just before noon, and Nick helped us load my trunk and camp gear into the VW bus. We hugged goodbye, said we’d see each other next year, and then I climb in back with my siblings. Dad piloted the bus around the other cars on the field, bumped down the camp’s dirt road and out onto the connector that led to Rte. 8. As we passed Jacob’s Pillow, I regaled the family with my Crockett adventures, stories about the pranks we’d pulled, the games of Capture the Flag we’d played, the time the cooks made pies with the blueberries we’d picked, and our inability to catch a single snipe despite the hours spent clacking rocks together in the woods. We stopped at a diner in Lee for lunch, and I found myself missing the clatter and camaraderie of the dining hall at camp. But I was happy to see my brothers and sister, and happier still to have joined the men in my family as a Crockett alumnus.

After lunch, we stopped at a gas station, and then Dad announced that we would take the scenic route home via Rte. 7, driving down through Connecticut to the Merritt Parkway. As the bus hummed along through small town after small town, conversation lagged and I began to feel drowsy. By mid-afternoon when we reached the Merritt, the day had warmed considerably. I was pleasantly dosing when I thought I heard Dad say something about running out of gas. “That can’t be right,” he said. “The gauge says we’re nearly empty.”

“What is that awful smell?” my mother said, rolling down a window. My brother in the wayback looked up from a treat leftover from lunch that he was munching. “It’s not my cupcake,” he said helpfully. Just then, a car passing on the left pulled even with us and a woman in the passenger’s seat frantically waved at Dad.

“You’re on fire!” she shouted, pointing to the rear of the VW. “On fire!”

From where I was sitting, I could see inky smoke trailing from one of the vents adjacent to the motor compartment at the back of the bus. Dad quickly steered the VW off the road, bumped up over the curb onto the grassy shoulder and slowed to a stop. Cars behind us were slowing down, too, and moving over as they passed. The interior of the VW began filling with acrid gray smoke. “Get out, kids!” Mom shouted. “Quickly!”

My younger brother swung one of the bus’s side doors open and then unlatched the other, letting our youngest brother out. They both ran up the roadside hill to safety. Our baby sister had been asleep in her bassinet on the luggage shelf over the VW’s motor compartment, and I reached back and hefted the carrier over the seat, out the open door and onto the grass. By now, flames were shooting out of the side vents and smoke was billowing from the rear windows and open doors. Traffic was crawling by, using only the left lane, drivers and passengers gaping at the fiery spectacle as they passed. One car stopped and its driver got out with a fire extinguisher, but Dad waved him off – the Volkswagen was clearly beyond saving. He had managed to rescue my trunk and a few other things, but whatever was left in the bus would be a total loss.

As we sat on the hillside watching, there suddenly was a huge explosion. Whatever fuel was left in the gas tank ignited and blew out the bus’s rear windows and sent its back door sailing out onto the highway where it landed in a crash of breaking glass. The vehicle was soon entirely engulfed in flames, smoke billowing up over the trees, and we all moved farther up the hill. Traffic had completely stopped, not only on our side of the parkway but also heading in the other direction. The conflagration was too dangerous to pass by and too spectacular to pass up.

In dramatic succession, each of the bus’s tires burst, lofting burning shards of rubber onto the grass and pavement. Even at a safe distance, I could feel intense heat radiating from the fire, and because the afternoon was already warm, the additional temperature made me feel queasy and wooly headed. The oily smell of the smoke, the rank odor of melting plastic and smoldering rubber, only made me feel worse. But what really disturbed me, what compounded the drama before me on the Merritt Parkway that August afternoon, was the jolt that came with the recollection of the words Stavvy Drabardi had said to me not two weeks earlier: “A great fire.” A great fire, indeed, and here it was.

BY THE TIME a pair of Connecticut state trooper cruisers arrived, the VW was little more than a charred shell sitting on rims. The grass around the wreck was burned in places, wilted brown in others. My trunk and a few other possessions sat on the hillside amid broken glass and bits of charred upholstery. My brothers and I were splayed out on the embankment, sweaty and dirt-streaked, and Mom was consoling our frightened sister while looking more than a little distraught herself. For the motorists sitting in the jam caused by the pyre, we were indeed a sorry spectacle.

While Dad explained what had happened to one of the troopers, the others began directing traffic, getting cars moving again. A fire truck soon appeared on the opposite side of the parkway and, crossing over the median, pulled up onto the shoulder behind one of the cruisers. Though the fire was mostly out, three firemen in full turnout gear began dousing hot spots with fire extinguishers. The trumpet-like hiss of their sprayers combined with the growing thrum of passing cars served to underscore the finality of the conflagration. The excitement, as far as the world was concerned, was over. Things were getting back to normal.

Mom came over and told me she was going up over the embankment to knock on the door of one of the houses adjacent to the parkway. She was hoping to use a homeowner’s phone. “I need you to hold your sister while I call Grandma,” she said. Our grandparents lived in Eaton, about thirty minutes away, and Dad wanted to borrow one of their cars for the remainder of trip home to Spring Glen. There was no answer at the first house, but we were let in at the second and the resident, after learning of our predicament, quickly handed Mom the phone. I held my sister as she made the call and explained the situation to Grandma. “Well,” she said, after hanging up. “Grandma is grateful that we’re all OK.” Then she added, “I am, too!” She smiled at me. “They’re on their way.”

Forty-five minutes later, we were loading my trunk into Grandpa’s Nash Rambler sedan. He had driven it from Eaton with Grandma following in their other car. They were lending us the sedan until Dad could purchase a new vehicle, and we boys piled into the back seat while Mom held our sister on her lap in front. Once the troopers gave Dad the OK, he started the Rambler and signaled to merge into traffic. We waved goodbye to our grandparents and, as the car picked up speed, I turned for one last look at our forlorn bus. It made me sad to leave it in such a sorry state.

ALL THE WAY HOME, I kept thinking of Stavvy’s odd warning. What did it mean? How could he have known about the VW catching fire? It was frightening to think about what might have happened had Dad not been able to pull over and we had all gotten trapped inside the flaming bus. “You could be in it,” Stavvy had said. And we almost were. It left me not knowing what to think. One moment I found myself believing he had actually foreseen the burning, and the next moment I was convinced I had made it all up. But, no – his asking about my Mad magazine was real. I didn’t make that up. And what about my Mad? Stavvy knew it was mine, but whoever packed up his stuff didn’t. And why did someone pack up his stuff – why couldn’t Stavvy do it? What had really happened to the pale camper? Maybe he wasn’t playacting the part of a drowning victim? Maybe he had actually drowned. I didn’t want to think about that.

Then there were the things he had said to Bobby and Chad. Weird things that also sounded like dire warnings. I couldn’t quite remember his exact words, but if his prediction about me had come true, maybe theirs would, too? Maybe they were in real danger. They weren’t really friends, but I didn’t want to think about them being in trouble. In fact, I didn’t want to think at all. My head hurt, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

The drive home was long but without further mishap, and we pulled into our driveway just as the sun was setting. Dad unloaded the trunk while Mom got my sister and brothers into the house and then fixed a quick supper. As I washed up, she took me aside and put a hand on my forehead. “You feel hot, honey,” she said. “You go up and get right into bed, and I’ll bring you a tray with something to eat.” I did as I was told, and though I had come down with the flu, it felt good to sleep in my own bed again.

IT HAS BEEN NEARLY half a century since that first summer at Camp Crockett. That traumatic events of the past have a tendency to fade over time is often a blessing, but as the camp director observed that first day in the dining hall, some memories last a lifetime. The burning Volkswagen bus on the Merritt Parkway is one such memory. Its story has become a staple of our family’s history, and though both my parents are now deceased, my brothers and sister and I have told and retold the tale to our children and, eventually, our grandchildren. My younger siblings know it largely through those retellings, but my older brother and I vividly recall the fire and ensuing explosion. ”It’s not my cupcake” has become a family catchphrase, and though it’s often used by succeeding generations who are only dimly aware of its provenance, everybody knows about the bus that went up in smoke that sultry summer afternoon.

There is one thing that nobody knows, though, not even my siblings. I never mentioned Stavvy’s prediction, because over the years I had come to believe that my recollection of his words had been tainted by the intense drama of the conflagration. I told myself I must have unconsciously altered whatever it was he said to fit the circumstances of our fateful trip home. It really was a great fire, and we could have been in it … so, that’s what he must have said. That didn’t resolve the question of what had actually happened to Stavvy – the question raised by my missing Mad. But there probably was a reasonable explanation for his disappearance, too, and I eventually let it go at that. But that took some time. In 1963, when I went back to Camp Crockett for a second season, I was eager for answers.

There were quite a few returning campers that year, but Chad Stark and Bobby Morrissey were not among them. I was surprised, because I fully expected to see them, and I was hoping to learn whether anything unusual had happened to them in the intervening year. The other camper I was hoping to see was Stavvy Drabardi, because I wanted to ask him about the things he’d said last summer and tell him about what had happened to me. But he wasn’t in camp either, and after the harsh treatment he’d received the previous year, I wasn’t really surprised. Of course, that did nothing to dispel my suspicion that he had drowned. He wasn’t back for another summer for the simple reason that he was dead.

But as the weeks at camp passed, my curiosity faded and I soon forgot all about Stavvy and his predictions. In the ensuing years, I made many good friends and had numerous memorable experiences at Crockett, but I never saw those three boys from my first season again. Whenever the topic of the VW fire came up, I was reminded of them, but for the most part life went on with little or no thought of Chad, Bobby, Stavvy or those strange incidents at Camp Crockett that summer of 1962.

RECENTLY, THOUGH, I came upon some information that rekindled an interest in that long-ago July. While working on a story about air travel safety for the Herald, I spent several days at the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC, gathering statistics on plane crashes that had occurred in the Northeast. Among the entries on a list of small craft fatalities in the Hudson Valley was one accident that caught my eye. It was a single-engine DeHavilland Beaver seaplane that had gone down in the mountainous terrain of the Catskill Park in upstate New York in the summer of 1962. Something about it seemed oddly familiar, and after a moment I realized what it was: the pilot’s name was Morrissey, and he was from Brooklyn. Bobby, Stavvy Drabardi’s bathhouse tormentor, was from Brooklyn and his last name was Morrissey. Long-dormant memories flooded back. I made a note of the crash, and resolved to look into it.

A few days later, back in the Herald newsroom, I spooled through the August 1962 editions of the paper on microfilm and there it was − a brief story on page eight of the A Section headlined “Private Plane Crashes in the Catskill Woods.” Apparently, a seaplane registered to a Sean Morrissey of Brooklyn Heights had been lost near Slide Mountain in Ulster County. The plane was returning to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after flying to a location in the Berkshire Mountains earlier in the day, and there had been no distress call before contact was lost with the craft. Rescuers were unable to reach the wreckage before nightfall due to the dense underbrush and steep terrain, and it was not known how many persons were on board or if there were any survivors.

In the paper two days later, a second article reported that the wreckage had been found and that all aboard had been killed in the crash. According to the authorities, Morrissey and an adult companion had flown from New Jersey to a summer camp near Crockett, Massachusetts, landing the seaplane on the camp’s lake. After picking up his son, a camper at the camp, Morrissey took off, intending to return to Teterboro. Twenty minutes into the flight, the seaplane may have experienced a catastrophic mechanical failure, causing it to fall from a great height in the clear sky to the densely-wooded, mountainous countryside below. The Beaver had been torn apart as it passed through the canopy of pines, and its three passengers had been killed instantly upon impact. The dead were the adult friend, the plane’s pilot and owner, Sean Morrissey, and Morrissey’s ten-year-old son, Robert.

I was shocked. Bobby was dead.

He was probably already dead while I was watching our VW bus burn, his body lost in the underbrush of a Catskill hillside, mine sitting along a parkway on a Connecticut hillside. I couldn’t really believe it. I read the article again, and then a third time. Dead. If nothing else, that clearly explained why he never returned to Camp Crockett.

But how to explain that Stavvy Drabardi knew it would happen? And said as much? I found myself right back in the mysteries of that summer forty-five years ago.

My next thought was of Chad Stark. Was he dead, too? And then − why wasn’t I?

I stepped out of the office and took a slow walk around the block while trying to collect my thoughts. When I returned, I decided I had to find out what had happened to Chad.

I REMEMBERED THAT Chad Stark was from a rural farming community somewhere in the state of Vermont, but that was really all I knew about him. A quick Internet search produced scores of persons with that name, but none of the age that Chad would be now. A search of the Herald’s digital newspaper archive service was more productive. I found a number of articles mentioning a Chadwick Stark in the Burlington Free Press, beginning with a birth announcement in 1952 that fit perfectly. The parents of that Chad owned a large dairy farm and were noted for producing a particularly rich variety of maple syrup. Other articles mentioned him in connection with various 4-H projects and school sports teams, but one nearly made me jump out of my seat. It was from an October 1962 edition of the Free Press and was headlined “Local Boy Rescued from Well.” The story recounted how Chad Stark, age 11, had fallen through a rotted cover over an abandoned well on his family’s farm, and how a volunteer fire crew had worked through the night to extricate him. The boy had injured his spine in the fall, and it was only with great difficulty that he was hoisted out. The story concluded by saying the Stark boy was recuperating in the hospital, and was paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors, however, expressed optimism that he would make a full recovery.

There it was. Confirmation of another of Stavvy Drabardi’s ominous warnings. If the article was about the Chad Stark I knew from Camp Crockett – and I was certain it was – his accident had been foreseen by our wan cabinmate. He had nearly been killed by falling into “a deep pit,” as Stavvy put it. I was eager to talk to Mr. Stark, not only to confirm that he had been at Crockett that summer, but also to find out if he knew anything more the fate of our ghostly fellow camper.

I called the Burlington Free Press and explained to an editor that I was working on a feature story about the summer camp experience, and was interviewing campers I had known as a camper myself. One was Chadwick Stark, and his family had owned a farm in Burlington in the 1960s. He would be in his early fifties now, and would the editor be able to help me locate him? The editor said he was unaware of any local residents named Stark, but would ask a few older staff members and get back to me.

A day later he called, saying there was a Chadwick Stark who owned a Toyota dealership in nearby Shelburne, and that might be the person I was interested in. I thanked him and immediately dialed the dealership’s number. After working though the options provided an the automated receptionist, I reached Mr. Stark. It took several attempts to convince him that the purpose of my call had nothing to do with leasing a new car.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, still sounding confused. “You want to know if I went to a camp in the Berkshires? What did you say your name was?”

I repeated it. “It was Camp Crockett. Near Crockett, Massachusetts. This would have been in the summer of 1962. I was in a cabin with a camper named Chad Stark.”

“1962 you say? Well, yes, that was me. At Crockett. That was a long time ago,” There was a pause. “I hated my name, that’s why I shortened it back then. You were the blonde kid who had all those Mad magazines?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s right. That was me.” I took a breath.

“OK, so how are you? You say you’re a reporter? What can I do for you?”

I asked Mr. Stark if he remembered Stavvy Drabardi.

There was another silence, and then he replied, “Oh, sure, right. You mean Spazzy.” He laughed. “The weirdo!” Another laugh.

Did Mr. Stark remember what Stavvy had said to him that night he woke him up? A warning about a “deep pit”?

Mr. Stark did not. But he did remember teasing him. “I admit I was a little rough on the kid,” he said. “But it was all in fun. Boys will be boys – like that, you know? Harmless. But why are you calling me after all these years?”

I recounted the “pit” prediction, and then explained how I’d found an old article about Chad falling into a well. I said that Stavvy had made other dire predictions, including one about me, and those had come true as well.

“Look, I don’t know anything about any ‘predictions.’ I did have an accident, but I don’t see how that relates to my time at Camp Crockett, or to you,” Mr. Stark said, suddenly guarded. “So, anyway, it was nice talking to you, but I have a sales meeting in ten minutes.”

I quickly apologized for calling out of the blue with odd questions about incidents long ago, but said I still had a few things I’d like to ask. Would he be willing meet with me in person?

“Well, alright, if it’s all that important. Though I’m not sure what the point would be. I don’t remember anything more than what I just told you,” he said. “But I’ll put you through to my secretary and she can set up a time.”

TWO WEEKS LATER, I drove to Shelburne, Vermont, and met with Chadwick Stark at his Toyota dealership. His office was a windowless cubicle, dark with simulated walnut paneling and decorated with Toyota service award plaques from various years. I recognized him right away. He was just as big, and had that vaguely aggressive demeanor that was familiar from long ago. But he was also balding and jowly, looking quite a bit older than his actual years. I saw right away why he hadn’t ever returned to Crockett when he rolled out from behind his desk in a wheelchair. The doctors had gotten it wrong − he clearly hadn’t recovered from his injuries after the fall.

“Ha! I do remember you,” he said extending a hand. “You’re looking very good. Time’s obviously been kind! Have a seat.” He had the forced affability of a salesman closing a deal. I sat.

Over the next half hour, I told Mr. Stark about Stavvy’s prescient warnings, about the one he’d issue to me followed ten days later by the burning of my family’s Volkswagen, and about the one predicting Bobby Morrissey’s death in a plane crash on that same day.

“Bobby Morrissey? From Brooklyn? I think I remember him,” Chad said. “Didn’t his rich dad pick him up in a float plane that landed on the lake? Yeah, I remember seeing that − on the last day of camp.” He thought for a moment. “You say he died in a crash – that his dad’s plane crashed? And this weird kid Stavvy predicted it?”

“Yes. I heard Stavvy tell him he’d fall from a great height. And you told me he woke you one night and said you fall into a deep pit. I’d already read about Bobby’s accident, and when I found your story in the Free Press, I decided I had to find you. To ask you about it.”

“Well, I don’t remember anything about him waking me up in the middle of the night. But my tumble into the well on our farm – that I obviously remember.” He rattled his chair to make his point. “You say he predicted what happened to all three of us? If that’s true, it’s too strange. Almost like he cursed us.”

I hadn’t thought of that. It was like we’d been cursed.

“But didn’t something happen to him, too? I seem to remember he disappeared at some point.”

“I think he may have drowned,” I said, giving voice to the suspicion I’d first entertained that summer at Crockett.

“Drowned?” Chad frowned. “Wait – wasn’t there some kind of safety drill? Was he involved in that? I remember we couldn’t go into the cabin because of it. I was pissed.”

I explained about the waterfront drowning simulation and how Stavvy had played the part of the victim. “At least that’s what Nick, our counselor, told us. But we never saw him again after that. That’s why I think he may have actually drowned.”

“But wouldn’t that have involved the police? I mean, wouldn’t we have known about it?” Chad said. “A kid drowns at camp – they couldn’t cover that up. Could they?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t,” I replied. “All I know is it bothered me forty-five years ago, and it’s bothering me now. Death and near death, all connected to our peculiar cabinmate. How to explain it?”

“Yeah, surreal. The Crockett curse, like out of a movie,” Chad said, with a laugh. He shrugged. “But water under the bridge at this point. I mean, nothing we can do about it now.” He looked at his watch. “Nothing more to say, really.”

I took the hint. “Well, yes, of course, you’re right. I appreciate your making time for me. It’s a mystery that’s pestered me on and off since our days at Crockett, but I guess there is no explaining it.”

We shook hands, and Chad, the salesman again, said that if I was ever in need of a new car or truck, I should call him − he would give me an unbeatable deal. We laughed, and I thanked him, saying I definitely would. As I turned to leave, Mr. Stark said one other thing.

“Before you go, I suppose there’s one other thing you should know. I haven’t really been entirely honest with you.” His smile took a malevolent cast, a look I well remembered from our camp days. “You see, it was me who pushed Spazzy off the dock that afternoon.”

ON THE DRIVE HOME, I kept going over what Chadwick Stark had told me. And wondering what else he hadn’t said. Obviously, the drowning exercise was no mere simulation. Stavvy had gone under, and efforts had been made to revive him. Were they successful?

I found myself convinced they were not.

Chad said he didn’t know what happened after Stavvy went into the water. He and a few other boys were jumping off the dock and, seeing his timid cabinmate sitting there, Chad gave him a shove and then jumped in himself. The next thing he knew, the lifeguards were blowing their whistles and getting everybody out of the water. He had no idea why, and only later learned it was because of Stavvy. “Hey, was it my fault the kid couldn’t swim?” Mr. Stark had said.

In my years at Crockett, I had become familiar with the camp’s history, and I knew that 1962 was crucial year in its revitalization. A new camp director had been hired to turn things around, and he was largely successful. In succeeding years, Crockett’s financial status improved, and the camp was able to greatly expand its programs. But that might not have been possible if a boy had drowned during that pivotal summer. The death of a camper could have irreparably damaged the camp’s reputation at a time when the YMCA was working to revive it. That Stavvy’s death was never acknowledged could mean only one thing.

Camp Crockett covered it up.

No ambulance was called, no police investigation was conducted, there was no autopsy, no coroner’s report, no news articles. Nothing. Just a panicked response, a hastily concocted cover story and a quick removal of the body. The ghostly boy had become an actual ghost, and the camp’s reputation was saved.

Even so, I could scarcely believe it. Crockett had been an important part of my adolescence, a place where I grew and matured, learned about life and learned about myself. It was special, not only for me but for thousands of other boys over the decades. It didn’t seem possible that an institution that stressed personal integrity and moral rigor could violate the law and its patrons’ trust in such a flagrant way. But no other explanation fit the facts, as far as I could see. Stavvy’s drowning had been covered up.

Other parts of the mystery remained. How many members of the camp staff were involved? How had they disposed of the body? And why were Stavvy’s parents never heard from? Certainly they wouldn’t have cooperated with any cover-up. I couldn’t answer those questions. Nor could I explain Stavvy’s predictions. Both Chad and Bobby had been abusive toward him, and his words to them did sound very much like curses. They had suffered the consequences. Though I’d never paid much attention to Stavvy, I’d also never teased him, and he was kinder to me, issuing only a warning. My family and I had escaped harm. In the end, though, Stavvy himself did not.

And it seems that’s where the story ends, for there is no hope of ever answering any of those questions. I’m no believer in conspiracies, the occult, fate, karma − any of that. As a reporter, I’m all about the facts. But sometimes, as the philosopher says, that which we cannot explain we must pass over in silence. So I’ll leave metaphysics to the metaphysicians, and simply say this is what happened to me, and to people I knew at a time long gone. And leave it at that.

SO CONCLUDES Jack Franklin’s memoir of his childhood encounter with unsettling prognostications and the defacto outcomes they foresaw. The mystery of their accuracy was compounded not only by the strangeness of the boy who delivered them, but also by that boy’s own apparent demise. Franklin captures perfectly the emotional bind those who experience extrasensory events find themselves in when he says, “One moment I found myself believing he had actually foreseen the burning, and the next moment I was convinced I had made it all up.” Reality becomes fungible if confronted with the paranormal, a circumstance that often renders the real unreal and the unreal real. What to believe? We’re left with a choice. We either accept at face value the divinings of the fortune teller, or wait to see if they come to pass, and if they do, seek some explanation. Either way, we settle the question of what is the case.

Franklin does something similar when he concludes that Stavros Drabardi must have drowned and, because that is the case, Camp Crockett had to have covered it up. While he clearly knows that that reality is, for reasons he enumerates, difficult to accept, he does make a personal choice, and decides to “leave it at that.”

We, fortunately, don’t have to leave it at that, at least as far as the fate of Stavros Drabardi is concerned. Despite circumstantial evidence to the contrary, Stavvy did not drown all those years ago. Mr. Drabardi is still very much alive.

How do I know? Because he is a relative – my mother’s cousin, in fact.

The explanation of his disappearance from Camp Crockett would doubtless have brought some relief to Mr. Franklin. Cousin Stavvy did not enjoy his time at camp, and when he nearly did drown after being pushed off the dock that afternoon, it was decided that he should be sent home. His parents picked him up that evening, very much alive.

The warnings attributed to Stavvy are, however, another matter. My mother’s family are of Roma ancestry – an ethnicity too often labeled with the pejorative “gypsies.” Divination and fortune-telling have long been associated with Romani culture, and my great aunt, Stavvy’s mother, was known in the family as a woman gifted with uncanny insight. She was often consulted by other Romani who valued her predictions, and young Stavvy was certainly aware of his mother’s talents.

“I shared some of them myself,” he told me when we spoke recently.

I asked Cousin Stavvy if he remembered making the predictions Jack Franklin recounted in his memoir. He said he recalled the two bullies, but did not remember making pronouncements about their fate.

“But I may have sensed something in the moment,” he said. “I did not like them, and they were unkind to me. I usually didn’t respond, but if they pushed me I may have cursed them – put an arman on them, as the old people say. But did that cause their accidents? I’m sure at the time I wished I had that kind of power!”

“But what about Jack Franklin? He says you also gave him a prediction – or a warning, really. Do you remember him?”

“Jack? Yes, though I didn’t know him very well – I didn’t really know anyone well when I was there. But I had seen his family arrive that first day while I was in the car with my family, trying to convince my father to take me home. I remember I was curious about the Franklins’ vehicle – I’d never seen a Volkswagen bus before. So that may have been why I asked him about it.”

“And the fire?”

“No idea. A durikerav, if it actually happened.” The word was Romani for “predicting the future.”