The Devil House was not haunted. At least my friends and I did not think it was. Still, that did not keep us from being so terrified of it that we teenagers were scared to walk past it on a dark night, and even going by it during the day might bring a shiver down the spine.

I had not thought about the place for years, decades probably, until someone I had just met mentioned it at lunch the other day. The question was whether there were any East Hampton ghost stories, and Lilly Hartley, with whom I was serving as a juror for the Hamptons International Film Festival, spoke up. I had forgotten all about it, but as Lilly reminisced the Devil House came back to me.

She had grown up in a house near the Star office and, like my friends and me when we were coming of age, she spent idle nights wandering around the village. The Devil House, on a quiet street near the Nature Trail, had a powerful attraction. Hidden by a thick wall of trees and shrubs, its mock-Tudor mien was brooding.

A path led from the lawn down toward the swampy end of the property. At its end, there was an opening in the woods, and under a dome-like clearing what seemed to us the very head of the Devil roosted among the cleft branches. Illuminated perhaps by no more than a cigarette lighter, it was terrifying in the extreme, and none of us could stand there for more than a moment before sprinting for the safety of the streetlights.

Many years later, my wife and I would celebrate our wedding with a reception in the Devil House’s great hall. By then the head, a gargoyle, I think, was long gone. Those of us at the reception who had crept onto the grounds on those dark, dark nights in our misspent youth could only glance over at the brushy path and smile at one another.

Returning from an ever so brief visit to D.C., where we — Mary, I should say — baby-sat two grandchildren, and I tended largely to the basic needs of a pug who had a heavily bandaged foot (the result of a torn, bleeding toenail), we listened with fascination to NPR’s “TED Radio Hour” as scientists traced (ever so briefly) what’s been going on for the past 13.8 billion years.

I would say I prefer mind travel to the normal kind. In fact, as we were about to depart last Thursday from the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, where Mary works two days a week, I told her hard-working boss, Penny Wright, that, at 743/4 it was all I could do to summon up the will to drive to Southampton.

Still, once at our daughter and son-in-law’s house in Kensington, Md., the next day, I drew out from the hall-length bookshelf Life magazine’s “Heaven on Earth” book with its colorful photos of 100 places one must see while on the planet. I didn’t see the Super 8 in Pennsville, N.J., in there, though I’d rank that very high.

We were in a relaxed mood, and my mind was untethered, at the Super 8. It was there that Mary told the clerk that some people had been stressed out to hear earlier that day that registration for the library’s yoga class was closed.

“Whaddya mean, it’s closed?” I chimed in, taking on the role of a stressed yoga registrant for the clerk’s amusement. “How’m I gonna relax for Chris’ sake?!”

That and Mary’s invariable sunny nature whenever dealing with other human beings, especially with other hard-working people, led to an upgrade to a suite, at a bargain-basement price.

The next morning, at the Cracker Barrel nearby, we learned there were no newspapers to be had. “That’s why they’re so happy here,” I said.

She spoke over country bacon and farm-fresh Grade A eggs and homemade country biscuits of an interesting novel she was reading about Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, who, in fictional form, was among the characters in “The Sun Also Rises.”

“I didn’t like that one at all,” I said. “They were all drunks and didn’t give a shit about anything.”

“Well, what were you like when you were 20?” said Mary.

“I was a drunk and didn’t give a shit about anything.”

The scientific lecturers I mentioned above — David Christian, Louise Leakey, and Spencer Wells — are of a contrary mind of course, to wit, that we should give a shit.

“ ‘Can we hold it together?’ ” Ms. Leakey asked at one point, after noting that her father had “so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species.”

I would say that species-wise our grandchildren, based on our time with them this past weekend, are wonderfully evolved.

“I’ve had fun,” Jack, the 8-year-old, said, when Mary leaned over as we were watching the World Series and asked him what he thought of life so far.

“So have I,” I said to him, “and I hope you can say the same thing when you’re 743/4.”

“Barcelona . . . I’ve always wanted to go there,” Mary said as we looked at Life’s “Heaven on Earth” book. I duly reminded myself we’d have to go there some day.

But when on Monday morning we parted, she for a dental appointment, I for work, I found myself saying, “Remember, we’ll always have the Super 8.”

Over the years on Halloween I’ve been the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz,” a princess, of course, and a giant face, a mask that covered everything except my shoes. But I’ve never been a ghost, because I’m afraid of ghosts. As luck would have it, I’m pretty sure one has moved in with my husband and me.

I always knew there was something a little different about me. Watches with dead batteries come back to life on my wrist, and I have premonitions that often come true. On the day of the Montauk Fire Department’s Big Bucks raffle a few years ago, I told my husband earlier on the day of the drawing that I was going to win. I told him we were going to win big, not the big prize of $50,000, but a big one nonetheless, and I did, I won $15,000. When the announcer called my name he prefaced it by saying “Montauk’s favorite reporter.” Of course, that’s a humble brag, and there are many who might disagree with that statement, but it sure made my winning even sweeter.

So why wouldn’t I have a ghost? Its presence is felt when things go bump in the night, doors slam, weird noises are heard from the kitchen, lights go on by themselves, and there are dark, dancing shadows in the living room at night. Most of these things probably all have reason behind them. The wind may have blown a door closed, the kitchen light never fully went off and recharged itself, and the kitchen noises could be from our refrigerator. But how do you explain how our black cat, which is brought in at bedtime, is sometimes found outside when we wake, waiting to get back in?

My ghost is playful, so not too scary. It likes to move things around and drive me crazy when I look for them. There are times when I know for sure I’ve left my sunglasses, which are like an appendage to me since I am sensitive to light, on the kitchen counter only to find them missing when I need them. I’ll search the house all over and afterward when I glance over to the counter there they’ll be, just where I left them.

Articles of clothing that I’ve folded neatly in a pile will be found strewn about the bedroom, with some of it missing and turning up days later right on top of the refolded pile. Sometimes my ghost comes in handy, and I kind of wish it had been around when I was younger, so I could’ve blamed my ghost for not doing my homework. “My ghost took it,” I’d tell the teacher.

My friends know about my ghost, so if they pay a surprise visit I can say, “Do you believe the mess my ghost made?”

When I was a little girl I had an attic bedroom and swear the Virgin Mary visited with me. I opened my eyes and there was an apparition in flowing blue robes. I took that to mean I was supposed to become a nun, but that whole celibacy thing didn’t work for me. And, of course, it could have just been my mother in a new nightgown.

My husband thought I was just being absentminded, but my ghost showed him. Like most men his age, he takes several medications. One day a few weeks ago, two bottles of meds that he had just refilled disappeared from the shelf where all his meds are stored. We checked with the pharmacy and sure enough he had picked them up and signed for them. Our wonderful pharmacist gave him a few days’ supply until we figured out what happened to them.

We searched the whole house and finally gave up, thinking somehow they were lost between the pharmacy and our house. Two days later, the two bottles of missing medications were front and center back on the shelf. They were not controlled substances, so we don’t think any kids were at play.

Do you need more proof? This is a good one. My cellphone charger, cord attached, is plugged into a socket in our bedroom, never leaves it. That is, until my ghost took it. Again, a household search and a half-hour spent trying to find out if any of the other phone chargers we owned would fit my phone. Two days later I’m in my backyard hanging linens on my clothesline (yes, I still do that, because I love sleeping with the smell of fresh air on my sheets and pillowcases), and there on the ground was my phone cord. Got goose bumps yet?

It’s odd that I can write about this because I’m such a scaredy-cat and writing about it makes it valid, somehow. I’ve written before about how when I was a child I slept with a big stick near my bed to protect myself — from what, I had no idea. But an online survey I recently took made it all clear. I learned that I was a man who was sacrificed to the gods in biblical times, which explains a lot. Deep in the recesses of my mind I guess I’m always waiting for an angry mob to come to my doorway out here in Montauk to offer me to the gods.

Tomorrow on Halloween, there will be mobs of kiddies knocking on my door, but I will be gracious and offer them a treat. If they’re nasty, I’ll invite them in to meet my invisible ghost, which should be willing to show itself on what I presume would be its favorite holiday. But if it does, I’ll be the first one running and screaming from my house.

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer at The Star and its Montauk correspondent.

Thinking of having a yard sale? Don’t. At least that’s what my friend Maggie said. What she didn’t forecast was that it would take three, four, and five days out of my life, even with incredible help by members of the family, a pair of friends who are yard-sale aficionados, and three muscle men.

Actually, getting ready for the sale was surprisingly fun, although Maggie won’t believe it. My daughter came all the way from Nova Scotia to take charge of emptying closets and corners of all kinds of household goods, from vintage Hawaiian shirts to Art Deco toasters, and she whipped through it all using blue painter’s tape to mark low-ball prices.

This was neither a run-of-the-mill yard sale, nor an upscale “estate” sale, however. Our mission was to empty a barn of the stuff that generations had stuffed into it. We offered old wood crates and trunks that had been in the barn for a hundred years or more, many heavy and mysterious chunks of cast iron (all of which sold), and wooden doors, screen doors, French doors galore (which didn’t). It was fun watching people snatch up old sailboat tillers, apparently as unusual decorative items, including one I am certain was put in the barn for safe-keeping by a friend about 40 years ago. (Sorry, Marjorie.) I should have asked some of these buyers to email me photos after the tillers were put in place. 

I never thought ancient, rusty bikes would sell, but what did I know? In fact, two young men got into a bit of a tussle arguing about who had dibs on one old, crusted specimen. They eventually settled on one of them taking the coveted bike while the other went home toting two rims that didn’t fit anything anyway. And those half-dozen windsurfers we advertised? Three of the six were sold for a pittance, while the others will stand guard outside the barn for another day.

Two young women were my favorite customers. One arrived with a male companion in a convertible Lexus, and you should have seen the way they cheerily tossed a Singer sewing machine in terrible shape into the car. So long, Singer! She had eclectic tastes, buying clip-on earrings and remnant upholstery fabrics, too, looking everything over carefully. 

The other favorite customer was an elegant French artist who bought two cupboards, a turn-of-the-century hutch, and a coarse handmade chair that, in my opinion, had absolutely no style (though my daughter said she would have bought it herself if she’d seen it at a yard sale). Off to the bank and back with the cash she was before we put our heads together and realized we no doubt were giving her too generous a bargain. She even arranged right then and there to have two of the pieces delivered to her New York City kitchen.

What didn’t draw buyers were martini or sherry glasses from the 1930s; various bits of nice antique china; vases and lamps, or an overstuffed sofa in a cabbage-rose print. (In case you are interested, I offloaded quite a few batches of household goods at the Animal Rescue Fund’s thrift shop the day after the sale.) And all Liza Werner of Sage Street Antiques in Sag Harbor bought, I think, were three exceedingly simple, American-made ceramic coffee cups of the five-and-ten variety. I’m sure she knows what she’s doing. What do I know?

One unexpected visitor at the event was a village police officer. We had our permit in place, but didn’t know we were allowed only one sign, even on our own property. The visit from the law went well enough, but there was a bit of an ominous cloud hanging over us as the afternoon drew to a close: As the pace slowed and energy flagged, we started to consider everything that we hadn’t even gotten around to sorting and attempting to sell, including the many, many (many) books we continue to accumulate or anything whatsoever that might be gathering dust up in the attic, which had been too daunting to climb into, and in what we call the “new” part of the barn. My conclusion? We just have to have another sale.   

A friend from an inland state, a very inland state, is due to leave for the Gulf of Mexico in the next couple of weeks for a course in boat handling, sailing, and navigation. He is taking a leave of absence from his job working for the State of New Mexico in anticipation of buying a boat and seeing the world.

On the one hand, as a boat owner myself, I think he is plumb out of his mind. I have spent far more time since the middle of August monkeying around with a leaking fuel tank and related issues on my boat than actually using it. But, on the other side of the tiller, as a fellow desk-jockey, I can see the sweet temptation of setting sail for points unknown.

My fuel problem began on an ordinary August afternoon as I was rounding the Lion Head Rock buoy and suddenly smelled the unmistakable odor of gasoline rising from the deck. Opening a port toward the stern, I reached inside and, sure enough, my hand came up covered with a vile mixture of fuel and bilge water.

Since my outboard is on a stanchion that holds it a good distance from the hull and because I could turn off all the other electrical systems, I felt there was little chance of an explosion. Nonetheless, it was with a nervous grip that I steered back to the slip in Three Mile Harbor.

A couple of weeks later, I had the old tank taken out, ordered a new one, and had the bilge cleaned. Now, more than a month after the replacement was installed, I am still messing around with the bilge pumps, fuel gauges, and other misbegotten boat problems between driving the kids to sports practices, friends’ houses, and trying to do a few other things.

My friend, a rock-climber and skier in his off hours, has no offspring to ferry around, and he  might well find the time to live his dream. As for me, I’d just like to get out to the east side of Gardiner’s Island one last time before I put the boat up on blocks for the winter.

I thought briefly of saying, “On my backhand” when asked the other day during our weekly editorial conference what I was working on, but demurred.

It is true though — I am working on my backhand, and, moreover, I think I’ve experienced a breakthrough. You know how it takes a while sometimes — about 66 years, in my case — for the right mnemonic word or words to sink in. (Wait, there’s an ant on my desk, zigzagging along agitatedly, lifting his tiny antennae up at the edge of my calculator as if he were calculating. As if to say, “So much to learn, so little time.”)

First, there was all this talk about how I was doing it wrong, wrong, wrong. Stepping when I should be

. . . what? I wasn’t sure. I asked a fellow clinic-taker. He said he thought I should be turning my shoulder.

“He said I should turn my shoulder,” I said to our teacher when she came over to us.

“No, turn your body!” she said.

Then, all of a sudden, after a half-hour or more of this, it began to click. Ah, turn! Turn instead of taking that big initial sideways step, which had been depriving me of power.

“Turn,” I said to myself when the ball was on the way. I turned, and the feet, the wayward feet, followed — in position to step forward as the racket, which I’d brought back with my right hand as I had turned, came through.

“And hold!” she said, her racket rising following contact.

“And hold,” I said.

“Turn, step, and hold,” she said.

“Turn, step, and hold,” I said.

See Spot turn, step, and hold. Turn, Spot. Turn, step, and hold. . . . It was kind of like that. Like the Dalai Lama saying, when asked by the hot dog vendor what he wanted, “Make me one with everything.”

“But hold the apotheosis!” I would add, more aware now, I think, than ever before, that there’s so much to learn, so little time.

The dark comes so early now. I shudder to think of the end of daylight saving time, barely a week away. But Tuesday was so mild and biking up Further Lane after work has become something of a mild exercise habit as I try to hold onto these great outdoors until the frost comes. So it was already getting dark as I pedaled east, then south, then west.

From long driveways, a few landscapers straggled toward home. A lot more deer, stock still, stared quizzically as I pedaled past, laboring on the cheap folding bike. This was Further Lane in the dying of the light in late October.

I stopped several times, to stare back and have a word with the deer, or take a snap of the horizon, pink and dusky gray-blue over blue-gray. Heading toward Old Beach Lane.

The outdated iPhone’s camera never gets it right. It doesn’t come close. The digital snapshot is dull and dark and small. It cannot capture it. But neither can I.

On the sand, a man practiced tai chi and another stood motionless and reverent at water’s edge and an elegant woman gazed at the sea and sky as her cavalier and happy spaniel ran freely. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” she exclaimed.

I thought a long moment and said yes, I think I have. “But it’s still magnificent.”

“It’s magnificent,” she said.

I wish I could speak in glorious Technicolor. But no, just black-and-white. “It’s hard to put into words,” I said, and corrected myself. “I can’t put it into words.”

“You can’t put it into words,” she said.

The night before, I’d learned that a young man I knew, just 20 years old, had died unexpectedly. His mother and I are friends, and the shock and sorrow for those who have lost him has made concentration difficult in the hours since. The awful news has also jarred a dark memory of a month and six years ago when my then-wife’s brother had also, at 27, passed away without warning. How is it that I had made it that far, and then so much farther, there on Further Lane?

I thought back to India, its colorful, fanciful gods and the Bhagavad Gita and Sri Krishna’s tender reprimand. “You are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor the dead.”

“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.”

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.”

The southern sky steeped in deep blues above, a long and delicate brush of powdery pink between, the relentless roll of the ocean below, and we four or five souls, helpless and bewildered on the sand before the terrible beauty at the end of Old Beach Lane. The elegant woman, barefoot, walked east, the galloping little dog charging into the twilight until I couldn’t see them anymore.

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The East Hampton Star.

The holidays aren’t here yet, not by a long shot, but my mailbox is already stuffed with letters seeking big and small gifts. Many of the requests come from institutions I am familiar with and wish I could do more to support, but I also seem to have gotten on the mailing lists of tons of organizations that I know little or nothing about. I guess donor lists are shared and shared again, until your address has been reproduced exponentially. 

I don’t remember ever communicating in any way with the New York Public Library, for example (although in years gone by I sat on the steps between the lions at the main branch on sunny afternoons). Nevertheless, in today’s mail the library addressed me as “Dear Friend” and asked me to make a donation from $25 to $1,500. There is, the solicitation reads, greater demand for the library’s resources and services and consistently less public funding.

The library does sound like a good cause, I’ll admit. I also was asked to help Long Island Cares, which operates the Harry Chapin Food Bank; it is seeking contributions to provide more than “6 million meals to 320,000 hungry Long Islanders.” That’s a vital cause, I agree again.

So how do you choose whom to give to? 

My rule of thumb, in general, is to donate as close to home as possible. There are food banks here in East Hampton that do a great public service, especially as the weather turns cold and seasonal workers find less work. Another really true-blue hometown organization that needs assistance is the East Hampton Fire Department. In addition to putting out fires, attending accidents, and saving lives, the Fire Department showers the community with a great big fireworks show every summer (and to me that’s no small public service). Arriving on my desk this morning, the Fire Department’s appeal says that calls have increased but “donations have dropped by half.” 

Another fine organization from which I receive pleas, both electronically and by snail mail, is much further afield: Doctors Without Borders (a k a Medecins Sans Frontieres). I was first drawn to its fight against childhood malnutrition in impoverished parts of the world. And, of course, today it is among those leading the charge against the horrendous Ebola epidemic. This week, The New York Times said it “has heroically provided much, if not most, of the care in the stricken countries.”

On a lighter note, I’ve been bombarded electronically with pleas from Democrats on behalf of men and women running for election or re-election to the Senate. I can’t help feeling like a bit beleaguered as Election Day approaches and the volume of these pleas increases. There must be people out there who understand why these candidate requests are for $3 sometimes or $80 at other times; these seem like curious numbers. I guess algorithms are involved. Whatever those are. (I just had to look up how to spell the word.)

It turns out that America ranked first among 153 countries in a new global survey of philanthropy. That’s great news, but I would feel a lot better about it if I knew that donations to political action committees were not included in that tally.

With the film festival in town last week and into this, an unusual number of people walked back and forth in front of our office. I counted myself among them, as a late addition to the festival’s documentary jury, which meant, among other things, that I spent quite a considerable bit of time on foot between the office and town, as we call it, and then hustling back south to Guild Hall, and back again.

One thing was clear from this: I don’t walk enough. Credit is due to Jack Graves, The Star’s eminence grise and sportswriter, who makes his way into town rather regularly. My father, who ran this paper until his death in 1980, was a walker, too, as was his brother, David.

David Rattray the elder, with whom I share a name, was not quite the equal of the legendary Stephen Talkhouse as a walker, but remarkable nonetheless. He, like my father, is gone now, but before his illness, he would take epic hikes, perhaps from Amagansett to East Hampton along the beach in the depths of winter.

He was foremost a poet, among his many other talents, including the ability to read and translate a host of languages and play concert-level piano. I read from one of his poems at a New York City tribute to him a couple of years ago. “West From Napeague” speaks of three figures afoot in the distance on the beach: himself, my father, and my aunt, Mary Rattray, who lives in Springs and in her time was as much of a walker as her brothers, I think.

Someone, Kierkegaard, perhaps, wrote that he walked himself into his best ideas. I have always liked that notion and tended to agree. Some walks are better than others, of course. On Main Street, East Hampton, I am as likely now to be buttonholed by a reader about something or other or just distracted by a loud truck going by.

And yet, we get a feel for a place while on foot that is like none other. A California writer whom I met recently has said that in walking we take measure of the earth. I plan to do a lot more measuring, then, now that fall has come.

Bunky was a real writer’s cat. When I would sit down at my laptop, he would jump onto the desk and circle around my workspace. He was of the belief that the keyboard was the perfect resting place. I would gently dissuade him from lying on the keys. He would eventually give in, moving to the side or the back of my laptop, and lie down. Sometimes he would watch me, and sometimes he would sleep.

He was scrappy. Having spent his kitten months in a small apartment full of aggressive children, he was wary of being handled. In particular, you could never touch his tail.

When Carole and I first got him, he wasn’t quite fully grown. I announced that there would be no need to castrate him. His moniker was, after all, my cousin’s nickname. A few weeks later, Bunky began having howling spells. He also decided that clawing his way up the window shades was a good thing to do. Still, I was adamant. No castration.

One day, I came home from work. In the corner of the apartment was my beloved black leather jacket, in a heap on the floor. On top of it was a yellow pool. A quick trip to the vet, and Bunky was a castrato.

We decided to move him out to Montauk when I found that I was doing most of my work out there. We had a rental in Ditch Plain (yes, there once were year-round rentals in Ditch, and year-round residents, as well).

In our garden, we had an area fenced with chicken wire where, supposedly, we were going to grow vegetables. We used it to acclimate Bunky to the outdoors. After a while, he began going in and out of the house on his own.

He was a big tom. He would get into occasional fights, but he always could handle himself. The yard, and the immediate woods east of the house, were his domain.

Opening the door for him when he wanted out, every morning and every evening, was fun. Each time, he would shoot down the porch steps, and break into a full sprint. Sometimes, he would head right, toward the big tree in the corner of the yard, climbing halfway up the trunk in a couple of seconds. Other times he would turn left, sprinting up the hill toward the woods.

Any direction he took, he would freeze after about 20 yards. Up the hill or on the tree, motionless, he would survey his world.

The tree was his scratching post, of course, and his jungle gym. He rarely went all the way up.

Of course, as with all cats, one time he went too far, finding himself the proverbial cat stuck out on a limb. He began crying, unsure how to get down. I got the ladder out, went up and got him, getting a couple of claw marks as a thank-you.

He was, for most of his life, a great mouser and quite proud of himself. He would catch mice in the woods, almost daily, and bring them back to us, a nice little gift, although Carole, in particular, did not share his enthusiasm.

Sometimes, instead of bringing his catch of the day up the steps, he would eat it in the backyard. Then, one day, he became violently ill. He hid under a bed for several days. When he emerged, his mouse diet was over, though he continued to bring his trophies back to us.

Tiger-striped, orange and white, he was impossible to see when he was in the shade.

It had been a warm winter when the end came. In the fall, he had gotten into a howling fight with a neighboring black-and-white, and he lost his enthusiasm for extended forays outside. He was becoming visibly weaker. Suddenly, he could barely walk. We took him to Dr. Turetsky’s office. He was seen by Dr. Katz. She told us what we already knew, that Bunky was, at roughly 20 years of age, old. He had several issues, the treatment of which would be very invasive, without any real recovery.

If he was dying, which I believed he was, I planned on burying him in the yard he loved so much. There was a winter storm on the way. It was supposed to dive down from the 50s to the lower teens. I took a shovel and dug a hole I wished I would never have to fill.

We brought him home and gave him his drugs, but he was weak and listless.

The next day, as the temperature dropped, an amazing thing happened. It was as if Bunky was reborn. He had energy, and while he was clearly an old cat, he was a happy one.

That burst of life was short-lived. The following morning, he was barely able to move. He grew weaker through the day, picking himself up only to collapse to the floor.

I wrapped him in a towel the following morning. He was practically lifeless. It began to snow as we made the long drive from Ditch to Goodfriend Drive. I held Bunky while Dr. Katz inserted the needle.

I buried him in the yard as the snow fell, under the now frozen dirt.

Years have passed, and life moves on. But, every once in a while, I turn a corner in my mind, and there is Bunky.

T.E. McMorrow is a reporter for The Star and a self-described “cat man.”