When my father was 28 years old, his four year old son, Barton was hit by a car and killed. Barton was the light of his life and my father, Sam Coslow, never recovered from the loss. This was 30 years before I was born. Barton was my father’s mini me, “pensive and sweet and wise.” To quote Lorenze Hart. Sam never got over the loss and spent the rest of his life consulting psychics and doing the Ouija Board trying to reach him.
Barton’s mother was not my mother. My mother was my father’s third wife, Barton’s mother was his first. But my mother did the Ouija Board with my father. She believed in Barton’s ghost—real as Banquo’s—too.
My father was under contract to Paramount as a composer-producer (he’d go on to win an Academy Award) when Barton was struck down by a teenage driver in the brand new neighborhood, carved out of Burbank, called Toluca Lake. My father received a phone call from movie star, Belle Bennett who lived across the street in this star studded enclave, telling him to come home quickly, she’d just seen Barton hit by a car. He rushed to the emergency room, a long trip from Paramount to Burbank where Barton died in his arms.
In my father’s autobiography he describes Barton’s death as the saddest shock of his life and that at this late date something impossible for him to relive or retell. The depression never went away.His three other children: my half sister, half brother, and me, lived in Barton’s shadow. This little boy, never to be older than four, loomed over us all.
When I was a child my father worked on Wall Street and his office at home was lined with photos of Barton. At five I’d just learned about the concept of death and ghosts at school and it terrified me. I ran to my father and asked him if there was such a thing as ghosts to which he replied, “Yes you had a brother who died but his ghost still lives in the house with us.“ I didn’t know of Barton’s death (or that there was something called death) or the life preceeding it. You can imagine what that news did to a five year old. I would learn later from my mother how they did their seances. She insisted you use a homemade Ouija Board and a bottle cap for a pointer. She shared in my father’s beliefs,fears,and ideas, she agreed that Barton lived in the house and I didn’t sleep for the next 25 years. Remember I was given this news at five. I became a panicky, nervous child, unable to sleep in my own bed; having to sleep with my parents for many years.
In 2010 I was newly sober and at a low point in my life. I had lost everything to my addiction. I was on the verge of losing my condo. I pitched, to my then agent, a paranoral book(paranormal stories were on the verge of infiltrating the entertainment industry) where I recreated my parents’ seances on a homemade Ouija Board with a small group of friends. The point was to prove my parents wrong.I invited a small group of friends. My friend Danny was staying with me so he was conveniently invited as was my friend, the actor, Ned Van Zandt. I made a Ouija Board on a piece of plain white paper and got a bottle cap off of a diet coke.
May 25, 2010 Seance. Present are: Danny, Ned, and Cara
We sat down,put our fingers on the bottle cap, and it spelled out very deliberately: NORBERT FACONI.
It seemed like a phonetic fake name; something our fingers had done via some muscular design that meant nothing. But Danny kept insisting we Google the name. I felt that was a waste of time but I finally gave in. When we put the name NORBERT FACONI into Google, the name SAM COSLOW came up. My father and Norbert had written a song together called, ONCE MORE MY LOVE, ONCE MORE. Norbert was also in my father’s autobiography. He was a Viennese violinist who was enamored of my father’s song COCKTAILS FOR TWO and followed my father out of a Viennese nightclub playing the song on the violin.
Danny and I let out a scream when my father’s name came up on Google under Norbert Faconi and I felt my father’s presence in the house. He’d been dead since 1982 and I felt close to him. Almost closer than I did when he was alive. Ever since I’d learned that Barton—though resolved into a dew—was living, invisibly, along side me,I held both a fear of and fascination with ghosts. As an adult I knew that it was my father’s love for Barton which created an unseen version of him, always with us, but there really was no ghost of Barton.
July 7, 2010 Seance. Present Are: Danny, Ned, Steven and Cara.
We all met up for our second Seance on our homemade Ouija Board. This time my childhood friend Steven joined us. He was a doctor and a cancer researcher. We sat around my big farm house table. We each put a finger in the bottle cap. It moved with force and speed around the board spelling out rapidly: YHWTONRETSIS and YALPHTHIWEM and EILLO. Letters that meant nothing to me.Letters that meant nothing. Someone, I don’t remember who,It was either Ned or Danny gasped and said read it backwards. It spelled out: WHY NOT HI SISTER. PLAY WITH ME. OLLIE. The pointer sped so fast, none of us could be able to write sentences that fast backwards so we didn’t suspect each other of moving the pointer.
Barton had arrived . . .
This was only the beginning.
WHOA!! just riveting....can't wait for more
Hi Cara,
Your writing is just beautiful. Thank you for sharing your life with us. I can't remember, but is a book coming soon? I can see a huge blockbuster coming. I'm so happy to be in touch with you again. Take care and keep writing. Rita💞