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Nov 2008
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Living with a Ghost!
(a post Halloween communiqué)
From Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-Legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us.” (Cornish prayer)
“I don't believe in ghosts and I don't believe in haunted houses. There's no such thing.”
At least that's what I thought when we first moved to a historic old Army base in Kansas dating back to 1827 and I heard all the tales of the ghosts who supposedly inhabited various buildings. Amusing lore, but surely no one actually thought that those stories were true. Then we moved in with one.
Our newest home was one of four units in a converted artillery barracks and we were thrilled to have such a lovely, spacious place. The master bedroom was especially nice, our furniture fit perfectly and it looked inviting, yet for some reason I didn't seem to enjoy being in there. The hallway leading to our room backed up to the apartment next door and our youngest daughter had the room next to us, at the end of that hall. Gretel, our dog, adored her and followed her everywhere - but from the day we moved in Gretel refused to go down that hall; instead she would pace at the entrance and whimper until our daughter reappeared.
If you don't believe in ghosts in the first place, you don't think you are living with one, so discussing any vague feelings of discomfort or seeming oddities didn't come up in conversation; I didn't even want to admit to them. Then one night my husband commented that he didn't know why but he didn't seem to like going into our bedroom, he preferred to read in the living room until time for bed.
Not long after that I woke up in the middle of the night to find our older daughter standing by the bed staring at me. Alarmed, I asked what was wrong. She said she wanted to make sure I was all right, that she had a dream that I was in trouble. That dream and that scene repeated itself for weeks and nothing I could say could reassure her. She was increasingly anxious and I was increasingly concerned but tried to tell myself her behavior must have something to do with pre-teen angst.
Then our neighbors on the other side of the wall moved out and a new couple moved in. Joan knocked on the door one morning and asked if I had time for a cup of coffee. We chatted lightly for awhile and then she said she needed to ask me a question...had we experienced anything unusual or strange in our apartment? I felt a chill.
Joan and her husband had been hearing things at night and finding items rearranged and out of place every morning. Then their daughter came from college for a visit, sleeping in the room adjacent to our apartment. In the middle of the night she said she saw things flying around her room and heard voices. She slept on the couch for the next few days, insisting the apartment was haunted. Karen thought so, too, and after listening to her, I admitted my own discomfort. Perhaps I did believe in ghosts. Now that the subject was in the open we became aware of all sorts of things, whether real or imagined, and decided we wanted to move. Another set of quarters (military lingo for house) became available during the Christmas holidays and we seized the chance to leave, even though we had to move everything ourselves in 12 degrees below zero temperatures.
Once settled into our new address we felt a little foolish but relieved and tried to put the whole episode behind us. There were no ghosts here; maybe there really hadn't been any in the other house either. I was back to maintaining there really wasn't such a thing. Probably.
Several years and several assignments later we moved into an enormous old house on the Presidio of San Francisco. The third floor consisted of a huge attic, a bathroom and two bedrooms, the larger of which we furnished as a guest room with every possible amenity for comfort. The other room was at the end of the hall; it was far smaller, had a linoleum floor yet somehow seemed very inviting. I liked to go up there in the afternoon, sit in the rocking chair by the window and read.
Our first houseguest happened to be a priest and longtime friend who was almost a member of the family. He opted for the smaller room, assuring us he preferred it to the spacious one. The next morning he came cheerfully into the kitchen and said, “who is she?” Surprised that we didn't seem to know what he was talking about, he told us he had awakened in the night to sense a vague female presence in the rocking chair but that there was nothing frightening about her, that she seemed so peaceful and serene that he felt only peaceful himself. Since we apparently hadn't “met” her, our guest decided to call her Jennifer and Jennifer she remained.
During the two years that we lived there we had a lot of houseguests. Invariably, when I took them upstairs, they would exclaim at the lovely guest room but after peeking at the other room ask whether they could sleep there, instead. I came to realize that some people are attuned to awareness of spirits (if there is such a thing) while others are not. Some of our visitors actually mentioned having felt some feeling of serenity, others just liked the room. Our oldest daughter (the one who woke me up in Kansas) was by now a young adult. When she visited us in San Francisco for the first time she chose the cozy room, too. However the next morning she marched into the kitchen and demanded to know whether there as anything we should tell her. We hadn't mentioned the third floor issue to her, she made the discovery on her own but she wasn't at all disturbed by the “presence”.
So I suppose I do believe in ghosts, or spirits, or whatever word is appropriate. And, having lived with a frightening one, it was reassuring to know they can be friendly, as well. If you “Google” Ghosts at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas there are numerous articles to be found. I didn't find any about the Presidio being haunted but we know Jennifer was in our house and suspect she still is. The Presidio no longer belongs to the Army and that house is now the office of a non-profit agency. We visited it a few years ago and the staff cordially invited us to wander around. We met a nice young man who told us he had a choice of several rooms to work in but liked the tiny one tucked under the eaves on the third floor.
Anne Vargas vargasanne@hotmail.com