The dog standing about eye-level to an elementary school-age child appeared to be leashed as it sipped water on a sidewalk in Dupont Circle. Corrine Johnson quickly learned the dog was only next to the leash, not attached to it.

In one second she saw the dog in the corner of her eye and in the next it had planted its teeth into her right thigh, she says of the July 14 incident.

"I wasn’t even very close to it when I walked by…which was a concern," Johnson says. "Usually a dog if they’re scared or you try to pet it might react like that. But that wasn’t what happened."

Blood immediately formed at the puncture point, and teeth marks stood out on her saliva-covered skin.

Possibly worse than the bite itself was the hassle Johnson endured over several months as she attempted to get rabies shots.

Fatal in just about every case, most people know rabies demands serious and swift prevention efforts. In Johnson’s case, she says the dogs’s owner, whom onlookers tracked down at a nearby restaurant, "wasn’t exactly accommodating." As a result, the canine’s medical history remained a mystery. Her doctor recommended Johnson go through a strict 28-day regimen of vaccines.

The doctor, however, couldn’t administer the drugs herself, since private physicians hardly ever have the shots handy in their offices anymore. Instead, she sent her patient to the George Washington University Hospital emergency room to get the first shot. The only question raised there was whether the dog was definitely rabid.

"We didn’t think it was that likely, but we were going to go forward anyway because there was no way of knowing for sure," Johnson says.

Two days later, when Johnson had to come in for the next shot, the hurdles went up.

About a week after Johnson’s attack, hospitals across the country got official notice of a vaccine shortage from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to its Web site. Providers were instructed to get clearance from the federal government before administering shots and to register a special code so that the government could track existing supplies.

Johnson says the way this played out for her is that George Washington’s pharmacy and urgent care doctors debated if she fell in or out of the confines of this new mandate, since it came after her first shot.

That day, she got her vaccine. By day 14, GW informed her they  were out of the vaccine, Johnson says. "It was Saturday morning, and they were calling the Department of Health. No one was there and I had to get the shot that day because that’s when my schedule fell on for the vaccination," Johnson says.

"They tried. I was there for three and a half hours at least.…Finally they said they just didn’t have it."

Going to nearby Georgetown University Hospital was the only option. There, Johnson got the help she needed. Two weeks later, when it was time for her last dose, she went straight to Georgetown.

The strategy worked, although she again had to wait for her doctors to get federal clearance. "It was definitely slower," she notes. "They had trouble getting it. I asked the doctors, and they said it was a struggle for them as well."

Johnson, who has had no health problems since, realizes that the individual hospitals were only following orders. But the barriers in place make it tough to follow through and prevent the spread of rabies, she says.

"If there’s a nationwide shortage, they may not be allowed to give it to someone sometimes. That’s too bad, because it’s almost having to make the case for this treatment, and if you don’t know the animal’s history, you can’t make that case," Johnson says. "The most important thing is just to make sure someone doesn’t have rabies and not restricting that."

Officials at George Washington Hospital are prohibited from discussing individual medical cases. But based on the timing of Johnson’s search for treatment they indicated she suffered a dog bite around the worst possible time.

Renia Mathews, director of GW’s pharmacy, says she and her co-workers have dealt with 19 rabies-vaccination cases this year, five of them since the shortage. In each of those last five cases, hospital staff members have had to get government clearance just to get the shots.

According to the CDC, the reason for the shortage has to do with the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs. French company Sanofi Pasteur, beginning in June 2007, started renovating its rabies vaccine facility to maintain FDA compliance. The project is set to be finished by mid-to-late 2009. Until that time, Sanofi Pasteur has a finite amount of its vaccine; it stopped producing it all together from August until earlier this month.

Since earlier this year the other major supplier, Novartis, has been distributing the vaccine but limiting it to patients definitely exposed to the virus. As of August, Novartis has been requiring doctors get a clearance code.

"We’re continuing to try to assist everyone in making the best and most efficient use of the vaccine that is available," CDC media relations specialist Rhonda Smith told Washington City Paper.

As of the first week in October, Novartis announced it will have additional supplies of the vaccine, which means the problem should begin to ease up in coming months, according to the CDC’s notice.

Mathews said the shortage is the worst she’s seen in three decades. Still, she encourages people who get bit by an animal that could be rabid to seek out the prolonged and problematic treatment. "We would always recommend that," she says.

(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

The ghost hunters show up at the Wayside Theatre in Middletown, Va., during the September run for Unnecessary Farce, a screwball comedy, and before opening night of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. They are looking for "George," the so-called "colored usher," who worked in the ’40s at Virginia’s second-oldest professional theater.

George, the story goes, lived and died on a porch just off the second floor that was dismantled during a theater renovation a few months ago. Now George is possibly hanging out at a balcony in an upper section—seat CC1—where he used to sit and watch performances after showing people (black only, this was during segregation) to their seats.

Theater types claim George, or some other ghost, is hanging around in other places as well. The stories they tell involve ghosts lurking among the dress racks in the costume room and creepy feelings of being followed on the stairs.

"Sound is not trustworthy in this booth," says Wayside actress Thomasin Savaiano, the hunters’ tour guide, as she escorts them to the hub of the operation over the stage. "[The monitor will] shut off everything, and it’s entirely rearranged in the morning."

The scene that follows is familiar to anyone who’s watched the plumbers-turned-spirit-catchers on the Sci-Fi network’s Ghost Hunters or those earnest Penn State kids on A&E’s Paranormal State. The place empties out, and the D.C. Metro Area Ghost Watchers haul out their A/V equipment (seven cameras wired up to a central command center next to the snack shop) and wait.

True to TV, they also try talking to the ghost, telling him to move a spindle on the sewing table—"It’s a very light spindle…" This is where the woman of the group, Jan Cunard, comes in. She’s the flirt.

Cunard, who’s in her 60s and volunteers as a commissioner for the Prince William County Historic Preservation Committee, grabs the mic and starts teasing George that he hasn’t been a good host to the men in her group.

"You know, we hear you’re very nice," she sort-of purrs. "You are talking to ladies. They always appreciate a good-looking man."

The coaxing continues for several minutes until everyone in the room swears the spindle slightly rocks from side to side.

Unlike her colleagues, who possess backgrounds in investigating or technology, Cunard was a client first. Her friend, the county’s historic preservation director, commissioned the Ghost Watchers to do a sweep of the historic Brentsville jail in Prince William. Cunard had spent more than a decade working to restore the jail and wanted to oversee the process to make sure they didn’t interfere with her efforts.
Watching the group work made her want to be a part of its investigations.

"I arranged for them to do several other sites here in the county before they asked me to join the team last March," she says. "Since I’ve always been a skeptic on many subjects, I try to figure out what the normal things are that are happening and prefer to debunk as much as I can and then concentrate on the things that I or other team members can’t explain."

Having Cunard on board has, according to the others, shown results.

For example: In August when the group returned to the Brentsville jail on the anniversary of a famous murder there, investigators reviewed their recordings and claim an angry spirit can be heard calling Cunard a "whore" after she talked about a former prisoner’s wife getting remarried. On its Web site, the group posts an audio clip, attributing it to the jail, where someone can clearly be heard saying, "Get out of here."

Previous cases around the D.C. area have produced more anecdotal creepiness. At the Christmas Attic store in Old Town Alexandria, the group’s lead investigator, John Warfield, a retired Navy officer who’s now a part-time physical therapist, alleges a ghost grabbed his hair, a reported signature move for that spirit.

But in Ellicott City, Md., a number of calls came up completely empty. At the Judge’s Bench Saloon, Maryland law wouldn’t allow the investigators to come in after closing, meaning they had to explore the place when it was filled with drinking customers.

"That’s not exactly how you want to do an investigation," Warfield says.

For nearly every case—including the one at Wayside Theatre —an obvious shadowy figure doesn’t show itself that night, nor do the supposed ghosts regularly or audibly respond to questions asked of them. Results take time to decipher.

Warfield will spend hours going back over audio and video footage for rare moments that could yield "proof." As of press time, he was still analyzing the Wayside evidence. Warfield has become so dedicated to the hunt, he now uses his physical-therapy income to fund the ghost watchers. Even though they charge nothing for their services, the cameras and wiring add up.

Much of the equipment and process is familiar to another member of the group, John Rossi, a former cop and psychologist who joined six months ago. Ghost hunting is lot like fishing, he says, adding it’s also a lot like being on a stakeout.

"You wait and wait and wait," he says. "Sometimes you get lucky. A lot of this work is sitting around and hoping for something to happen. But I’d pick this over bad guys any day."

(photo by piccadillywilson)