The Brookdale Years
Ghosts of Halloween Past | Scheerwonder Living
Mysteries Beneath the Redwoods
There was a time in my childhood when I lived in a little woodland paradise called Brookdale, tucked into the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.
It was the 1970s, and our little community of cabins sat beneath towering redwoods, connected by wooden footbridges, gravel pathways, and the gentle waters of Clear Creek.
I didn't know the word enchantment then.
I only knew that Brookdale was a wonderful place to be alive.
We children spent our days exploring the woods, climbing rocks, following little trails, and wandering down to the San Lorenzo River. We didn't have much money, but we had imagination, freedom, and an entire forest for a playground.
I had a favorite boulder beside the creek that I called my Thinking Rock. At the end of another pathway was a little stone-lined circle where I loved to stand and spin around, simply because it made me happy.
There was a charming country store with wood shingles, a single pinball machine, and a tiny post office next door. The owners lived upstairs with their baby, in a cozy little apartment with a potbelly stove.
It was the kind of place that seemed to belong in a fairy tale.
But not everything in Brookdale felt quite so magical.
Directly across Clear Creek from our cabin stood an enormous, abandoned cabin.
All the neighborhood children avoided it.
Nobody had to tell us to stay away.
We simply did.
And that wasn't the only strange experience I remember from those years.
There was the mysterious figure who looked like a lumberjack, the silent unidentified object I remember seeing above the trees, and the afternoon my girlfriend and I carved a homemade Ouija board into a wooden bridge.
Some of these memories are funny. Some are mysterious. And a few still leave me wondering what really happened.
These are my stories from the Brookdale years.
A little childhood wonder.
A little Halloween mischief.
And a few mysteries beneath the redwoods.
👻 The Cabin Across Clear Creek
An abandoned cabin stood directly across the creek from my childhood home. Nobody lived there, and none of the neighborhood children wanted to go inside.
One afternoon, my mother unknowingly sent me to knock on its door.
🪵 The Lumberjack at the End of the Road
One of my strangest childhood memories involves a mysterious figure I remember seeing near the end of our little gravel road.
🛸 The Silent Visitor
An unusual childhood experience involving an unidentified object above the redwoods, remembered decades later for one particularly unsettling detail: its silence.
🔮 The Ouija Board on the Bridge
We couldn't afford a real Ouija board, so my girlfriend and I made our own, carving letters into a wooden footbridge over Clear Creek.
Then we proceeded to scare ourselves silly.