THE DILTSVILLE POLTERGEIST

     Diltsville is an all but forgotten village east of Iowa City. In a few years, it will probably be absorbed by Iowa City's sprawling suburban juggernaut. I live alone in an old one-story building that was once a schoolhouse. It's a lovely old place and it has plenty of room for my garden. I am also a vegetarian.

     But the house is also very weird. Sometimes, little things, like knick-knacks or other items I have on shelves, get moved or have gone missing all together then later turn up under my pillow or some other improbable place. It never scared me, rather I thought it was just strange. It's more like someone playing a prank and it sort of adds to charm of living there.

     Another thing that happens is the scent of frying bacon suddenly wafting through the house around 2 am. As I said, I am a vegetarian; I don't keep meat in the house, much less cook bacon late at night.

     Yet, by far the neatest of these silly little stunts happened not long ago. There was nobody in the house with me and I was very much alone. I left a quart jar sitting on the kitchen counter by the sink, its mouth pointing upwards. I went off to take a shower and was gone from the room for seven to ten minutes. When I came back, the jar was upside down on the counter top, full of water, with a penny in it!

     I don't what it is doing these little tricks, I call it a "poltergeist" just the same and the things it does are much like the sort of things I did when I was a kid. Who knows. Maybe it's the irrepressable spirit of mischief left by the children who spent thousands of hours trapped behind cramped wooden desks when my house was a schoolhouse.