Haunted Houses

by Nancy Roberts

  He buried his face in his pillow, and when he finally dared look again, the girl was gone. With a deep sigh of relief, Stephen pressed his arms close to his chest, hugged himself to keep from shaking, and started to lie down.

  “Help me. Please, help me,” came a feminine voice, and there she stood again, this time right beside his bed. Tall, with long, dark hair, she was very lovely, but Stephen was too shocked to appreciate her beauty.

  “What kind of help?”

  “This terrible wind has blown my tombstone over.”

  He was unable to reply.

  “You aren’t very gentlemanly.”

  “I’m sorry.” He apologized, dimly aware that the wind had begun to blow again.

  “You must come to the cemetery with me and set it up again.”

  Now Stephen knew what had happened. He had been struck by lightning and was dead. He was just as dead as the girl who was standing there speaking to him. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was gone. At that point he felt as if he were on a cloud drifting up in the air and through the sky—he didn’t know where, and he didn’t care.

  The next morning was a glorious, sun-drenched day. Breakfast was served out on the side porch. It was nine o’clock, and everyone was there—with the exception of one guest, Stephen Scott.

  “Shall we wait, or shall we eat without the sleepy sluggard?” joked one of the men.

  “Let him sleep on. He was too popular with the ladies, anyway,” laughed another.

  “I think I’ll go knock on Stephen’s door,” said their host.

  At that moment the screen door to the porch opened, and everyone turned to look. It was Stephen, but his appearance was quite different from the night before. He was pale, and his hair and clothing were disheveled. Jokes about his late arrival evoked no answering smile.

  “Did you rest well, Steve?” inquired his host.

  “The storm woke me up.”

  “Quite something, wasn’t it?”

  “Ghastly, I’d say.” Leaving his breakfast almost untouched, Stephen wiped his mouth with his napkin and rose from the table.

  “Where are you off to, my friend?” asked his host.

  “I want to walk out to the cemetery.”

  “At this time of morning? We were out there most of the afternoon yesterday, but if you want to go, I’ll walk with you.”

  When they reached the cemetery, Stephen went directly to one grave. There, flat on the ground, lay the toppled tombstone of Miss Sally Carter, the sixteen-year-old sister of Mrs. Ewing. Miss Carter had died in 1837. He was certain now that it was Sally he had seen in his room.

  Stephen’s face grew pale. Pleading the sudden onset of illness, he terminated his visit to Cedarhurst well before nightfall.

  It was odd, thought his host, that a man could be so shaken simply by a toppled stone on “Miss Sally’s” grave.

  In the early 1980s Cedarhurst, the historic Stephen Ewing house, and the land around it were sold. A developer has built private homes and town houses in the immediate vicinity. The restored house sits at 2809 Whitesburg Drive in Huntsville, Alabama, and its interior remains much the same. The cemetery was moved in 1983 to an undisclosed location. We wonder whether the move was as unsettling to Miss Sally Carter as was a fallen tombstone. Will she appear some night to another guest at Cedarhurst and tell him she needs his help?

  THE GHOSTLY GREETER

  LUCAS TAVERN, MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

  Old North Hull Street Historic District in Montgomery, Alabama, has a haunted house for a welcome center. How appropriate that it is the home of a ghost said to be unusually cordial.

  The most frequent accounts of seeing this ghost—the friendly Eliza Lucas—come from people who pass the house at night and see a woman, dressed in the style of the early nineteenth century, waving at them from the doorway of the Lucas Tavern. Rather than be rude, most wave back and begin to wonder about her only later, especially if the hour is approaching midnight.

  In the 1820s Lucas Tavern offered travelers a comfortable place with clean beds, warm victuals, and a friendly hostess. Undoubtedly, one of the great moments of Eliza Lucas’s life was when she opened the door to welcome the handsome, bewigged General Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution, on his visit to Montgomery in 1825. There is no record of what Mrs. Lucas served for dinner that night, but a menu of the tavern fare, found later, listed “chicken pie, ham, five vegetables, pudding and sauce, sweet pies, preserved fruits, a dessert of strawberries and plums, and wine and brandy.” All this cost the traveler seventy-five cents.

  Those who doubt that Eliza’s spirit is at the tavern may begin to believe it after hearing of one Saturday morning in the fall of 1985, when a man arrived, unsolicited, to meet Eliza. He encountered her just inside the front door of the tavern, describing her as of medium height—about five feet three inches tall—and with a warm, pleasant disposition. Strangely enough, the tavern cat, ordinarily very docile, “refuses to go in or out the front door of the tavern unless one of us goes with her, and even then appears uneasy,” the late Director Mary Ann Neeley informed the author. It is a well-known fact that animals often sense the presence of a spirit even when people do not.

  The tavern restoration was completed in 1979, and on January 2, 1980, it became the Visitor’s Reception Center and home of the offices for the Historic District. “Soon after we occupied it, Eliza began to make her presence felt,” said Ms. Neeley.

  “In the winter of 1980, there was a late-afternoon meeting in front of the fire in the Tavern Room. The question was controversial, and one person began to speak very heatedly. At that point a great puff of smoke and ashes erupted from the fireplace, covering the dissident with a coat of chimney soot. All we could think of was that Eliza had not agreed with the speaker and had expressed herself forcefully.

  “On another occasion two staff members were sitting at a table having lunch and were discussing the Historic District and its operation. With no warning, the door to the room began to just slide off its hinges. As they watched, it continued to slide and finally struck the floor with a resounding thud. Again, Eliza had manifested her displeasure over something that had been said.

  “Objects disappear, only to reappear in new locations,” Ms. Neeley concluded. “Eliza rearranges, straightens, messes things up, or leaves them about in a quite unpredictable fashion. Nor can we be sure where she will reappear next.”

  The Hull restoration and its nineteenth-century buildings bring the past to life and are highly popular with visitors, some of whom are amateur photographers.

  Vince Ives was one of these. In the late summer of 1986, he coaxed a hostess into letting him stay to shoot some pictures after the restoration was closed for the day.

  When the last visitor had left, and the tour guides as well, Vince went out through the Lucas Tavern’s back door and into the square with the other nineteenth-century buildings. They were bathed in the wonderful, warm light of late afternoon. He knew that the light would not last long, and he moved quickly from one building to another, shooting.

  The third building was the 1890 schoolhouse, one of Vince’s favorites. It was filled with all the materials a student would have found in a classroom of the 1800s. Earlier he had noticed its interesting details—the potbellied stove, the pine schoolmaster’s desk, the kerosene lamp, the abacus, and the slates. It would have been nice to leave this building until last, like a dessert, but the natural light inside the room would be gone soon, and Vince did not want to use a flash.

  He started toward the schoolhouse, thinking he might want to place some “school days” objects on the windowsill for a still arrangement. It would be great to have a teacher or someone using a slate or abacus to photograph in there, but that was out of the question. Vince had a sense of awe as he thought about all the boys and girls who had sat at these desks long ago, students who had grown up and left their mark in the world but who had now been dead for many more years than they had even been alive.

/>   Closing the door quietly behind him, Vince looked around the room to decide where he would begin. Then he started in surprise. All the guides must not have gone, for there sat one in her nineteenth-century costume. She could be a picture subject for him, perhaps pose as the teacher. She was near the window and seemed absorbed in a book with a blue cover. Why had she stayed on after all the others had left?

  Wearing that old-fashioned dress, with the light coming in from the window beside her, she would make a great picture. Vince started to ask her permission, but then thought how ridiculous that was, because none of the guides minded having their pictures taken. Besides, she might change position, and she was perfect just the way she was. Very quietly and unobtrusively, he began to shoot, moving a little to this side or that, adjusting the lens, bracketing. Unfortunately, the tripod he was carrying struck the leg of a desk with a sharp crack, and the sound seemed to startle her. Hurriedly, she got up to leave.

  “Wait! Don’t go, please. I wonder if I could shoot a picture or two of you there at the old schoolmaster’s desk? It won’t take long.” She did not reply, which seemed rude, and, instead of going toward the desk to sit down, she stopped under the picture of George Washington.

  Oh, no, thought Vince. He might be able to get her to pose there under the portrait, but it was too high to show over her head. The picture of her sitting at the desk absorbed in the book would have looked much more natural, as it really might have come from out of the past.

  “Pardon me, ma’am. I’m Vince . . .” Then his heart began to pound and his lips refused to form the words he was about to say. As he stood there in the middle of the schoolroom, ready to coax his subject into sitting over at the desk, she reached the picture of Washington. For the first time she appeared to acknowledge Vince’s presence, and she turned to wave at him slowly and deliberately. The eyes in the face never really seemed to react to him as a person, although they appeared to stare directly at his face. It was a hot August day in Montgomery, but as Vincent looked back at her, he was chilled to the bone. Then, to his great astonishment, she simply floated right through the wall beneath George Washington’s portrait, as effortlessly as if she were passing through an open door.

  “Ma’am, ma’am . . . ,” he tried to call out, to summon her back. But words failed him, and, beginning to tremble all over, he sat down in the front row of desks. He stared at the area under the portrait. Then he arose and, walking over to the portrait, ran his fingers over the wall beneath it as he searched for some sign of a door or secret panel that would press inward. He couldn’t accept the fact that the girl had simply disappeared. It was almost dark outside when he finally decided to leave. A little dizzy, his knees still weak, Vince walked over to the desk where she had been sitting. On it was an abacus that looked as if it were being used for arithmetic. The blue book that she had been holding was a McGuffey Reader, written in the mid-1800s for children.

  Later Vince asked Mrs. Neely if Eliza was ever seen in other places besides the front of the tavern.

  “Her spirit, you mean? Oh, my goodness, yes. She’s a lively one, if you’ll pardon the pun. She’s been seen in many different buildings here at the restoration, most often the schoolhouse. I doubt if she was ever able to get much formal education in her time, coming from a humble background. But if there was ever anyone who would have wanted to better herself, it was Eliza Lucas. She was ambitious and a hard worker.

  “We all feel Eliza’s presence, and even while I talk about her now, I think she is trying to tell me how I should present her story,” said Ms. Neeley. “The question is, why does Eliza’s spirit continue to visit the tavern? My idea is that Eliza, having lived and operated the tavern for more than twenty years, found her most fulfilling moments in this building. It was here that she reared her family and was recognized far and wide as a hostess. We are very fond of Eliza, and I believe she is of us.

  “I’ll bet she’s around here somewhere right now. Wouldn’t it be something if you could get a picture of her! Why, Mr. Ives, you look white as a sheet. Are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Mr. Ives, what is that book at your feet?”

  Vince stooped down, and, as he looked at the book, his heart began beating madly. It was the McGuffey Reader. He read the child’s name on the flyleaf, the same name he had seen earlier on the reader in the schoolhouse! How did it get here? It was almost as if Eliza were giving him her “calling card.”

  “A book on the floor, eh? That’s our Eliza, at it again. Did you get some good pictures?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Do come back and see us, Mr. Ives. We want to welcome you just the way Eliza would have done if she were here.”

  As soon as Vince returned to his car, he unloaded the film he had shot in the schoolroom and marked the top of the can “Eliza.” He sent the roll off to Kodak when he returned home, not trusting it to a local processor. When he picked it up and put the slides on his lightbox, the pictures of the buildings were fine, as were those of the exterior of the schoolhouse. But all the frames that he had shot inside were blank, except for showing a streak of bright, golden light over at the left or the middle or the right, never in the same place, but “depending on where ‘Eliza’ was standing as I moved around framing my picture,” he said to himself wonderingly as he looked at his slides.

  All Vince needed to do now was to find a photography book with instructions for the proper exposure to capture both the man-made backdrop of a schoolroom and a good sharp image of a ghost.

  Lucas Tavern was relocated and restored in 1980 to Old Alabama Town, a collection of restored nineteenth- and twentieth-century structures reflecting the lives of people who settled and developed central Alabama. The Town is open for self-guided tours from 9 am to 4 pm, Monday through Friday. Visit www.landmarksfoundation.com or call (334) 240-4500.

  THE PIRATE’S HOUSE

  SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

  The Pirate’s House in Savannah was once a home for seafaring men such as Flint and Blackbeard. It is now a world-famous pirate-themed Savannah restaurant.

  “You have to take some risk to find adventure,” said Marion.

  “I don’t want adventure, only a decent meal,” said her husband. Jack Moore could just taste a good seafood dinner. They had strolled along the Savannah waterfront most of the afternoon, intrigued by the variety of shops housed in the brick buildings that had once been cotton warehouses. At about five-thirty they had begun talking about where to have dinner.

  “Let’s ask one of the natives,” suggested Marion.

  Jack groaned. “Do you remember that little hole-in-the-wall in San Diego? The last time you asked a native, it was terrible.”

  “Look at that man over there, in the faded blue dungarees. I’ll bet he would know.”

  “All right. You ask him, and then I can blame you later.”

  The man was sitting on a bench, sifting through a number of fishing lures.

  “Visitors, are you, and you want to know where to get a good meal? Well, I suppose that depends on your taste and your wallet. Where are you folks from?”

  “We’re from Massachusetts. Both of our families have always lived on the coast,” said Marion.

  “Mine, too,” he said.

  “What do you think of the Pirate’s House restaurant?” asked Jack. “Maybe I ought to indulge my wife. She’s always saying that one of her ancestors was a pirate.”

  “Well, join the club,” the man replied. “My grandfather used to say that we were descendants of Captain Bartholomew Roberts, one of the boldest buccaneers of his day. They called him the Crimson Pirate because he often wore red.”

  “We really ought to introduce ourselves. I’m Marion Moore, and this is my husband, Jack.”

  “Glad to meet you. I’m Bart Roberts. You were asking about the Pirate’s House. The food is fine. I eat there myself now and then, but sometimes some of the goings on there bother me a little.” He looked down at the lure he was tying
on his line.

  “You mean loud music, that sort of thing?”

  “No. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Well, then, what bothers you?”

  “It’s other things. Things like . . . well, it’s hard to say.”

  “Like what?” prodded Marion.

  Roberts just looked down at the knot his weathered hands were tying and shook his head. “Don’t pay any attention to an old sea dog like myself. You folks will like it. The place has an interesting atmosphere.”

  “Is your boat tied up near here?”

  “That’s her right there. The Mary Anne. She’s named after my wife, although I’m a widower now. I take her out every morning at sunup, and we’re back here by late afternoon. Some days the catch is quite good. It certainly beats teaching at a university.”

  “Where did you teach?” asked Jack.

  “The University of Oklahoma.”

  “And you just left it all?”

  “Yep. It gave me the feeling of being landlocked. So I decided to come back home. My family has been in the commercial fishing business here for years.”

  “Have you ever regretted your decision?”

  “No. I have too many seagoing ancestors to want to spend my life in a classroom.”

  “How about being our guest for dinner?” Jack asked.

  “You folks don’t need me along.”

  “It would be a real treat for us. You can tell us about Savannah, and you and Marion can swap pirate stories.”

  “You’ve talked me into it. Let me go by my place and change.”

  “That’s great. Marion and I will have a few oysters at a raw bar and then meet you in front of the Pirate’s House at seven o’clock.”

  They were waiting in the parking lot when Bart Roberts drove up. The Pirate’s House is a rambling old frame building on East Broad Street, not far from the waterfront, and was once an inn for Savannah seamen. Its shutters are painted blue, a custom along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. The color blue is believed to be a protection against evil spirits.