Over the twelves years we owned our last house, I have often been asked the question, is it haunted? Through this post, I hope to finally answer that question once and for all.
It was only after about twelve hours of ownership that we were informed our new house was haunted. I mean, how do you respond to that? Something like that doesn't show up in the disclosure. 'House shows minor termite damage, brick pointing appropriate to the age of the structure, and an infestation of spectral anomalies.' You anticipate a lot in an older home, but ghosts?
As we were still unloading boxes from the moving truck, local self ordained keeper of the village history and culture, Siggy, stopped in to welcome us. She was a sweet woman who spent a very long life in our village, and was pretty much known to all. She was what you would call a staple, and had tidbits of knowledge and gossip concerning every house and family in town. As we quickly found out, there is no engaging in a passing conversation with Siggy. Once she had your attention, you might as well stop whatever it was you were doing, and give her your undivided attention for the next thirty or so minutes.
On this particular morning, she came to deliver the 'welcome aboard' speech. We were provided with a complete history of the town, its churches, businesses and its German culture. She then continued with a complete history of our home, its owners, its transitions between residence, boarding house, and restaurant, finishing with the matter of fact statement "Oh, and it's haunted."
Fortunately, my wife was fielding a phone call with the moving men, who were late. I was glad for it, for I am quite certain this assessment of our new home would not sit well with her. During an initial tour of the house, I went to inspect the attic. My wife was not interested in following me there, out of a morbid fear of attic and basements (how could I know, our last house was built on a slab and had a crawl space). When she asked what was up there, I made the mistake of saying Norman Bate's mother. It was a wise-ass comment I would later live to regret... many times. It was hard enough for her to shrug off that scene in Psycho, you know-where the detective spins the chair around to find the mummified remains of Norman's mother? But to make her consider the presence of a disembodied spirit, might have taken buyer's remorse to new level. No, I tucked that little piece of information away for another day.
That wasn't the last time I heard such rumors. My son came home from school one day and announced, "There was this kid I met, and he said this house was once a mortuary, and there were a lot of dead people here... who died, and that it's really scary, and it's haunted." I've never been able to confirm that one, from anyone, but a house of that age and size inspires such controversial rumors. I quickly dispelled that statement as nonsense, and told him not to believe silly stories that were intended to scare the new kid. After he left the room, I began to look around the house with a growing sense of apprehension. I half expected I would soon find one of our children puking up split pea soup, while cursing in a 5,000 year old dead language.
As it turned out, my expectations were unwarranted. Weeks turned into months, then years without any kind of possession or wicked spectral encounters. I'm not saying it wasn't haunted, but don't be biased by movies that sensationalize this kind of phenomena. As I see it, a house is kind of like a sponge. Over the course of its life, it soaks up a family, then wrings out the past with the introduction of the next family. A house as old as ours had soaked up and wrung out a lot of memories, but a sponge can never be completely wrung out; there is always a little something left behind.
Every family wants to leave behind an impression where they live. It starts with little things, like pictures and furniture, which may eventually lead to something more enduring like structural modifications. What I really find to be true is what they leave behind in the sponge is a little bit of their identity, perhaps something that says I was here. After 170 years, the house itself grows something of a personality, and jealously holds onto the echoes from its past owners, much in the same way we keep photos to remind us of who we are. It is within those echoes you will find your ghosts.
Echoes may even be a poor choice of words. There are many who will argue that it is a sentient being, caught between this world and the next. We can observe and report, but in the end, the truth will always be lost in theory and conjecture. So what was the nature our echo/manifestation? Was it scary? Was it apparent, like a ghostly image?
My personal experience was pretty basic: I never felt alone. It wasn't a creepy feeling, more like the company of someone familiar to me. No matter where I was in the house, I never felt alone. It was always with me, unshakable. All I can say, is I was never lonely. Also, I would often see something move within the periphery of my vision, like someone waving a hand just behind me. Perhaps it was our ghost waving his arms, yelling "Yoohoo, I'm over here. Hey, pay attention to me!" When I turned, there was nothing to be seen. I wouldn't exactly call this conclusive evidence, but it helped to build a foundation of belief.
In time, my wife and I experienced other things that led to the credence of our ghost. First of all, I will state for the record that my wife and I can be diametric opposites. I have been accused on several occasions of being forgetful. I wish I could say the same of my accuser, but the truth is, she is organized almost to a fault. So when I say, "Honey, where are my car keys? I know they were right here," it will be answered with "Wherever you lost them last dear." The odds are not in my favor that they were moved by some mischievous presence, but I had my doubts. However, when my wife encounters a lost set of keys as well, there is definitely something weird going on. And when it happens so often that you purposely leave your keys in obvious locations only to go hunting for them later, the odds diminish.
Okay, so lost keys may not be enough either, but the lights were another thing altogether. On many occasions, we'd wake in the middle of the night to see the glow of all the downstairs light illuminating our hall. This wasn't one of those sit up in bed and scream at the top of your lungs moments, but it did inspire wonder. Sometimes it was the light on the bedside table. I will confess that I don't even have the motivation to tap the snooze button when the alarm goes off, let alone turn on a light in my sleep. Again, weird.
The deal closer was when one person, whose honesty I have no need to question, told me he once saw a complete manifestation of a little boy in shorts staring at him. I think in some ways, all of these things may have been our spirit just looking for a little attention. Unless you were a very popular kid in school, I am sure you had your moments where you knew what it was like to invisible in a room; it gets to be pretty lonely.
So, any or everything may not add up to much, I guess it's just a matter of belief. Personally, I like the idea, and I was surprised to find that my wife even warmed to it. In time, the house, or ghost, or both became a member of our family. Looking back though, I think it may have been the other way around. I have found that on our journey through life, we take a little from everyone we meet, and leave a little of ourselves behind. I think a house like ours becomes the record of this transference. Every squeak of floorboards or groan of timbers is the echo from all who trod upon them. Every family who passes through its rooms leave behind their memories to be absorbed throughout, right down to the very foundations. Our house was not a place we used to pick up our mail and park our car. It was place where we laughed and cried, ate and slept, entertained and relaxed. Our house was where we lived our lives, and we happily became a part of our house's life.
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