February 26, 2025

My Haunted Childhood
by Mave Goren

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.


      Sooner or later, memory will catch you. I am not certain if ghosts are real or not, but what I am sure of is that memory is the ultimate phantasm, the thing inside your closet, the voice calling you from downstairs, the shadow of the newel post against the wall. My childhood was not so much a linear progression of events as much as a parade of sensations, ebbing and flowing like an itch.
    For a kid who got scared so often, my trajectory seems weird—I write horror. In its own way, it’s a form of healing. Horror movies are hard for me to stomach. I have to pace myself when reading a book. Terror is not so much a boost of adrenaline as it is therapy.
    I began thinking about this, and a series of similar events when I gave a talk at a bar in Brooklyn. I have always grown up in Brooklyn and as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to die here. This city is my bones, it is the veins underneath my skin. From every bodega to every time a subway station breaks down. Although I live on my own now, I’m still out of the regular vicinity for book events. People my age tend to congregate in Bushwick, a place I can only get to if I swing by Manhattan first.
    Today was no exception, I gave a talk at Madwoman Books, a space right off the L-train. Bushwick is an odd case because it is living proof of a different kind of haunting, gentrification. It’s sad to see all the local Puerto Rican businesses get replaced with overpriced coffeehouses and bars that look like they double as office space. It’s all so clean, so well-oiled.
    I was glad to see Madwoman Books retained the quiet edge of eccentricity that I had grown accustomed to. The smell of weathered pages from Austen to Zola lingered in the air as I stepped up to the Mic. My moderator was another girl with short hair. Before I got ready to present, she remarked how we looked like doubles. And I felt something that I hadn’t felt in a while, that sense of fear that comes at you when you realize you’re truly helpless. Even if I was a published author I became afraid that life was nothing but an illusion. It came without instructions, so why should I be expected to play the game?
    I was still nervous as guests started to pour in. Not many people will turn up on a Thursday at 6:30 PM for a C-List horror author, but I have an appreciation for those who do. The general makeup of guests ranged from their late twenties to early thirties. Queer women with bright and colorful hair, socializing amongst themselves; “horror maniacs” with widow’s peaks and scholarly beards; matronly women with an investment in the psychological and in the furthest corner a woman with long black hair. It almost seemed done up in ringlets. Her blouse was green with lace surrounding her chest. Her blush bloodred, her foundation pale as a corpse. She looked as if an oil painting crawled out and came to life.
    The moderator introduced me. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “Madwoman books is pleased to present Shauna Birchbaum. The author of half a dozen novels and short story collections, her latest anthology Elysian Fields is a collection of ghoulish yarns.”
    This was followed by applause—I couldn’t tell if they were humoring me or genuinely happy. It’s difficult to guage how hard someone is clapping.
    “Shauna,” the moderator continued, “would you like to read?”
    This came as a shock, but I had a captive audience, “sure,” I said, “I don’t often get a chance to read out loud,” I started to rifle through the book looking for a good story, “here’s one of my favorites; The Abandoned House on Verne Street.” I began to read.
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The Abandoned House on Verne Street
    The candle resting on a golden holder in the corner flickered against the chipped walls and splintered hardwood floor. It was the only room in the house with any source of light, fluttering in the freezing winter breeze. In the corner, Dana contemplated if she could light her cigarette with the flame. She reclined against the wall and cocked her head over her hand, thinking she conveyed an air of mystery.
    Across the room Lia tromped, panting, out of breath. “Is this the place?” Her voice was starting to give. Her oversized hoodie was sliding off her body.
    “I’m guessing.” Said Dana, fiddling with her cigarette.
    “What was it that you got?” Lia said, “A letter or something?”
    “A letter in the mail. Written in red ink, smeared all over the page. Said meet me in the abandoned house on Verne Street. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only abandoned house.”
    “I got that letter too,” Lia said, “but why are you here?”
    “Beats me.” Dana swooped down and sparked her cigarette with the candle flame. “Why?” She took a puff, “Are you?”
    “I’ve just been really down lately. Nothing but work, bills, family reunions, then I hang out with friends who don’t even give a shit. Figured if I got stabbed by a murderer in an abandoned building; it would be an interesting way to end my life.”
    “Want a drag?” Asked Dana, offering her cigarette.
    “Nah,” Said Lia, “I wanna die quickly, not slowly.”
     “Me? I just wanna die.”
    Thwack! A sound of a heavy object slamming against a wall came from the entrance. Alice scurried in. “Oh hey ladies!” she said, “Did you get the letter?”
    “Yes.” Lia and Dana said in unison.
    “Me too! Oh my god!” Alice walked closer. Her black blouse shone in the candlelight, like it was slicked with some sort of substance. “So… what are your names?”
    Dana bent down, lit her cigarette and took a drag. “I’m Dana, I guess.”
    “I’m Lia, who the hell are you?”
    “Oh,” said Alice, “You might say your name is Bart Simpson?”
    “Huh?” Said Lia.
    “Oh you know, one of Bart Simpson’s lesser used catchphrases was ‘I’m Bart Simpson who the hell are you.’”
    “Huh.” Said Lia.”Who’s Bart Simpson?”
    “Never mind.”
    Dana bent down and re-lit her cigarette. It erupted in another bloom of flame. She took a deep drag in and exhaled, sending a pall of smoke to Alice’s face.
    “Oh I’m sorry, so sorry, just forget it.” said Alice. “I’m Alice by the way. It’s so nice to meet you.”
    “Why are you here?” Lia raised an eyebrow, tapping her toe on the hardwood floor. “You seem chipper enough.”
    “It’s just, none of my friends wanted to hang out with me and I got this letter written in the mail and I thought it was written in blood and if it was I mean that would be so cool. I dressed goth for the occasion! So, I decided to go to the house on Verne Street because I thought it would be a cool little Halloween-y thing to do, even though Halloween was months ago, you know?”
    “Could you say the whole thing again, but slower?” Said Lia. “It wasn’t torturous enough the first time.” In the corner, Dana took another drag, escaping into the curtain of cigarette smoke.
    “Well,” said Alice, “To tell you the truth, I thought y’all would be nicer people. It’s just,” —she leaned in closer—”I don’t think anyone loves me anymore. Love is such a short thing in this world and,”—she scooted down to the candle, watching it dance in the endless darkness—”I don’t know if I can love anymore. It’s like my mind is full of flies and my stomach’s full of maggots.”
    Dana squatted down, procuring a cigarette from her flannel shirt pocket. “Want a drag?”
    “Yeah sure, why not?” Alice said, taking the cigarette and baptizing it in the candle flame. “I’m not gonna live much longer.” She brought it up to her lips, took a drag, and blew it in Dana’s face.
    “Lia?” Dana said. You sure you don’t wanna smoke?”
    “”Oh, am I being peer pressured here, or something?” Said Lia, grabbing the cigarette, “I’m down.”
    For the next hour, the abandoned house on Verne street was alive with laughter and coughing fits. Smoke escaped through the window sills and into the cold winter air.
    And then there was another knock. Three raps in succession. “Hello?” said the voice, raspy and androgynous. “Did any of you ladies get the letter?” In the moonlight, the blade of their knife glistened.
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Light applause followed. I kept staring at the woman in the green dress in the far back. Out of the entire cohort she seemed the most enthused. The expression on her face inviting me to tell more about my world. But I couldn’t shake that feeling of anxiety, that omnipresent dread that I was in fact, a hack.
    The moderator slowly turned to me and asked, “what amazing imagination. What  inspired you to write this story?”
    I never thought I’d get put on the spot so many times in rapid succession, “It was based on the houses in my neighborhood,” I said, “I’m from Victorian Flatbush, and as such grew in the shadow of massive manses. I can’t believe people can still afford it. But on some side streets houses lie abandoned, and I thought, ‘what if I get people not dissimilar from those I usually talk to and have them complain in a haunted house?”
    The interview continued on, relatively smoothly for something I was so embarrassed for, until the question of influences came up.
    “Shauna, your work is so scary, what influences you?”
    “Truth be told,” I said, “I find it hard to read or watch horror. Writing is a therapeutic process for me. I used to get scared a lot as a kid. Usually at stuff that seems trivial in hindsight, but still stuff which is difficult for me to think about today. If we’re being honest—I’m kinda scared right now.”
    “We don’t have to continue this conversation if you don’t want to,”
    “No I want to,” I said, “I’m just so sorry.”
    “It’s okay,”
    The conversation continued, and soon we opened up the floor. We talked about the writing process, finding motivation to write, standard boilerplate writing stuff. A man asked what book I wanted to be made into a movie and I said my novel Imperium; a retelling of the life of Caligula that imagines the Roman emperor as fundamentally haunted. Of course, I doubt any studio would have the budget for a movie of that caliber. Aren’t epics about the Roman Empire kind of dated?
    I started signing books. The eerie woman in the green dress was in the back of the room and getting closer. I kept small talk with the people presenting their books for me to mark. Overthinking was a way of life for me, did they not think I was worthy after signing these books? Was I not thinking highly enough of my work? And I kept getting distracted by the woman in the back. She seemed like she had something to say. Something important.
    Most of the guests had either left or were mingling amongst the aisles by the time she came to talk to me.
    “Hi,” she said, “I loved your reading.”
    “Thank you! I’m sorry I came across as so scared.”
    “You’re literally perfect,” she said, “my name’s Vivianne by the way,”
    How suitably crawled-out-of-an-antique-painting of her, I thought, but kept that to myself.
    “I’m Shauna,” I said, “But you already knew that, I’m sorry.”
    “Stop apologizing.”
    “I’m—oh, wait.” I chuckled a little, “do you have a book for me to sign?”
    “Now I guess it’s my turn to say sorry. I don’t. But I am curious. I didn’t want to raise the question because I didn’t want to embarrass you up on the stage, but you mentioned being scared a lot. Is there something specific?”
    How did she know? “There is, actually,” I said, “and if you have time—”
    “I do,”
    “If you have time, I’ll tell you about my haunted childhood.”

     Brooklyn is not just bars, clubs and bodegas, it’s a vast collection of neighborhoods, many where transplants fear to tread. I grew up in Victorian Flatbush, where brownstones and storefronts give way to detached colonial houses, with yards, backyards, porches and dogwood trees reaching up into the heavens. I think it’s common for transplants to think of it as a world of podcasters and novelists. Indeed, gentrification has encroached like kudzu on crimson houses. Even today when I visit my parents, I go to Coney Island Avenue to check out the Pakistani restaurants and Jewish delis.
     Growing up here, I always took Flatbush for granted. That this was how children celebrated Halloween—going door to door trick-or-treating, then going into the local bodega and doing the same. Native New Yorkers are in a bubble. It wasn’t until I went to college when I fully understood that people need to drive everywhere. If I had to pinpoint a proper place to start, I’ll start with the tea party I had in the guest bedroom.
     My parents didn’t bother to rennovate the wallpaper. It was yellow, the color of aging teeth, the same kind of wallpaper that would make Charlotte Perkins Gilman go mad. My parents were never keen on teaching me how to be a kid. They gave me a bear they found at a yard sale, a soft brown eyeless thing, the color of coffee with cream. It was late autumn, the trees almost fully stripped of leaves, branches outside the window like withered fingers, reaching into god knows where. I took Eyeless bear and sat him down against an empty platter. It was around the time my memories were starting to develop, where I grew cognizant of the world around me. In the dim light of the now LED sconce behind me, Eyeless Bear loomed a massive shadow on the wallpaper.
 “Sure is a fine day to have a tea party, eh Eyeless bear?”
 A beat.
 “No response,” I said, “Typical.”
 The tea party commenced in the way all 6-year-old tea parties do—with utter mayhem.
 “Bunny, we have to go.”
 I froze. My Mom is standing at my door holding my coat and a couple of bags for carrying groceries. 
 “Sorry eyeless bear,” I said, “We’ll have to complete this tea party some other time.”
 “you sure will,” Said Mom, “we gotta go to the Co-op.
     We march downstairs, Mom helps me into my coat. The late autumn sky is dark, it’s been getting darker and darker as of late. We hold hands, I in my tiny bear jacket, and Mom in her long coat that swoops down onto the ground. The trees in Ditmas Park were quiet, even at such an early time for me, there was stillness in the air. Wrought iron lamps dropped their light upon the sidewalk.
     We rounded the corner. A pitch-black car swoops by, the windows completely dark, obscuring whoever may be the rider. A macabre thought crossed my mind—what if there was no one driving? What if the only person that was driving was a skeleton, a ghoul? Or worse. I started shivering, waiting, just waiting for the light to change.
     “Bunny, what’s wrong?” Mom asks,
     “Nothing.” I said, “Are we there yet?”
     “We’ll get there when we get there.”
     “I hope we get there soon.”
     “We will.”
     Distances are much larger when you’re a kid. What could be a 15 minute walk as an adult feels like a marathon for a kid. We kept walking, the detached Victorians giving way to brick apartments, cold and mechanical things. My Dad took me to see a kid there once, and he kept harping on and on about breaking rules. I never cared for breaking rules. Even today as an adult, I write horror because it allows me to stay grounded, to make sure that no one idea can take over. You know life is cruel; life is never kind. As a kid, imagine that but magnified times a billion—you hardly even know what life is, you just started to remember where you are in the world, what your place and ideas are. And anything new that strikes your fancy is an alien. A thing to be reviled.
     The houses became Victorian again. On the other side of the street, was a squat green house with two stone lions outside. It reminded me a little of the New York Public Library, only in miniature. I laughed a little.
     “Look,” I said to Mom, “It’s like the library.”
     “You wanna go back huh?”
     “Can we?”
     “Well not tonight, Bunny. We gotta shop til we drop.”
     I stifled some laughter. My feet began to tire.
     Each house in Victorian Flatbush is different from the rest. In the dark, they lose their bright striped colors and become looming specters, places where you assume that their lives are about the same, only different in such a way that it rubs you just the wrong way. Then, I saw something in a window. Even for a scardey-cat like me, I don’t think it would scare me during the day.
     But now, my teeth chattered, I tried glancing away but I just kept staring.
    On the third-floor window of a lime-green house, was a stuffed bear, the color of cream and coffee, much like my beloved Eyeless Bear. It looked out onto the masses, a hulking figure, far too big for anyone but grown-ups to pick up. Its fur was smooth, hairy, and its face was round—as if it was trying to imitate being a human. All of the lights were out in this house except the very top, which was a perfect place for the bear to glare at me.  I sensed that there was a mirror version of me in that room—one who carried out her life in a way almost the same but…
     At last, we rounded the corner. My body was still tense as we made our way to Cortelyou Road, a more commercial street. People were shambling about like characters in a Noir movie, a man sat against a post at the train station, smoking a cigarette. The smoke wafted up, I slowed, entranced by such a thing.
 “Come on, come on.” Mom says, “We’re almost there.”
 Finally. We entered the co-op, and my energy returned. We darted through aisles and aisles of fluorescent lighting—my eyes were fixed on a box of cereal with a wise Gorilla on the front. It was airbrushed, looking like it belonged more on a van or a picture-book than a supermarket.
     “Mommy,” I said, “Can I get this?”
     “I don’t know.” She said, “Is it salubrious?” My parents liked to use big words on me so they could raise me to be their little genius. I never thought of myself as an only child. Wordplay was my sister.
     “I am positively certain it is salubrious.” I said, rocking back and forth on the tiled floor. “positively!”
     “You are one precocious tot aren’t you,” Said my Mom, “Well, just this once.”
     “Yay!”
     Soon, our shopping cart ranneth over, bulging to the brim with goodies, and a couple of foods with names like Holy Basil or Thousand Island Dressing that sent me to mystical realms, places I never quite dreamed of. Who knew that food could be so preternatural?
     After we reached the checkout, Mom gave me a couple of bags to carry. They sagged in my hand, but they were manageable—the whole lower half of my body struggled, urging itself to accomplish the task. We started walking down Cortelyou again. Those same storefronts, that felt like they were part of a city bigger than I could handle hung against the frigid november sky, now drained of any color it may have once had. The white plastic bags were digging into my side. Thumping against me like a pendulum. We had crossed the bridge where the train was, and the man was still smoking a cigarette. Did he have a proper home? All of his clothes were tattered, and a melange of bags was scattered across the sidewalk.
     “Mommy, that man was—“
     “Just keep going.”
     “Mommy, are we going back home?”
     “Yes sweetie.”
     “Are we going back the way we came?”
     “Of course.”
     “I don’t want to go back this way.”
     “Why not?”
     As a 6 year old, I felt too mature to tell my Mom that there was a bear in the window that was scary. Even at the time, it sounded dumb, just think of what the kids at school would think about it.     
     “I just don’t like it.” I said. None of those words were wrong.
     “Bunny, growing up is realizing that you have to deal with things that make us uncomfortable. I deal with uncomfortable things at work all the time.” Mom said, “Besides, we’ll be home soon.”
     “Okay,”
     We were walking down the same street where the bear was. I was sure my Mom noticed me looking away, trying to focus on the other houses, putting all of my effort into heaving the bags home at every step. Yet my eyes were drawn to it. I stared. I stared back at it.
     That night, I huddled in my bedroom, clutching Eyeless bear tight and firm, making sure that he would never leave me. I think my parents were confused why I was so quiet at dinner, not answering a thing that they would say. When you’re younger, you scare easily, things affect you in ways that you can’t quite process as an adult. The world is vast, scary. Kierkegaard once said that anxiety is the buzzing of possibilities. If that is true, being a kid is anxiety manifest. As I tried to go to sleep that night, vast shadows lurched around my room. The Dr. Seuss Books taking on an eerie orange hue in the shade of the night-light.
     I wanted to think that it was all make-believe. But when you sit in the darkness of your room, you keep thinking about the worst possible outcomes for what would happen. Just who was the kind of person who would have a bear outside the window of their house? Was their life like mine in any capacity? Or worse, maybe they were a lot like me, only different in the slightest way. I shuddered at the thought that that girl—let’s call her Laura--might come to my school, sit next to me in class and we would became close friends, finding out that we had so much in common, and then to find out that she liked to torture her pets and feed them to the bear on her third floor window.

     It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, instead that gross miasma of anxiety began to fester in my soul. When I finally fell asleep, I caught a glimpse of that bear, its black button eyes with a fresh sheen, as slick as oil, glistening in the inky darkness, beckoning me to fall to their thrall.

    Vivianne gave a chuckle and I worried she was being overly mirthful after I just bared my sorrows. The moderator gave us a look that seemed to signify she just wanted to go home already so I said,
    “Thank you for listening to me, I appreciate it.”
    Viviane smiled, “It’s no problem, I hope you don’t mind that I laughed.”
    “Not really, no,”
    “No,” she said, “it’s just, I grew up in Flatbush too.”
    “Oh,” my body was starting to break out in gooseflesh. I knew it would have been ridiculous for her to have been from the exact house with a bear in it, but there was something uncanny, something I understood that things weren’t quite right,”
    “And it’s funny you mentioned that story. I had a huge stuffed animal which I placed on my window.”
    “Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t demonize you or anything.”
    “Stop apologizing,”
    The moderator and other staff of the bookstore gave us an icy stare,
    “I should probably be heading home soon,” Vivianne continued. “It was great meeting you.”
    “Same, I think.”
    “Do you want a hug?”
    “I’d love a hug,”
     Vivianne and I embraced each other. It must have been the wind outside because her skin was cold to the touch. A thought crept in, when she departs into the night I’ll be all alone, with more questions than answers.
    “Thank you,” Vivianne opened the door, which jingled before she stole away into the darkness, “I’ll see you soon.”
    I supposed it was time for me to start packing up. I was paralyzed for a second before reaching towards my stuff.
    “Hey,” said the moderator, “everything alright?”
    “Why? Why wouldn’t it be?”
    The moderator went on, “I didn’t want to interrupt you or anything because you seemed to be deep in your element, but I saw you talking to yourself.”
    “What do you mean, I was talking to one of the people here,”
    “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
    “No, there was a woman... with a green dress here, she looked like she came from a portrait, you saw her right?”
    The moderator looked at the guest list of people who had rsvp’d for the talk. “What was her name?”
    “Vivianne.”
    “Huh, I don’t see anyone named Vivianne on this list, Ms. Birchbaum.”
    A beat.
    “Ms. Birchbaum, are you sure you’re feeling alright? You’re shaking.”

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Mave Goren is an author, radio host and musician from the hinterlands of Brooklyn. A lifelong writer of the weird and fantastical, her work has appeared in Ode to Dionysus and the queer indie award horror anthology Trans Rites. She is a prospective MFA student in St Joseph’s University in Brooklyn. You can find her on Instagram as yon_wizardmeistress