When Althea Wade and her husband, C.P., moved into their “new-old” home in the 1300 block of Sealy Street in Galveston, they had no idea they’d soon be sharing their new address with an otherworldly resident! It was soon made apparent to them, because they began to hear strange noises every night soon after retiring. Althea described them as “a drag, a plop, and a drag, and a plop.” Deciding that they just might have some rambunctious rats in the attic, they set a trap. When C.P. went up to check the trap, he found a beautiful gold-headed walking cane lying on a pile of books. The cane bore the inscription, “J.D. Skinner, Nov. 6, 1895.”
William Skinner, the son of J.D., had built the house in 1895. Strangely, when the Wades moved in, C.P. said, they’d gone over every inch of the house, including the attic, and there had been absolutely nothing there. They decided they had to have a ghost, and he must have left the cane there as a sort of housewarming gift because he liked the Wades!
Besides hearing strange noises, there were other unexplainable occurrences. Once, when C.P. was out of the house with the two older boys and Althea was home alone with their three youngest children, one of the tots wandered out into the parlor. She came back into the room where her mother and siblings were watching TV and asked Althea, “Mama, who is that man going up the stairs?” Althea asked her daughter, who was only about three years old, if the man she saw was tall like her daddy, or not-so-tall like her grandfather. The child replied he was “not-so-tall, like Grandpa, and he had on a long, white coat.”
When C.P. and the boys came home, they all searched the house, but no one was there. They didn’t really expect to find anyone, however.
Once, a visitor to the house was pushed from behind as she stood on the stair landing. She fell down the stairs but was not injured.
During the entire twenty years the Wades lived on Sealy Street, they were never afraid. In fact, they felt very comfortable with “George,” the name they affectionately called their star boarder.