Transmitted through ghost-static and scribbled in chalk on the side of a boxcar headed west.
It started, as most proper omens do, with a frog playin’ the blues.
I was camped outside of Gizzard Gulch, Iowa, where the ground hums faintly with long-forgotten vibrations and the air tastes like old pennies. I’d just heated a can of mystery stew when I heard it — soft, melancholic, soulful. A harmonica. But no hands.
There, perched on a rusted hubcap like some kind of amphibious jazz prophet, was a frog. Tiny hat. Tiny harmonica. Playin’ “House of the Rising Sun.”
Jasper and I locked eyes. “We follow,” he grunted.
🗼 The Tower
Just north of the gulch stood an ancient, vine-wrapped water tower known only as Whistle Hill — though no map lists it. Some say it used to sing to the farmers at night. Others claim the tower collects memories from the clouds. All I know is, the closer we got, the louder the frogs played.
When we reached the base, we saw them: hundreds of frogs, each sittin’ solemn on a stone, puffin’ out blues riffs in perfect harmony. A wall of mournful noise that bent the wind and stirred something deep in my hobo soul.
👻 The Haunting
Inside the tower was darkness. And echoes. And something that smelled vaguely like a high school gym sock that’d gone to seminary.
The temperature dropped. The harmonicas fell silent.
Then: whispers. And light. Ghostly silhouettes drifted through the rusted interior, clad in overalls and railroad jackets. One stepped forward — a translucent woman with a harmonica in her chest cavity like a built-in jukebox.
“You’ve come,” she said.
“The Beans have sent you.”
That’s when I realized: this was a ghost conclave, a meeting of lost souls whose unfinished symphony had been taken by a corporate jingle decades ago. Now they haunt the tower, playin’ tunes into the void, waitin’ for someone to help them finish the melody.
🎼 The Song of Release
They called it “The Ballad of the Rusted Rail.”
I lit a trash fire in the center of the tower, pulled out my emergency kazoo, and joined them. Jasper kept rhythm by slappin’ an old tin plate. The frogs howled.
And just like that — the melody clicked. The final note vibrated the tower like a thunderclap. Ghosts cheered. A light burst from the top of the tower, spiralin’ into the sky like a flare of pure memory.
Then silence.
They were gone.
Except the frogs. They left their harmonicas at my feet and vanished into the reeds.
🐸 Takeaways from a Haunted Amphibian Concert:
- Never underestimate the musical talent of local fauna.
- Sometimes a kazoo is a key to the spirit world.
- Haunted water towers need love too.
- The dead, like the living, just want to finish their song.
🪔 Today’s Fire-Flare of Truth:
“If you ever hear a frog blowin’ the blues — don’t run. That’s the sound of the world tryin’ to heal.”
—
Next stop? Heard rumors of a circus train that vanished mid-loop and reappears only when you sleep under bridges made of brick. I’ve packed extra socks.
Stay tuned and keep your harmonicas clean.
— Hobo Harry, Listener of Spirits, Liberator of Frogs, Maestro of the Kazoo Void
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