KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

The Chicken Ghost of McGrew House

M. O. Ene
Friday, August 17, 2001

The convoy of coaches arrived at the Farm after a two-hour drive from northern New Jersey's Essex County. On stepping out of the coach's air-conditioned comfort this Wednesday, August 8, 2001, I was ready to pass out. The earth north of the equator was taking a direct hit from the Sun. The day before, the heat index clocked 100 degrees -- in the shade. It was like someone was hitting me on the forehead with a huge rock of salt: oppressive, so oppressive that I wanted to follow the Vanderhoof bus back to Jersey.

After checking into our rooms in varied houses, males separated from females, we assembled in Penny Hall for group orientation. God bless whoever designed air-conditioning gadgets! The fans in the Hall were blowing at top speed and air coolers were working overtime. A Farm staff gave us a brief history of Fellowship Farm in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. I have heard it before, but this time it sounded fresher, probably because this particular lady was younger and more soft-spoken. One could feel a certain passing of the torch and, I guess, that was how the setup survived for 70 years. The thought of it made me listen more carefully and get a fresher perspective.

The Farm, which is off Sanatoga Road in a bucolic Pennsylvania suburb, was founded to provide a place for people of all cultures to meet and to bridge the chasm of religious and racial differences. More than that, Fellowship Farm propounds the needs to go deeper into who we are and understand what it means to be what we are. If we do not know who we are, how could we expect others to understand us? In essence, loving one's culture should not mean hating other people's. By talking to one another from the deep recesses of our hearts, not from the periphery of our polarization, the unity-in-diversity we seek would not elude us. It is really never going to be one world, after all; a uniform world would also be painfully boring.

We were told about the varied buildings, and who were on the grounds. McGrew House, she revealed, used to be a chicken coop! This struck me. The rooms are so tiny that I now understand why it wasn't raised high enough for normal humans: the designer was a chicken farmer. Other animals roam on the Farm: several goats, a donkey, a pair of turkeys, a flock of geese, squirrels, and other wild creatures. Bugs abound this summer, and all sorts of birds chirruped in the woods. But, I could not get past the chicken coop.

It was a great retreat: delicious food, informative seminars, and interactive activities concluded the first day's sessions. We were all exhausted by 10:00 PM. At bedtime, the rooms were huge ovens waiting to bake people. I soon found out why: it was not that the wood had absorbed the punishing heat of the day -- somehow we forgot to open the windows. We got a fan, aired the space, showed, and stretched out on the beds. There would be no sleeping tonight. Before long, we all passed out into the welcoming arms of slumber. Or, did we?

The young women talked about ghosts. I imagined that it could not be about human ghosts, since the building was a chicken coop. But they were talking about a particular host that was so timid and shy everyone ignored it and laughed it off. I didn't get exactly how the story went. So, when I heard some scratching on the wall, I imagined it was the chicken ghost. So, I said, "Chicken ghost, go away." It stopped. Must be chicken indeed. What ghost goes away so easily? Yes, what ghost is so easily exorcised by mere mortals?

I opened my eyes and sat up. The girls were sound asleep. One bubbly, touchy-feely girl was already snoring. The skinny saint at the end of the room lay statue-like. I looked around. The scratching had stopped, but I could hear tinny feet prattling around the room. I looked at the space between the saint and the bubble; and there it was -- a headless hen!

Chicken Ghost is actually a chicken… the ghost of a chicken!

The neck stuck out like a sore finger, its tip emitting an intermittent red light that illuminated the room. It pranced about the room, following a coordinated, ritualistic route that intrigued. I was so mortified that I could not utter a word. Then the neck extended and the red light whirled through different colors and stopped at a fluorescent white channeled directly to my face. The intensity of the light burnt my face like sulfuric acid.

I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow me. Everyone got up and rushed to my corner of the room. Other girls in the building came running too. Some held me while others fought off the ghost. They gave me glasses of Pina Colada, one glass after another. I didn't care where they got the drinks from, although alcohol was not part of the menu at the Farm. Within minutes, my head was spinning. Slowly, I slid off to another plane, the inner plane between the lands of dream and hereafter… a place Chicken Ghost won't touch me and where rituals are prohibited. Who would have dreamed of chicken ghost?

I slept all night. I slept all right.

When I opened my eyes, the mantle clock in our master bedroom cuckooed 8 AM. The daily calendar, which my husband religiously flips over before he goes to bed, read "Friday, August 10, 2001." It took a while to get my bearing, but I was in a familiar environment. I lazily turned around, careful not to break something; the first law of nature, after all, is self-preservation. I saw the unmistakable torso. My husband was standing beside the bed with a tray-full of eye-catching and mouth-moistening breakfast.

"Darling Diane," he began in his ever so gentle mien of a man-mountain. "You should go easy on Pina Colada, especially when you come home from a summer retreat, tired and difficult to think of work on the next day."