Sunday, November 12, 2006

BACK TO THE OLD HAUNTS

Our house is haunted.... No, really. .... My wife and I were on the way to Salisbury today and she asked, rather matter-of-factly, if I have had any issues with the house recently.... that's linguistic shorthand for, "have you seen the ghosts recently."
Well, no I haven't. There were a few odd incidents when we first moved in three years ago, and then some more weirdness when we redid the master bedroom, but nothing, for me, since then.... and by "odd" and weird, I mean stuff like the clock flying off the wall and landing six or seven feet away, the doorbell ringing and no one is there ... that kind of thing... But for my wife, the weirdness has taken on physical shapes, like the little black dog on the front stairs and the man in the brown suit in my office--- he made his first appearance last night about 10 o'clock.
I've not seen either the dog or the man, but that doesn't mean I disbelieve the wife. She's sane and not given to flights of fancy, but neither of us are afraid of whatever shares our home, and over the years we've come to not even be too much surprised by their presence or actions. This is an old home, occupied by just four families since it was built sometime between 1850 and 1885. ... That disparity comes from the years the state says the house was built and the year listed in Paul Touart's book "Along the Seaboard Side." ... And it's not so weird anymore to think that ghosts might exist. Even such scientific journals as National Geographic seems to be giving them some level of credence.... they spent a couple days in Snow Hill last year doing a segment on a ghost known as "JJ" in the old Snow Hill Inn....no word on what they found, but to those ( and there appear to be many) who have seen him, he's a revolutionary war-era soldier. Nevertheless, it does make me wonder if others have similar encounters but have not mentioned them.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey check our the link on my website for eastern shore paranormal. You will get a kick out of it.

as for haunts, I have seen my fair share. I grew up in the pocomoke forest and went looking for the spirits and ghosts. sometimes I found squat, sometimes I got freaked out pretty good.

RAT said...

well ain't this interesting... anybody git askerd? I'm not.... nothing malevolent about this... I like to think I'm sane, but I have no official documentation to prove it... nevertheless, I have only actually seen one ghost in my entire life and it was a pussycat skulking along the baseboards of my friend's house in Arlington. Interesting but not scary.... the older I get the more I realize how much I don't know.

RAT said...

RR: It was probably the Assawoman Swamp Monster following you. Coulda been the game warden too. .... hell, maybe they were working together..... BTW... I just made up that thing the Assawoman Swamp Monster..... I don't think he goes that far south...

RAT said...

RR... Is you house in the book?

RAT said...

Touart's book... see the original post.

RAT said...

no... this is a book on archetectual and historiacally significant home in Worcester County.... I think he has another one out about another Eastern Shore county, but I can't remember which one.

as to the belief in ghosts: Spirituality aside, I think the First Law of Thermodynamics supports the existance. "In any process, the total energy of the universe remains constant" ... in effect, energy in the universe is neither created nor lost, but simply changes form.

RAT said...

Early 1900s could be right for either style... it could have been built as a victorian but later altered by removing all that trim... It was hell to maintain and only the qwealthy could afford to do it.....Ours is Second Empire. ... slate mansard roof, 7-foot windows, 8-foot front doors.

RAT said...

It still needs a lot of work... I do most of it myself... rehabed the living room (re-plaster, redo the random-width pine floors) We had to bring in a mason to re-do four of the six fireplaces and rebuild the chimneys from the roofline up.

joe albero said...

Get off the mushrooms! LMAO

Anonymous said...

Yeah ssr I know all those stories and then some. The Red Grave was actually an aunt of a kid i hung out with...and the ward sisters with their hounds of the baskervilles... but one night I was down in the swamp, out by Bucks Store and the same thing happened. Was out camping, enjoying a little radio and some beer, it was a little after midnight or so and from behind me, toward the river came a twig snap. it went deathly silent, not bugs or anything was makin any noise. I got out the mossburg 12 guage pistol grip and got ready. I sat there for what seemed like hours just looking for whatever it was by the firelight. Then I got my stuff together and started to work my way out of the swamp. As i cleared the camp spot I heard that distinct sound of a foot stepping in water, that baloop sound. Man was I a scared shit. I never held a gun so tight in my life. Some thing was following me. I felt it there. I knew something was watching me. So I made it to my quadrunner, got it running and hauled ass out of there.

sparkly1 said...

I have a book around here somewhere about the local ghosts. Reading this makes me want to dig it out and read it again. LOL! Memories of the Pocomoke Forest. . . . Did you have to sit on the bridge and beep the horn three times and wait for "Shot Gun Annie?" I thought she was the one that went with the scratching on the roof story. The Warren sisters are/were real, but I never heard they had a brother. I certainly hope he's not buried in the basement because my sister and I plan on putting all our money together and buying that house and living there when we get old and crazy enough.