A Baby Cries From Somewhere

Staffers at KMPS-FM got more than they bargained for last week. The country-music station asked listeners to phone in stories about ghosts, just in time for Halloween.

The plan was to pick a likely story, then have John the Stunt Guy (a k a John Hiefield) hop in the KMPS mobile van and check out the ghost with help from psychic Lorena Simon.

The ghostbusters drove to Ballard to make contact with a gentlemanly ghost named Fred. (Hiefield says, "Turns out his real name was Michael.")

Tame stuff. Then came the phone call from a Tacoma listener who sounded distraught. The woman said that - although she had no children of her own - she could hear the sound of a baby crying in her house.

KMPS staffers recorded the woman's phone call. But when they played it back they were startled by a strange sound on the tape. Could it be a baby's cry?

"We did hear a baby crying," claims one staffer. "There was no way anyone could have doctored the tape. It was scary."

Later staffers replayed the tape. There was no crying.

Weird. Maybe KMPS can turn it into a country hit: "Hey, Baby, Baby. Don't Cry for Me."

Farewell to arms: Big doings at Boeing Field: The Internal Revenue Service will auction off contents of the Blue Max restaurant at 10 a.m. Nov. 18. Everything goes, from the three-quarter-scale Fokker Triplane to pots and pans in the kitchen.

Some choice items: six airplane ejector seats, a dozen model airplanes, miscellaneous engine parts and an aircraft horizontal stabilizer. Items can be inspected from noon to 3 p.m. Nov. 14 and an hour before the Nov. 18 sale.

Plight at the opera: Numbers of extras appear in the Seattle Opera production of Janacek's "The Cunning Little Vixen" that runs through Nov. 9 at the Opera House.

There's a flock of hens, played by six women, but many of the extras are children. Among them: a weasel, hedgehog, raccoon, hawk, dragonfly, butterfly and three baby grasshoppers.

The role of the caterpillar is played by 6-year-old Gabriella Schwarz, whose dad is Seattle Symphony conductor Gerard Schwarz. Not to give the plot away, but during the opera along comes a spider and dines on the caterpillar.

No hang ups: In the final days before their wedding, Shelley Ledray-Bornkamp and Tim Northern found themselves dealing with dozens of calls, so many that they recorded a just-for-fun phone message. Excerpts: "If you want directions to Roche Harbor (the wedding site), press one now; if you want the schedule of events, press two; if you want information about our registry, press three; if you have any objections to our marriage, hang up now."

Must not have been many objections. The couple married on Saturday.

Food for thought: Up for bids at the League of Women Voters auction last week was lunch with Seattle Times' editorial-page editor Mindy Cameron. High bidders were Seattle Librarian Liz Stroup and Seattle City Councilwoman Margaret Pageler.

Is it possible that Stroup and Pageler want to discuss The Times' failure to endorse the library bond issue? Can't say. But the choice of restaurant may be significant. They're meeting Wednesday at the Crocodile Cafe. Jean Godden's column appears Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the Local News section of The Times. Her phone is 464-8300.