Haunted Houses

by Nancy Roberts

  Randy had decided in favor of the riverbank. He, as usual, had forgotten the time, and he paid no attention to the darkening sky or even the first drops of rain. Over his head, thunder crashed like colliding freight cars, and flashes of lightning were all around him.

  He was not easily frightened, but he couldn’t help but think of the story of how, long ago, Benjamin Harrison and his son had been lowering one of the windows upstairs, when the boy was struck and killed by lightning. Mr. Jamieson had said that often when he was relating the story of the boy being killed at the window, a noisy crash would be heard, and everyone would hurry upstairs to discover that the open window had slammed closed.

  Then Randy saw a red-headed boy a few yards away beckoning to him. In a moment the pair stood together in a sheltered place where no rain was falling.

  “This is a real cloudburst,” said the boy.

  “It’s the lightning that bothers me,” admitted Randy.

  “I’ll bet you’re thinking about that story of Mr. Harrison’s son being killed at the window.”

  “I guess I was.”

  “I used to think about it, too, when we were here and a bad storm would wake me up at night. A tent never seemed like much protection.”

  “You’ve camped out here beside the river?”

  “Yes, many a night. My name is John. What is yours?

  “I’m Randy. Say, you’ve got a nice drum there. Did it take you long to learn to play it?”

  “No. You can’t tune it, but I like the rhythm. Reminds me of my father when he used to play the bagpipes. Of course, they carry a tune, but there is a rhythm about their music, and drums have it, too.”

  “I wish my father could play the bagpipes. Do you come out here to camp often?”

  “The camping? Oh, that was a long time ago.” By now the rain had stopped.

  “I could come and camp sometime, maybe, if I asked my dad.”

  And that reminded Randy that he had better get back to the house quickly. He turned to say goodbye to his drummer friend, but the red-headed boy was gone. He would get his father and together they would find him.

  An excited Randy appeared just as his family was almost ready to go into the little restaurant that Berkeley maintains for visitors.

  “Dad, I want you to come and meet my new friend!”

  His parents were taking some pictures of the front of the house and Randy tugged at his father’s arm to get his attention.

  “Oh, all right,” said his dad. “Where is this boy?”

  “Near the river.”

  “Your mother would like to have lunch while we are here, but she can probably look around in the gift shop for a few minutes. Let’s go find him.”

  The pair took a path that led off toward the left, Randy chattering away.

  “Dad, he was wearing a uniform and carrying a drum.”

  “Some of the people around here are dressed in costume, I suppose.”

  “He must be hot in that uniform.”

  “He’s probably used to it.” They searched until his father was impatient to go to the restaurant, but they could not find Randy’s new friend.

  When dusk falls across the emerald fields of Berkeley and the last tourist has left, Berkeley’s real inhabitants return. Although Randy did not know it, among McClellan’s troops there was a lad born in Scotland, not old enough to fight in a war, but spunky enough to want to go. This brave twelve-year-old became a drummer boy, practicing until the alternate double strokes of the sticks upon his field drum produced a rhythmic, stirring call to battle. Its rumble could be heard through the trees like distant thunder.

  Randy is not the only one to have seen him. Some say that the boy stands on the gently sloping hill several hundred yards above the James River near the Old Cemetery and by the split-rail fence, a red-headed youth striking his drum softly and gazing out over the river. Others relate having seen the figure of a uniformed youth with a drum strolling beside the riverbank and then back in the direction of the cemetery.

  It may be that the young ghost drummer, still sometimes seen at Berkeley, is the father of Malcolm Jamieson, the current owner. For it was John Jamieson who returned years later and bought the plantation where he was once a drummer boy with McClellan’s army.

  Do rooms in old houses harbor sounds of past events, latent, ready to be touched off by some slight vibration, rare frequency, or even an echo? Now and then in the afterdusk, faint laughter, tinkling glasses, and the murmur of voices have been heard. Could it be one of the many genial gatherings that the rooms of this home have seen?

  There have been other reports of unusual sightings at this meeting-place of historic events and people, such as a tall, gaunt figure, down at the water’s edge, walking slowly toward Berkeley. Abraham Lincoln himself had been to Berkeley twice during the war. Does he return to review his army? On the way the figure is sometimes accompanied by a little drummer boy, and together they turn right up the path, toward the hill with the split-rail fence. The two are obviously friends. Does the drummer boy remind President Lincoln of his own son?

  If you are among the very fortunate, you might behold two shadowy figures cresting the hill some September evening or hear the last faint roll of a drum as they disappear from view. And while a late summer storm rumbles overhead, what is that on the far side of the rise? Can it be the Army of the Potomac, passing in review for Lincoln?

  Berkeley Plantation is on Highway 5 in Charles City, Virginia. It is open year-round (with limited hours in January and February). Visit www.berkeleyplantation.com or call (804) 829-6018.

  THE TRAMPING FEET

  THE GAFFOS HOUSE, PORTSMOUTH, VIRGINIA

  The front door of 218 Glasgow opens during the night, heavy footsteps can be heard going up three flights of stairs, and then the attic door closes.

  The grizzled old sea captain didn’t know when he had prayed last. It must have been many years ago, but it hadn’t saved her. His lovely Maureen had died anyway. She had never been a strong one, and when the baby was born and there were complications, she was gone in a day or two. But behind her she left a treasure: tiny Cathy.

  Fortunately, his mother had stepped in and taken care of the infant. It was hard to realize that Cathy was now a young girl. For the past two years, since his mother’s passing, she had made a home for him. Now he was about to lose her, too.

  “God, don’t let the girl die. I know I could have been a better man, and I don’t deserve her. I never have talked much to you. Maybe I don’t know how. But I’m trying, Lord.” On he went, up the steps of the four-story house that had been turned into a hospital for Portsmouth’s yellow-fever victims. The house was filled with patients, and beds had even been placed in the halls. Cathy was on the fourth floor, and that day she was tossing and turning so much that it made tears run down the old captain’s weather-beaten cheeks just to watch her.

  He cradled her frail body in his arms, pleading, “I will take you to Richmond and buy you such lovely clothes—everything you want. Look at me; speak to me! Cathy, you must get well, you must,” he cried out. But like many other poor souls who were brought to the hospital, turning and tossing in the throes of the virulent yellow fever, Cathy did not get well.

  A Portsmouth gentleman who swears that his seagoing grandfather knew the captain says that the captain stayed out at sea as much as he could after Cathy’s death. When he returned for brief shore stays, his solitary figure could be seen striding along in front of the homes a few blocks from the water. There he often paused to stare up at the fourth-floor windows of the house at 218 Glasgow Street.

  How could so much happen in this cheerful-looking house? It is yellow with blue shutters, and its interior is bright with shades of red, green, and gold. But the house did not always look this attractive. When Mary Alice and George Gaffos were first married, they moved into a ground-floor apartment here, as the old house was then divided into apartments. A full English-basement home, it rises four stories above ground. The couple soon beg
an to dream of buying and restoring it, despite its unhappy history and their modest income.

  A few years later, however, they did buy and remodel it. Their dream had come true, but it was not all that they had expected. Or should we say that the house contained more than they expected and could ever have believed?

  The Gaffoses are a pleasant, attractive couple. Mary Alice tells the story. From the first few weeks we lived here, strange things happened. The children noticed it first. Andrea would call us time after time, telling us that she had heard heavy feet going up the stairs. The girls slept on the third floor and were very frightened there for a while. One night Andrea called, and I ran up to her room.

  “It was going up the stairs again tonight, Mother,” she said. “I could hear the footsteps tramping up each tread, like someone with boots on, and I wondered if those feet were going to stop at the top of the stairs on my floor. I just held my breath!”

  She threw her arms around my neck and hung on to me for dear life. Then our older girl, Sabrina, chimed in: “They never stop, though. They go right on up to the fourth floor, Mother, and sometimes we can hear them in the attic overhead.”

  George and I got so frustrated for a while, we really didn’t know how to handle it, for we thought the children were just hearing old-house noises. I made up all sorts of funny and comforting stories about the footsteps on the stairs to take their fear away. After a while, they said they weren’t afraid anymore.

  One winter evening about a year later, my husband and I were sitting in front of the fire, working a jigsaw puzzle. We enjoy doing them and sometimes sit up quite late. I remember that I had just found a piece we had been looking for all evening and was putting it in the right place when—bam! The front door slammed so hard that we both nearly jumped out of our chairs. We sat looking at each other, frozen, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Then came a series of thuds that sounded like heavy boots going up the stairs, step by step. We heard them reach the top of the first floor. They went on. When they got to the second floor, George was out of his chair.

  “I’m going up there, Mary Alice,” he said. The steps seemed to pause at the third-floor landing. Then we heard them again. Now he—if it were a man—was on his way up to the fourth floor.

  I was so relieved that he had passed the third floor, until we heard the attic door at the top of the stairs open and slam hard as it shut. George’s face was white as he ran out into the hall and up the stairs, with me close behind him. We were very much afraid, and we both wondered what we were going to find in the attic. At the third floor I stopped and switched on the light upstairs, but when we reached the fourth-floor landing, no light at all could be seen under the door.

  “I’m not going into a completely dark room. Stay right here,” said George. “I’ll get the flashlight and be back in a second.” It seemed as if he were gone forever, but it probably wasn’t over a minute or two until he returned. “Get behind me,” he whispered, and I did. He threw open the door and swung the powerful flashlight from one end of the room to the other. The attic was empty! With relief, we both just collapsed into each other’s arms.

  Nothing happened for about a month after that. Then one night, when George was working on the third floor on something he had brought home from the office and I was reading to Sabrina, he called downstairs.

  “What are the girls doing playing in the attic this late?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I hear them walking all over the place up there.”

  “You couldn’t,” I said. “Sabrina is down here with me, and Andrea is asleep in her bedroom up there with you.” I heard George go into Andrea’s room, and in few minutes he came downstairs, carrying the sleeping child in his arms.

  “I want you all to get out of the house immediately. There is someone upstairs. Go across the street, and, if you hear a gunshot, call the police.”

  He searched the attic, looked under beds, and opened closet doors on every floor of the house. But like the night that the two of us had gone up to the attic, there was nothing to be found, at least nothing that anyone could see.

  My mother probably had one of the strangest experiences of all. We were going on a business trip, and she volunteered to spend the night with the girls. She slept in our room, which is right between the girls’ bedrooms. Just as it does at home, her little dog slept on a pillow beside the bed. In the middle of the night, my mother awoke to a thump, thump, thump. The first thing she thought about was the ghost. She determined that she wasn’t frightened and that she was going to see if anything was there.

  Thinking it might be her dog, she said, “Susie, now you get right back on the pillow.” She reached over and found the dog was there. Then she exclaimed out loud to herself, “My Lord. It’s the ghost!”

  Her finger flipped the light switch, and, when the light went on, she saw her bedroom slippers being tossed into the air. Up and down and up and down. To her, the bizarre and frightening spectacle seemed to last forever, but it was probably only a few seconds. She didn’t get to sleep again until after the sun came up.

  Mary Alice Gaffos and her family have lived at 218 Glasgow now for a quarter of a century. “Sometimes months go by and nothing happens. Then we may see our dog looking as if he is ready to spring into space and barking his head off as he faces an empty corner in the front hall. When that happens, we know the captain is back!”

  If the daughter of the sea captain really did die in this house during the yellow-fever epidemic, it surely broke the old man’s heart. Does his love for her still go on in some timeless dimension? Does it sometimes bring him back?

  Located at 218 Glasgow Street, the Gaffos House is not open to the public. However, the town is popular, pleasant, and walkable, so a self-guided tour is a great way to become acquainted. A good place to start is the cemetery behind Trinity Episcopal Church, 500 Court Street, Portsmouth, Virginia. For more information on the area, visit the Portsmouth, Virginia official tourism website, https://portsvacation.com/.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  NANCY ROBERTS (1924–2008) was the author of more than twenty books, most pertaining to the supernatural. She was named “custodian of the twilight zone” by Southern Living magazine and was often described as the “First Lady of American Folklore.” A journalist for many years, she worked for newspapers in New Jersey, Florida, and North Carolina. Her thorough research also won her the Certificate of Commendation from the American Association of State and Local History.

  TARYN PLUMB has penned several books, including New England UFOs, Haunted Boston, Haunted Maine Lighthouses, and Maine Off the Beaten Path (10th edition). She has worked as a journalist for many years throughout the New England region, most notably for The Boston Globe, and lives in Portland, Maine. She is honored to have the opportunity to continue a volume by such a talented and prolific author as Nancy Roberts.