Stalking Shadows
Page 4
Sam also never pulled off any of his antics when the children were awake—only when they were asleep. I guess he didn’t want to scare them, which I greatly appreciated. Nor did he really do anything when my husband was home. That may have been out of respect, or because Sam knew my husband wouldn’t appreciate his not-so-subtle humor.
Sam also wouldn’t communicate with me to tell me who he was or why he was there. I found this to be extremely frustrating, because I felt I had a right to know who was in my own home—even if it was a ghost.
It took a little bit of adjustment, but Sam and our family learned to co-exist. In fact, I came to rely on Sam for little things, like turning on lights if I’d been out and came home to a dark house.
I remember one night when the kids were with my parents, my husband was at work, and I’d gone to the grocery store. When I came home I had my arms full of groceries, and when I got in the house I realized I hadn’t turned on any lights— I hadn’t expected to be gone so long after dropping off the kids.
I yelled out to Sam to please turn on a light, so I could make my way to the kitchen to set down the groceries.
I was actually quite surprised that Sam turned on the foyer light, one of the living room lights, the dining room light, and the kitchen light. What he’d done was basically light a pathway for me from the front door to the kitchen.
After putting down the groceries, I thanked Sam, finished unloading the car, and began to put away the food. Apparently I forgot to lock the house up, because I heard the decisive click of the lock as the deadbolt slid into place on the front door. I walked out of the kitchen to see if my husband had come home early, but there was no one but me in the house.
One night, however, Sam’s normal antics stopped, and took a very serious turn. The kids were in bed, as were my husband and I. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by someone shaking me violently.
I woke up with a start, thinking it was my husband waking me up for some reason, but he lay sound asleep next to me. The house was deathly quiet, and I got out of bed to go check on the children. It was then I noticed that the house was very cold.
I checked the thermostat, which said the house was down to fifty-five degrees. As it was the middle of winter, the house should have been a lot warmer. I woke up my husband and told him the problem.
He ran down to the basement to check the old oil burning furnace and discovered it wasn’t working. He then turned off the oil supply to the furnace. We called around and found a twenty-four hour furnace service that dispatched a repairman to our house.
After a careful inspection, the repairman told us that the furnace was shot and we’d need a new one installed in the morning. Then he told us that if I hadn’t woken up and discovered the problem, and my husband hadn’t turned off the oil supply to the furnace, that the house could have exploded. Sam saved my family’s lives that night, by shaking me awake, and I shall always be grateful to him.
The day after we moved out of that house, I drove by it on my way to pick the kids up from school. I noticed that the gutter on the right side of the house had been torn away and grotesquely twisted. It wasn’t like that the day before. Perhaps the ghosts were protesting my leaving.
The people who bought the house were well aware that the house was haunted, because they’d asked and I’d told them the truth. They lived in the house only for a short time, while their new house was being built. After they moved out they kept the house as a rental property.
I find it very curious that none of the tenants have lived there more than a year, and most of them must have broken their lease and moved out a lot sooner. Perhaps the ghosts are just too much for them to deal with. Kind of makes you smile, doesn’t it?
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Chapter 4
The Screaming Lady
When I was contemplating which stories to include in this book, I knew I couldn’t leave the story of the Screaming Lady out, because the message is so valuable—it is one of undying devotion, with a healthy dose of desperation thrown in for good measure. Her story teaches us that love transcends death, and persistence can eventually reap huge dividends. It’s also one of my favorite ghost stories to date.
I first heard the story of the Screaming Lady from a friend who lived in the state this event occurred. It caught my interest so much that I conducted some independent research. What follows is the sad story of Sarah Christenson.
Most of the time everything appeared to be relatively normal around the white, 1920s, clapboard farmhouse. Cows grazed in the pastures, chickens strutted around the farmyard, and the old farm dog lay snoozing in the shade of his favorite elm tree.
The crops were planted, tenderly cared for, and then harvested and sent to market. The pole barn was filled with more than enough hay to sustain the farm animals through the winter and the farm was settling down in mid-October for a long winter’s nap.
Late in the October afternoons, Jack the farmer would corral, milk, and feed the cattle, tuck the chickens safely into their coop, and bring the dog inside to be fed and to keep him warm during the cooling nights of fall.
Then Jack would build a fire in the old wood stove, have dinner, pack his pipe with fragrant tobacco, and settle down in front of the TV to relax.
Yes, most evenings everything seemed normal except for one night each fall—around midnight—when a heart-
wrenching scream would pierce the night and jar everyone within a two mile radius of the farm out of a sound sleep.
People who lived close to the farm would race to their bedroom windows just in time to see the ghostly form of a young woman with long, flowing hair, running away from the farmhouse through what was left of the corn stalks in the field, and then fade away. Life on the farm would then return to normal—until next year when the ghoulish scene would repeat itself—just like it had every year since Sarah Christenson was murdered in the 1920s.
The story goes that Sarah was a pregnant woman whose husband was away on business. Late one October night, a group of transient workers who’d been working on a local farm broke into Sarah’s house and brutally murdered her.
When her husband returned from his trip, he found his wife’s body. After her funeral, Sarah was buried in the church cemetery, in town.
Ever since then, the anniversary of Sarah’s death is marked by her ghost appearing to run from the house screaming. Jack and his wife, Emily, became used to the annual event and never really thought much of it. Although the ghost of the Screaming Lady quickly became a local legend, the town was filled with superstitious people who kept a safe distance from the farm during the month of October.
You would think that would be the end of the story, but it’s not.
About ten years ago, Jack sold the land and moved into town to retire. The young couple, Mark and Maggie Douglas, who bought the farm, were from out of town and didn’t believe in such things as ghosts, and ignored the warnings about the screaming woman.
The Douglases moved into the house and started to work the land. Like clockwork, Sarah would appear screaming every year in late October, but her once-a-year appearance didn’t seem to bother the couple.
After living on the farm for five or six years, the Douglases decided it was time to do some remodeling and update the farmhouse. By this time, the couple had become a family, welcoming two beautiful boys, Jason and Mark Jr., into the household.
The Douglases decided that the huge fireplace and mantel in the living room had to go. The enormous hearth jutted out into the room, and was taking up valuable living space that they so very much needed for their growing family.
One early Saturday morning in mid-May, the young couple started demolition on the fireplace. The work was slow and tedious as they chipped away the mortar and took the fireplace apart, brick by brick. They planned to repurpose the bricks into an outdoor grill, so they were careful not to destroy too many of them.
They immediately called the local sheriff and notified him of the found human remains. Within a few minutes, sheriff cars were screaming up to the farmhouse, closely followed by the local doctor, who also acted as the coroner.
The doctor was quickly able to determine that the remains were that of a newborn baby, however the cause of death and length of time the baby laid in the hearth were unclear.
The sheriff spent quite a while asking the shaken couple a lot of questions, and once he was satisfied with the answers, left with the doctor, who took the tiny skeleton with him.
News of the discovery of a baby’s skeleton traveled fast, as is so often the case in a small, close-knit farming community. Gossip was running rampant in the town’s church the next day, so the doctor exercised his right as coroner and ordered that an inquest be held the following Monday. It’d been well over sixty years since Sarah Christenson was murdered.
On the day of the inquest, there was standing room only inside of the small courtroom. Almost everyone in the small town was in attendance, dressed in their Sunday finery. The ladies wore their best dresses and hats, and the men were dressed in shirts, ties, and their best blue jeans—some men even wore suits for the occasion.
The sound of high heels and cowboy boots against the worn wooden floor of the courthouse did little to drown out the murmur of muted voices as people discussed what the inquest was going to uncover. The mood remained solemn and serious. After all, as far as the townsfolk were concerned, an innocent baby died in a most gruesome way.
The sheriff took his place at the long table that had been set up in front of the elevated judge’s bench. He was followed closely by the tall, slim coroner, with his hawkish features and sharp, dark eyes that scanned the crowd.
The town attorney, an older woman with graying hair, stern features, and a heavy build, lumbered into the room and took her place next to her husband, the sheriff. The wooden chair protested loudly under her weight to the point that many people waited to see if the chair would give way, sending the attorney tumbling to the floor.
The judge was the last to enter the room. His black robe billowed out around him as he walked, making him look twice his size. He took his place on the bench and banged his well-used wooden gavel several times to bring the inquest to order. The sheriff was then called upon to give his report.
The sheriff rose from his chair, and with an air of self-
importance, related the story from the time he was called to the scene, until the baby’s remains were removed from the house.
The coroner then spoke in a clear, sharp voice, and announced that the baby was placed in the hearth some time ago and that no cause of death could be found, due to lack of any tissue left on the baby to run sufficient tests. The lack of information led to a collective gasp and whispering among the crowd of onlookers, who were looking for more definitive answers.
The judge then told the crowd that if anyone had any potentially relevant information regarding this matter that they should come forward now and share what knowledge they had.
Eighty-seven year old William Walters, who’d discreetly taken a seat at the back of the courtroom, watched the proceedings carefully. His wrinkled, weather-worn face crinkled up in thought and his milky blue eyes half-closed as he searched his memory for any possible answers. Then it hit him—he was positive he knew to whom the baby belonged.
Tentatively, he raised his calloused hand and waited patiently for the judge to call him up to the front of the courtroom. As he stood up, he grabbed the back of the seat in front of him for balance, and slowly shuffled his arthritic body toward the front of the room, relying heavily on his cane for support.
A young man jumped up and helped Mr. Walters get settled in a chair in front of the panel, for which he was very grateful.
“I believe the baby belongs to Sarah Christenson, better known as the Screaming Lady,” Mr. Walters said, his voice raspy from years of smoking. “As I recall, Mrs. Christenson was pregnant when she was murdered, but no baby was found at the time of her death. How the baby got into the hearth of the fireplace I haven’t a clue.”
The room instantly became abuzz at this prospect. Most people forgot about the Screaming Lady until October, when her unearthly scream filled the darkest of nights.
“Quiet!” the judge roared as he banged his gavel. The crowd immediately fell silent. “Mr. Walters, I accept your premise, as there seems no other likely scenario. The question is; what do we do with this poor baby?”
Much discussion ensued on the topic, and it was finally decided, thanks to a charitable contribution by the local funeral director, that the casket of Sarah Christenson be exhumed and the baby placed in her arms. Albeit a gruesome prospect, the townspeople agreed unanimously; they were ready to be finished with this tragedy that blemished the town’s good reputation in the county.
On a dreary, rainy Saturday morning, Sarah Christenson’s body was exhumed. The fragile skeleton of the baby, tenderly wrapped in a soft blanket, was carefully placed in the young woman’s arms. The casket was then resealed and returned to its final resting place.
That October, and every year since the baby was returned to the young mother, the Screaming Lady has been silent. She can no longer be seen running through the barren corn field, nor do her heart-breaking screams punch through the darkness.
It’s speculated that all Sarah Christenson ever wanted was for someone to find her baby and reunite them. As an earthbound spirit, she was using the anniversary of her death in an attempt to send a message to anyone who would listen that her baby was missing.
This young mother’s love for her unborn child transcended death, and now that they are reunited, there is no longer a reason for her to run screaming through the fields. She and her child are together and at peace for all eternity.
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Chapter 5
Franklin’s Story
Sometimes as a psychic medium, a ghost wanders into your life that is unforgettable and will stay with you all the days of your life, and perhaps even remain with you after death. Franklin’s story is haunting—a bit tragic, but in many ways endearing.
Franklin taught me that the personality you carried with you throughout your life doesn’t change much after death. In Franklin’s case, anyway, any changes that happened after his death were subtle. He had an extremely long time to reflect on his life, and the lives of those around him, and in some ways I think he made peace with himself—something he didn’t do before he died. However, his strongest character traits—stubbornness, arrogance, and his sense of entitlement—stayed with him long after his body rotted in the ground. He exists in this plane in spirit form only.
Franklin is an earthbound spirit by choice. He knows he can cross over to the other side any time he chooses; the point is he doesn’t choose to. Is he right in his decision? You can be the judge after you read his story.
I met Franklin’s ghost in a decaying, pre–Civil War mansion that had been undergoing renovation by the current owners. However, due to divorce, all the renovations had stopped and the mansion, a mere shell of its former self, was once again up for sale.
A friend of mine was close friends with the owners, and I was granted access anytime I wanted to be there—which was almost all the time.
At first, Franklin tried to scare me away by attempting to push me down a staircase, but I’d been warned by a friend who’d been almost shoved down the stairs in that house some months earlier, when she was helping the owners attempt to remodel the house.
I remember creeping up the well-
worn stairs, varnished a deep mahogany, and feeling two unseen hands grab my shoulders.
Before the ghost could act any further, I told it to “Back off.” The ghost immediately scurried into a dark corner of the third floor of the house.
With time, and a lot of encouragement on my part, I got the ghost of Franklin to trust me, and we became what I would call “friends.”
I knew from my research on the property that Franklin was the ghost of the son of the original owner, Robert. I knew that Franklin died in 1887 and assumed, rightly so, that he’d been wandering the halls of the mansion since that time.
The third floor of the mammoth estate, like almost all the other floors, had been demolished down to the studs, and the original wide-planked wood floors, which once were varnished to a high-gloss mahogany shine, now were worn and covered with dirt.
The brick outside walls were barren, and a hole in one of the brick walls revealed the spot where an old fireplace once sat. The long-dead radiators were still set against the walls, and three bleak light bulbs dangled from their wires in the ceiling.
Daylight made a vain attempt at illuminating the rooms through dirty narrow windows, but even on the brightest of days, the third floor seemed dark and foreboding. No matter how warm it was outside, the third floor of the house always held a distinct chill, due to Franklin’s presence, and whenever I planned to be there for an extended period of time, I always took a blanket with me.
One rainy morning, I packed up a blanket and thermos of coffee and headed over to the mansion to spend time with Franklin. I could sense he often felt lonely in the place, and obviously, there weren’t many people he could talk to since the house was completely empty. The current owners, Jake and Sandy, were living in their own home a few miles away. Knowing the house was haunted, and because of my love of the paranormal, they’d graciously given me a key, so I was free to come and go as I please.