Happy Halloween!
~~~ A True Story from my Childhood ~~~
When I was about 10 years old my cousins (2 girls and 2 boys) moved into a beautiful stone farm house on a 100 acre property. It was the typical center hall plan layout with a staircase in the middle of the home and it had a hidden staircase at the back that went directly to the kitchen. I am an only child and loved spending the summer with my cousins. I got to be the 5th sibling. As kids, we just loved all the different ways to run around that house and play hide and seek.
The house was truly beautiful in the daylight, with the large windows on all sides and deep window wells. The gorgeous antique glass seemed too pretty to cover up with window covering. Since there were no immediate neighbours in the country the windows were left uncovered. At night the property was always extremely dark however. . . . and the shadows from all the old maple trees moving in the wind became quite spooky.
From the very first day my relatives moved into that home everyone felt that the front parlour room to the right of the main stairs had a very odd feeling. It felt occupied. Taken. Non welcoming. No one wanted to lay claim to that room. Very unusual for a large family.
It was immediately called "The Nothing Room". Since old Victorian homes don't really have basements all the non essential boxed items, that usually would have been delegated to a basement, went to the Nothing Room instead. It took a long time for those boxes to get unpacked. They were stacked and forgotten for months. The room had a pull out couch eventually, but no one ever wanted to use it. Even at Christmas time when there was a shortage of places for guests to sleep . . .no one wanted to sleep in that room. Not even the adults or any of their four cats.
My cousins family eventually began to inquire about the history of the house and who had lived there previously. We learned that a woman had indeed died in the parlour and under suspicious circumstances.
The following summer . . . the previous owners came to visit and asked if it would be possible for them to have a picnic at the rear of the property . . . where the ashes of their mother had been buried in a Maple tree. They also wanted permission to return every year on her birthday. Sure enough, they confirmed that their mother had died in the Nothing Room.
After the family's first birthday picnic my four cousins and I ran all around the 100 acre property looking for Mrs. Usher's Tree. We found it eventually. It was a hallowed out tree (rather like the one above) and marked with a small plaque.
From then on we felt a little more at ease about the house. Just knowing who "the presence" belonged to made us all feel a bit more comfortable. We still didn't ever sleep on the pull out couch though. That was for Mrs. Usher !
Although I have never seen a ghost I can certainly say I believe that you can feel a ghostly presence. What do you believe? Do you have a story to share?
