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The Great Ghost Write-Off: And now, if the congregation will please rise...from the dead!Oct 25 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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Ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night are fun at Halloween but what if they were your room mates? Journey with me to the small village of Dassel, Minnesota and I'll introduce you to a spirited group from my old church. In the early 1990s my four sons, my foster daughter and I lived in the small town of Dassel, Minnesota, population 1,233, in Meeker County, situated about 50 miles west of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We lived at the edge of town in an old deconsecrated church that had been built around 1871 and recently remodeled into a residential home. The wood frame two-room church building had a steeple and bell-tower and a high cathedral ceiling. The long original windows on either side of the structure had been replaced with modern heat-conserving windows but they were still at least 12 feet high. A gorgeous stained glass rose window above the wide front door made prismatic patterns when light filtered through on bright sunny days. A large old walnut tree partly sheltered one side of the church building and divided the property from that of our only neighbor on the right. An empty field bordered our property on the left and a seed corn company, empty and quiet at night was located across the road. When the church was remodeled its largely open interior space was converted into a living room with a ceiling that stretched far over head, the master bedroom and bath, the dining area and the kitchen. A small landing area was about halfway up a winding stairway that led to the former choir loft which now housed a library with wall to wall built in shelves. A second bathroom and three small bedrooms completed the upper floor. The home was spacious and that was lucky for us because we were not alone. The Bell Tower, as the people of Dassel referred to our home, was haunted. As a country church that dated back to the state's youth who knows how many funerals had taken place beneath its roof, how many bodies had laid in state as spirits departed and loved ones grieved. We would come to believe that some of those spirits were among the unquiet dead and weren't above a little mischief. The first evidence we had of "our ghosts" as we eventually affectionately called them came one day when Nycole, my 16 year old foster daughter tried to go into her bedroom on the second floor to put away some of her laundry. As she approached her door from the short hallway she suddenly felt as though someone had opened the door of a deep freeze. Even though it was a fine early spring day, we had yet to remove the storm windows and so she was startled to feel a breeze ruffle her hair followed by the bitter cold sensation. She said the hair on her arms stood up even though she wasn't feeling particularly frightened. She put her hand on the door knob and turning it, pushed against the door. It was shut tight and wouldn't budge even though there was no lock on the door. She tried it again and couldn't move it. Thinking her brothers were playing tricks she called out to them and pounded on the door. They surprised her by opening the door of their own room and coming to see what all the commotion was. Ben and Justin also felt the coldness and tried the door knob without success. By this time, I came to investigate and when I put my hand on the doorknob it turned easily in my hand and swung open. I thought I was being hoaxed by three teenagers until I looked into their faces and I could see they were serious and felt unnerved. We all agreed it was pretty weird but didn't make much out of it, jokingly saying we might need an exorcist. Less than a week later, Nycole again had problems with her door but this time she was inside her room and couldn't open the door to get out. In a panic she started screaming. This time my son Nick was the first one to reach the door and once again it opened easily. She told us that she had again felt the icy cold and immediately tried to leave her room only to find herself locked inside. We got the landlord's caretaker to come over and check the doors and door frames and he found nothing wrong and no need to plane them or otherwise alter them. They were not sticking and the hardware was in perfect operating condition. Over the summer all of the kids at one time or another, but especially Nycole, reported hearing footsteps on the upper stairs and in the hallway during the night. One autumn night, I was home alone, sitting in the living room reading a book. The house was dark except for the living room lights. Suddenly I distinctly heard what sounded like footsteps on the stairs which were only about seven or eight feet from where I was sitting. I heard them ascend the few steps to the landing area where they seemed to stop. My two cats who were both laying nearby on a small area rug both leaped up and turned their heads toward the sound with the fur on their bodies all standing on end and their tails bristling. Their eyes showed the large round black pupils of a full alert state. After a second or two the footsteps continued on up the stairs and faded away. My female cat, Deva, growled deep in her throat and ran to hide in the downstairs bedroom. After that we started having what I think was actual poltergeist activity. We had numerous little incidents like cupboard doors swinging open, a venetian blind falling off a window three separate times even though there were no defects and no one was in the room and doors were always shutting by themselves in the Bell Tower. This was all minor and we told ourselves it was just an old house settling on its foundation and the noises and odd little events were nothing really unusual. We kidded about "our ghosts" but didn't take it seriously until our ghosts upped the ante and started throwing things. My eleven year old fearfully reported that his crayons and "art junk" box got pushed off the dresser and onto the floor. Another time his Lego creation was dashed to the floor during the night. He was so frightened and so convinced that he could feel a presence in his room that he insisted on sleeping on the floor in my room in his sleeping bag. "I know there's someone in there, Mom. I can feel them like they are right up next to me when I'm playing with my Legos." I burned sage and worked a cleansing on the rooms and the house seemed quiet for a few weeks. Then one night as my daughter, two of my sons and I were in the living room watching TV at around 9:30 we got a shock when a large heavy glass ash tray, the TV guide, the remote and a nearly empty can of pop shot off of the end table near the recliner chair I was sitting in and slammed onto the floor a few feet away. It happened really suddenly and with enough violent force to shatter the ashtray against the floor. We freaked out! I gathered the kids in the kitchen and turned on all the lights in the house and demanded that the entity, as I now firmly believed it was, leave our home at once. I claimed our space aloud verbally, banished the unseen force and the next day I placed small bundles of birch twigs above the doors and windows. I swept the entire Bell Tower from top to bottom with a consecrated broom and sprinkled it with salt water. Once again I smudged all the rooms with sage smoke. I enacted other protective ritual familiar to me from my practice of the religion of Wicca which I won't detail here but which is common knowledge available in numerous books and websites if you are curious. We had an uneventful several months before the next two incidents. My foster daughter and I were in the living room on a fine day when we suddenly heard a loud crash out in the kitchen. I had just finished doing the dishes and as was my habit I had placed our heavy cast iron griddle on its side, wedged in between the dish drainer basket loaded with clean dishes and the blender and rice steamer that permanently sat on the counter top when not in use. I have done this a thousand times. It was a level surface and the griddle was snuggly and securely fitted in the narrow space. It would have been impossible for it to have slid or fallen off the counter. None of the other dishes or small appliances had been moved but the griddle was laying a good five feet out in the middle of the kitchen floor when I came into the kitchen. Don't blame the cats. Deva and Carbon were curled up on the sofa with Nycole. Aloud, I said, "What do you want now? Go away. This is my house." By this time we were all so used to our big old spooky church-house that I didn't even feel moved to do another cleansing. Jonathan was back to sleeping in his own room and we were feeling pretty settled and at ease. Our ghosts seemed to be okay with sharing the house, too. One day a girl from Jonathan's school came by to deliver some Girl Scout cookies I had ordered. I ran in to her that evening in the grocery store. She said she guessed I didn't hear her when she was over that afternoon to deliver my cookies. She said she had seen me through the window walking around in the kitchen but when she repeatedly knocked on the door and called out I didn't respond so she decided to come back later or call. The trouble is, we were all in the nearby city of St.Cloud all that day and no one was at home in the Bell Tower. I tested looking through the windows in to my house from the outside and it was pretty hard to see very clearly. It looked kind of shadowy even in daylight and the kitchen area being the furthest from the windows was really dark but some visibility was possible. I suppose she could have seen a person walking around in there but I doubt she could be sure of who that person was. I know it wasn't me. Still, our ghosts weren't scaring us any longer. We decided to live and let not live in peace. If only the ghosts hadn't stooped to theft we probably would have been happy to co-exist. I am totally organized when it comes to my library. I have a card catalog and lender cards and I know exactly where every one of my books is at all times. I can tell you off the top of my head where each book is located, what books you will find next to them...you get the idea...a real fuss-budget. My foster daughter wanted to read a couple of my Tarot books. I told her what shelf they were on and she yelled down from the library/choir loft and said they weren't there. I went up and looked for myself and sure enough they were not there. We ended up searching every closet and drawer in the whole house. I was getting pretty wound up because these books were out of print and important to me. I actually took every book off the shelves and searched behind books and under furniture. I left no stone unturned. I do not loan my books without documentation and the kids all swore that they had not touched them and since I searched their rooms anyway (with their help and permission) I know the books had not been inadvertently misplaced. It was a genuine (and frustrating) mystery. I eventually gave up the search and resigned myself to the fact that my two books were gone. Several more months passed and the time came that we moved out of the Bell Tower and back to Wisconsin. Our ghosts didn't chase us out, finances and circumstances sent us back to familiar territory and extended family. As I boxed up the books in the library there to my amazement were the two Tarot books, safe and sound, exactly where they should have been all along, in their familiar spot, in alphabetical order by author in the Divination section of my library. At least our ghosts returned the books. Now if only we could coax them to do a review or at least ghost-write one. ................................. This has been my contribution to The Great Ghost Write-Off of jps246. If you ain't afraid of no ghosts go here for details and do some serious busting.  |
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