I live in the house my father grew up in. I remember it as my grandparents’ home. The square newel post at the foot of the stairs reminded me of the tower of the First Parish Church in Plymouth
I was alone in the house on a dark, rainy afternoon shortly after I moved in when my grandfather’s phantom appeared on the lower landing of the stairs. He was wearing the conservative business suit he almost always had on.
“What are you doing here?” I said, forgetting in my astonishment to be afraid.
“I live here,” the specter said.
No you don’t, you’re dead.”
With that my grandfather disappeared, not with a slow fade, but an instantaneous vanishing. Only then did the chill set in.
Both my children, separately and without consulting one another, believed there was a ghost on the stairs. Part of the reason lay with the ghost shaped-shadow a lamp makes at the upper landing by the built-in shelf where I keep my poetry books. There is also the fact that, when the sun goes down and the temperature drops, the stairs sometimes creak. The sounds may seem to start at the bottom and ascend.
The stairs are built of blonde oak, and I mainly think of them as "the golden stairs.” When you live in a house long enough, every part becomes associated with memories. We would say to the children at a certain evening hour, "It's time to go up the golden stairs. When I use them, I remember ascending holding a little girl by the hand heading for bedtime stories and a long goodnight.
As for my sighting of my grandfather’s specter, it was a figment of my storyteller’s mind. Psychologically, it was an assertion of my right as one of the living to occupy the house in a style and manner of which he might not approve. Metaphysically, it never happened. I assure you that, as the spiritualists say, the house is clean. At least I think it is.
I don't think they build houses with newel posts like that anymore.
ReplyDeleteWe lived for 33 years in an 1890 victorian bought from an elderly "uncle"'s estate, which we, in turn sold to our daughter. She informed us, from early childhood: "When I am grown-up I will return to live in this house" ... and did.
ReplyDeleteFrank Steward, who had the house built (Uncle Ben's father-in-law), was a jewelry designer and hub and die cutter. He represented an Attleboro silver manufacturer at the Chicago Wold's Fair in 1890. While there, living in rented quarters hastily built upon a former city dump, he took ill. Returning to Attleboro by train, he struggled along the 7 min. walk home, and managed to get to his upstairs front bedroom in his newly finished house. He never left the room again, dying shortly thereafter leaving a wife and three daughters. He was the first to die in the house, his wife who lived quite some years more,was second. And his second daughter,Uncle Ben's wife, in her 80's was third.
Starting not long after we bought the house, I, my wife and our two children have had our brushes with ghosts. Sometimes creepy, none were ever threatening. We felt "watched over" by kind spirits, and always felt they approved of our "Stewardship" of their home.