Ghosts of Thanksgivings Past

By the time the turkey sailed out of the oven, the Series of Unfortunate Events that marked our eight years in a 19th-century New England house was funny, sort of. People can learn to laugh at almost anything, and a self-propelled turkey…well.

Thanksgiving was always my mom’s favorite holiday, a chance to bring out the good dishes and bask in fleeting togetherness. The long dining room table held all the traditional fixin’s along with an 18-lb. turkey for our family of eight: sweet potato casserole with puffy baked marshmallows, mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, corn on the cob, cranberry sauce, and pecan and pumpkin pies. In our volatile household, the ritual face-stuffing was a rare time of peace and contentment, or at least, that’s how I remember it. I was just a kid, and nothing disturbed my feasting.

Half a century later, as a turkey roasts in my oven, it seems like the right time to share an excerpt from my mother Johanne’s unpublished account of life with ghosts. She wrote it on a typewriter during our last months in the house, in the midst of a bitter divorce, after my father had moved out and the house was up for sale. Everything is verbatim from her story except for a couple of spelling corrections. She used fake names for everyone outside our family (except in a later section, the famous parapsychologist Hanz Holzer, who visited at her request and interviewed us all in a suave Austrian accent). I’ve added a few notes in italics, based on my sister Tracy and brother Rick’s recollections.

You don’t have to believe in ghosts, I think, to find her story entertaining. But before you draw any conclusions about my family’s sanity or credulity, I’ll add that residents before and after us had similar or worse experiences. Neighbors said of the previous family, “They ran out of the house screaming just like you guys.” And the next owner, a physicist with housemates, shared several alarming stories with my brother Rick, who felt bad that nobody had warned the guy about the paranormal extras. (The physicist actually considered them a bonus.)

Johanne’s story is below. Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Gentle Spirit—the Story of Verona (an excerpt)

by Johanne Reichel Frank O’Neill

Actually, this is a story about Verona and friends. Verona suggested the title, so I wish to oblige her by using it.

Some homes are infested with termites; ours is infested with ghosts. I can’t blame them for loving this house. A gracious turn-of-the-century Victorian, it sits on a rise, reached by a winding driveway lined with two magnificent beech trees. When my husband, Marv, and I first approached the house with its tower-like projections, it not only beckoned, it tugged. As we passed through the fourteen sunlit rooms, I could hardly contain myself. Here, indeed, was space to spare for our large family, soon to be augmented by the arrival of little one number six. Five fire­places to be cozy by during raw New England winters, porches for eating, porches for dreaming, a carriage house to roam in, trees begging to be climbed; in short, everything I’d ever dreamed of. Also, everything I’d never dreamed of.

We were allowed a two week grace period in which to accomplish the myriad of things necessary to create a semblance of order; then the fun began. Although it was August, the nightly heat surpassed belief. We discovered that someone was raising the thermostat to 83°F. All potential culprits vehemently denied any involvement, and the lever was taped into place. It didn’t matter; we suffered through a week of tropical heat. I voiced a gnawing suspicion; “I think the house is haunted.” It seemed a simple statement, but what an uproar it caused. Marv, being a technical, logical sort, refused then, as now, eight years later, to even remotely concede a “maybe.”

The repairman I hastily summoned pronounced the thermostat mechanically well. He looked me straight in the eye to declare, “Lady, I’d move.”

Soon after, our daughter Evan frantically raced into our bedroom, too terrified to say more than a wide-eyed, “Mom!” She had awakened to see a grinning, transparent man’s head, complete with mustache but minus body, hovering two feet in front of her face. One month later, the “Cheshire cat” head paid a return visit; this time to our eldest daughter, Tracy. He and his grin were looking down from a height of about six feet, at the foot of her bed. For her, his warm smile dispelled all fear; they mutually regarded each other, and Tracy went back to sleep.

[JF: Actually, years passed and quite a few things happened between the 83° thermostat and the floating heads. Tracy had no prior knowledge of Evan’s experience, since our mother had told Evan not to tell anyone. The difference in Evan and Tracy’s reactions may be attributed to the distance of the floating face from theirs but also to their very different personalities. Tracy, who was in high school at the time, remembers knowing she was awake but feeling too tired to get out of bed and go to our parents’ room. So instead of reacting, she just pulled the covers up over her head.]

My pregnancy was a difficult one and caused me concern. In my fifth month, I had a dream of Michael Burke, the original owner. I had heard that he was quite colorful and knew instinctively that we would have been friends. I felt that he, who had been married but childless, would be delighted to have his home full of laughter and little people. In the dream, I was one of many awaiting his arrival. He stepped from behind a screen, outlandishly attired in purple velvet knickers, a gray and white wool checked shirt and peaked cap. Putting his arm around me, he said reassuringly, “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.” and vanished. When I awoke, I could still feel the warmth of his arm. I was reassured. Although little Gregory was born five weeks early; he was, indeed, a fine boy. I was astonished to later learn that Michael Burke was an avid golfer; knickers and golf cap were his perennial costume.

[JF: According to online records, Michael Burke was a cobbler turned farm manager. A descendant of his said he ran a liquor store, and neighborhood gossip had it that he built his wealth as a bootlegger. Also very much alive in local legend was the suspicion that Burke had been bumped off by his heir, a nephew who later married the nurse who’d cared for first Burke and then his widow until her death. But I guess I’m burying the lede here: Michael Burke was 83 when he died.]

The third floor was early recognized as the place you didn’t go to alone. Through the years, when the boys and their friends braved the night in one of the rooms, the morning brought excited reports of a baby crying and of thumping, dragging and moaning. Our third floor became nearly as famous as Madame Toussaud’s House of Horrors.

One afternoon, Marv and I returned home to be greeted by a yard full of neighborhood children. Evan and our son Ricky, the eldest and then 15, had been investigating heavy footsteps from the kitchen, only to find the room unoccupied. Hurrying to vacate the premises, they both felt an unexplainable urge to stop and look into the dining room. As they did, a candle on the table jumped straight out of its holder, up into the air, down to the edge of the table and then hopped to the floor. Evan’s screams were well heard.

[JF: Rick verified a few more details: he and Evan had heard the stomping in the butler’s pantry, a little room connecting the dining room and kitchen where our mom kept her good dishes. They thought it was our brother Cory and decided to circle around from both sides and jump out at him. But the butler’s pantry was empty. Standing there, they looked into the dining room to see the candle pop several feet straight into the air.]

….

The ghostly performances opened to rave notices and have been as long-running as any Broadway hit. Even the oven got into the act. I opened the door to check on two loaves of bread, both on the same rack, to see one loaf sail out, separate from the pan in midair and land right side up five feet away, not a crumb anywhere. The following week they brought down the house. I had again opened the oven, this time to baste a turkey and out flew said turkey. The shrieks and laughs abounded, but no encores were requested.

[JF: Tracy was there for the turkey incident. According to her, the cumbersome turkey shot out horizontally in its pan and landed in the middle of the kitchen floor about 6 feet away.]

My cousins arrived for a visit, bringing their German Shepherd, Charlie. The third floor being our (short-lived) guest quarters, they and Charlie mounted the steps to retire. Charlie froze. She whined, she barked, she stiffened, but she wouldn’t budge. Marv and my cousin, Mike, shoved her rear end, and Charlie started to cry. “You know why she won’t go up - She senses the presence of the ghosts,” I announced with satisfaction. “Ridiculous,” echoed Marv and Mike and shoved anew. Charlie stood firm. My cousins retired and Charlie was left to roam the house. I went down to the kitchen where I was quickly joined by Charlie, who’d seemingly gone berserk. Faster and faster she raced in a circle from the kitchen, to the butler’s pantry, to the dining room, back to the kitchen, around and round, barking ferociously. Mike came barreling down from the third floor, a comic sight in his undershorts, face affright, shouting, “That’s her ‘stranger’ bark!”

Now will you believe me?” I laughed.

[Laughed? Maybe we really were all half mad at this point.]

The dog and cat parade followed this episode. Each young owner was certain that his dog or cat would reach the third floor pinnacle. The only pinnacle they reached was one of terrific volume. When I presented this series of events to a veterinarian, he posed an interesting question: “Is your house haunted?”

[JF: Skeptical note: my black cat Friday liked to hang out on the third floor, and cats generally resist being carted off and deposited in strange places. The dogs, though, I can’t explain.]

About this time, the director of an ESP group visited us at his request. David was accompanied by his associate, Jim, and Jim’s wife, Susan. David and Susan, both psychic, verified the presence of a woman. David descended the third floor and informed us, “She’s up there!” He spoke of feeling extreme cold and intense claustrophobia at the top of the stairs; Susan also felt the cold and an invisible wall. At the entrance to one of the rooms, identified as “her” room, she had to force her way in. These were regarded as normal psychic reactions. We were told repeatedly that our ghost was both good and protective. When I telephoned David several days later, Jim told me of their trip home. Driving along, discussing the evening, Susan felt someone tap her on the shoulder. This was followed by a tug of her hair. “Oh, no,” said David, half laughing, “Do you suppose we brought her home with us?” At that, the car drifted to a complete stop. At the conclusion of Jim’s tale, while still on the phone, my body came to instant life as I heard the front door violently slam open. “She’s back,” I quivered.

On a later visit, David returned with Martha, an acutely psychic friend. A gentle, soft-spoken woman, her outward appearance belied her inner powers. Hopefully, she would have some answers for us. She did.

“Her name is Verona,” she told us. “She lived in a farm house, on the back of this property, which was deliberately burned down in 1786. She was then pregnant, and it seems she perished in the fire. Her husband was one of a group of men, led by a terrible man from Springfield, who went around burning down houses at this time. I see this man from Springfield in uniform, but I know little of history and don’t know what uniform this might be. Verona’s house was burned because her husband, who was not home at the time, tried to leave this group. She has always thought that her husband was responsible. This man from Springfield was so evil, that if I find him here, I’m leaving immediately.” He wasn’t.

She went on to say, “Verona is very happy here. She feels right at home. She gazes out of the third floor and dining room windows and walks the property in nice weather. I hear her calling, as if to a child, “chéri,” or it could be the name Sherry. I’m not sure if the man is her husband. There will be others coming later.” Great.

[JF: Rick was present for this visit and says the “group” were identified as vigilantes burning down the houses of suspected British sympathizers. He also remembers an additional detail: Martha said that Verona liked to stand by a well on the property. But nobody knew of any well. “Oh, it’s there,” Martha said, and then led the way to a grown-over, sealed-up well at the far edge of the property near the woods. Rick added that no money was exchanged and no publicity received—the visit was private. As for Martha’s prediction, others did come, but I’ll save that chapter for another time.]