A Spirited Life: The Semi-Fauxtobiographical Tale of a Paranormal Enthusiast

PART 1: CHILD’S PLAY

I’ve always been interested in the paranormal. Blame my mother. She had a bookshelf full of psychics, ghost stories, lost worlds, and aliens. And – good or bad – she would let my sister and me stay up late to watch “Creature Feature” hosted by the entertaining and only quasi-creepy Count Gore de Vol. Being my inquisitive self (Something else to blame on my mother who encouraged us to figure out the answers to our own whys.) I always wondered from what shady realm all of the ghouls, vampires, and slimy creatures came. Being only six or seven years of age, my brain had a hard time getting past the answers “from the closet” or “under the bed”.

In the rural area of northern Virginia where we lived at the time, there were several abandoned houses down dark, wooded lanes, buried under vines, far back in the forest. My favorite interruption to the hot summer days occurred whenever our mother (there she goes again!) would take us to collect blackberries or some other wild edibles on rambling hikes through those spooky woods. My eagerness for these outings was more for exploring the ruins of the abandoned homes of past settlers than collecting berries – though I never turned down a blackberry cobbler.

One of these houses sat in the middle of what was now a cow pasture. After negotiating a path through the patties and keeping an eye open for territorial bulls, we would explore the farmhouse. It was still basically stable, only having been abandoned within the last three decades and, since it sat in the middle of an open field, the roots and vines couldn’t tear it apart. It was fun, but not particularly scary since we usually did our exploring on a sunny afternoon.

The house I eagerly awaited to visit was the one time residence of the grandpappy of a neighbor and good friend, Mrs. Lillian H. W. Dillon. I believed she still owned the land upon which the house stood. I call it a house, but to me it seemed more like a mansion with a wraparound porch and rows of windows across the wide front. Now this house looked like it would be haunted. It sat deep in the woods, shadowy, wild, and overgrown with thick hairy ropes of Virginia creeper. Windows were broken, the porch listed to one side, and it was profoundly unsafe. Due to that fact, we weren’t allowed to enter, but we peeked through whatever windows we were able.

The bare interior was coated in dust, wallpaper peeling and cracking throughout. The décor on the walls was no longer family portraits, but spray painted graffiti left by the local teenage hoodlums. I fantasized multiple histories for this home, ranging from a young Civil War widow dying of a broken heart when her husband was killed to a sinister occult hideout for a long line of witches. Yes, I was definitely watching too much TV. Sadly, this old mansion was later set ablaze by the same neighborhood troublemakers who authored the graffiti and nothing now remains but the stone foundation.

Neither of these homes had any real ghost stories attached to them, only the ones we created, but the woods directly behind out house had their share of tales. Most of these stories were attached to the few gravestones off to the side of the dirt road leading through the forest. I always felt as though I were being watched whenever we approached this small family graveyard. Perhaps there was a connection forged because we now lived on the land they once called home. My interest in these graves inspired my first attempt at paranormal investigation. Using my trusty little Kodak 110 camera, I took photos of the graves, hoping to catch a ghostly image on film.

After waiting impatiently for the developed pictures to come in the mail (yes, this was waaaay before digital and instant prints!) I was thrilled to see what I was surely an apparition. I had done it! I caught a ghost! Not so fast, my skeptical nature made me take another look and forced me to rethink my “ghost”. I had to admit, it looked more like a fallen leaf caught in the sunlight than a ghost. Oh well, I thought, just because I couldn’t catch it on film didn’t mean there wasn’t something there. What do you think?