Haunted Houses

by Nancy Roberts

  “She probably looked out that window many a time, for that was Alice’s bedroom,” said Clarke Willcox, gesturing toward the room on my right as I stood with my back to the round window. The room was white, as was the spread on the spool bed. Over a door hung a needlework sampler upon which had been worked, in large letters, the name “Alice.” It was a room that might have been typical of any young girl before the Civil War, what with its dainty, ruffled curtains, its innocence, its simplicity.

  We sat down on the porch and continued to talk about the house. The front steps and walk are of sturdy English ballast brick, used to prevent light sailboats from capsizing in mid-ocean. When not needed, these bricks were often thrown into harbors and rivers, and many of them, when retrieved, paved the streets of Charleston and Savannah. It appeared that Mr. Willcox was not going to bring up the subject of Alice, which I had been prepared to ask questions about—questions that, in the light of my hosts’ obvious intelligence and culture, now seemed somewhat rude.

  “Everyone who comes here probably asks you to tell them the story about Alice,” I finally said, leading into the subject in a manner that I felt did not indicate either belief or unbelief.

  “You’re right,” my host replied, “and with so many questions about the story, I suppose that I have thought about her almost daily during the years we have lived in the house. No description of The Hermitage would really be complete without the tragedy of Alice Flagg. I gather you wish to hear it?” I nodded, and Mr. Willcox began his story.

  “Alice was the sixteen-year-old sister of Dr. Allard Belin Flagg, who built The Hermitage. Since there was a considerable age difference between Allard and his younger sister, and since their father was dead, Allard always dominated his sister. He was more like a parent than a brother, and at times a tyrannical and disapproving parent at that.

  “On her last vacation at home from finishing school in Charleston, Alice wore her new engagement ring on a ribbon around her neck beneath her blouse, unable to brave Allard’s rage if he saw it. She did everything possible to conceal even her happiness, for she was aware of his contempt for a man who was in the turpentine industry, a mere merchant, rather than a member of the professional or planter class.

  “She returned to school after Christmas, and that spring was one of joy and secret planning for the future with her fiancé. The high point of the social season each year was the Spring Ball, at which the debutantes were presented. Alice made her debut in the most beautiful white gown imaginable. Those who saw her commented on how lovely she looked and on the becoming color in her cheeks as she danced one dance after another with her fiancé. Her mother was not able to attend for she had fled from the Low Country, with its dreaded malaria season, to the mountains. Fortunately, young Allard was not present either, too busy visiting patients and operating the farm.

  “The day following the ball, Alice was suddenly stricken with the fever prevalent in the area. School authorities sent for Dr. Flagg. After equipping the family carriage with medications and articles for Alice’s comfort, he set out with a servant over the miserable roads to Charleston. It was a four-day one-way trip from Murrell’s Inlet, and there were five rivers to ford.

  “When they arrived back at The Hermitage, Dr. Flagg was able to give his young sister a more thorough examination, and, in doing so, he found the engagement ring. Allard snatched it from her neck with such force that the ribbon broke. Then he strode outdoors and threw the ring into the creek. Alice was broken-hearted, and when visitors would come to her sickroom, she would beg them to find her ring. Her distress was apparent to all, and finally a young cousin went to Georgetown and bought a ring. When he pressed it into her hand, weak and near death as she was, she knew the difference. She threw it on the floor and begged him to find her ring.

  “One week after her arrival at home, Alice breathed her last. There was not sufficient time for her mother even to get back from the mountains before the casket was closed, and Alice was buried temporarily in the yard of The Hermitage. When her mother returned, the girl’s body was moved to the family plot at All Saints Waccamaw Church, on the river opposite Pawley’s Island. Beneath the beautiful trees in the old cemetery and amid the imposing stones raised in memory of the other Flaggs may be seen a flat, white-marble slab. Upon it is engraved the single word ALICE.

  “It is an epitaph telling in its simplicity. It would be given only to one who was unknown save for her first name—or so loved that only the first name was needed. I have walked through that cemetery many a time and seen a vase of flowers on her grave, a tribute to her left by some unknown donor. People are very romantic, aren’t they?” Mr. Willcox commented.

  “Do you think that Alice really does come back?” I asked him.

  “People have been seeing the ghost of Alice Flagg for a hundred years or more. They were seeing it when I was a boy,” was his reply.

  “When she appears, what does she do?”

  “Old people in the area say that she searches for her ring and that her spirit won’t rest until she finds it.”

  “Does she ever come back here to the house?”

  “My wife and I have often felt her presence in her bedroom. An aunt of mine slept in that room while I was growing up. One day, when she was looking in the mirror and brushing her hair, she suddenly saw a lovely girl in a white dress reflected in the mirror beside her. She turned, and no one was there. Aunt Emma screamed all the way down the stairs,” he said, chuckling.

  “Then there are some who claim to have conjured up her ghost in the cemetery.” Mr. Willcox stared thoughtfully out over the salt marshes. “Some nights I think she is out there or even under the trees on the lawn, searching for the ring, never giving up her quest. I’ve looked for it myself, but if I ever found it, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. How could I get it back to her?”

  “Where is Alice’s grave located in the cemetery?” I asked.

  “Beyond the church on the right. You’re going out there, aren’t you?”

  “I probably will.” The sun had set by now, and it was getting chilly on the porch. We both stood up, and I thanked Mr. Willcox for his kindness.

  It was time for dinner, and I looked forward to eating at Oliver’s or one of the other seafood restaurants on Highway 17. I thought it would be best for me to go out to the cemetery in the morning. The meal was delicious, but as I ate I became more and more tempted to find Alice’s grave that night. If the moon was out, it might be possible; if not, there was no hope at all in the darkness.

  The sky was clouded over, and there was no sign of the moon or even a star. I drove south on Highway 17, and somehow, seemingly without even being able to help it, my car turned right and took the road to All Saints Waccamaw Cemetery. I had a powerful flashlight in the trunk that I could shine on some of the stones, but trying to find her slab that night was risky.

  By the time I pulled up and stopped beside the old cemetery, I was beginning to feel foolish. If anyone passed and saw my light bobbing about out there, would they think I was a vandal, perhaps even a grave robber? Ahead were the gates. Would they be locked? They opened easily, I found; as I went in, I closed and latched them carefully. Where had Mr. Willcox said her grave was? Somewhere beyond the church . . . past the front steps and then to the right? Was that where he had meant?

  I shone my light on one of the stones, but it was not a member of the Flagg family. Off in the distance, a dog howled mournfully. Wasn’t that considered an omen of death? I didn’t know whether I was nervous or just felt foolish being here on such a mission. Sometimes I bumped into markers, and that gave me a real start. At other times I would step on a sunken grave and feel my feet sink still further into the soft, sandy soil.

  For more than thirty minutes I must have wandered about the cemetery, with no success. It is not easy to find a flat stone at night. And then I stepped on it. When I did, I jumped to one side, for the act of standing on someone’s gravestone seemed sacrilegious. I shone the light down squarely o
n the white marble, and there, engraved in large letters, was the name ALICE. My excitement was so great that I dropped the light, and as it hit the stone, it went out. It didn’t really matter, though, because I had found her grave. With my index finger I traced the letters. It was the stone I had been looking for!

  Someone had said that teenagers often come out here at night and walk around the grave thirteen times, hoping to commune with Alice’s spirit. At least there was none of that foolishness going on tonight, for I seemed to be the only one in the cemetery. I had taken a picture of The Hermitage and wanted to take a picture of the stone—just as a curiosity, of course. But I could come back here in the morning before I left and do that. It was getting quite misty, and even a flash shot might not turn out well.

  “What are you doing down there on the ground?” asked a feminine voice.

  I turned around. Behind me stood a girl who must have come up without my hearing her. It was probably one of the teenagers who often visited the gravesite.

  “I was looking for the grave of a girl named Alice.”

  “You have found it,” she replied.

  “Do you come here often?”

  “Oh, I’m out here quite a lot, most often when some of my friends are out at night, too.”

  “Isn’t it pretty foolish for you and your friends to come out here in this old cemetery to see the grave of a girl who has been dead more than a hundred years?”

  “You make that sound like a very long time.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t seem long to me at all.”

  As she talked, I thought her dress appeared almost luminous. The moonlight must have been shining on it. I looked up at the sky, and the moon was out for the first time that night.

  “Why did you come out here?” asked the girl.

  “I suppose I wanted to know if all the stories I had heard were true and if there really was such a thing as the spirit of a beautiful girl named Alice.”

  “What a ridiculous question.”

  My heart began to hammer. “Do you mean you are Alice?”

  Her white raiment was glowing even brighter until I could scarcely look at it.

  “Of course I am Alice, and my home is The Hermitage.”

  “Then what are you doing here in this cemetery?” I asked more boldly, but she ignored my question.

  “Did you come to help me?”

  “That depends. What would you like for me to do?”

  “I want you to help me find my ring. I’ve been looking for it ever so long.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that. Your brother threw it away, you know.”

  “How could he do something so wicked? Where is it?”

  While she talked, her dress became so bright that I had to turn my eyes away. A cloud of mist came rolling up from the river and enveloped us. As we entered the cloud, for the first time I was afraid.

  “If I ever see Allard Flagg, I will surely tell him . . . ,” she was saying, and her voice faded. When the cloud finally passed, the girl was gone, and so was the moon. I heard the angry rumble of thunder in the distance, the prelude to a coming storm.

  For the first time in my life, I found myself trembling violently. My eyes had been exposed to such brilliant light that they were not readjusting well, and the darkness of the cemetery was overwhelming.

  What had happened to the practical, down-to-earth engineer whom I had always considered myself to be? Without my flashlight, how would I find the gate? Suddenly, I heard a metallic clang, and I realized that someone had closed the gate noisily. Was I imagining that I heard the rattle of a chain securing it? Had a night watchman locked me in?

  In my haste to get out, I stumbled over a footstone and barely managed to keep from falling. I stretched my arm out in front of me for some protection, and my fingers rested on a clammy marble face. Whether the face was that of an angel or Christ, I was not sure, for I didn’t leave my hand there long enough to find out. Finally, I managed to make my way to the gate. I reached for the latch automatically and when I did, I discovered that I could have walked right through it. Instead of being closed, the gate was ajar. What about the sound I had just heard? Hadn’t I been careful to latch it behind me? Yes, I was certain I had.

  Reilly Burns has become a believer, I thought to myself as I drove down Highway 17 north toward Myrtle Beach. That night I lay on the bed in my motel room, hands clasped behind my head. I thought for a long, long time of a girl named Alice whom I would never see again—at least not on this earth.

  The Hermitage is on the National Register of Historic Places and located in the Murrells Inlet Historic District, United States Highway 17 Business, Murrells Inlet, SC 29576.

  A DRUM FOR THE DEAD

  BERKELEY HUNDRED, CHARLES CITY, VIRGINIA

  Berkeley Plantation is on Highway 5 in Charles City, Virginia.

  When I first saw him, the master of Berkeley was out picking up limbs that the wind’s hands had stripped from ancient oaks. With his eighty-two years, Malcolm Jamieson stood like one of the oaks, aged but sturdy. Beneath his shock of white hair, the blue wells of his eyes gazed out with humor and kindness.

  No Virginian he, but from energetic Yankee stock, Malcolm Jamieson, through both physical labor and imagination, wrested this gem of an early colonial plantation from the years of neglect following the Civil War.

  In a very real sense, Berkeley is the home of all Americans, for it is the birthplace of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the ancestral home of two presidents. Over the past three-and-a-half centuries, this single plantation has seen more historic firsts than any other English-speaking settlement in America.

  By the spring of 1622, just as the Virginia settlement was gaining strength, the inhabitants of Berkeley met with sudden and violent death during an Indian uprising. The Indians simultaneously invaded plantations all over the colony, seeking to annihilate the English intruders. At Berkeley they succeeded; the original plantation never fully recovered from the massacre although it changed hands several times during the next seventy years.

  The Harrison family acquired Berkeley in 1691. The history of this family and American politics blend together here like the sweeping green lawn and fields running down to the banks of the James River. One descendant, Benjamin Harrison V, grew up to sign the Declaration of Independence. His good friend George Washington was often entertained at Berkeley. In fact, every one of America’s first ten presidents enjoyed the plantation’s hospitality. Two of these presidents came from the Harrison family—one was William Henry and the other, his grandson.

  By the nineteenth century financial reverses had caused the Harrison family to lose its hold on Berkeley, and then Virginia was torn by the Civil War. General McClellan’s Federal troops occupied Berkeley after retreating from their siege of Richmond. On the grounds and fields surrounding this once proud manor house, the Union Army of the Potomac encamped, 140,000 strong, receiving supplies from U.S. Navy gunboats anchored in the Potomac River.

  During that hot August of 1864 at Berkeley, a man named General Daniel Butterfield composed a haunting bugle melody. The name of it was “Taps.” It was a melody that would soon drift out through the darkness into camps all over the world.

  As Jamieson walked about picking up limbs on a warm autumn day in 1987, he thought about Berkeley’s history. A panorama of scenes went through his mind leading from the past to the present, peopled by characters whom, in a sense, he had come to know intimately.

  It was on that day in 1987 that a white Oldsmobile station wagon rolled up to Berkeley and a family from Richmond, whom we shall call the Larrimores, began the plantation tour. Julie Larrimore was more patient than her brother. Randy, not content to inspect all the fine architectural details of the mansion and eager to explore the farthest reaches of the plantation, slipped away during the movie about the plantation’s history.

  Randy always became restless when he had to tag along with his parents on tours of old houses, for he wo
uld rather be out tramping in the woods, slogging along in the muck beside a river, or peering curiously into the musty dimness of an old barn. In the darkness of the visitor center where tourists were viewing the film, he had seized his chance to slip away. Perhaps, he could even melt back into the group as they came outside later. Meanwhile he was off in search of adventure.

  “This house was purchased by John Jamieson of Scotland, who served as a drummer boy in McClellan’s army fifty years ago,” intoned the film’s narrator. “In 1927 the plantation was inherited by his son, Malcolm, and together with his wife, Grace, they are responsible for the extensive restoration seen today.

  “Window frames, floors, and masonry as well as America’s finest pediment roof, are all original. Much of the furniture came from Westover Plantation, and the English silver, Waterford glass, and Chinese porcelain are authentic to the period. The famous Adams woodwork was installed in 1790. Berkeley’s five terraces between the house and the James River were dug by hand, using oxcarts and wheelbarrows, before the Revolution.”

  Outdoors, Randy had already reached the third terrace and was contemplating which part of the plantation he wanted to explore first. His parents continued to watch the film, unaware that he was no longer with them. “Today, the soybean and small grain crops that occupy more than a thousand acres of this working plantation are harvested with the latest in farm equipment. So, welcome home, Americans, to a plantation where history lives today. We hope you enjoy your visit,” said the narrator.

  Julie and her parents filed out with the rest of the audience. She was just about to tell them that Randy was gone when they saw friends. Everyone began talking and when Julie found that their daughter of her age was with them, she forgot all about Randy’s defection. While they had been in the house, there had been a summer storm; the sky had become quite dark, though it was not yet midday.