ENTER GHOST
Horatio: Look, my lord, it comes!
Hamlet: Angels and ministers of grace defend us!/ Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,/ Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, /Thou com'st in such a questionable shape/ That I will speak to thee.
Few of us have, like Hamlet, met an apparition of our dead father at midnight and discussed family problems with it. We assume, quite understandably, that ultimately the cause of so-called "ghostly" shenanigans can be found in the physical world. But many people--more than most realize--have experienced things as strange, and perhaps stranger than Hamlet did, virtually right in your own back yard. The Lowry Hill area on both sides of Hennepin seems to be a fertile area for ghostly occurrences. The common explanation for the higher proportion of psychic phenomena reported here is that our neighborhood consists almost exclusively of turn-of-the-century houses which have housed several generations. Why this fact should be significant is a matter of continuing debate among people who are concerned with such things.
Curiously enough, the people whom I interviewed in the Wedge became interested in the theories about ghosts only after some thing very peculiar occurred in their house or apartment. For example, when Peter and Mark (all the names here are fictitious) moved into the ground floor of a big old house on Colfax last year, they were pleased with their new quarters. Peter's work kept him out past midnight most of the time. When he returned home, Mark would already be asleep.This routine went on for over a month, when one night Peter came home to find the light on in Mark's room. This seemed odd, so Peter peeked in to see what was going on. Mark was very puzzled and a little upset. He was a big man, a no-nonsense carpenter who had never had an experience like the one that had happened that night: He was sound asleep when all of a sudden he was awakened by an overwhelming sensation that someone was standing at the foot of his bed. He quickly turned on the light, but there was nothing to see. The incident was inexplicable to him, and he didn't feel very comfortable afterwards. So he decided to sleep with the light on that night. The next night he slept through without disturbance.
Peter noticed. . .along with a couple other close friends. . .that sometimes as they passed through the hall, at the entrance to Mark's room they'd feel a "chill" like the sense of an alien presence. Several weeks after Mark's first midnight wake-up Peter arrived home to find the lights on again in Mark's room while Mark slept. This happened a couple of other times while they lived there, although nothing spectacular ever happened. Eventually they moved out, and at the time Mark suggested that the nocturnal disturbances were partly responsible for his decision to leave.
Further down the street is another late nineteenth century house where the inhabitants have also had some unusual experiences. One night when I was visiting there, Tom complained that he was having trouble laying a floor in the front room. He would carefully line up the parquet block as he knelt in the doorway. Twice, he had turned away for an instant, only to find the blocks scattered helter-skelter when he turned back to work. Other peculiar things have happened to him, too. One day he saw a boy pulling a wagon down the upstairs hallway. . .a child who seemed inexplicably to vanish. Another time a faint glow emanated from part of a back room, a glow that Tom tried in vain to find a source for. These experiences are so strange that Tom, quite naturally, does not fully trust his recollection of them. Others in the house, however, have also reported uncanny events: the upstairs hall light comes on, unbidden, in the middle of the night sometimes. Also, a study lamp goes off and on at odd hours and there appears to be nothing wrong with the wiring.
A few blocks away on Bryant is an 1980's house where only one peculiar thing happens, and this happens over and over again. When they shut the door to one bedroom, it often opens as soon as they turn away. The latch and the hinges appear to work fine. The room used to belong to the son of the original owner, both now deceased.
Up the block is a house which the current residents have owned for two years. When Karen and Jim first moved in, even though they liked the house, they frequently got the feeling that the house wasn't completely theirs, as if someone else's presence sill pervaded certain rooms. One night a while back Karen and a friend came home and entered through the back door. The rest of the family was not at home, and the two women remained in the kitchen, occupying themselves with petty tasks. They dawdled there for some time, when the friend finally remarked, "Don't you feel like running through the house, looking under the beds?" After the friend broached the subject, they both admitted that they felt a presence in the rest of the house and just couldn't bear going into the living room. In a while this feeling passed and they felt they could proceed as usual.
Karen and Jim's daughter, who was three at the time they moved in, quickly acquired the unorthodox habit of leaving her room in the middle of the night to sleep in the hall. This practice has continued to the present day on the average of two or three times a week.
Recently, when Karen slept in this room, she was awakened by the disturbing impression of a hellfire-and-brimstone sermon delivered by a male voice like that of a sidewalk evangelist. A stranger experience yet is that of their son. Last year as he was coming out of his room, he saw a misty figure emerge from the bathroom, turn to look at him, and disappear into his sister's room. The apparition was that of a man, his mousy brown hair wet as though he had just washed it. Who the preacher and/or bather might be, they haven't yet discovered. Some time ago, though, as he was working the the yard, Jim was approached by a funny old man carrying a violin case. He told Jim that he had lived in an upper bedroom (indicating the son's bedroom) for 25 years and he had recently been having recurrent dreams about the house. At least the family knows they aren't alone in having their sleep disturbed by something connected with the house.
All of the people I've mentioned so far have talked about feelings and impressions. But one couple on Bryant has had rather a different experience. Claire and Paul have lived in their house for nearly six years. During that time, some odd things have happened. One night, for example, they came home to find all the basement windows wide open, but most of these incidents could be explained without straining one's imagination. One night last spring, however, this was not the case.
It was about ten at night and they were preparing to retire after a long day. Paul was already in bed and Claire was just climbing in--when, suddenly, the chest next to the bed began to shake violently. This large, heavy antique chest was not merely vibrating, but rocking rapidly from side to side. They were absolutely boggled by the chest's antics and began to look around the room for clues to its behavior. The light cords the window shade pulls, the drapes, the other furniture--seemed perfectly still. While they sat in bed staring at the chest, the foot of the bed began shaking, too. For the few seconds this went on, they huddled in bed, astonished and frightened at the same time. Then all movement ceased. For the next hour they checked out every possibility as to the cause of the disturbance. Was the chest off balance?. . .Had something fallen elsewhere?. . .An earthquake? etc. But they couldn't come up with an answer. Finally, they gave up and went to bed. Paul soon fell asleep, but Claire lay awake, plagued by a feeling that it was going to happen again. Sure enough, in another half hour or so, the chest started shaking again. Paul awakened and reached out toward the chest. As soon as his fingers touched it, the shaking stopped. They at once felt greatly relieved and spent the rest of the night undisturbed.
What possible explanations for these experiences can be proposed? The theory most frequently advanced, especially by those who haven't had such an experience, is that these weird events are products of the percipients' overactive imaginations or disturbed minds. Somehow, there must be a "rational" explanation; there must be some physical cause which, once discovered, will explain all. For those who find this scientific skepticism inadequate in terms of evidence, there are three possible approaches to take: First, that there is a spirit in all living things which is independent of the body and which lives on after physical death. Thus through seances people try to make contact with this spirit world. Over the centuries this has certainly been the most pervasive and simplest of explanations, although modern psychologists have attacked it. They suggest on the other hand that all living beings emit a psychic energy which can reappear in various ways, independent of space and time. Thus if someone dies in a disturbed form of mind, his agitated psychic force may appear after death in a place he feels comfortable. A third possible explanation is that "ghosts" are subjectively perceived in an extrasensory way and are essentially hallucinations emanating from "mid-level consciousness." Psychic phenomena are really part of the enormous power and faculty of the mind, the nature of which we have barely discerned.
I myself can hardly tell you what to think, let alone decide for myself. Last week I went to Kenwood to interview the owner of a house with a poltergeist, a prankster ghost. Before I left home my portable tape player recorder worked fine, but when I arrived at the other house the apparatus refused to work. After a number of futile attempts to get it going, the lady of the house said resignedly, "Well, I guess Betty doesn't want to be interviewed." I took down the story on paper, then rushed home to see if my record would work there. It did.
Do you have a ghost story to tell? At the suggestion of Ellen Steckert, director of the Institute for Minnesota Folklife, I am collecting stories of urban ghosts. If you or someone you know has such a story, I would be grateful if you would contact me about it. All information will be strictly confidential. If you can help, please call me at 377-XXXX. Many thanks!
NOTE: I have corrected a few misspellings, typos, and punctuation errors. See next post for comments about the article and the events that followed it.
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