The Phantoms of Bowlaire

By Brendyn Schneider

When I was a kid, my dad told a ghost story that set my nerve on fire. I still recall the blood rushing from my face which, as every child knows, was really the sound of nightmares stretching in the brain’s bullpen, prepping for bedtime. A little voice in the back of my mind always warned against listening but the tale of Elmont Bowlaire beckoned like a dark carnival.

For most teenagers in Elmont, NY, the 60s meant rock and roll, mind expansion and taking the fight to The Man’s doorstep. Not my father, though. Don’t get me wrong – he was down with the cause but you were more likely to find him staring down a 7-10 split than the riot gear of the Nassau County Police Department.

Dad bowled. He dealt in arm swings and lane conditions as a chef would with spices and colanders. I mean it – a real pro. Now, consider the ecstasy of this 14 year-old boy when given the post of Mechanic’s Assistant at Bowlaire. My father lived and breathed those alleys and now he was getting paid for it.

Like all the other regulars, he had heard the rumors about the place. But even at a young age, my dad was never taken in by after-dark superstitions. It was either a strike or a spare – the proof’s right there on paper. Moreover, when Dad was bowling, a semi could have plowed through the side of the building; he wouldn’t have noticed. The proof behind the rumors only began to peer around the corners when he stepped away from the approach.

One chilly morning before school, my dad was in the thin hallway, behind the alleys, prepping the pin setters. It was quiet – so much so that he could hear the occasional truck driving by, way out front on Hempstead Turnpike. After finishing with alley 14, he heard a scraping sound from above. He glanced up and spotted a ceiling tile move back into place. It was as if someone had been watching and just then gotten bored. Assured in his domain, my dad sprinted to the end of the hallway, grabbed a ladder and positioned it beside the pin setter. Despite this bravery, his pulse cranked with every step toward the ceiling. Unhooking the flashlight from his belt, he took a final breath and pushed the tile into the musty crawl space above. He flicked on the light and scanned the space all the way around in one long sweep. Rafters and mortar, dust in the beam of light but nothing more – no proof.

John, the front desk attendant was with my father during one of the bowling alley’s more disturbing incidents. They were watching a game on alley 13, going back and forth about girls, bowling balls, the elusive 300 Game. At one point, John dropped his end of the conversation. It was such a full stop that my father thought he had been called away and in a sense, he had been. Dad looked away from the game to find his colleague staring at the ceiling. Following his line of sight, my father focused on the vent directly above them. There was a woman’s face, just beyond the grate, locked in a frozen howl of absolute silence. Her hair was alive in the breeze rushing from the vent. My dad stepped away, pulling his friend with him. They stared dumbly at one another, unable to speak. John nodded and they both looked toward the ceiling once more. The vent was as empty as it always had been, as empty as it always should have been but neither my father nor John would ever regard it as empty as they once had.

This was where I always bailed out of the story. A screaming head in a vent was just too much. The teenager who would be my father apparently felt the same way, as there were no ladders or flashlights in this part of the tale. He had been scared too and that made it all the more frightening. Fathers weren’t supposed to be scared! He was DAD. It didn’t make any sense! I needed sense!

“How, Dad? Why would a bowling alley be haunted?”

“I thought you said you didn’t wanna hear anymore.”

“I don’t. It’s just…There’s gotta be an explanation for all of this.”

“Well, Charley had an explanation.”

“Charley? Who’s Charley?”

Some afternoons, my father noticed an old man having a cup of tea in the snack bar. Familiarity led to friendship and before long, they got to talking about the history of Bowlaire’s property.

Through the early 1900s, Charley had been a butler in one of Elmont’s great mansions. It was three stories high with white clapboard siding and a grand porch that swung around the front – a true sight to behold. Its owners, the Coverts, frequently offered the estate’s guest quarters to urbanites who were too tired to make the trip back to New York City. Word got around, especially at Belmont Racetrack, just down Hempstead Turnpike. The hospitable couple met a grisly end in bed one night when they were shot and killed by gangsters from Brooklyn. After the funeral, the mansion was boarded up. Charley sought employment elsewhere but continued residing in the servant’s quarters across the street.

Following years of vacant decay, a developer purchased the land, razed the mansion and erected a bowling alley.
For most in Elmont, the Coverts were gone. Charley thought otherwise. He swore that his former employers were still on the grounds, haunting Bowlaire, particularly alleys 13 and 14, where the master bedroom once stood. This conviction was strong enough to keep him away from the bowling alley at night.

Had Mrs. Covert been so shocked by the murder that her countenance could be seen still, locked in denial, incredulous in the face of her own death?

Yeah, I would leave the story again right about here.

“It’s just a story.”

“Yeah? Tell that to the ghosts in my closet.”

“Come on. There’s just one more part.”

“Is it scary?”

Bob considered the snowstorm from the front door of the bowling alley. He could ride it out and cut down his to-do list. Then again, if he waited, he might not be able to get his car out. Being a night janitor was a welcomed contrast to his teaching position, but there was no appeal in getting stranded in Bowlaire overnight. Not to mention the fridge in the snack bar was out of milk (he had never acquired a taste for black coffee).

As he weighed his options, a knock came at the back door. Bob walked across the house, the clicks of his heels bouncing off the walls. My dad couldn’t recall the name of the woman at the door, so let’s call her Doris. Bob recognized her from one of the house’s league nights. She was disoriented and, with only a light sweater, not dressed for inclement weather. Bob invited her in from the storm. They stepped over to the snack bar and he asked if he could get her something.

“I’d like a cup of tea,” she replied.

“Okay,” he said, “but just so you know, we have no milk.”

“There’s milk.”

“No, there isn’t,” he stepped behind the counter. “I was debating going out for some, earlier.”

Doris insisted that the snack bar did indeed have milk so, to prove the contrary, Bob opened the refrigerator. There on the shelf sat a small pitcher of milk.

He stared. “Huh. I swear that wasn’t there earlier.”

After fixing her a cup of tea, Bob walked off to get started on his shift.

A short time later, he got to thinking about the woman in the snack bar. Though he really only knew Doris as a face around the bowling alley, her behavior had seemed out of place. She had been aloof and distraught. Perhaps she had gotten into a squabble with her husband and decided to take a walk. In a snowstorm? Perhaps she lived close by. Still, it was winter.
Why hadn’t she been wearing a coat? Something wasn’t right.

Returning to the snack bar, Bob spotted the cup of tea on the counter, untouched. Doris had disappeared. He opened the back door and noticed that the storm was now just a few flakes in the air. Scanning the back parking lot, he saw no sign of her. No footprints. No tire tracks. Nothing. Bob stepped back inside and relocked the door with a shiver.
A few weeks later, he spotted Doris packing up her bowling ball after a game. He asked about the night of the storm. Where had she gone? For that matter, why had she come by in the first place? Expanding Bob’s frustration, she claimed that she hadn’t been to Bowlaire at all that night.

“But you were here,” he pointed toward the snack bar. “You sat right there and I got you a cup of tea.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because on the night of the blizzard, I was on the operating table for emergency heart surgery.”

While researching the story of Bowlaire, I began turning into that nine-year-old boy again, the one who demanded that his father chain the story to an undeniable anchor of fact. I wanted to end the story with the date of an actual murder. Nevertheless, after hours of reading articles, files, emails, websites, blogs and property cards, after countless conversations with town clerks, owners, cops, bowling alley managers, reporters and my parents, I cannot say that the Coverts or anyone else for that matter were, in fact, murdered within the walls of Covert Mansion. Only Charley’s account points toward a double homicide. As for proof, the “why” behind the occurrences is a phantom among ghosts.

Though the research did not lead me back into the Covert master bedroom, I did uncover an interesting oddity that my father hadn’t known about. We found it together, actually, in typical 21st century fashion. We were on the phone, each viewing the same property card, online, for a rather unexciting strip of stores housed in the building that had once been Bowlaire. We laughed when we came upon the late October completion date of the bowling alley’s construction. It was not the date I had set out to find. But for a ghost story, I couldn’t have asked for a more suitable ending.

*
Read more about Elmont Bowlaire by clicking:
Elmont Ghosts
But no one was there

***
Read more at www.brendynschneider.com

© 2007-2012, Brendyn Schneider, reprinted by Dadity.com with permission. Use or reprint not authorized without permission of the author.

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