I love to hear people’s stories about ghosts, guardians and guides! Every week I will be adding new true accounts here that are not in my book. So please come back for more!
Speaking of Spirits
A beautiful nineteenth-century haunted home.
The Gibbs Farm, just down the road from me.
Story 1
When I was visiting a friend in a nursing home, the hospice nurse who was washing her hair asked where I worked. I told her about my book coming out in January. She was quiet for a moment, then she told me she has brought ghosts home from work.
She said there was a woman she used to bathe in a different nursing home. The woman was close to death but kept hanging on to life. Something was keeping her from letting go.
One day, when the hospice nurse was taking a shower at home, the woman suddenly arrived, crying “Rosario!* Rosario!”
The hospice nurse was more than startled. She felt the message was important, so she contacted the woman’s regular attendant at the nursing home and asked her to relay the woman’s message of “Rosario!” to her family. The attendant did not do as she requested.
However, the nurse learned later that a priest had visited the woman. He thought that she needed a rosary, so he gave her one. She died that very day. Apparently, she needed to be clutching a rosary before she felt ready to move on.
After she passed, her attendant finally told the family about the message the hospice nurse had asked her to pass on to them. They found it very comforting.
*”Rosario” is Spanish for “rosary”
Story 2
While C. was at a restaurant, a hot sauce bottle suddenly slid about six inches across the table and toppled over. The group thought one of them must have accidentally bumped into it.
They put the bottle back where it had started. The bottle proceeded to slip across the table and fall over again.
Surprised, they checked the table for moisture because sometimes objects will move across a wet surface. But the table was completely dry. They checked the stability of the table’s legs and if the top was slanted. Everything appeared normal. The table was flat, dry and seemed perfectly level.
They did notice that the sliding bottle fell over the moment it hit the seam between their table and the next one. However, they could not explain why the bottle kept moving on its own.
It glided across the table four more times before they left.
Perhaps someone was playing with them.
Story 3
The hospice nurse I mentioned in the first story also told me about a regular haunting in her home. She felt it was a parent who was hanging around. Lights would come on by themselves and other minor things would happen.
But the worst thing was every night, in the wee hours, the TV would switch on and wake everyone up. It was extremely annoying.
The nurse finally told their ghost to stop it. She said she knew they were there, and they didn’t need to keep turning on the TV. The activity ended.
Until her sister came to visit. That very day, the TV came on in the middle of the night for the first time in months. The ghostly relative wanted the sister to know they were there, too.
We discussed how ghosts will try to let us know they are around by any means they can. They know we usually can’t see or hear them, so they must make use of electronics and physical objects to get their message across.
Story 4
J. used to work at historic house museums. The Sibley House, possibly the oldest home in Minnesota, was built in 1836 by Henry Sibley, regional manager for the American Fur Company. He cemented his relationship with some of the local Dakota through a relationship with Red Blanket Woman. After she died, he married Sarah Jane Steele, and added on to his stone house to make room for a family.
Only four of the couple’s nine children survived to adulthood, in addition to Sibley’s daughter with Red Blanket Woman.
The children moved on with their lives. But after her death, Sarah did not. Those working at the Sibley house often hear her footsteps in the home when no one else is present.
The “landline” phone, which has been disconnected for years, has been known to call 911. Police have become annoyed by repeated calls to which they must respond, always arriving to find no one there, and nothing amiss.
Workers who unlock the Sibley House in the morning have found the table set with Sarah’s fine China—which had been safely stored in the cabinet when everyone left the night before.
Apparently, Sarah is still very proud of her China and wants to make sure everyone sees it!
Story 5
J. also worked at the Gibbs Farm house built in the 1850s. The ghost there is a mischievous young boy. Willie died due to smoke inhalation after he helped his family put out a prairie fire that threated their farm.
Sometimes when people die very young, they are not ready to leave Earth and will stick around for a while. Willie lets everyone at the Gibbs Farm know that he is still present.
He will do helpful things overnight such as tuck in bed sheets and blankets that were left untucked or put together a large coffee maker that he found unassembled after it was washed and left to dry.
On the other hand, Willie will also take out items that were stored away and hide things that are later found in very odd places.
When museum workers put a new quilt on a bed, they returned the following morning to find that the original antique quilt had been returned to the bed.
Willie will do surprising or even helpful things, but they are playful vs. scary, as you might expect from a spirited little boy.
I love old cemeteries and historic tombstones and have taken hundreds of photos of them. This one is a bit creepy!
Story 6
When L’s grandparents got married in 1919, they sought to buy a farm. They were able to purchase one from a distant relative whose grief over the loss of a child made them want to leave that place.
There was a burial ground on the farm a short distance from the house. It was not uncommon in the nineteenth century for families to bury deceased loved ones on their own land. It was a way to keep them close. Besides, in remote areas, cemeteries were few and far between.
Nobody knew how many bodies were buried on the farm, but there could have been nine or more. The only tombstone that remained was for a man who was born in 1816 and died in 1869. The man’s grandson was also buried onsite; he was born in 1884 and died in 1886, just shy of two years old, due to “cramps in the stomach.”
L’s grandmother said that after they moved in, they experienced loud knocking sounds on the outside of the house. At other times, they would hear the sound of chains being dragged.
Whenever this happened, L’s grandma would have a Mass said for the poor souls in purgatory. That seemed to help, because the sounds would disappear for a while. However, eventually the sounds would return. Another Mass would be said, and things would quiet down again.
It’s possible the ghosts on the land were not sure what to make of the upstart family living in their old farmhouse. However they must have become used to the “new” folks, because they eventually stopped haunting them.
Story 8
A dear friend was seriously il for a long time. I told her that if I passed before her, I would come back and give her a sign that I was all right. I asked if she would come back and give me a sign if she passed before me. She smiled and agreed to that.
On the morning of the day she died, my husband was wrapping Christmas gifts on the dining room table, and I was wrapping them on the living room floor. I heard a thud in the dining room. I asked David what it was. He didn’t know.
I walked over and saw something lying on the rug. It was my little wooden sign that read “Home Sweet Haunted Home.” It always sat on top of a wooden counter by windows on the opposite side of the table from where David was standing. I asked David if he had touched it, and he said no.
The sign had been there for years and had never fallen off before. It has a wide, solid base, so it is stable and not easy to tip over.
I suddenly realized that was the sign from my friend! She had cleverly used a literal “sign” to send one—which appropriately and amusingly mentioned “haunted” when she was in spirit form.
I was thrilled that she had wasted no time in reaching out--on the very morning she had passed. I thanked her profusely. My grieving heart felt lighter.
Story 7
R lived with her boyfriend on a farm in a house that his grandfather had built. His mother had been raised there, and his grandpa had died in the home.
R kept seeing a little gray shape out of the corner of her eye that would come up the basement stairs, race through the kitchen and into the hallway, then disappear. This happened between 7 and 8 pm every evening.
The entity moved like it had four legs, so they named it the “Ghost Cat”. However, no cat had ever lived in the house. So maybe the spirit R saw wasn’t as harmless as the name they gave it.
R eventually told her boyfriend that she intended to leave. She chose to pack her stuff on a day when he was away from the house. His family living next door did not know she was leaving.
As she packed up her possessions, she could hear all kinds of things falling out of the kitchen cabinets loudly onto the floor. The resident ghost was clearly angry she was leaving. R felt that they were mad enough that they might even hurt her.
She didn’t feel safe, so she left abruptly, leaving a lot of her stuff behind. She never went back to retrieve her things.
Story 9
Alyssa lived with her husband and four children in a suburban home. She would regularly see a little ghost girl, who would just stand there watching her with a smile. Alyssa thought she was the only one seeing the apparition. She didn’t say anything to her kids because she didn’t want to frighten them.
One night at dinner, she snickered, and her kids asked why. Alyssa finally revealed that she was reacting to a little ghost girl who was standing there watching them eat. Her kids were shocked. “You can see her?” they said.
She asked her children to describe what they saw. They said the little girl was wearing an old-fashioned dress and a prairie sun bonnet. Exactly what Alyssa observed.
Alyssa said they lived close to the Pond House, where settlers co-existed with the indigenous people of the land. She thought the little girl looked like photos she had seen of people who lived in the Pond House in the mid-1800s.
The ghost still resides in the house with Alyssa’s ex. The kids call her Sophie.
Story 10
JoAnn lived in England as a child. When she was about eight years old, she visited a castle with her family. During the tour, she became separated from her parents and found herself alone in a room.
Suddenly a lady dressed in period clothing stood next to her. JoAnn thought that the woman must be a reenactor. The woman told JoAnn about her child, who she sadly said had passed away.
JoAnn heard her mother calling her. She turned to look at her mom and asked her to wait a minute, because she was talking to a lady. Her mom said, “What lady?”
When JoAnn turned back to the lady, she was gone. There was no place she could have disappeared to in those brief seconds.
Later, Joann saw a wall in the castle that was covered with portraits. One of them was of the lady she had spoken to, who had disappeared.
Story 11
When Matt started teasing his partner a little too much, the resident ghost would respond instantly. A loud knock in the kitchen or porch or a sudden thump in the dining room would shake the house. The spirit let him know in no uncertain terms that no drama was allowed.
Matt said he could feel the entity’s presence. But he also felt that they were not malicious. They were just trying to keep him in line.
When Matt’s sister visited, a different activity occurred. The ghost would keep turning off the lights. They had clearly figured out how to use both visual and audio means to signal their presence or their displeasure. And they were eager to do so!
Story 12
K had a longtime friend who was a Buddhist. One year, he took great delight in giving her a kitschy plastic bell that played snippets of every Christmas song imaginable.
K accepted the cheesy gift with good humor and told her friend that she would play the music every year in his honor. After he passed away from a serious illness, the tacky bell took on some poignancy.
One winter day, K was steaming vegetables in a pan on the stove. She became engrossed in a phone call with her sister in another room and completely forgot about the veggies in the kitchen.
Suddenly she heard the telltale opening notes of the first carol the bell always played. That surprised her.
The switch that turned the music off and on had always been hard to move, and the bell had never turned itself on before.
She went into the kitchen where the bell was hanging to investigate. There K saw the vegetables that she had forgotten. The pan was just moments away from going completely dry, which would have sent smoke pouring out instead of steam.
K felt that her friend on the other side had sounded his bell to grab her attention, saving her from burning her veggies, or worse, starting a kitchen fire.
Story 13
Joe went into the hospital for an operation that was supposed to alleviate distressing symptoms from a chronic illness and make his life better. Instead, he ended up dying while only in his early 40s, leaving behind a wife and two young children.
Jim and Joe were the closest siblings in their large family and were as much best friends as brothers. Although the whole family was devastated by the loss of Joe, it hit Jim especially hard.
Six months after his brother’s death, Jim went outside on a sunny summer Sunday to read the paper on the patio. His dog Jack came with him and sat by his feet.
Suddenly, the dog leapt up and trotted over to the back gate of the fenced yard. The dog looked up as if he saw someone standing there.
Then he turned around and came back toward Jim, all the while looking up and back at the empty air as if he was watching a person walking beside him. He returned to his place near Jim, but his attention was focused on the empty chair across the table.
Jim had a strong feeling that his brother was now sitting in the chair. Joe and the dog had always been pals, and Jack would have responded exactly as he had just done if Joe had entered the yard.
Jim felt Joe had come to find out how he was doing. He started talking to the brother he could not see.
The presence of his loved one was a gift.
Story 14
When Jenny was younger, she lived in a nineteenth century farmhouse with her husband. She learned that the place was haunted in a very disturbing way.
When she was coming down the staircase during her first pregnancy, suddenly everything went dark; she felt as if she had just been blinded. Then she was pushed down the staircase by an unseen force. Fortunately, she was not seriously hurt—just bruised—and her baby was unharmed.
The next time Jenny became pregnant, the same exact thing happened. She was abruptly “blinded” and shoved down the stairs. Once again, she was bruised and in pain, but not seriously injured, and her baby was okay.
Clearly, the resident ghost—or perhaps a darker entity—did not want little ones invading “their” space.
Jenny and her family decided they could not risk further assaults and found a new home.
The mansion where C stayed.
Story 15
C drove to a small town in the country for a weekend work retreat. She and her coworkers met at a mansion built by a lumber baron in the late nineteenth century. The corporate retreat was stressful, but at least C could retire to her own private bedroom at the end of each day.
The first night, C secured her bedroom door and set the alarm on the clock by her bed. She didn’t want to be late for the first session in the morning.
She woke up in the middle of the night. The bedroom door had swung wide open. But no one stood in the doorway. Surprised and confused, C got up and shut the door again. She eventually managed to fall back to sleep.
The next thing she knew, someone was knocking on the door to wake her up. C had overslept. She looked at the bedside clock and saw that the alarm had been turned off. She had been so careful the night before to make sure it was set properly. How could that have happened?
At the end of the weekend, C decided to take a quick look around the historic mansion before leaving. When she glanced into the kitchen, she saw a bulletin board. On it was posted a prominent phone number—for Ghostbusters.
Suddenly what she had experienced in her room made sense. C suspected that she was not the first person to have been visited by ghosts in that old mansion.