My life had hit the first of many nadirs in 1985. To start, I had problems socially fitting in at Anne Coulter University during my first year of graduate study. I also had trouble borrowing money for school, despite the fact that I owned a bank at the time. Worst of all, my fiancée dumped me.

I couldn’t take the pressure. Throughout that year, I drank. A lot.

Of course, one of the problems with imbibing on that scale is that you never know what you’re gonna take home to bed with you. And when you wake up in the morning, there’s a good chance that you won’t recognize the person staring back at you.

So I wasn’t particularly concerned when, at the crack of dawn, I woke up and saw two green eyes gazing lovingly into mine. Still groggy, I scanned my memory banks trying to come up with a name. After I wiped away a few grains of sleepy dust, her face, framed by soft tufts of auburn hair, started looking familiar. But before I could place her, she smiled and said, “Mornin’ there, Little Feller.”

“Sandee?!” I screamed, rolling out of bed so fast I took all the covers with me as I crashed to the floor. When I got back up, I got the fright of my life.

“What’s wrong, darlin’?” she asked, as if this sort of thing happened every day. “You’ve seen me before when I wasn’t wearin’ any clothes.”

“I’m not shocked by the fact that you’re not wearing any clothes,” I replied. “I’m shocked because you’re not wearing a wrist, an elbow, kneecaps or feet! WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR BODY?”

It’s bad enough having a ghost wake you up at five o’clock in the blessed AM. But getting roused by a ghost’s disembodied head can trigger cardiac arrest in some people. And it’s not like the windshield cut off Sandee’s neck evenly, but in little jagged pieces, leaving bits of arteries, veins, and part of her windpipe hanging out from underneath.

“You’re leaking blood all over my pillowcase!” I shouted.

“Relax, Little Feller. It’s just ghost blood. It’ll go away all by itself, soon as I leave.”

“Then leave.”

Sandee looked at me with a mixture of betrayal, anger and disappointment. “What’s wrong with you?” she said. “I thought you’d be happy to see me. Besides, most guys like a little head in the mornin’.”

“Go away!”

She shook herself. “Can’t do that. Bo sent me to ask you a favor. Clubbo’s got this new gal, some slut named Laryssa. She used to make them dirty pictures. He wants you to produce her next record.”

“Does she have anything written?” I asked.

“Of course not. I told you. She’s just a slut. But Bo says she’d be perfect for a new version of ‘Yeah, Yeah, No, No, No.’”

“Hah!” I snorted. “He doesn’t need me for that. By now, that song should be able to produce itself. I can‘t think of a single Clubbo artist who hasn‘t covered it at least once.”

“I know,” said Sandee, nodding herself in agreement. “I done it three times now, twice during my life. Look, I know you promised never to work at Clubbo again. Can‘t say as I blame you with the way they treated you after I died. But the label really needs you. And I know it‘ll turn out just fine. You gotta realize that even dead, when it comes to the music business, Bo knows. He really knows.”

“So why doesn’t Bo’s ghost come up and ask me to do it?”

“Oh, he’s so scared of the livin‘,” she explained. “They give him the heebee-jeebees.”

I responded with a firm no. After pleading with me for two hours to come back to the label, she finally left. But she came back the next night, and the night after that, when I had a living, breathing (not to mention anatomically whole) woman with me. That didn’t go over so well. Sandee vowed to visit me every night until I said yes. Realizing the damage to my sex life were I to keep my promise, I finally acquiesced. The song wrecked my fledgling music career. But at least I could bring dates over.

Besides, Sandee lied to me about something. Ghost blood is one of the hardest substances to get out of linen. And you should have seen the owner of the Laundromat, whenever I took my bedding in. I’m lucky she didn’t call the cops on me.

After 1985, Sandee still visited me from time to time, although not since my move to Cincinnati. Currently she spends a lot of her free time at her new museum. Back during her childhood days, working at her grandparents’ diner, she met former stuntman Pete Pickford (no relation to Mary), best known for getting punched in the mouth by Tex Ritter during the 1937 filming of Sing, Cowboy, Sing. Despite the age difference (she was born in 1940, Pickford in 1915), he fell in love with her. After her death, he bought the gas station once owned by her grandparents, and turned it into a museum full of Sandee’s memorabilia. The museum prominently displays what’s left of the Ford Galaxy 500 that claimed her life (left).

When she’s not at the museum, Sandee’s bodiless ghost often roams up and down I-25, sometimes lingering at the bridge where she breathed her last. She’s been known to hitch a ride with unsuspecting passengers, especially when “Mornin’ Kind of Feelin’” makes an appearance on the car stereo. Sometimes, when she sees a driver dozing off at the wheel, she’ll pop on in to give them the quick wake-up jolt that they might need to stay alive. On rare occasion, she would visit me in New York. We’d usually go to Washington Square Park to look at the old Clubbo Studios building, recently converted to an upscale sex boutique.

Fortunately, New Yorkers have seen just about everything, so nothing really shocks them. A man talking to a woman’s bloody head on a park bench in broad daylight doesn’t faze them one bit. Let‘s face it, you see that kind of thing every day in Manhattan. So no one really bothered us.

I even saw her once in New Mexico, when driving to Roswell. At one point during the trip, she told me that Bo really liked my work on “Yes, Yes, No, No, No.” He said it was the best example of 1980s crap he can find anywhere. And it was important for the label to keep with the times. Since I never made a dime off my time at Clubbo, that meant a lot to me.

Nowadays, when not haunting her museum or the highways, Sandee spends the rest of her time online. She frequents her fansite, and visits friends on Facebook and Twitter.

She’s even come to The X-Spot a few times to offer anonymous comments. Over the years, we developed a code so I know when it’s her communicating with me, and not some spirit from the Ouija board. Next time you find an anonymous poster on this blog, see if you can spot her.


To learn more about Clubbo records, click here to visit their official webpage, or here to see their Wikipedia entry.