Ghost in the Machine

CLICK HERE TO ZOOM IN ON DETAIL (2020) "Ghost in the Machine" is the 3rd piece in my Campfire Stories Series. This piece was inspired by an experience I had at 10. The house I grew up in had an unfinished basement with an attached root cellar storage space. Amidst the items in this space was a box of golf balls and an antique vertical pinball machine. It was so old that metal pinballs had to be dropped into the top, where they would hit bells on the way down. One summer afternoon two neighbor kids and I were in the basement playing with toys, being noisy and rough-housing. In the middle of our chaos we all froze and stared wide-eyed at each other. From the lower root cellar, we heard golf balls bouncing off the floor as if being dropped one by one, and then the 'ding, ding, ding' of metal pinballs falling through the pinball machine. We dropped everything and made a mad dash upstairs. My drawing features an updated and unplugged pinball machine going berserk, an older variation of myself making a run for it, and the same fight or flight response...a feeling that stays the same from kid to adult.  The machines change, but the ghosts never do.