Front Porch Posts: October 2011

Here are a few true stories of my very own ghosts....(Really, I know I'm prone to exaggeration, but these things really did happen to me)

The little farmhouse was built in 1900, so the chances of lingering spirits is pretty good. Unfortunately in the 12 years I have lived here, I have only seen two. Though actually, it may only be one because the second one was that guy in the fedora. I had seen him once before at my grandmother's apartment and truth be told, I'm not a big fan. He was standing in the small hallway that leads out of my bedroom, but in his favor he did go away when I asked him to. But the first ghost I saw was outside, in the middle of the afternoon. Down in the back corner of our yard before it turns to fields is an old screen house. We converted it into the goat barn by boarding up the screened windows and putting a solid door on the front. A few weeks after we did this, I came home and as I drove along the front of our property I looked down into the field and saw a man with tan work pants and a baseball cap walking into the building. He looked to be in his early 60's and he just seem curious. I drove into the driveway and took the kids inside and went down and there was of course no one there. I'm pretty sure it was the man who lived here last, his name is Milton and he died in 1976. I haven't seen him again but sometimes after I've fed the goats at night and they are all settled in, something will spook them and I'll have to go down and convince them to go back inside. I'm hoping this spring to build a new goat house and we'll probably tear that one down. It will be interesting to see what Milton thinks of that.

Another ghost of mine was at a rental cottage we leased for a week a few years ago. The cottage was situated on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The building had originally been a store in Canada and the owners had actually brought it over by barge in the late 1800's for the owner's wife who had been prescribed ocean air for lingering illnesses. It was a really cool place, but I could always feel this weird expectancy that there was something about to happen. It was kind of like we were there with another family and we were doing our best to ignore each other. On the last day, my husband took the kids home and I stayed behind to clean up. As I put everything back where it was supposed to be, swept the floors and straighted the furniture I could feel someone watching me. It wasn't scary, I was just aware of her. As I stood at the door and looked around to make sure I hadn't left anything behind, I don't know why I did it but I said, "Thank you for letting us use the cottage. We had a wonderful time." As I turned to leave, the smell of butterscotch surrounded me. There was no candy or anything left in the cottage that smelled like butterscotch. I think it was the wife telling me "You're Welcome".

My husband thinks I'm nuts, but the most haunted house I've ever been in was the one he grew up in and even he can't deny it. In the middle of the ceiling in his old room there was a light fixture with a string you had to pull to turn the light on. You had to pull it quite hard, wait for the click and then let go. One night I was sleeping in the room alone and the light came on all by itself. Rattle---wait---click. The next morning I mentioned this to him and his parents and that was when they shared that they heard sounds like people walking up and down the stairs and how the appliances turned themselves on in the middle of the night.

How about you? What are your ghosts like?

Happy Halloween!
Lisa