by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Doctor Goober Modesty

Age: 46

Occupation: “Urban Outsider” artist

Bio: When this charming yet complex NDG resident isn’t busy performing his superintendent duties in a downtown office building, he’s addressing the ghostly apparitions that come visit him in the night through his art and writing. A former marine engineering officer in the Canadian Coast Guard who left his position in the early 1980s to pursue the big bucks in offshore oil around Sable Island, Goober, after “freaky things started happening around me on the rig,” had the “common sense to resign” when he began developing feelings of paranoia and “realized I was getting angry and not focused on my position.” Returning to the mainland, he was shortly thereafter diagnosed schizophrenic and committed to an asylum, largely because he refused to take the anti-psychotic medication that was making him physically ill. He says he first became interested in spooks as a teenager, “gobbling up everything I could on the subject. But later my childhood fantasies came alive by believing in them. Kind of like my own Field of Dreams.” Go to www.angelfire.com/folk/docgmcreations to check out his work.

How hard Goober says it is to get legislated into the bin: “All they need is for you to meet with two psychiatrists, the signature of one judge, and you’re locked in a room and observed, that’s the bottom line.”

Is capturing one’s demons on canvas cathartic? “I don’t have so many demons. It’s like a continuum of society that I witness in ghostly forms around me. I see children in the attire of long ago, or old soldiers fighting battles. I see these things illuminated in the darkness of my room at night. If you live hell on earth, you’re going to live hell in heaven.”

Might it be remotely possible these ghostly apparitions are delusions? “Define delusion. These sightings/apparitions/hallucinations, a psychiatrist might say they’re real to the individual who experiences them. Many people become crazy from having these experiences but I’ve learned not to let it make me psychotic. I have a rapport with them. Humans are very capable of adapting to their environment, and these apparitions are part of my environment. Yes, I went a bit psychotic as a younger man while learning to live with them because there was nobody to explain them to me, but over the years I’ve grown and evolved as an individual and found a way to live with them. I produce them in my art and writings. They’re kind of like buddies now.”

Do the ghoulies ever start telling him the time has come for Goober to go out and start doing a little butchering? “No, I don’t hear voices. That’s the worst form of schizophrenia, you want the voices to stop so badly, it can drive you crazy. I just see ghosts in my room. Sometimes I reach out and communicate with them telepathically.”

Last book read: The Everything Drawing Book, by Helen South

Musical preferences: Heart, Led Zeppelin

Words of wisdom: “Don’t dwell on the past, dwell on solving future problems.”

Comments? dimwit@hdot.net