The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story

by Debra Pickman

  We found fifteen possibilities and initial cross referencing ruled out five of them. We ended up with six Sallys or Sallies, as well as three others who had died within the specified dates but without notation of their ages, first names, or gender.

  Of those ten individuals, six died between 1927 and 1943, which ruled out the information that Barbara had shared with us before. There was a child named Sallie Isabell Hall who died in 1905, and three others that died in the late 1800s: Sally M. Foster died Feburary 1865, Sally White died Feburary 12, 1891, and another child, noted as being four years old (no first name listed) died in 1894 in the town of Lancaster. We ruled out Lancaster, leaving us three individuals with the name Sally or Sallie.

  Out of those three, we realized one possible connection to one of the surnames. The Hall family was a black family that lived around the corner and up the block from the Finney house. Although we had no proof, we thought this family might have worked as servants for the doctor. Although this information certainly did not validate the name of our ghost, we thought perhaps it would be helpful down the road. In the end, the countless hours of research didn’t really help at all. We never found a child with the name Sallie who had ever lived in the house, much less died there.

  eight

  The next day was July 29—the day Barbara was due to visit. I began the day with my normal activities, still looking around cautiously at everything as I entered a room. By now, it had become a habit to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Quite often I had found myself peeking into the nursery for things mysteriously out of place, or for a crayon-written response to the note I had left on the clipboard, but there seemed to be no activity anywhere.

  Knowing that Sallie wanted my attention, I began to talk to her as Barbara had suggested. I told her I was happy that she was still with us, and I thought it was nice when she did things to let us know she was around. “When you do things like that, I know you’re here in the room with us, and then I can talk with you.” I tried to make small talk, one-sided of course, and asked her if she liked it when I talked to her. I also reminded her that Barbara was coming later that day and that she had no reason to be scared. “Barbara’s just a friend who’s going to try to help all of us.”

  Barbara was scheduled to do a radio talk show where listeners could call in and ask questions. I thought listening to the show would give me some insight into her psychic ability. During the first half of the show, she talked about psychic phenomena and told about how she had come to know she had abilities.

  As a young girl, she had communicated with her brother who had died several years before she was born. One day Barbara’s mother heard her humming a tune that her mother had only sung to the infant who had died. This had been a turning point in her family’s belief in her abilities. Before then, no one had been able to validate the things she would share “from beyond.” Although her brother had died as a baby, he came to her as a young man and grew older as he guided her through her teenage years.

  This was the closest encounter I had ever had with a psychic, so I took notes and listened intently. I was disappointed that instead of asking questions about ghosts and spirits, callers asked about things like: Will the bad financial situation I’m in get any better? Will my business venture succeed? Will I come into money? Is the man I’m dating Mr. Right? There was not one paranormal question about life after death or spirit communication. They had missed the point of the interview. Listeners were so self-centered that everything focused on their own personal satisfaction. I couldn’t wait to meet Barbara myself because I had so many questions about the spirit world.

  Later that afternoon, I visited my neighbor Carol, who had lived in the house north of us for fourteen years. I wanted to ask her a few questions about the people who’d lived in the house before us. I wondered if she’d ever heard about anything weird or unexplainable happening. I took the baby with me, and the conversation centered on him for quite some time.

  I didn’t know quite how to approach the subject of our apparent haunting, and I wasn’t sure how Carol would respond to it. After unsuccessfully hinting for information, I finally mustered up enough courage to come right out and ask her, “Did you ever hear of anything weird happening in our house?” I could tell that she was puzzled, but curious. I couldn’t contain myself any longer; it was inevitable that she would hear about the whole ordeal, so I began telling her of the experiences we’d had.

  Now, usually when you tell someone you think you have a ghost in your house, they look at you with disbelief and maybe attempt to humor you. To my surprise, Carol actually showed a great deal of interest. She told me she really didn’t know the previous tenants very well and she hadn’t heard of anything strange ever happening at the house. At some point we had gotten off the subject and were on to discussing other things, such as how it felt having a new baby in the house. Then she asked me a strange question. “Do you let the baby sleep with the light on?”

  Not wanting to offend her, especially if she had done that with her children, I said, “No, he’s still sleeping in the cradle we have in our room, and we don’t leave the lights on. Why?”

  She told me that she and her husband were often up in the wee hours of the night as well as early in the morning, and they had noticed that the light in the nursery always seemed to be on. She also informed me that when we were gone in the evenings, the light was on. I explained to her that because we had often gone in there in the middle of the night for diapers or something, I had put a night light in the nursery and that we had a bad habit of leaving the hallway light on. “That’s probably what you have seen.” I said.

  “No, it’s definitely the overhead light because we can see it through the window.”

  This was confusing. I had never noticed the light on in the middle of the night. I had also never noticed it from the front of the house as we pulled up to park the car. Being very energy conscious, I always turned the lights off before we left the house, except for one of the living room lights.

  Carol and I chatted a little while longer before I realized that Tony was due home any minute. I excused myself without mentioning Barbara’s impending visit. Carol had been exceptionally receptive to our strange situation, but I still didn’t know if she was just trying to be polite or secretly thinking I was wacko. I didn’t feel comfortable letting her know we were having a psychic come to the house.

  Knowing we were expecting company at six that evening, I picked up the house. Although I knew better I started again to doubt my own senses. “Maybe we don’t have a ghost,” I thought. “Nothing really strange happened today and the light coming on was probably just a short in the wiring or something.” There were, however, two things that brought me back to the reality at hand. One was the fact Barbara had sensed a certain young presence in the house; the other was the incident where Tony was scratched.

  About 3:30 p.m., Tony came home from work. A short time later, George came over saying that he wanted to check things out before Barbara got there. It just so happened that he brought his laundry, too. After browsing through the house and examining a few items of interest, he went into the kitchen and put the first load into the washer. When he came back to the dining room where we were we sitting, he pulled out one of the chairs and plopped his cigarettes and lighter down on the table in front of him.

  As we talked about Barbara’s visit and what might happen with her there, one of us mentioned that it would be nice to record the whole evening on video and Polaroid camera. Should Sallie reveal herself, we wanted to get the best pictures possible. The problem was that none of us owned either type of camera. We racked our brains to think of people we could borrow the equipment from, and were soon on the phone calling family members, friends, and neighbors. We finally found what we needed, and made arrangements to pick it all up a short while later.

  After about twenty-five minutes, George realized the washi
ng machine had stopped, so he went into the kitchen to switch his wet load into the dryer. As he passed the bathroom door on the way, he noticed out of the corner of his eye what he thought was a night light in the bathroom. A few days earlier, he had noticed a night light in the nursery and thought I had also placed one in the downstairs bathroom, so he didn’t think twice about it. After loading the dryer and passing the bathroom on his way back, he once again glanced into the bathroom and noticed that what he thought was a night light was actually two votive candles sitting on the back or the toilet. When he got back to the dining room he casually asked if either of us had lit them, but we had not.

  Several months previously, I’d placed those two candles in the bathroom. Like all the other candles scattered about the house, they were purely decorative and had never been lit. I raced to the bathroom to see if they were still lit. They were, and each candle had a very small pool of wax at the base of its wick, which told me they had not been burning long—perhaps a minute or so.

  I tried to think back. There hadn’t been a moment during the past ten minutes, when one of us had been out of sight from the others long enough to have slipped into the bathroom to light the candles without being noticed. Tony and I had been in the next room within full view of the bathroom doorway and anyone entering it. In addition, Tony and I had not left each other’s side during the few minutes George was in the kitchen. George’s cigarettes and lighter were still sitting on the dining room table where he had left them. Realizing that no one had the opportunity to light the candles, we decided that the culprit must have been Sallie.

  Knowing that my next chore was to scold her, I blew out the candles and took a deep breath. Then in a sharp and angry voice, I called out to her. “Sallie, did you light these candles?” Since I really wasn’t expecting a response, I wasted no time in telling her that lighting fires was not a good thing to do, that it was very dangerous, and that a fire could easily get out of control and burn down the house. I explained that if we had no house she would not have a place to stay, either. “So, Sallie,” I said in a very strong and chastising voice, “Now we have another rule. No playing with fires!”

  I returned to the dining room where Tony and George stood snickering. Not just at the idea that I had been yelling at a ghost, but in their disbelief that a ghost had lit the candles. Thinking of being in the house with an active ghost gave them such an uneasy feeling that for them, laughter was the best response. I have to admit that I was amused, despite the safety issue. Sallie’s desire to let her presence be known was cute. On the other hand, having an unknown and unsupervised fire in the house really bothered me.

  I also found myself baffled. Did she like playing with fire? Was she trying to tell us something? Was she just being ornery, or was this simply a ploy to get noticed. Then I thought about what could have happened if she had actually set the house on fire. What if one of these days she lit a fire while we weren’t home or when we weren’t close by? To distract myself, I tried focusing my thoughts on George and Tony as they made arrangements for who was going to pick up which camera and who would go to the store for the film.

  The guys set off on their errands and returned a little while later. George then went to retrieve the video camera from our neighbors, Don and Carol. Upon his return, we found out that he had for some reason felt compelled to tell the neighbors about who was coming to the house that night and what was going to take place. I was shocked that he had done so.

  A few of George’s friends, knowing about what was going planned for that night, stopped in just to see what was going on. Rodney was one of them, and while we waited for Barbara’s arrival, he detailed one of his own ghostly experiences. It had happened when he was young, and although it didn’t thrill him, he did come out of it with a curiosity and interest in the subject. George’s friend James was not a believer and probably thought we had made the whole thing up. Given his position on the subject, he was very interested in hearing the line of bull that the psychic was sure to tell us.

  I’m sure that Rodney and James also hoped to witness something ghostly during Barbara’s visit. Of course, if something did happen, it would be in our best interest to have as many witnesses as possible to support our claim. With that in mind, we agreed to let the two of them stay.

  We sat around, waiting impatiently for Barbara’s arrival. We talked about breaking into the film so that we could test the Polaroid camera. When Barbara didn’t arrive as scheduled, we did just that. We eagerly opened the first package and loaded it into the camera. Since Barbara had once explained that Sallie was protective of the baby, I suggested that we take some photos of Taylor being held by different people.

  Tony took the first photo of George holding Taylor on the couch. This picture turned out clear, so we assumed the camera was working fine. Further thinking out our approach, we realized that Sallie was likely comfortable with Tony, me, and George being around the baby, so Taylor was passed to Rodney. When Taylor began to cry and fuss, we took another picture of him. While we waited for the picture to develop, Tony cuddled Taylor in an attempt to comfort him.

  A few minutes later, we looked at the photo of Rodney and the baby, and saw an odd whitish fuzzy area between them. Not sure what to make of it, we decided to take another picture. Tony had managed to quiet Taylor, who was now smiling and babbling at him, so I turned toward them and snapped off the next picture. When the picture developed, the same whitish blur showed up between them. Was this Sallie? Before long, we had gone through an entire package of film.

  We had several pictures of Taylor alone and in the company of at least one other person. Although it was less apparent in some of the photos, almost every one showed the same fuzzy effect. This effect also showed up when Tony and I were with the baby and in one photo of me alone. It was odd.

  In one photograph of Taylor sitting alone on the couch, his left foot is raised off the couch and a small but a very apparent fuzziness can be seen just under it. His focus seems to be on something a little higher than himself and to his left. I couldn’t help but wonder if the fuzzy blur under his foot was actually Sallie’s presence. Had her hand been under his foot in an attempt to stabilize him from toppling over sideways, as he so often did at this point of his development?

  Although it varied in size, density, and orientation within each photo, the blur or fuzzy area consistently showed up in many of the pictures. Although he couldn’t see one, Tony wondered if he had gotten a fingerprint smudge on the camera’s lens and this is what had appeared as the blurred effect in the developed photos.

  Determined to prove his theory, he took the last two pictures of the first roll. One was of Taylor in his baby swing, and the other was a self-portrait taken at arm’s length. While those pictures developed, the rest of us again scrutinized the previous pictures. Tony was still convinced that the fuzziness was due to a faulty camera or a bad roll of film, so he opened the second package of film, loaded it into the camera, and took three more pictures.

  While those photos were set aside to develop, he looked at the last two from the first roll. Neither photo showed a blur, which discounted both the idea that the film pack was bad and that there was a finger print smudge on the lens of the camera. Although the first two photos of the second roll showed no anomaly, the third picture of the second roll showed a fuzzy blur along Taylor’s backside. Out of thirteen photos taken up to this point, eight were marred by a whitish fuzzy blur, five were not. From those eight, we noticed that the blurs were very localized, leaving the rest of the picture in perfect focus. I started to refer to the blur as Sallie.

  I remember things like Taylor’s disposition and who was near him at the time, and then correlate the intensity of the blur that showed up in a particular picture with what was actually taking place in the picture. It was apparent to me Sallie was more prominently visible when Taylor was upset or when she didn’t feel comfortable with the person who was holding
him or anywhere near him. Another thing I noticed was the increased density of the blur in the photos of Tony and the baby and of me and the baby. In each of these photos, Taylor was being cuddled in our arms and we were looking at him in a loving way. He was perfectly content, and there was no reason for Sallie to feel the need to protect him, thus leaving me to conclude that she simply wanted to be included in the family togetherness.

  Each of us took a turn at being the photographer, so it was highly unlikely that any one person was to blame for the blur in so many of the other photos. Since some of the pictures within each package of film had turned out perfectly fine, we could assume there was no defect in the film or camera. We felt there was definitely some sort of paranormal energy showing up in the pictures, and we couldn’t wait to get Barbara’s opinion.

  Barbara’s Arrival

  Barbara arrived about 8:30 p.m., accompanied by her sister. Before they had a chance to sit down, we asked if they had any objection to our documenting the visit with cameras. Barbara thought it was a great idea. We told her of the photos we had taken prior to her arrival and she responded, “I don’t want to see them just yet.”

  I assumed that she wanted as little outside input as possible so she could interpret the situation and energy without external influence. Already extremely skeptical of psychics, I appreciated this approach to avoiding a common pitfall of “cold reading”; a method whereby psychics gain information from photos, facial expressions, voices and reactions of those they are working with. Tony, however, wasn’t yet convinced.

  Barbara appeared to be preoccupied as she glanced around the living room, seemingly in a world of her own, getting a feel for whatever or whoever was there with us. It wasn’t as if she was actually looking at any “thing” in the room; in fact, as her eyes roved they never seemed to stop or focus on anything in particular or anything we could see. It seemed that she was seeing beyond our physical world, and outside the world of normal expectations. Her body language did not seem to signify a predetermined approach or prepared speech, and she didn’t ask a lot of questions that would lead her to cold read responses.