Ghost Walk and a Ghost Story
21 October 2012
This week The Prince Consort and I signed up for the annual White Hall Ghost Walk.
Down the road from our home on a cliff called Bull’s Hell, Cassius Marcellus Clay, a hot-tempered man, supposedly was so enraged with a bull that he pushed the creature over the cliff into the Kentucky River. So TPC and I were ready for some scary stuff at Clay’s old home, White Hall.
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| White Hall |
The house was lit with candles, dark and creepy corners everywhere. But no ghosts on the Ghost Walk, just actors who presented lively history about Clay and his family.
Probably good news since almost daily TPC and I take our morning walk around White Hall.
I’ve told my ghost story before, but it’s almost Halloween, so here goes.
When I was in college, while Dad was at the Naval War College, my family leased a 17th c. farmhouse on Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island. At first the only thing that bothered me about the house was the attic. There was something about the cold spot (in the middle of summer) in the upstairs hall under the hatch to the attic. It was just creepy. While I had no problem going into the dark dank basement, no one was going to get me to even open the attic door.
At first I felt safe in my bedroom, at the end of the hall from the attic hatch, in the back with a window overlooking Narragansett Bay. My two cats spotted the ghosts first. One night I was in bed ready to read when Ebie and Rikki started watching something in the room. Their heads moved with the something they watched. Something I couldn’t see. Being that the cats were both Siamese, and pretty crazy on their own, I thought they were just jerking my chain.
Sure enough the cats snuggled up to me and went to sleep. I settled down to read, facing away from the window. Eventually I was ready to turn out the light. I rolled over, and there they were: a man in old fashioned sea captain clothes holding the hand of a little girl with long curls and a short dress. They stared at me from where they stood in front of the window. They said nothing. I said nothing. Not to them. Not to anyone.
The pair showed up, silent and still every night. I kept the light on every night. I didn’t sleep until dawn. The summer ended, and I went back to college, glad to get out of the house.
A few years later my mother told a story about a couple she and Dad met in Hawaii who’d leased the house after us. The couple claimed to have seen ghosts. Mom had suspected poltergeists because of opening and closing doors and windows. She was fascinated.
I asked where the ghosts appeared, and what they looked like.
Ghost fingers ran cold ice over my body. The couple, people I have never met, had described the same ghosts in my old bedroom.
Did I ever research to find out who the ghostly pair were and why they haunted? No. Because somehow it’s safer. Or saner.
Kath who hasn’t lost the memory of that summer and the ghosts but has so far lost 21 pounds on the DeFluffing.
