Its always easy to say that you would run screaming out of your house if you saw a ghost. But the fact is, you have to stop and think, where are we going to go? What about all our hard work and money? When we get there (his parents, my brother, friends, co workers) what are they going to think when we tell them this? The majority of that group had already told us we were nuts for buying it to start with all the work it needed. They also told us it was beautiful but spooky looking. I guess everyone associates a large, old, ornate house with the Munster's or Addams Family. Looking back we should have done our homework before we bought it. I'll never make that mistake again.
And I that was what I was thinking as I stood there leaning against the kitchen sink, looking out on the back yard that took so much sweat, time, money and pain to tame into a gorgeous private English garden. We worked our butts off out there, give me some paint or wallpaper, I'll even patch cracks and strip woodwork but that landscaping sucks. Its worth it in the end but something I prefer not to do. Looking out there brought my will to fight back. Bill was shaken but when we explained to F what was happening and that he did not see M he said "WOW alright man! I saw my first ghost man! Trippy man I LOVE IT!!!" You have to remember this is a guy who is hanging by one foot and his pinky finger trying to reach an area 55 ft off the ground. He is a bit nuts. But his attitude helped to calm Bill somehow. He was even laughing later on about teaching the ghosts to scare off unwanted people at the door. I wasn't laughing.
It took us about 5 full days to finish the bathroom. We had basically gutted it to the studs and put everything back. It was alot of fun to pick out everything to make the bathroom look like it did when the house was built. It was work but very rewarding. The day we finished the bathroom B and I were in the family room watching TV and he decided to go upstairs to bed. I wasn't ready to go up yet so I continued to watch TV. About an hour later I heard the bathroom door close. I thought that B had come back down via the servants stairs. I said "are you hungry?" Bill often visits the kitchen after he goes to bed and I thought any minute he would flop down on the sofa with an ice cream. But I never heard him come out of the bathroom. Finally I got up to get a soda and as I passed the bathroom door to the kitchen I tapped on it and said "did you fall in?" to which I got no response. Without a seconds thought I turned the knob and the no one was in our beautiful bathroom with its new subway tile and the smell of fresh paint in the air. I knew I had been the last one to use it. The seat and lid were down. It made me a bit nervous but we had taken the door off while we were working on it and maybe it wasn't on quite right, I knew at the time I was lying to myself but the sound of a closing door in this house was nothing new. Once I got the soda I took the shortcut to the family room past the bathroom and the door was still open but this time the seat and lid were up as if a man had just used the toilet. I did an about face and shot up the servants stair case, and the TV and lamp stayed on all night.
The light in the hallway bathroom upstairs had a mind of its own. It went off and on at all different times and B was worried about a short. He replaced the switch, then the light fixture, and then we called our electrician back. He looked everything over and said he didn't see a problem. So not only does the lights go off and on but the closet doors swing open and closed at will. This bathroom had been restored when we first bought the house.
This was to be the first Thanksgiving without my mom. It was tradition for her to spend the night at my house and we would bake pies the night before, get up early and start the huge amazing dinner waiting for family and friends to trickle in. It had been discussed and I said I would continue to host Thanksgiving dinner for everyone, after all I had the big house. If Mom had been there we would have been up by 6. But I decided not to get up till 7, at least an hour of Thanksgiving morning with Mom was spent at the kitchen table with our coffee discussing a game plan and laughing about which bimbo my brother would bring for dinner this year or if Uncle Archie comes drunk again this year we will have to drive him home like last year and the year before. I let B sleep and made my way down the hallway towards the servants stairs. Once I began to descend the stairs I could clearly smell turkey and dressing baking. I stopped on the stairs for a second to check to make sure I was awake. The dogs blasted past me on the stairs as usual but instead of turning left to the door outside they went straight to the kitchen. By the time I rounded the corner they were at the back door wanting out. I know they smelled the wonderful smells that I did. But my oven was cold and the kitchen was just as I had left it the night before.
My best friend V and I had joined a historical group that touted the advantages of owning and restoring old buildings. The best form of recycling, save an old house. The group wanted to have members volunteer their homes for a Christmas tour. Several people raised their hands and the president of the group said "Everyone wants to see D's house! I have more people coming to me saying they want to see what you and B have done to that old beauty. This lady has some wonderful antiques everybody, she has it decorated like 1890." All eyes were on me, I felt like a deer in the headlights. "It is far from finished" I stammered. "In fact there is an entire wing upstairs that we haven't even touched yet!" M placed her hand on her hip and said "you can rope off the areas that aren't on the tour and the beauty of it not being finished is you can show it next year and everyone can see the progress! And you will help her won't you V?!" Of course V said "Oh D, it will be fun!" "Thanks alot" I muttered.
So it was on. V came over and we worked for 3 days. We had put up a 10ft. tree in the parlor decorated with antique ornaments, decorated all the mantles and the staircase railing with green pine branches lit with white lights all the way to the 3rd floor. We had a tree in the upstairs foyer and had 30 Poinsettas placed on the dressers and throughout the house. I have to admit it was elegant without being overwhelming.
On the night of the tour B went upstairs to turn all the white lights on and when he came back down he told me he distinctly heard a little girl laughing in the upstairs hallway when he turned the lights on. I hoped and prayed we didn't have any guests screaming and running for the door tonight.
The cookies were baked, the volunteers were ready with the eggnog and spiced apple cider and tidbits of information about the house and some of our antiques. I was on hand to field questions and chat with guests about everything from where I found the wallpaper to why there was a large TV in the family room. I had to remind people that it wasn't a museum, we actually did live here. Overall the pride in learning that I had a knack for decorating in Victorian style was worth the effort. People were ohhhh and ahhh ing all night long at the moldings and furnishings. B was proud of the work he did to "bring the old the old girl back" as he told some elderly men. At the end of the tour the gal at the front door announced that she had collected 237 tickets. Two of the last people to leave were a little old lady and her little old daughter. I had assumed they were sisters. "I had to come when I saw the house in the paper" she said. "The outside hasn't changed much since it was in the paper the last time." But I never saw the inside till now, beautiful too!" I was worn out but she had my attention. "When was it in the paper the last time?" I asked. "Oh honey it was a big deal! When it happened it was all over the papers." "Oh mother, I don't think she knows what you are talking about" the little old daughter said in her shrill voice. "Oh hon I'm sorry, I thought you knew about the good banker." I sat her and screech in the front parlor, got B and V and a few of the volunteers, poured everyone a spiked apple cider including our story teller and we listened for the next hour.
The little old lady's mother worked as a maid at the house next door for a doctor and his family. After school she was to walk to the house and wait for her mother to finish her day. In the back yard of the house next door was a gazebo that the little girl played in while she waited. One spring afternoon as she played in the back yard the police showed up at the huge house next door. After a flurry of activity of police and ambulance, the doctors wife told the little girls mother that the good banker next door had been caught cheating on his wife and she must have chased him upstairs where she put a bullet in his head in one of the bedrooms where he ran to hide. She then calmly went into their bedroom, dressed in her best nightgown and shot herself through the temple. That was 1933.
Having no children the house sat empty for several years after that. Furniture still where it was, blood still on the walls. Once the estate was settled a niece stepped forward, her and her husband purchased the house from the estate and began to clean it and work on it. She had lived there about 2 months when she fell down the gorgeous front staircase breaking her neck. Her children found her when they came home from school. That was around 1940. She also told me that I should talk to the elderly judge across the street. He had lived in his house all his life and it had been in his family since it was built. He was a wealth of information. Some of it scared the hell out of me. My house had a dark ugly past of premature and horrific deaths.
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