Lou’s View 10/14

By Lou Bernard

It’s October. With Halloween coming, me writing about the paranormal, and everyone looking for ghost stories, it seemed as good a time as any to announce that I’ve discovered a new kind of paranormal incident.

I’ve had a lot of reports over the past year and a half—For some reason, people come straight to me when they see something unexplainable. I’ve studied this a bit, and compiled the sightings, and realized that this seems to be a new phenomenon. I’m calling it a Covach.

The Covach is a shadow figure. I’ve had quite a few people come to me recently and report seeing humanoid shadow figures in their homes. Each one of these has a very specific, different detail that stands out. Some have pointy feet, some wear hats, some have bright red eyes. There’s always one different characteristic, but the shadow figures are always there.

Do I really believe Clinton County has been invaded by shadow figures? No, not strictly, but there may be an explanation. Let me lay out a little groundwork for you.

All of our paranormal stories reflect our fears. Before World War II, there was an upswing in alien invasion stories (Think “War of the Worlds.”) This was at a time when the thought of someone coming from another place to invade us was a very real fear. Aliens, at the time, stood in for the enemy across the ocean. The Jersey Devil is an old legend of a monster that begins with a childbirth, and that legend began in a remote area of New Jersey about three hundred years ago. This was at a time when medical care wasn’t readily available, so childbirth could be a death sentence. Naturally, we wound up with a scary story reflecting that. You may have heard of the Wendigo, a northern monster caused by cannibalism. That legend comes from a time and place where food could get scarce in the winter, and people would have to make some horrible choices. The monster in the story reflected that common fear.

Closer to home, there are many old legends of ghosts around the railroad tracks or lumber areas in the river. Both railroading and lumbering came with a certain danger—Many guys died doing those jobs. Because of that, ghost stories began to spring up around them. Our legends reflect our fears.

With a year and a half of COVID-19, is it really all that surprising that we’d get a new ghost story?

I’m referring to the shadow figures as “Covachs,” which is my combination of “COVID” and “Bodach.” (It was going to be either that or “Zoombie.”) A Bodach is a sort of shadowy Scottish goblin. I figured it was as good a way as any to explain the phenomenon.

When people are afraid of childbirth, they report the Jersey Devil. When they’re afraid of occupational death, they report railroad ghosts. And when they’re afraid of COVID, they report Covachs.

The whys and hows of the Covach are not easy to understand, like the Coronavirus in the early days. Also like COVID, it comes into your home, generally uninvited and through no fault of your own. (Again, in the early days of this mess—COVID is a lot more preventable now.) It affects everyone a bit differently, which accounts for the slightly distinctive details each Covach seems to show.

Our stories reflect our fears. With a pandemic raging throughout the nation, we’ve come up with a common fear to express it.

Sometimes, houses are haunted. Sometimes, you experience unexplainable things. And sometimes, the stories are created out of the common fears a society has. Clinton County seems to have created one of those—The Covach is our new paranormal creature.