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husband gaping at his wife in stunned horror. "But, Maybelle, you told me you'd been living in a convent up until we met!" he cried at last.
    I sputtered hard into my hand, clutching my mouth to stifle my laughter, desperate not to reveal that I was there eavesdropping.
    Then Maybelle, the wife, broke down and admitted the truth when the spirit -- speaking through Mother -- began to recall details of their carnival life together. I jumped away from the door as Maybelle abruptly hurried her living husband out before her chatty spirit ex could reveal too much more.
    "How did you know all that?" I asked Mother after they had left.
    Mother simply stared at me, perplexed by the question. "I didn't know it. The spirit of her late husband told me."
    Despite my confusion about the validity of its main industry, in those days Spirit Vale was a child's dream. For one thing, folks swarmed to the town -- often as a stop on their trips to see Niagara Falls, only an hour away -- seeking consultations with their loved ones who had passed on and advice from spirit guides.
    One time, when I was ten, I sat on the porch beside Mother as she rocked in a rocker. "Can you contact our father?" I asked.
    She shook her head. "No. I've tried. I believe it means he's moved on. It's what a spirit should do. Only restless spirits with unfinished business stay behind."
    "Didn't he want to stay with us?" I wanted to know. This was more a matter of curiosity than heartfelt longing on my part.
    Mother looked down at me and smiled a little sadly.
    "Your father could move to the Beyond because he knew we'd be fine. You're fine, aren't you, Jane?"
    "I suppose so," I replied after a moment's thought.
    "You don't sound certain," she noted.
    I shrugged. "It might be nice to live in a place where the dead stay dead and don't speak."
    "Don't call them dead," she corrected me.
    "Sorry. I meant those who have passed over."
    "Better."
    "I'd like to go to school, I think," I mentioned.
    "You'd be bored in school. I've taught the five of you to read, write, and do figures better than you'd have learned in school." But it wasn't the learning that appealed to me. It was the sheer ordinariness of the situation. I was slowly developing a burning desire to be normal.
    "Don't you want to get married again?" I inquired slyly, with a sidelong glance to gauge Mother's reaction to this question.
    "No, Jane, I don't," she said. "I'm happy with no husband to give me orders. It's bad enough that as a woman I can't vote. At least not being married gives me some autonomy. I am my own woman, at last."
    ***
    From June to late August every year, the town boomed with visitors and there were not enough rooms  to accommodate them. Even the huge Spirit Hotel was filled to capacity. Residents of Spirit Vale pitched tents for their children in order to rent their rooms out to the tourists.
    Imagine, if you can, children running freely through the summer woods in night shirts, catching fireflies in jars, not chaperoned by any adult at all, while the streets were illuminated in a carnival atmosphere of people walking from home to home, shop to shop, sampling the various mystical services offered.
    Tarot and palm readings were given on the porches. In some shops, spirit photos could be purchased whereby a person had his or her picture taken with a "special" camera. More times than not -- in fact, almost always -- a hazy, white blur of a spirit figure would be captured by the lens as it hovered around the photographic subject.
    Princess Running Deer's husband, Wild Elk, owned one of these studios. Mimi and I ran errands for him one summer, which gave us access to the darkroom where he processed his photos. One day Mimi found his collection of spirit negatives, pictures of other people that could be superimposed on a photo to make it appear that spirits hovered in the air around the person being photographed. Some kind of wiping technique had been used to blur the distinctive features of the people