My husband has warned me that my extreme fondness for telling everything is not a good quality. He’s probably right. But, sometimes, it’s less stressful to tell the truth. Also I get a lot of exercise hopping around with my foot in my mouth. Well, the most recent fallout from my extreme honesty has to do with writing a cousin, on my father’s side, the family ghost story.
My husband tells me I should never talk about this story or write about this story because people will think I’m nuts. Once again, he’s probably right. After twenty-five years, I greatly respect his opinion. However, I do things differently. Besides, I’m using a pen name, right?
My grandmother, my mother’s mother, had a sort of ESP. It came out in various ways. First of all, she always knew if you were lying. This is an uncomfortable trait in a mother or grandmother. Secondly, she knew if something was going wrong with family members even if they were half a continent away. This could be a useful trait.
Another quality my grandmother had was more disconcerting. She knew when bad things, like a death in the family, were going to happen. This was a very eerie trait. She once told me that when someone was going to die she would hear a sound outside like horses’ walking on bricks. She was born in 1903, and maybe this had something to do with horse-drawn hearses. I don’t know.
Maw-Maw had told me the historical family ghost story. Her grandfather was a pioneer in East Texas and a friend of Sam Houston’s, a Texas hero. The family homestead was a place called Chinaberry Hill. Now, the Civil War, or the War Between the States was a terrible time in the United States.
Many Southerners, whether they owned slaves or not, fought on the side of the South, the Confederacy. I think in many cases this was because being an enemy of your neighbors or even members of your own family was too hard. My ancestors were Southerners and fought for the South.
So, my great-great grandfather, who lived on Chinaberry Hill, had several sons away fighting in the War. One night, the family was sitting around the fire, and they thought they heard footsteps, familiar footsteps. They called out the boys’ names, but when they looked outside, no one was there.
Several months later, the family received a letter. Two of the boys who were away had died. They had died in a disease epidemic in Arkansas. The boys’ deaths happened around the time that the family thought they heard the footsteps in the night.
Well, with this story and my grandmother’s ESP in mind, I came home from college to find her house was haunted. A friend, who was psychic, had driven home with me. I went to school in Texas and home was Georgia. Carol was company and enjoyed seeing the country.
Maw-Maw was away on a trip when we got home. I believed Carol. In my family, unusual is the norm. When Maw-Maw got home, she told us about it. Yes, there was someone or something. If wasn’t hostile, but it blew doors open in the house. Sometimes it made noises upstairs. My grandmother had seen a white figure in the yard.
Carol and I were both intrigued. We named the something Oscar. We weren’t afraid. My grandmother, to use an old expression, wasn’t afraid of the devil. If the eighty-year-old lady wasn’t afraid, why should we be?
Carol went home and I stayed. My bedroom was upstairs in a room we call the Pine Room. It is paneled in heart pine, which turns a honey-brown color with age. My only problem with my room was that I always felt that someone was watching me. It wasn’t scary, just strange.
