I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead by Zak Bagans, Kelly Crigger Page B
Authors: Zak Bagans, Kelly Crigger
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unfortunately he’s good at convincing the rest of us to follow his lead. Aaron will spend no more than five minutes in his hotel room before he texts everyone to go out and look around. We call him The Walker. He’ll walk for miles just to see the sights, and he never takes a cab.
Sure enough, he did exactly that in Bucharest. I should have seen it coming. After being on a plane for so long, there was no way he’d sit idle in his room, and I was too curious to fight him. After all, when would I ever be in Romania again?
So we went walking around Bucharest and quickly met up with our fixers. Fixers are production managers on location. Their job is to help us out-of-towners with everything—logistics, security, navigation, communicating in the local language, you name it. We put our lives in the fixers’ hands. They could take us out into a field and kill us for all we know, but we trust them. So far we haven’t found a reason not to. I’ve had hundreds of fixers over the years, and in Bucharest we had two: Andre and Crazy Name. Andre was awesome. He was a cool-ass dude, and I really enjoyed his company.
Andre and Crazy Name took us out, and I began to notice how many stray dogs there were. Later I learned that Romania has the highest population of stray dogs in the world. They’re like birds in America. There were hundreds of dogs everywhere we went, and as a dog lover and activist against animal cruelty, I couldn’t help but notice them. I fed them whenever I could, like sausages from gas stations. This was always risky because the second I broke out food, the packs would come running, and I never seemed to have enough to go around.
The next day we drove to Sighisoara to film our show where Dracula was born. Billy Tolley, Andre, and I rode together. Every mile or so along these Romanian roads, we noticed a bunch of women. I’d never seen so many women just walking along the road, so I asked Andre what was up. He told me that they were gypsies. To us Americans, the word
gypsy
conjures up all kinds of magical images, and I was intrigued to see some in person. Maybe they have some sort of genetic connection to the spirit world and could help me understand it better?
Unfortunately, in Romania, gypsies are a minority that’s treated very badly. They’re considered dirty, untrustworthy creatures and subhumans, which saddened me, especially when I found out why there were so many of them on the open roads. Andre told me that many of the women we saw were prostitutes selling their “goods” to passing drivers, but they also had a way of making a legitimate living. Every few miles there were tables manned by gypsy women where they sold homemade honey, sap, and CHEESE! I love cheese, so we stopped at one of these tables, and I bought five big hunks of cheese and a little bit of honey.
But I didn’t really think it through. It was hot during the day, with temperatures reaching into the upper 80s, and I had no way of cutting into these cheese bricks while we were filming. So five giant blocks of cheese sat in Andre’s car, getting hotter and hotter. One of the bricks that I left under my seat basically cooked and saturated Andre’s car with its funk. It was like stinky, sweaty feet that had been wearing boots for a month and then marinated in rotten egg salad. I felt awful that I had jacked up Andre’s car so badly. By the end of the trip, it was rank. To this day, if Billy or I ever smell that type of cheese again, we’ll puke all over the place, like the kids in
Stand by Me
did.
We filmed for a day in Sighisoara and had a great shoot. Afterward Billy and I got in Andre’s stinky cheese car to drive to a town called Cluj-Napoca—in a different part of the country away from everyone else—but I quickly developed a problem. My asthma was acting up, and I didn’t have a rescue inhaler with me. It wasn’t bad enough that I was in danger of dying from a completely closed airway, but it was uncomfortable to say
Sure enough, he did exactly that in Bucharest. I should have seen it coming. After being on a plane for so long, there was no way he’d sit idle in his room, and I was too curious to fight him. After all, when would I ever be in Romania again?
So we went walking around Bucharest and quickly met up with our fixers. Fixers are production managers on location. Their job is to help us out-of-towners with everything—logistics, security, navigation, communicating in the local language, you name it. We put our lives in the fixers’ hands. They could take us out into a field and kill us for all we know, but we trust them. So far we haven’t found a reason not to. I’ve had hundreds of fixers over the years, and in Bucharest we had two: Andre and Crazy Name. Andre was awesome. He was a cool-ass dude, and I really enjoyed his company.
Andre and Crazy Name took us out, and I began to notice how many stray dogs there were. Later I learned that Romania has the highest population of stray dogs in the world. They’re like birds in America. There were hundreds of dogs everywhere we went, and as a dog lover and activist against animal cruelty, I couldn’t help but notice them. I fed them whenever I could, like sausages from gas stations. This was always risky because the second I broke out food, the packs would come running, and I never seemed to have enough to go around.
The next day we drove to Sighisoara to film our show where Dracula was born. Billy Tolley, Andre, and I rode together. Every mile or so along these Romanian roads, we noticed a bunch of women. I’d never seen so many women just walking along the road, so I asked Andre what was up. He told me that they were gypsies. To us Americans, the word
gypsy
conjures up all kinds of magical images, and I was intrigued to see some in person. Maybe they have some sort of genetic connection to the spirit world and could help me understand it better?
Unfortunately, in Romania, gypsies are a minority that’s treated very badly. They’re considered dirty, untrustworthy creatures and subhumans, which saddened me, especially when I found out why there were so many of them on the open roads. Andre told me that many of the women we saw were prostitutes selling their “goods” to passing drivers, but they also had a way of making a legitimate living. Every few miles there were tables manned by gypsy women where they sold homemade honey, sap, and CHEESE! I love cheese, so we stopped at one of these tables, and I bought five big hunks of cheese and a little bit of honey.
But I didn’t really think it through. It was hot during the day, with temperatures reaching into the upper 80s, and I had no way of cutting into these cheese bricks while we were filming. So five giant blocks of cheese sat in Andre’s car, getting hotter and hotter. One of the bricks that I left under my seat basically cooked and saturated Andre’s car with its funk. It was like stinky, sweaty feet that had been wearing boots for a month and then marinated in rotten egg salad. I felt awful that I had jacked up Andre’s car so badly. By the end of the trip, it was rank. To this day, if Billy or I ever smell that type of cheese again, we’ll puke all over the place, like the kids in
Stand by Me
did.
We filmed for a day in Sighisoara and had a great shoot. Afterward Billy and I got in Andre’s stinky cheese car to drive to a town called Cluj-Napoca—in a different part of the country away from everyone else—but I quickly developed a problem. My asthma was acting up, and I didn’t have a rescue inhaler with me. It wasn’t bad enough that I was in danger of dying from a completely closed airway, but it was uncomfortable to say
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