The Scratching Post: Fairway Thirteen — A Ghost Story Inspired by Pittsburgh's North Park

I've been having a lot of fun lately experimenting with animated storytelling.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally finished my animated Myron Cope tribute, Quoth the Raven, "Yoi!" That was a blast to produce, and naturally, no sooner had I finished it than I found myself fixated on another project. This one is called Fairway Thirteen.

It's a ghost story about a golfer, a Native American, and a rather unusual encounter in the woods at North Park Golf Course.

Unlike my little Raven production, this one is a longer-form audio story. The narration is pretty much in place. The trick is figuring out how to bring the visuals along for the ride without turning the whole thing into a Hollywood production.

I'm getting there.

But something especially enjoyable happened this past weekend.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous. The kind of crisp, golden autumn evening I had imagined when I first wrote Fairway Thirteen more than twenty years ago. Actually, it might be closer to thirty.

So I grabbed my Canon camera, my tripod, and my selfie stick and headed to North Park Golf Course around six in the evening.

Now, I should explain that I'm something of a stooge with a camera. I know just enough about photography to realize how much I don't know. But I'm learning.

The sun was beautiful, filtering through the fall foliage surrounding the course.

I spotted a greenskeeper wrapping up his work and asked whether he'd mind if I wandered around taking pictures. I explained that I was an amateur photographer practicing my craft.

He didn't mind at all.

So off I went, walking the back nine, taking photographs and shooting little bits of video until I reached the very fairway that inspired my story.

And that's when I made a rather embarrassing discovery.

Fairway Thirteen is actually Fairway Fourteen. Oops. The real thirteenth hole at North Park is a par three. Both holes have woods to the left, and I've donated more than a few golf balls to those woods over the years.

But Fourteen is the one I remembered. It's a sharp dogleg with a steep ravine leading into the trees on the left.

The perfect place to lose a golf ball.

And, if your imagination works anything like mine, the perfect place to go wandering into the brush looking for that ball and stumble into a time-traveling ghost story.

That's how my mind works, anyway.

What made the evening special wasn't just getting some beautiful photographs. It was reconnecting with a place that inspired one of my earliest attempts at fiction.

Fairway Thirteen was my first real short story. Before that, I don't think I'd written anything much longer than a page.

And here I was, decades later, walking the same fairway, camera in hand, trying to bring that old story to life in an entirely new way.

I still think it's a solid little tale. I've revised it for a new narrated edition, and I've even tucked in a little lore from The Midas Files that longtime readers might enjoy.

Maybe someday I'll turn the whole thing into a fully animated story. For now, I'm having fun discovering what's possible.

And sometimes that's enough.

Anyway, I think I hear the dogs barking out on Fairway Thirteen.

Or Fourteen.

Whatever.

I'd better go.

Look for Fairway Thirteen on my YouTube channel later this week.