My Haunted House I : Something's Happening Here

                   "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."

Steven Still's song isn't about the paranormal, but this quote quite aptly describes what many people think after they witness something that seems unexplainable.

1978 was a banner year for my family. It marked the completion of the exterior restoration of our 1885 Queen Anne house begun the previous summer and the birth of a second daughter in July. In September I interviewed several neighbors about ghostly-goings on in their homes, and then wrote them up in an article for the Wedge newspaper. (Read the article here: "Enter Ghost" "Enter Ghost" Wedge 1978.) 

These interviews led to other interviews and other articles. I talked to Eleanor Steckert, Professor of Folklore at the University of Minnesota, and read the books she suggested. The first was the 1981 classic by Jan Harald Brundvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: America's Urban Legends and their Meanings. I learned that a folklorist does not need to believe in nor try to disprove the claims in the stories they collect. The important thing is to listen, record, and document. Thus I became not a ghost hunter, but a ghost story collector.

In The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Brunvand says that the hitchhiker story is the one he's heard most often in his collecting of urban legends: 

Someone driving at night sees a girl (or guy) by the roadside in distress. They offer her a ride to her home. After they drop her off, they realize that she's left her sweater/umbrella/purse/whatever behind. They go back to the house. When her mother answers the door, she get very upset and tells them that her daughter is long dead. 

There are a number of variations on this story, but they all present the girl or guy as a solid apparition that can be touched, one that leaves physical evidence behind. In fact, I heard variations on this story from two people, one from Georgia and one from New England, stories that they had heard from other people. My daughter Ceridwen heard a Christian version of this, with the hitchhiker as Jesus.

So much for urban legends. But what about firsthand accounts of spooky encounters? These are what I was interested in. Then, in 1983, something happened at our house that intrigued and baffled me. I was in the foyer talking on the phone, and my younger daughter, whom I'll call "M," was in the back parlor, when I heard a loud, metallic "clunk" in the dining room. I immediately opened the door to the dining room and saw, to my astonishment, that the cast iron floor grate had moved from its place against the wall to the rug under the table. Our dog Tessie was standing several feet away near the kitchen doorway, staring at the grate with a "WTF?" look on her face.

How did the louvered grate move a couple of feet on its own? I asked M if she had moved the grate, and she emphatically denied it. She had been sitting on the sofa watching TV in the adjoining parlor. We moved the grate several times from the floor to the rug in an effort to determine what could have moved it. We tested how much force it took to move the nine-pound grate from the floor to the rug. There's no way Tessie could have moved the grate. The openings were big enough only to fit fingers, not large dog paws. The air from the forced-air furnace could barely lift a piece of paper, let alone move a heavy grate.

I applied Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is the best one. At that point, I had heard enough stories to recognize the elements of paranormal activity. Did a ghost move the grate? If so, who was it that wanted to get our attention? It would take a few more incidents over many months and more research to come to some sort of a conclusion.

                                                   The front parlor of our house in 1981

Months passed. Then one afternoon, my younger daughter, M, was by herself in the house, upstairs watching TV in her room over the dining room when she heard a metallic clunk from the first floor. After having witnessed the moving of the grate previously, she recognized the sound. Fearing the worst, she crept downstairs and looked into the dining room. There it was: The grate had once again moved from its place in the floor to the rug. When her father came inside shortly thereafter, he found M nearly hysterical with fear. M had heard me declare my suspicions that the movement was possibly caused by a ghost, and the grate moving again freaked her out.

Witnessing the grate moving was significant, as it was a clear physical manifestation of an unexplainable force. Hearing footsteps, seeing apparitions--these common paranormal incidents are ephemeral and hard to document. Someone wanted to get our attention--and did. The grate never moved again, but it marked the beginning of a decade of sporadic unexplained incidents in the house which I will describe in my next posts.

                                                     

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

                                        Edith Wharton at her writing desk, 1905 (Photo: NYTimes)

American author and designer Edith Wharton (1862-1937) wrote a very scary collection of literary ghost stories, Ghosts, reissued in 2021. I was intrigued by Wharton's answer to the question, "Do you believe in ghosts?" in the preface to this collection: “I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them.”

                           The cover of a first edition copy of Ghosts. You can have it for $2,500.

In her biography, Life and I, published posthumously, Wharton explains that this fear of ghosts emerged after she read a ghost story during convalescence from an illness at the age of nine: "To an unimaginative child the tale would no doubt have been harmless, . . .[but] with my intense Celtic sense of the super-natural, tales of robbers & ghosts were perilous reading.” Wharton, thanks to reading this story, entered "a world haunted by formless horrors.” She continued to be "haunted' into adulthood, even though she had no paranormal experiences--only the experience of reading about ghosts.

I understand how this could happen. When I was 16, I read a collection of ghost stories from New England folklore, and got scared senseless--for a week. Then, as the memory of these tales faded, ghosts went off my radar for a couple of decades. (Obviously, I do not have Wharton's powerful imagination.) Then, coming to the realization that my family and I were living in a proverbial haunted Victorian house, ghosts were brought to my attention again. However, after experiencing quite a few inexplicable events over the years, my daughters and I became more nonplussed than scared. (I plan to write up these experiences in future blog posts.)  When I heard footsteps or witnessed a TV turning on in the middle of the night, my reaction was not, "Aieee!", but "WTF?" On the other hand, some of my daughter's friends who came to check on our pets when we were out of town understandably got freaked out when they heard footsteps in the upper hallway when no one was there.

                     A ghost photoshopped into an image of a staircase in a wrecked Minneapolis mansion.

A couple who told me very scary stories about their haunted house (where I, too, had a ghostly experience), when asked, said they did not believe in ghosts. Perhaps denying their existence made it easier to cope with the very strange goings-on. My father, who also was not a believer, nevertheless told stories about his experiences in the auditorium in Woodlawn School and stories about a fellow actor who haunted the old Pittsburgh Playhouse. My Aunt Estella, another non-believer, told me of an eerie experience on the death of a relative. 

Some non-believers are willing to suspend disbelief to hear a good story; other non-believers scoff at and ridicule believers. ("She must have been drunk", "He's a nutcase," etc.) Others just don't care one way or the other.

Of course, many believers who have not had any paranormal experiences desperately want to believe. They watch TV programs about "investigations"; they go to allegedly haunted locations to see if they can have an experience. Many don't have experiences, and some, I suspect, want to believe so badly that they start "seeing things."

                                                    An old wing in Eastern State Penitentiary

I have never been to a Halloween haunted house, but I have visited one of the allegedly most haunted locations in the US, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. On a lovely summer day my friend Jay-Louise and I did a tour of this historic prison, where inmates once lived in horrific conditions. We'd heard some of the ghost stories about this place; we learned the history as we walked through its corridors. If a place should be haunted, Eastern State should be. We didn't have any paranormal experiences, but I admit to getting the heebie-jeebies in some of the cells and walkways in this crumbling, dark edifice. 

I have been to other places that creeped me out, most recently a house on a architectural tour. As I walked through the house, I felt more and more uneasy, but said nothing. It had a nasty odor. The rooms seemed dark, even on that sunny day. As we hastily exited, my companion commented, "I couldn't wait to get out of that place. Horrible!" An earlier visitor had a similar experience, going so far as to say that the house should be torn down. Others, however, thought the house was cool. Who's to say?

Duluth's "Haunted Ship", the William A. Irvin. Is it really haunted? You can try to find out for yourself during one of the October "Haunted" tours.

If you haven't had any ghostly encounters, but want to experience them in their most intense forms, I recommend reading literary ghost stories. You can get thrills and chills from the comfort of your home by reading Wharton's "Old Souls", Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw," or Ellen Glasgow's "Jordan's End"--or so many others from Dickens to Shakespeare. 

                 Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost (although no one else does) Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4

MACBETH, to the Ghost 
Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee.
Thy bones are marrowless; thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with.

 

Leave the lights on.

Answering Disservice

 It's October, and time once again to tell ghost stories. This story is among the ones I collected in the 1980s.

Sharon lived alone in an apartment in a Minneapolis suburb. She had two daughters, one of which lived in the same apartment building and another married one who lived a few miles away.

Over the initial months Sharon lived in this apartment, several inexplicable incidents occurred. A couple of times when she was running bath water, the taps were turned off when she was in the next room. On other occasions, burners on the gas range had been turned off or on while she was cooking. Since these incidents caused no damage and didn't seem to be dangerous, Sharon ignored them.

 

Then, something occurred that she couldn't ignore. One evening she left the apartment to visit her married daughter. From the parking lot, she waved to her other daughter who happened to be looking out from her apartment in the same building. While she was en route to her second daughter's house, that daughter called her mother's apartment to remind her to bring something. The phone was answered--at least it sounded like someone had picked up the receiver--but then dropped back on the hook immediately afterward. The daughter tried calling again, but got a busy signal.

Fearing that her mother might be injured or taken ill, she called her sister at the apartment building, who told her that she had seen their mother drive off about ten minutes earlier. The daughter at the apartment building tried calling, got a busy signal, and then dialed the police. The police arrived shortly thereafter and used the daughter's key to get into her mother's apartment. To everyone's surprise, the apartment appeared to be untouched and deserted. All was as it had been--except that the phone receiver in the bedroom was dangling on its cord over the side of the night stand.

The officers searched everywhere in the apartment, through the closets, under furniture, even in the clothes dryer ("in case of very small burglars'), but found nothing, no person or animal. The windows were  shut tight and there was no sign of forced entry. They all were dumbfounded to explain how the receiver could be lifted, replaced on the hook, and then dropped over the side of the table. As the search ended, one of the policemen began humming the theme from "The Twilight Zone." He had apparently concluded that no flesh-and-blood person had been in the apartment since Sharon had left earlier that evening.

After the phone incident, Sharon started to wonder if she was sharing her place with an unseen person, a person who was getting miffed at being ignored for the past several months. Sharon decided that possibly the ghost was saying, "Hello, I'm here, Now you know for sure."

 

The Most Haunted House in Minnesota

 

                                               A dining area in Forepaugh's before it closed.

We're coming up on October, and it's time to resume telling ghost stories. A couple of weeks ago a story was circulating online naming Forepaugh's Restaurant in St. Paul as the "most haunted" house in Minnesota.  The story was out of date, Forepaugh's having been permanently closed in 2019 after the tragic death of their executive chef from the flu at the age of 32.

                                                  The exterior of the 1870 Forepaugh House

Nevertheless, I will not quibble with the assessment that Forepaugh's is haunted. The architectural researcher who wrote up the history of the house for the owners when it opened in 1976, told me of a weird experience he had in the upper room allegedly haunted by a maid: the smell of perfume, guttering candles. When he gave me a tour of the place, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but I admit parts of the place felt uncomfortable to be in.

Plenty of ghost stories have circulated about the restaurant, which was named after the first owner of the 1870 mansion. (You can google them if you like.) However, if we are to judge how haunted a house is by the number of stories told about it, one house immediately stands out: the 1883 Chauncey Griggs House at 476 Summit Avenue in St. Paul. Tenants were telling about ghostly experiences back from the time it was an art school. But one owner, Carl Weschke, publisher of books on the paranormal, put the house on the "most haunted" map.

                      The literally spooky Chauncey Griggs House (Photo: Marriot-Bonvoy Tours)

During the winter of 1969, Weschke invited three skeptics from the St. Paul Pioneer Press to spend a night in the house to investigate the rumors that the place was haunted. They didn't last the night.

The newsmen, two reporters and a cameraman, set up two cameras and a tape recorder at the top of the stairs and fourth floor hall, where a lovelorn maid had hanged herself decades before. When the men each went out into the well-lighted hall, they became inexplicably overcome with fear and quickly retreated to their room. From there, they heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. The bravest of them crept down the hallway and looked down the stairwell. Although he could see nothing, he was overcome with the sense of a strong presence. Even though they had several hours to go with their vigil, the newsmen decided they'd seen (or not seen) enough and beat a hasty retreat down the stairs with their equipment. 

                                The lower part of the infamous staircase in the Griggs House.

As with Forepaugh's, stories about the house are legion. The Chauncey Griggs House (not to be confused with the 1874 Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House further down Summit Avenue) is always included on the haunted house tours of Summit Avenue. Apparently, there were many ghostly shenanigans in the 1950s when it was a art school. Students reported hearing footsteps, doors opening and closing, lights going off and on. 

The stories I heard firsthand were at a gathering at the Weyerhaeuser Theater in St. Paul in the 1990s. People were invited to tell ghost stories to assist playwright Lance Belville, who was writing a play about a haunted old house. Architectural researcher Jim Sazevich and I warmed up the group of 25 or so gathered on the stage by telling some of our stories, and then the audience was invited to tell their tales.

Three people told accounts of incidents at the Chauncey-Griggs House. One person told of what felt like a gloved hand being pressed against her throat in the middle of the night when she lived there as a student. Another said that his uncle, who lived in a basement unit, told of many nocturnal disturbances, such as whispering and the sound of footsteps.

The firsthand account by a man who lived in the neighborhood in the 1960s was the most memorable. One day he and two friends, twelve-year-olds eager for adventure, decided to explore the Griggs House carriage house. Although it was daylight, when the boys entered the barn, they immediately felt gloom surround them. They crept along, peering into the darkness. When he reached the end of the passage, the boy turned around. To his horror, he saw a tall black figure in a cape blocking out the sunlight from the entrance. His friends were behind the figure, and they fled the way they had come in. He, however, was trapped between the apparition and the hay mow door behind him. There was a single-story drop to the ground from the hay mow. Should he try to get by the towering dark figure or jump? He jumped. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured in the fall, but after that, he and his friends stayed well clear of the Chauncey Griggs House.

I've heard other stories about the house besides the ones told at the Weyerhaeuser. One of the most chilling stories I've heard, period, comes secondhand from a former owner of the Griggs House. One night she decided to stay up reading in the library while the rest of family was upstairs in bed. It was a winter night, very still. She was puzzled when her reading was interrupted by what sounded like someone breathing softly. As she sat curled in her chair, the sound of breathing grew louder. She tried to ignore it, but it swelled until within a minute or so, it sounded like the house itself was breathing. Terrified, she threw down her book and ran up the stairs to her bedroom without stopping to turn out the lights.

A Ghost Story from Powis Castle, Wales

Whenever I visit an historic site, I try to ask the docents if they've heard any ghost stories about the place. I specifically ask for stories, not if the site is haunted. Sometimes this doesn't turn out well, as during a tour of Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior's North Shore. I knew that there were well known stories of the place being haunted by a past lighthouse keeper, but wanted to find out if the people on site had any stories to tell. But when I asked the docent, he nearly blew a gasket. "No!" he huffed. "No ghosts." End of inquiry. I deduce that he had had about enough of would-be ghost hunters asking about the haunting and wanting to do investigations. I can understand his irritation.

However, when I asked the docent at Powis Castle, Wales, if she'd heard any ghost stories about the palace, her response was quite different. According to the National Trust, which owns the property, the castle and garden you see today reflects the changing ambitions and visions of the Herbert family, who occupied the castle from the 1570s. The oldest parts of the castle were built by a Welsh prince - Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn - (c1252), so it's no surprise that ghostly legends have sprung up about it. 

The most famous is the story of an old woman who stayed in one of the bedrooms in 1780. There are several variations, but the basic story is that she claimed a man in a gold-laced suit entered her room and led her through the castle to find a hidden chest and key. Hidden treasures and ghosts, what could be more exciting in a legend? 

                        The  rather spooky state bedroom at Powis Castle, not available on AirBnB

But I wanted to know if the people who worked there had any stories to tell. Yes, she said. The ballroom, which is located in the 1741 addition, was apparently haunted.  Several castle employees, including herself, had clearly heard footsteps sounding in the ballroom after hours. When the castle is open to visitors, many people walk through the rooms on tours. But when it's closed, especially after dark, she said it was unsettling to hear the footsteps sounding in the huge, empty ballroom. Also, people have reported that they heard the piano being played in the ballroom, and once, the piano had been moved several feet during the night when no one was in that building.

                                                     The ballroom. Photo: National Trust

These recent stories are not nearly as detailed or exciting as the old legends, but they reveal that ghostlore is still alive and well in the 21st century.

Sleeping with the Light On

 

                                                      Colfax Avenue in South Minneapolis

One of the first stories I collected was from two musicians that had rented the first floor of a large converted house on Colfax Avenue in Minneapolis's Wedge neighborhood. Frank had a year's lease on the apartment, and he shared it with his friend David--who stayed there for only five months. 

One night David, who worked nights, came home to find the light on in Frank's room. Frank told him that he was awakened in the middle of the night by a "presence" at the foot of his bed. This presence awakened Frank a number of times during his tenancy at the house.

From the front door to the kitchen stretched a long hallway. David said that when he walked down the hall, he sometimes experienced a "creepy, tingly feeling in the spine" when he passed by the doorway to Frank's room. After he moved out, David wondered if he was hallucinating this feeling because he knew about Frank's experiences. But when he told his wife and another friend about this sensation two years later, they both said that they also had had a creepy feeling in this hallway--although none of them mentioned it to the others.

Both roommates felt that there was a lot of unusual house noise, including a loud unexplained bang in the middle of the night. One night while Frank was in his room with the light on, David tried to lure out the ghost by playing his drum set, but nothing happened.

David asked a neighbor, Jerry Trigg, who lived down the block, about the former occupants of their apartment. Jerry told him that the owners, an elderly couple, used to live in the downstairs unit. Their bedroom had been the room that Frank was staying in, and the wife had died in that room.

Neither roommate saw anything; they only felt a ghostly presence and heard unexplained noises. When he moved out, Frank commented that "there are too many ghosts in this house."

 

The house has undergone an impressive restoration since Frank and David lived there. These incidents occurred many years ago, and it's likely that the haunting has faded or completely disappeared. Nevertheless, whenever I pass by the house, I can't help wondering if the former owner is still hanging out in the first floor apartment. I hope not.

The Phantom of the Organ

 Organ music (like Bach's "D-Minor Toccata and Fugue") has been often used for spooky effect in film and on radio. One of the best known examples is the phantom playing the organ in "The Phantom of the Opera."

                  Claude Rains playing the organ in the 1943 version of "The Phantom of the Opera"

Of course, in that story, the phantom is not actually a phantom, but a live person. I've heard, however, of a real organ-playing ghost in an old Minneapolis church.

Joyce Memorial Methodist Church (cum Joyce United Methodist Church) sits on the corner of Fremont Avenue and W. 31st Street in South Minneapolis. Built in 1907, it was named after a Methodist Episcopal bishop who died in 1905. In 2020 the church, no longer used as a place of worship, was designated a local landmark. Designed by architects Harry Downs and Harold Eads, the California Mission Revival style church looks somewhat out of place in this snowy northern city.

                                                        Joyce Memorial Methodist in 1953

Back in the 1980s when the building was still being used as a church, one of my neighbors, a member of the congregation, passed on to me stories that the custodian and members of the church council had told her.

One night as the custodian was alone in the church, working in the basement, he was startled to hear  organ music burst from the sanctuary. He doubted that it could be mischievous kids because the instrument was being played with great skill and confidence.

He couldn't imagine who had gotten into the sanctuary without his knowledge, so he bounded upstairs to find out. The instant his hand touched the door to the sanctuary, the music stopped dead. The empty church was in darkness; all was still. The puzzled custodian flipped on the lights and went to check the organ console. It was closed and locked. No one could have had the time to turn it off, lock it, and leave the sanctuary in the few seconds between when he opened the door and turned on the lights. A few months later, the same thing occurred. The custodian heard similar bold, vigorous organ music pouring from the sanctuary, which was locked, dark, and deserted. 

He wasn't the only one who heard the music. Several parishioners had also reported hearing pipe organ music from the street as they were leaving the church after a meeting at night. The sanctuary was in total darkness at the time.

My neighbor and other older parishioners speculated that the phantom organist was the clergyman the church was named in honor of, Bishop Isaac Wilson Joyce. They said that Joyce was renowned as a superb organist, although music remained an avocation throughout his life. He had the hymn "No, Not One" from the 1896 Methodist hymnal translated into Chinese and Japanese in an apparent evangelical effort.
 

                                                           Isaac Wilson Joyce (1836-1905)

No one knows for sure who the ghost was who played the Joyce Church organ, but the story passed on by the church elders fits as well as any.

Click for the piano version of "No, Not One!":

Piano version, "There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No, not one"

Down the Hatch

 Some people are reluctant to tell their personal ghost stories, even upon request. For whatever reason, they will acknowledge that they have a story, but will refuse to tell it. Perhaps they don't want to add to their confusion or fright by trying to articulate what they experienced; perhaps they wish they hadn't experienced it and are trying to block it out of their memory.

In some cases this is probably for the best. One man complained to me about midnight disruptions to his sleep after moving into an 1890's house in my Minneapolis neighborhood. But he refused to give details, explaining that he really didn't want to think about it. Unbeknownst to him, neighbors had told me that several years previous to his moving in, a landlord had settled a rent dispute with a tenant in the house by blasting him with a shotgun, killing him instantly. Eventually, the new owner learned of the incident from the neighbors, who were initially reluctant to spook him with the story. A couple of decades later, I had my own experiences in that house after it was acquired by new owners.

                                            

The reportedly haunted historic Gibbs Farmhouse in St. Paul

Another reluctant storyteller told me his story, even though I never met him in person. One winter afternoon in early 1980s after I had posted a notice in local libraries soliciting ghost stories, my phone rang. The voice on the other end was a man's. He sounded harried and nervous. He gave his name, adding that he was an attorney who worked in downtown Minneapolis. He had seen the notice in the library during a lunchtime visit that day. As it turned out, his main concern was not, he said, telling his story, but getting some relief from the uncanny incidents occurring in the house that he and his family had moved into earlier that year.

 Their house was an old farmhouse in a far western suburb of Minneapolis. The family liked the house and everything about it--with one exception: the hatch covering to the attic kept coming open. It was a standard hatch cover which fitted over an opening just large enough for a person to climb through. During the summer months he and his wife often found the cover slightly off-kilter. They'd put it straight, only to find it askew a day or two later.

When the days grew cooler in the fall, he filled the attic with insulation in preparation for the long Minnesota winter. When the heating season started, he and his wife began to get annoyed, then upset, when they'd repeatedly find the hatch open, allowing heat to escape into the attic. It became routine for them to make sure the hatch cover was shut tight before they went to bed. Despite this precaution, in the morning, they frequently found the cover askew. They never heard a sound; they never actually saw it move. But there it was, partially open, virtually every day.

After going through this futile exercise for several weeks, the man decided to nail the cover shut. That would fix it, once and for all. He attached the cover to the molding with a series of long, sturdy nails and went to bed happily expecting never to have to deal with this cover movement again. Needless to say, he was aghast when he found the hatch in the upper hallway open, just as before.

It was then that he and his wife began to entertain the idea that the cover was being moved by something paranormal. They wondered if their house might be haunted by a ghost that didn't care a tinker's damn about big heating bills.

At this point the man's brother, who lives a great distance from Minnesota and whom he hadn't seen for ten years, phoned. His reason for calling was startling: The brother told them that he felt they had a "presence" in their attic, and that he was going to exorcise it for one year. But despite the brother's assurances, the cover to the attic refused to stay put.

Shortly thereafter, they had an unannounced visitor whose mysterious innuendoes changed their irritation to alarm. One weekend a man appeared at the front door. He appeared to be in his 30s, an unkempt and disheveled character. As they chatted on the front stoop, he told them that he had lived in the house as a child, and as he happened to be in the neighborhood, he decided to stop by. Then, with an insinuating smile, he asked if "it" was still there.

 The sly inquiry upset the attorney, who pretended not to understand. The visitor went on to say that when he lived there, a "thing" inhabiting the attic had caused his family distress. As a child, he was so impressed by this unseen thing's activities that he felt compelled to stop and ask them about it.

The attorney was shaken by the man's story, for it confirmed his suspicions that something paranormal was at work. He resolved that the "thing" had opened the hatch once too often, and that he was going to get rid of it--although he didn't know where to begin.

As if in answer to his need to banish the "thing", he had found my notice in the library. Could I help them? Reluctantly, I told him that I am a story collector, not a ghost buster. Hearing this, the man was crestfallen. He had poured out the story to a stranger who couldn't do anything but listen. He hung up.

I feel bad that I didn't try to help them. If he had called a year later, I would have been able to suggest resources to check out. When people ask me what they can do about their haunting, I tell them that the first thing to try is to talk to the ghost. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. In this case, I suspect it wouldn't because the "thing" had been around for so long and seemed malevolent.

                                                         Who you gonna call?

The Haunted Hallway

Just for fun, on Halloween I used to tell ghost stories to my students at Normandale College, where I taught English. Inevitably, every year a student or two would share their stories with me. One of the most dramatic was from a young woman who had a very unsettling experience while waiting for her father at his office in St. Paul, Minnesota.

                                      An old photo of houses on St. Paul's Summit Avenue

The office was on the first floor of a Victorian house on historic Summit Avenue. The entire ground floor was office space; the second floor was an apartment inhabited at the time of the incident by a young couple. Emily, the student, had arrived at the office in late afternoon on a cold winter's day. Emily and her father had planned to meet there to go out to dinner together.

The last vestiges of daylight were fading as Emily let herself into the office. She sat at her father's desk in the front room and began to read. She had been reading only a few minutes when out of the corner of her eye she sensed something moving by the door to the hallway. She glanced over at the door just in time to see it swinging shut. Emily's first thought as she rose from the chair was that her father or some other tenant had entered the building and was waiting in the hallway.

Curious, Emily crossed the room, opened the door, and leaned into the hallway. To her surprise, she could hear muffled voices coming from a room down the hall. It sounded like several people were talking and laughing in the room. Yet when she opened the door to that room, it was completely still, dark--and vacant.

Emily stood by the door for a moment, puzzling over the source of the voices. But she didn't have long to ponder, for from the front end of the long hallway she heard heavy, deliberate footsteps coming toward her. Emily stared in the direction of the sound, but could see no one, just an empty hallway. The sound of the footsteps kept coming nearer--slowly, and as it seemed to her, menacingly.

Emily began to beat a hasty retreat toward the back end of the hallway. As she hotfooted it to the door at the end, she kept glancing over her shoulder. The hallway appeared to be empty, yet the footsteps continued ever closer. When she reached the rear door (which led to the basement), the terrifying episode reached a climax. The instant before she reached for the door knob, she could feel the oak floorboards underneath her feet sag slightly, as if someone's weight were pressing down on the boards right behind her.

Close to panicking, Emily pushed open the basement door, hurtled over the threshold, and slammed the door closed behind her. Fearing that the invisible visitor might pursue her, she half-tumbled down the stairs into the basement. With trembling hands she dialed her grandmother's number on the extension phone down there. She was greatly relieved to hear her grandmother's voice on the other end. Looking anxiously up the staircase, she recounted to her grandmother the series of incidents that had just occurred. Her grandmother was very reassuring and sympathetic, and Emily felt calmer simply hearing her voice. While they talked, Emily could still hear the deliberate, ominous footsteps on the wooden floor overhead, slowly crossing and recrossing the hallway and office areas. 

Emily knew that her father was due to arrive any minute, and her coat and backpack were upstairs in his office. Needless to say, under the circumstances, she was not going to venture up the stairs to retrieve them. Finally, after talking to her grandmother for about ten minutes, Emily heard the front door open upstairs and father's quick tread as he entered his office.

Emily hung up the phone and dashed up the stairs and down the hallway. Breathlessly, she poured out to her father the story of the unseen pursuer. However, unlike her grandmother, her father was not impressed. To her dismay, he just laughed and replied, "Well, the next time you run into this guy, please collect rent from him. We can't have anyone hanging around rent-free."

Like many ghost stories, this one has an epilogue. Shortly after this incident, the couple who lived upstairs in the house told Emily that during the few months they had lived there, they occasionally heard footsteps. And on one very scary night, they were awakened to find a tall shadowy figure at the foot of their bed. It vanished when they turned on the lights. 

Emily was crestfallen that her dad made light of her story, but she was heartened that her grandma and the tenants believed her. Since that day, Emily has never ventured back into that old house by herself, nor has she had the slightest inclination of trying to collect rent from the heavy-footed invisible tenant.

Does "Coke Add Life"? Inquiring Ghosts Want to Know.

 

Not all ghosts exhibit conventional ghostly behavior such as turning lights on and off, making sounds at night, or putting in translucent appearances. One such anomalous ghost inhabited the Chicago house once occupied the family of Sara, an executive secretary for a big Twin Cities corporation.

Not long after Sara and her husband moved into a 1920's bungalow with their three children, the first unexplainable event occurred. One Sunday morning the whole family left for church together, and, according to custom, they let out the cat and locked up the house. When they returned a few hours later, the house was still locked, but the cat was inside. They had thought they had left the cat outside, but perhaps they were mistaken.

The family promptly forgot about this incident, but recalled it with a jolt a couple of weeks later when it happened again: they left the house together with the cat outside. When they returned, the cat was inside. Nothing was disturbed, not even the cat, which seemed completely normal.

For a few weeks the family was left to puzzle over the cat's mysterious space transfers. Then an even more curious incident occurred. Because they don't drink much soda, they usually kept only one large bottle of Coca-Cola, from which portions could be poured into glasses. This bottle was stored capped under the kitchen sink.

                                                          A Coke print ad from 1976.

One day the parents and kids once again left the house, returning after a short while. When they entered the kitchen, lo and behold, the pop bottle stood on the table, empty. The parents accused the kids of polishing off the Coke and leaving the drained bottle, but each of the children indignantly denied doing any such thing. The more the parents pressed for a confession, the more irate the kids became. In the end, the subject was dropped, although each member of the family secretly assumed that one of them had done it as a prank.

Several weeks later an even more astounding variation of this incident took place. Again, as a group the family left the house for several hours. This time, when they came home, an empty Coke bottle sat on the coffee table in the living room--with an empty glass beside it.

                                     A 1960's ad. You can't beat the Real Thing if you're unreal. 

Recriminations flew. Someone had to be tricking the rest. But each member of the family denied it in turn. After all, one of the kids pointed out, since they had all left together at the same time, when would they have had the opportunity to drain the bottle, move it, and set out the glass? Moreover, why would they want to? Sara and her husband had to agree that the incident certainly was odd.

Unfortunately, there is no denouement to this story. Over the half dozen years they lived in this house, the strange transferences of cat and bottles happened several times each. After the first incidents, Sara and her husband started to refer to the unseen mover as their "ghost", although Sara (even though she told me this story) still hesitates to apply that label. She feels more comfortable thinking about it as an unsolved mystery. 

Sara brought up a tantalizing question: If a disembodied ghost did indeed drink the Coke, where did the liquid go? And then again, how can a ghost unlock, open, let in a cat, and relock the door?

I propose an answer to this mystery: In their 1976 ad campaign, the Coca Cola Company chose "Coke adds life" as their new advertising slogan. The ghost took this ad to heart, and consumed this presumed elixir of life. As for letting in the cat, you can puzzle that one out for yourself.

                                                        Creepy "Sprite Boy" from the 1940s.

More Balls O' Fire

 The appearance of glowing orbs or balls of fire, as in the Methodist church parsonage, are a common story among ghost hunters. A Google search will show dozens of photos and videos of orbs in allegedly haunted locations.

                 A photo of allegedly ghostly orbs from a debunker website, "American Hauntings"

I heard a story about phenomena similar to the fireballs in the parsonage from Gretchen Quie, wife of Minnesota governor Al Quie (1979-83). She said that in the upper hallway of her grandparents' Minnesota farmhouse, incandescent balls of fire would briefly appear, bounce off the walls, and then vanish. Her description of their size and the eerie glow they emanated resembled the minister's description--except the former made no noise. Mrs. Quie said that the family had no explanation for the orbs, but since they appeared infrequently and didn't disturb anyone, they were mostly a curiosity. 

Another orb-related story, a more sinister one, came from a young Twin Cities journalist. Between jobs one summer he was staying with a friend, sleeping in the attic room of a early 1900's foursquare in South Minneapolis. He slept in the sparsely furnished room only a few nights, but it was a memorable sojourn.

The first night, as he lay on the mattress on the floor in the sweltering heat, a glowing sphere about the size of a baseball suddenly appeared overhead. He watched it curiously as it circled around the room, vanishing after about a minute. The next night he saw it again, an encore performance he would have preferred to skip. The third night he awoke in the middle of the night to see a shadowy figure standing in the corner of the dimly lit room. Afraid to move or speak, the young man lay there in the darkness, watching the motionless figure. After a few moments, the form disappeared.

The journalist left his friend's house the next morning, deciding that it was time to find a place to sleep minus eerie disturbances.

As I was writing up these stories about orbs, it triggered a memory of an experience I had on a trip to Germany in the 1960s. My dad, my cousin George (who was stationed at an Army base in Germany at the time), and I were touring historical sites along the Rhine. 

One night we stayed at a B&B in an 18th-century house. Mine was a small basement room with a narrow bed set between an ancient armoire and a windowless wall.

                               An early 18th century house similar to the place where we stayed.

I climbed into bed, turned off the light via the pull chain over the bed, pulled up the duvet, and closed my eyes. I was dozing off when something prompted me to open my eyes. There, overhead, was a swarm of little glowing orbs, swirling around in a cloud over the bed. I blinked, wondering if I was seeing things. At first I thought they might be bugs, but as I watched the glowing orbs, I grew increasingly alarmed. I'd never seen anything like this weird swarm of lights. What in the world were they? 

Panicky, I sat up in bed, my hand searching in the darkness for the pull chain. It was probably only a few seconds, but it felt much longer before I found the chain and yanked on it. The "bugs" vanished. Looking around the room with the light on, I couldn't find anything that might be the source of the orbs. Fearing that they might return if I turned off the light, I slept with it on.

The next morning I said nothing to Dad and George about the orbs. In fact, I never told this story to anyone until now.

Not-So-Great Balls O' Fire

The haunted rectory in "Dead Ringer" was a grand old house that once had servants to care for the inhabitants. This story concerns a relatively new house that served as a parsonage. "John," a Methodist minister, told me this ghost story from the 1960s, when he was fresh out of seminary. 

That summer he took a position as interim pastor for a church in a small town about 100 miles west of the Twin Cities. His predecessor there had been at that church only one year; the congregation was awaiting the arrival of a permanent minister in September.

 

                                                The main street of the town in the 1940s

John had not visited the town before he pulled his car up in front of the church on a hot June afternoon. Several parishioners greeted him and showed him to the parsonage down the street from the church. Although the church was turn-of-the-century, the parsonage was a relatively recent structure, less than a decade old. The two-story house was the pride of the congregation, for it had been built by a cooperative effort of various parishioners, who had each contributed in their way--labor, skill, materials, or financing.

As a member of the welcoming committee pushed open the front door to let John enter the house, the minister felt a rush of cold air pour past him. "How wonderful," he remarked gratefully. "It's air-conditioned." The man at the door gave John a sharp look. "Why, no," he replied. "It's just well insulated, I guess."

 The parishioners helped John bring in his luggage, and he spent the rest of the day getting his books and other belongings organized. Later that evening, John wearily crawled into bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms, turned out the bedside light, and closed his eyes. He hadn't been lying there for more than a few seconds when he was startled by popping noises overhead, somewhat like someone snapping their fingers.

He opened his eyes and saw softly glowing globes about the size of ping-pong balls floating by the ceiling, and these balls were emitting the popping sounds. They circled in the air for about ten seconds before being abruptly dispatched with a loud bang similar to the sound of a balloon bursting.

Fumbling in his haste, John snapped on the light and looked around the room. He couldn't believe what he had just seen. He wasn't exactly terrified, but he certainly was unsettled. Minutes passed in the silent house. As his anxiety slowly ebbed, he turned out the light and eased his head back onto the pillow. As he lay there in the darkness, he worried that the popping fireballs would come back. But all remained quiet, and he gradually fell into a deep sleep.

In the bright light of the next morning he tried to puzzle out what he had seen over his bed--light from outside, dream, hallucination, ball lightning? The incident was certainly weird, whatever the cause.

John wasn't thinking about fireballs that night when he switched out the lamp and rolled over to sleep. But his attention snapped back to them as they suddenly reappeared over the bed, whirling and popping. After a brief display, they again disappeared with a bang. John leaped out of bed and checked the room--the windows, the doors, the lights--but couldn't find any likely source for the phenomenon.

When the fireballs visited him again the next night and the next, John began to wonder if the spooky little fireworks display was going to be a nightly occurrence. It was. Each night was the same: glowing orbs would circle over his bed for 10 seconds or so before they'd disappear with an abrupt bang.

John was beginning to come to the conclusion that some paranormal force was at work. To reinforce this conclusion, John had observed that the house always seemed cool, even downright chilly, no matter how hot and sultry it got outside. Then came the clincher. He was downstairs reading one evening when he heard footsteps overhead. He cautiously climbed the stairs, wondering who had gotten into the house without him noticing. Yet when he looked into the bedrooms, no one was there.

As the days stretched into weeks, the glowing balls continued their daily nocturnal appearances. John began to anticipate their regular performances. They became more of an annoyance than a source of alarm. When they'd arrive on cue after he turned out the bedside lamp, he'd lie resignedly in bed waiting for them to leave him in peace. The unexplained noises continued as well, although there was no set pattern for these. Sometimes he'd hear footsteps; sometimes he'd hear the floor or furniture creaking.

John wondered about the previous occupants of the house, but he was reluctant to be too specific in his questions to the parishioners. For one, the official position of the denomination at that time was decidedly anti-ghost. Such things don't exist. Period. For another, the parishioners had built the house with their own hands. How could he suggest that this labor of love was, well, haunted?

                                      A 1950's two-story house model similar to the parsonage.

John ventured to ask a couple of parishioners about "unusual" incidents associated with the parsonage, but he learned little from these inquiries. The situation was tolerable for John because it was for the summer only. He couldn't help but speculate, however, about why the previous minister stayed only one year. And what would happen when the next minister moved in? Would the balls of fire visit him as well?

In July John's sister came for a weekend visit. Not wanting to unduly alarm her, he had told her nothing about the strange occurrences at the parsonage. As it turned out, he didn't have to tell her. The minute she set foot in the house, she exclaimed, "How can you stay here! This house really gives me the creeps." She wasn't at all surprised when he told her about the spooky goings-on he'd experienced.

At the end of the summer, John moved out, breathing a sigh of relief that he didn't have to deal with the fireballs and footsteps anymore. The next summer he learned that the incoming minister hadn't even lasted the year out.

                   

The Man Who Wasn't There

                      Last night I saw upon the stair,
                      A little man who wasn't there,
                      He wasn't there again today
                      Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

                                            --from 'Antigonish' by Hughes Mearns

While visiting an historic Ohio River city on a Victorian Society architectural tour, I visited an art historian who worked for a museum there. She told me this story that she heard from the night security guard at the mansion, who related it to the administrators as it unfolded.

                                                                                                                          The house in the 1950s

A daytime visitor to the 1840's Greek Revival house would probably find nothing spooky about it--a sunny, spacious house with broad hallways and open staircases. The night watchman, however, knows a different house. His story begins several weeks after he started working there. 

                                      The original security system for the house: metal bars

The museum, which houses artifacts and objets d'art worth millions of dollars, is guarded by an electronic alarm system. In addition, sensitive microphones are placed in every room to pick up sounds of an intruder during the hours that the museum is closed. From a room in the basement, the night guard listens to the sounds received by the microphones. During training he was given instructions that if he heard anything suspicious, he was not to investigate on his own, but immediately to call the police.

                                                        The museum dining room

For a while the nights passed uneventfully for the guard. Then, one night he heard the sound of footsteps from the microphones in the second floor hallway. He listened carefully. Yes, someone definitely was walking around up there. Had someone broken into the building, somehow bypassing the alarm system? The watchman pressed the red button that automatically summoned the police.

                                        One of the lighting fixtures in the large entrance hall. 

In a matter of minutes, spotlights flooded the building and grounds; squad cars drove up and screeched to a halt outside the building. Weapons in hand, the police charged into the house. . . and found no one. The guard was flabbergasted. He had heard footsteps; he was certain. 

He took the police officers to the guard station and played back that night's recording of the sounds the microphones had picked up. Sure enough, there was the sound of footsteps, clear and distinct, from the hallway. The police were as nonplussed as the guard.. They conducted a second search of the museum complex and grounds, but found no trace of an intruder. The police unit drove off, leaving the embarrassed guard to puzzle over the mysterious sound of footfalls.

Several more weeks passed uneventfully. This time, sensors picked up a sound in a third floor storage area, the sound of a baby crying. The watchman couldn't believe his ears. How could a baby get up there? Why would a baby be up there?

Since the crying was coming from a part of the house where no valuable objects were kept, the guard decided to check it out for himself. He went up to the third floor and stealthily approached the door to the storage area. Gun drawn, the guard carefully unlocked the door, threw it open, and switched on the lights. Nothing. Silence. Dead still. He searched the area, but found nothing--no baby, no animal, no living thing.

A few weeks later, another incident occurred. Again, the sound of someone walking in the second floor hallway came from the microphones. This time the guard chose not to call the police. No exterior alarm had sounded, and the guard did not want to turn in another false alarm.

                                                                   The main staircase

Quietly, he made his way from the basement, into the house, and up the main staircase to the hallway where he had heard footsteps. Holding his breath, he stopped at the top of the staircase and listened. All was quiet. He turned and began creeping slowly down the long, pitch-black hallway. He had gotten halfway down the hallway when he suddenly heard footsteps coming towards him. He froze. At that instant, to his horror, he felt someone brush past him, gently rubbing against his right arm. Whipping out his gun with one hand and turning on his flashlight with the other, he whirled around to face the intruder. But the beam of light fell on a deserted hallway. He was stunned, knowing it would have been impossible for someone to have gotten all the way to the staircase in the instant it took him to switch on the flashlight.

Heart pounding, the guard hastily turned on the lights and searched the area. All was in order. Shaken, but nevertheless glad that he did not call the police that time, the guard reluctantly concluded that he was dealing with something paranormal.

After that incident, the guard heard the baby crying several times, and sometimes even the sounds of children playing in that attic room, which, he learned, had been a playroom for the family that built the house many decades before.

The ghostly footsteps have not sounded again. The young guard was left with the dilemma of trying to decide which is more terrifying to him alone all night in the dark, silent mansion--an intruder that is there or an intruder that isn't.

                                                A window treatment in a main floor room.
 

Note: It's been many years since the guard had these experiences in the house. The woman who related these stories swore me to secrecy regarding the exact location of the house, for an obvious reason: The story offers an opportunity for a real, live thief to get in and make off with some priceless work of art. 

But today, the house has a sophisticated security system that monitors not only sounds, but includes a video IP system, touch detection, and intrusion alarms. Night guards don't have to physically check out parts of the house in order to know what's going on.

The fascinating part of this story is the unseen person making physical contact with the guard. Many people have heard ghostly footsteps, as I have myself, but very few have actually bumped into a ghost walking down a dark hallway.