Whenever cool mornings hint at autumn’s arrival, I fondly think of Jackson Avenue. The East Side street’s two leafy blocks between South Green River Road and Burdette Avenue were framed with handsome timbered and brick houses — tall as mansions, I thought as a kid — and were the setting for uncountable idyllic childhood moments. Though some properties remained off-limits because of high school bullies, barking dogs, and child-hating adults, not a single house was haunted. And that is a shame.
Beginning in August 1976, after moving back to Evansville from Florida, my family bunked for six months at my grandparents’ house on that small stretch of Jackson Avenue (so named was the portion east of U.S. 41; the part running west is called “Street”); it remained my after-school anchor neighborhood between third and eighth grades because my beloved Holy Rosary Elementary School was a five-minute walk away. Those were critical developmental years and, as it happens, I developed one fantastic imagination during that time.
This was long before R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” book series made classic horror tropes family-friendly, and there remained ample reason for believing in the weird and spooky, especially after 1979’s “The Amityville Horror” and 1982’s “Poltergeist” films proved that haunted houses were real. Serendipitously, Park Lawn Cemetery and Mausoleum loomed just across Green River Road, and (back then) wild, grassy fields started one street over — home to no telling how many goblins and zombies.
With nervous eagerness each Halloween, I went trick-or-treating prepared for the bewitching of my life. I strolled the sidewalks in search of houses with supernatural phenomena, not carnival attractions, attached to them. I looked for ghosts drifting across windows. I listened for rattling chains and creaking doors. I sniffed the night air for the putrid scents of improper burials floating from backyards. In turn, I gained nothing but Snickers bars and spare dimes.
Make no doubt, last century’s kids stayed outside the house unsupervised long after dark every night of the week, not just on Halloween. Trick-or-treating took place under dark and dramatic skies, like in horror movies, and came with real risks: Bullies snatched candy right out of the sack; dogs reared back like animals with all that noisy commotion; and some adults behaved worse — actually hiding inside, making their houses appear to be empty. Those stops were doubly disappointing: no candy, no ghosts.
Each year passed without mysterious lights or dancing skeletons. No glowing apparitions or headless horsemen. With nothing to be frightened of on Jackson Avenue, I bitterly devoured my candy haul, growing a little less fretful of the night with each delicious bite.
“We just felt like people were looking out for us,” says Kelly Warren Endsley, my friend since third grade who lived many years longer than I did on Jackson Avenue. She also begrudgingly laments that our two-block hamlet was such a warm neighborhood setting, practically carefree. “Maybe we weren’t consciously doing it, but we felt safe. It’s such a gift that we had that.”
To lack something as foundational as a neighborhood haunted house has left me rueful, too. In fact, I adventured through childhood — romping, exploring, and occasionally trespassing through Evansville’s neighborhoods — and never came upon a certified haunted house anywhere. Could I have missed something?
It wasn’t all that long ago that I found myself walking again on Jackson Avenue, hoping for some spirits from the past to rise. What I would have given to hear some bedeviled moaning or catch a glimpse of a sinister clown glaring past the shutters of an abandoned house. Oh! to feel goosebumps rise on my skin!
But I actually felt totally out of scale, like I was towering over those houses. They were not quite the mansions I considered them to be in childhood, though they’ve remained handsome. Those two blocks are no less charming than before, which explains why most of my memories from growing up there are dappled in sunshine and clad with clear, starry nights.
Kelly told me she also returned to the old neighborhood recently and felt like she was walking in a miniature village, “like in a snow globe.”
Which is perfectly understandable to me because whenever the sky takes on the snowy hue of winter’s arrival, I think fondly of Jackson Avenue.
Although a Texas resident now, writer Anthony Head possibly lived his best life while growing up on Evansville’s East Side. His essays for his hometown city magazine have covered topics including the Great Metric Flop of ‘75 and reminiscing about one’s first concert.
