With Halloween fast approaching and October being National Family History month, it’s time for a family ghost story.
The Tradition
My paternal grandmother’s family lived in a small Middle Tennessee town. Annual visits to see her family were well established by the time my sisters and I came along. When I moved to Tennessee, few living relatives remained, but the tradition of driving through the old hometown, and seeing the family homeplace and cemeteries, continued.
The Houses
I never saw—except in photographs—the large two-story house my great-grandparents built in the late 1800s. It burned down in 1948, but until then, it was the focal point of all family activities. My great-grandmother—alone since her husband’s death more than a decade before—rebuilt a smaller, one-story house on the site.
Whenever Mom and Dad came to visit me, we continued to drive by the small house and through the neighborhood that had once been the family farm. Then, one year, we drove past the house without recognizing it. It had been sold and the new owners had both remodeled and added on.
The Question
We met the new owners and were invited to stop and walk around the house whenever we were in town. We accepted their invitation, and in the ensuing years, the wife often walked with us, listening to Dad’s stories, and asking questions.
One year, our annual visit and walk followed the normal script, until we prepared to leave. At that moment, the woman surprised us with an unexpected question: “Did any male relatives die in the house?” Dad and I looked at each other and said, “Yes. Why?”
The woman explained that her teenage son had recently shocked her with the information that a male spirit resided in the house with them. He’d realized it soon after they’d first moved in, more than a decade before, but until now had never spoken of it.
More than a little shocked ourselves, Dad and I proceeded to tell her Dad’s grandfather and uncle had passed away there. We gave her both men’s names.
In my opinion, if there is a ghost, it’s most likely Dad’s uncle, my grandmother’s younger brother. Always a sickly boy, Silas had passed away in the original house at age seventeen. The woman’s youngest son, barely five or six when they moved in, would have been open to seeing ghosts, as only a child can be. And Silas’ spirit would certainly have identified with the young lad.
DYK Silas was buried in the orchard behind the big house? Twenty-seven years later, when his father passed away, Silas’ remains were exhumed and reburied in the town cemetery next to him.
The Wait
As you might expect, I couldn’t wait to return and learn what effect, if any, the use of their names had had. However, due to unexpected circumstances, several years passed before we were able to visit again. As luck would have it, the young man himself pulled in right behind us.
Somewhat reluctantly, he admitted his awareness of the house’s male spirit but didn’t share anything else. Anti-climactic, to say the least, but not surprising. He didn’t know us.
Final Thoughts
For decades after Silas’ death, both houses—the large two-story first and later the smaller one—were filled with family—his parents, ten siblings and their spouses, and numerous nieces and nephews. Then the family sold the house, and the new owners were older, more sedate, and had no young children. It would be more than forty years before the house once more changed hands. This time to a couple with young, rowdy boys.
If my great uncle’s ghost does still reside there, it’s not surprising he made his presence known to the youngest son soon after this new family moved in. Who could blame him? Even a ghost can take only so many years of peace and quiet.