A Haunting

During the month of October, I enjoy raking crispy leaves, brisk hikes, baking goodies with cinnamon, and watching a few scary movies. That last admission probably makes you think less of me, but it’s the bold truth.

It’s not that I enjoy jumping a foot off the sofa and banging my ankle on the coffee table; nor do I condone anything gory, cheesy, slasher-y, or grotesque. It’s the vampires, ghosts, and witches that cast a spell on me.

It all started when my mother let me, as a child, watch Dark Shadows, the television soap opera with roots in Gothic romanticism. Barnabas Collins, for those of you who missed this daytime treat, was the protagonist—a vampire with remorse and self-loathing. Season after season, he searched to cure his malady and right the wrongs his blood-lust created. The ghost of Josette, Angelique the witch, and a werewolf or two were also regulars on the show. I gobbled up each episode, timing my fabricated fevers and tummy aches ensuring school days at home to see “what happened next.”

But there is another reason for my ghoulish penchant. In the early 1970s, my family rented and lived in a bonafide haunted house. My siblings will back me up on this, and so would my mother and grandparents if they hadn’t already crossed to the other side. The two-story farmhouse was over 100 years old and drafty; the siding peeling shards of ancient white paint. The windows rattled, the floorboards creaked, and the door hinges squeaked. The washing machine would start up for no reason—no one around. Mirrors fell from walls face down, shattering. We all reported a feeling of “being watched,” especially upstairs.

My sister and I shared a bedroom there, a room just large enough to accommodate the double bed in which we slept and a dresser. Quite often, I would wake in the dead, dark of night, sensing someone other than my sister in the room. I’d reach over and touch her arm or hold her hand as she slept. With her as a lifeline, I’d brave opening my eyes, and there he stood at the end of the bed—the gray ghost. He appeared as a middle-aged man in an ill-fitting suit, his tie-less shirt buttoned to the top. His lips pursed into a tight line, cheeks hollow, hair combed back in visible ridges. His eyes were neither lackluster nor intense, but he was staring at me, always, as if he was trying to see inside me…read my soul. The only hint of color this apparition flaunted was a white carnation in his lapel. He never spoke, he never blinked, he never twitched. All he did was drink me in.

One day, two elderly ladies knocked on the farmhouse door. Mom welcomed them in. They’d grown up and then lived most of their adult lives in our house with a brother, who had died unexpectedly. When he passed, they had dressed him in his Sunday best, and he laid in repose in the downstairs parlor…a white carnation in his lapel.

A few summers back, my sister, cousin, and I road tripped down memory lane to Indiana where the old farmhouse still stands, albeit unrecognizable due to years of “renovations.” As we surveyed the old homestead from our rental car, a waif of a girl ran into the open doorway. She was towheaded like we were, scrawny, and curious…like we were.

My sister still cannot shake off the vision of that girl. It was as if my sister had been looking into a mirror that reflected a not so picture-perfect past. I, was less shaken, less affected…because I know a haunted house when I see one.

(Photo taken in Bessemer, MI, and how I think our haunted farmhouse should look today.)