Instead, he asked, “Do you think the town is haunted?”
“I think everywhere is haunted,” Gabriel replied. “If, by haunted, you mean connected to the spiritual world. I think the spiritual and natural worlds are intertwined, and there are some places where the barriers between them are thinner. Orion is one of those places.”
“Are there ghosts here?” Drew asked, though he thought he could guess what Gabriel would say.
He was right. “There are ghosts everywhere,” Gabriel said decisively. “If you just know where to look.”
“Interesting.”
“Do you not believe in ghosts?” Gabriel cast him a shrewd look.
“I haven’t thought about it that much.”
“I’m guessing you don’t. It won’t offend me if that’s true.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“I’ll change your mind by the end of the tour,” Gabriel said confidently.
“You sound very sure of that.”
Gabriel smiled. “I am. This is less of a tour,” he admitted, “and more of a long walk with a lot of me rambling. I hope you’re okay with that.”
“Sounds like a tour to me.”
“Just don’t expect me to stop and take your picture anywhere.”
“Damn it,” Drew joked, drawing another smile from Gabriel.Thatfelt like a win. Gabriel had a lovely smile, wide and unabashed.
“Maybe I will,” Gabriel conceded, “if you ask nicely.”
“I can be very nice.”
“I believe it.”
Again, Drew felt an internal shiver. Gabriel was very attractive and very confident. Drew couldn’t tell for sure if Gabriel was queer. He tried not to assume one way or the other, but he noticed several bracelets on Gabriel’s left wrist. One looked like prayer beads, one was a braided hemp cord, and one was a leather strip with seven glass beads in the colors of the rainbow. Itmightbe a Pride bracelet, or it might just be a pretty accessory.
“I’m ready for your rambling,” he said.
“You’re going to regret that,” Gabriel responded. “I could talk your ear off.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me.”
“If you say so.”
As they wandered through town, Gabriel started by giving Drew the history of Orion. Two hundred years ago, before the first European settlers, Orion had been the location of an Odawa village. It had a long history and was a center of trade. The village sat on a river that flowed into Lake Michigan and was a great place for fishing. Europeans—French, first, later the Dutch and English—settled in the area in the 1830s and over the next few decades built it up into a European-style settlement, pushing the Native peoples out.
“Our ancestors built without any regard for the local communities, their history, and their sacred spaces,” Gabriel said. “That’s terrible, obviously, and the commercial ghost tour uses that as the foundation for their stories. They saw that the town is haunted by the spirits of angry Natives because our town hall is built on a burial ground.”
“Is it?”
“It might be. There is no archaeological record to support or to go against it. But that story takes the very real and tragic history of the Native communities here and turns it into something commercial for White tourists to enjoy, rather than forcing us to confront the violence of the past. I think that’s wrong.”
“So, you don’t think this place is haunted by ancient Native spirits?”
Gabriel paused. “I think that people who say it is are ignoring the truth of Native experiences in exchange for a story that sells. We can learn from the history and the truth of the Odawa without projecting modern stereotypes on them. So much of what the commercial ghost tour says is just Western ‘Magical Indian’ bullshit that completely ignores the real culture.”
“You seem passionate about this.”
