My Ghosts

It's the Halloween season again...so it's time to trot out our ghost stories. Currently we're dealing with a "ghost" at our home—we keep looking for reasonable explanations but we're coming up empty. Meanwhile, the accent lights on our entertainment center keep coming on at odd times—particularly troubling when I'm the only one home and they come on in the middle of the night.

Apparently our "Casper" is pretty strong—on two occasions we've found Carroll's commercial quality hand truck moved several feet. Once it had been placed in front of our garage stairs. Again, this happened in the middle of a Friday night, and it is just the two of us here. We were headed out early on a Saturday morning and both stopped short when we started down the garage stairs. 

I'm not sure I believe or am any more comfortable with the "rational explanations" we've come up with. Tremblers or mini-earthquakes in only our little acre? electrical malfunction in the entertainment center? double dementia? ghost(s)? So, we're still in the scratching our heads and wondering stage.

But, a few years ago...I was Executive Director of the Lock House from 2004-2008. I had two assistants during that time period and both commented on feeling like they were being watched, and both ladies occasionally "saw" fleeting glimpses of someone disappearing around a corner or through a doorway.

I should probably mention here that I am pretty skeptical of colorful lore in general and particularly ghost stories. I am a historian and want to get at the truth of a situation. Now onto my experience...

I was working on a new exhibit on the Burns Family—Havre de Grace's own early automobile builders. (Cool piece of history, by the way.) My husband, Carroll, had built large glass-topped display cases for the china, silver and small artifacts of the exhibit. It was the day before the exhibit was to open. All of the volunteers had left for the day, and I was finishing up. It had been a whirlwind day, and now it was about 4 p.m. on a gray winter day with rain threatening.

I walked to the upstairs exhibit room in the northeast corner of the building to retrieve my purse/totebag. It was a large Vera Bradley tote, full of both purse stuff, and file folders related to the exhibit. I'd been using it as a traveling file cabinet as I directed the volunteers who were hanging postcard enlargements in that room. I looked at the bench where my bag had been all day—no bag. I searched the room—no bag. I searched my office, the kitchen/restroom, and two remaining exhibit rooms. And then I searched the whole upstairs again. I went downstairs and searched the downstairs too—no bag. So, I started upstairs again and searched the entire museum, top to bottom, inside and under every piece of furniture large enough to hold the bag, and inside every closet and drawer. No bag.

At this point I figured that one of the volunteers accidentally picked up my bag and took it—although that was pretty far-fetched, given the bag's distinctive weight and contents. But, for me, the most pressing issue were my missing key ring—with both lock house keys and most importantly, my car keys. I couldn't get home without my keys. So, I decided that there was nothing more I could do at the moment, so I started upstairs to call husband Carroll to come bring a spare key so I could get home. I was miserable as I climbed those tilting stairs to my second floor office. As I turned into my office, I saw the new exhibit out of the corner of my eye. There, sitting in the middle of the glass topping one of the new exhibit cases was my bag—contents undisturbed.

As I retrieved my bag, I mentally retraced my steps. Bottom line—I went directly from the new exhibit to where I knew I'd left my bag. There's no way I put it there, and I was alone. I remember saying aloud, "Very funny. I hope you enjoyed your little trick."

And then I went home.

Do you have any "odd," unexplained experiences? Please share them around this virtual campfire. We can all make s'mores and scare ourselves silly reading each other's stories.