Ghosts Among Us: True Stories of Spirit Encounters

Museums, usually housed in old mansions or historic buildings and filled with artifacts of the past, are naturals as haunted places. Sometimes the ghosts belong to family members or servants who once lived in the house. And sometimes the ghosts are unwittingly donated to the museum along with a piece of antique furniture. (Yes, ghosts have been known to be attached to an old bed or a dresser as well as to a building!)

While some curators are tight-lipped about the ghostly activity in their museums, others realize that a reputation as a haunted place is a boon for business and are enthusiastic about sharing their stories. The following are a few fascinating museums where visitors sometimes see ghosts:

It was a sunny autumn morning in Raleigh, North Carolina, when Teri Jones stopped by the Mordecai House to check on the progress of the workmen.

The lovely family home–turned–museum was under renovation and a new man was on the job. Teri stepped into the spacious foyer and looked up to see the man atop a ladder. His hands shook as he spread the plaster on the ceiling. His face ashen, he asked, “Were you here a few minutes ago?”

He shook his head as if he could not believe his own words as he described the odd visit by a woman in an old-fashioned dress.

Teri smiled knowingly as he pointed through the French doors to the stairway beyond. “She came down the stairs,” he said. “And then she opened the French doors and walked into the hallway. She turned around and shut the doors behind her and then walked into that room.” He gestured toward the dining room.

Curious, but not alarmed, the man had climbed from his ladder and followed her. “But there was no one there!” he said.

Teri, the Mordecai House site manager since 1996, knew the man wasn’t pulling her leg. “He’d never been here before and knew nothing about the history of the house,” she explained. “I questioned him very carefully.” The unsuspecting workman had just described the exact scenario that had been witnessed at least once before.

Twenty years earlier, in fact, a housekeeper named Rosa had seen the apparition of a lady in a long dress sweep down the old staircase. The description matched that of Mary Mordecai as she had appeared in her younger days, and the assumption is made that the ghost belongs to her.

As do many of us, Mary grew less attractive in her senior years and was apparently insulted when, in another incident, some visitors made fun of her picture, which was on display in an upstairs bedroom. For as they laughed and made an unkind comment about her, the picture suddenly toppled over—though it had been securely placed and no one was near it.

Mordecai House, built in the 1780s, had once been the heart of one of the biggest antebellum plantations in Wake County with thousands of acres of wheat, corn, and sweet potatoes. In business during a shameful time for our country, the Mordecai family had many slaves who worked the land and waited on them. In fact, the bell used to call them to serve the meals still hangs outside the dining room window.

The grounds remain lush and green with enormous broad-leaf trees creating welcome shade on hot days. St. Mark’s Chapel, where two hundred couples are wed each year, and the humble home where the seventeenth president, Andrew Johnson, was born, now also share the land.

Mordecai House is an imposing structure with big shuttered windows and graceful balconies. “Five generations of the same family lived here up until 1968,” Teri said as she pointed out various pieces of original furniture. Paintings, photographs, and personal possessions also fill the rooms, lending an almost chilling sense of continuity to the grand atmosphere. It’s as if a little piece of each person who ever lived there still remains.

Some of the children’s toys occupy upstairs bedrooms—including an unfortunate dolly whose face bears the results of a long ago game of hospital. “A little boy was determined to give her her medicine,” Teri replied when asked about the large hole punched between the doll’s eyes.

The chill felt at Mordecai House goes beyond the sense of history. Puzzling cold spots have been measured in the downstairs parlor. Part of the original structure, it had once been the center of activity in the home. “We can’t explain it,” Teri said, describing how a climate-controlled heating system was installed to protect the museum’s precious artifacts. The system was designed to moderate temperatures in the entire house.

Yet the mysterious icy spots persist. In addition to experiencing the baffling cold spots, this writer felt something else.

I was on a private tour with Lynette Minnich, the librarian from the Rhine Research Center, and we followed Teri upstairs. After admiring the lovely rooms there, I sat down next to Teri in the hallway upon the worn wood floors. Suddenly I was startled by the unmistakable sensation of a tug on the back of my shirt.

Of course she didn’t. She was three feet away from me. Lynette was standing six feet away.

While I would much rather have seen Mary, or any other ghost who may inhabit the spacious house, I will have to be satisfied with that simple mysterious sensation.

On Lynette’s prior visit she and a few staff members from the Rhine Research Center had been invited to see the mansion. They were gathered with Teri in the same upstairs hallway when they heard a sudden, urgent pounding on the front door. Teri hurried downstairs and opened the door but the huge yard was empty. Perhaps it was simply someone playing a prank, but the timing was odd, as they had been discussing ghosts.

Since my April 2003 visit to Mordecai House, Teri reported that paranormal activity has escalated. “A new employee went to work for us,” she told me. “She is extremely sensitive and has heard a female voice calling her name. Something happens almost every day. They’re mostly little things, but they are things we can’t explain.”

In October 2003, a local TV news team did a story on the haunted museum and something interesting showed up on the film. A ghostly woman, said Teri, appeared, looking out of a window of one of the unoccupied houses behind Mordecai House.

Then during the Christmas season when Mordecai House was decked out for the holidays, decorations were mysteriously moved around.

A couple was visiting the upstairs bedroom when the woman felt someone touch her arm. And an employee was alone in the house one day when she heard the sound of frantic footsteps racing from that same bedroom.

Teri was in her office, in a building beside the Mordecai House, when the employee, upset by the occurrence, told her what had happened. “She was almost in tears, shaking and pale,” said Teri. “She said she’d been overwhelmed by a horrible sense of sadness and grief and then had heard the fast-paced footsteps upstairs.”

If so, why did she leave such a strong impression on the mansion—why is it her ghost who is seen rather than the others? Mary was born on September 18, 1858. She married William Turk in the parlor of her home. Obviously, her attachment to the place would be strong. Yet we can’t say for certain if Mary is responsible for any—or all—of the paranormal activity.

The ghost could also be that of her grandmother, Margaret Lane, who married Moses Mordecai and had three children with him, including Mary’s father, Henry. They had all lived in the house together. When Margaret died, Moses married her sister, Ann Lane, and they had a little girl, who Ann named after Margaret.

One has to wonder if she did so out of guilt. Did she, perhaps, feel a little funny about her union with her sister’s husband? And what of Mary? Do ghosts feel jealousy and resentment? If so, is that why she sticks around—to claim the house as hers even after the others are long gone?

Perhaps they are all there—all of the Mordecai residents living beneath the same roof as one big happy ghostly family. If so, it may get a little crowded.

Melissa Fox is fascinated by the past. As education director of the Granger Homestead and Carriage House, she shares her enthusiasm with visitors to the historic home–turned–museum and enjoys showing children how to churn butter and make candles. The sense of history is palpable here—especially when the ghosts appear!

In her five years in Canandaigua, at New York’s beloved Granger Homestead, she has glimpsed the ghosts twice. “I saw a girl on the porch,” she confided, explaining that she was cleaning up after a tea party for a Brownie troop. The young woman in the long white summer dress swished her skirts and walked away as a stunned Melissa watched.

On another occasion, she encountered a different apparition. “I was opening up the house, when I saw the man,” said Melissa. She had just opened all of the shutters, and the morning light poured in as she passed the North Parlor. “I was in the hall when I saw him,” she said. At first she thought it was a fellow employee, having some fun with her, but then realization hit her. “I did a double take,” she said.

Dressed in the fashion of the mid-1800s, the man sat on the couch for a fleeting moment. “It might have been Francis Granger,” said Melissa, referring to a one-time resident of the huge home.

About thirty miles southeast of Rochester, New York, the big house was built in 1816 and was home to Gideon Granger, the postmaster general. Four generations of the Granger family made it their home.

Barb Rauscher, who served for two years as social director at the Homestead, also had a startling experience she blames on the Grangers. She still gets goose bumps when she recalls the odd occurrence.

It was about 11 P.M. and she was alone in the enormous house, closing down after an event. She turned off the lights and put things in their proper places, including a cane that had belonged to Francis Granger.

Earlier in the day employees had been discussing a book they’d found about Gideon Granger’s political connections in Washington. Barb had made a joke and referred to the possibility of Gideon’s “shady dealings.”

Apparently, not everyone thought it was funny because she soon found herself on the butt end of an unusual “joke.”

Barb set the cane in its place on the table in Francis’s room. She was the last one out that night and the first one in the next morning. When she entered Francis’s room her gaze fell on the table and a chill shot down her spine.

“The cane was gone,” she told me. “I searched the house for days and everyone helped look for it but we could not find it.”

The cane had seemingly vanished. Days later, Barb noticed a ray of sunshine spilling through the window. Like a spotlight, it highlighted the linen cupboard in the hall outside of Francis’s room. She’d searched just about everywhere else for the valued artifact so she got down on her stomach and peered beneath the cupboard.

Many people have encountered spirits at the Granger Homestead in Canandaigua, New York. (Leslie Rule)

Melissa Fox in the parlor at Granger Homestead where she once saw a man who died over a century ago. (Leslie Rule)

The grounds of the Granger Homestead, where people from the past still linger. (Leslie Rule)

There, glowing in the golden shaft of sunlight, was the cane. “It was a total shock,” said Barb. “The hair on the back of my neck stood up.”

Spirit encounters are not rare at the Granger Homestead. One museum volunteer told me about the time she was stopped in traffic on the road by the house when she glanced up to see a cluster of women in nineteenth-century black dresses gathered on the veranda. They appeared to be in mourning.

Custodian Dan Eddinger knows every nook and cranny of the lovely old home, and he admits things are a little different there at night than they are in the bright light of day. He learned that firsthand when the alarm system broke down and he was appointed official guardian of the mansion for the night. He settled in on the second-floor couch and tried to doze off but loud banging and phantom footsteps kept him awake. “It was unsettling,” he admitted. “I called my wife.”

Peggy soon joined him but she was not much comfort. She yawned, took over the couch, and fell into a deep sleep while poor Dan did not get a wink all night.

Granger family members? Or perhaps a spirit left over from the days when the family moved out and the house served as a girls’ school, where young ladies lived and learned.

Melissa Fox thinks the ghost of the girl in the white dress may have belonged to a past student there.

Julia Ann Williams was the wife of John Albert Granger. The couple’s first daughter, Delia Wilson Granger, was welcomed into their family on September 8, 1820.

Sadly, records indicate that Julia was in her early twenties when she died on June 22 two or three years later. She may have died giving birth to her second daughter, also named Julia.

Delia honored her mother by naming one of her daughters Julia—resulting in a line of Julias that was unbroken for at least five generations, including the first Julia.

Today, the estate occupies a lovely ten-acre site, which both the living and the dead can enjoy.

Island of Ghosts

Nearly seventy miles west of Key West, Florida, the Dry Tortugas seem to float in the turquoise ocean where turtles and sharks and amazingly beautiful fish swim.

Discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513, the cluster of seven islands drew the attention of the military in the early 1800s. In 1846, the construction of a huge fortress began, yet Fort Jefferson was never finished because new weapon innovations made the military’s plans for the fort obsolete.

Famous for its abundant marine life and history of pirates and sunken treasures, the Dry Tortugas is an incredible place for snorkeling.

The Civil War era saw the fort used as a prison, where criminals and army deserters were locked up.

Perhaps the most famous prisoner was Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was accused of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of President Lincoln. After the fort’s doctor died of yellow fever, and Mudd took over the medical care there, he received a presidential pardon from Andrew Johnson in 1869.

Today, in addition to being a breathtakingly beautiful place, Fort Jefferson can be spooky—especially at night.

One employee who asked to remain anonymous told me he had spent a couple of weeks there. “It was hard to sleep,” he said. “When there was no moon it was pitch black. I heard what sounded like soldiers marching on asphalt.”

The Dry Tortugas are beautiful in the day but can be frighteningly dark at night when the ghosts come out to play. (Leslie Rule)

The ghosts of prisoners may still cling to the place where they were once caged. (Leslie Rule)

He also described an eerie moaning. Rumors of ghosts at Fort Jefferson are whispered about among employees, yet they resist talking to outsiders about the restless spirits there.

Audubon House may be caressed by the balmy breezes of Key West, Florida, but visitors shouldn’t be surprised if they feel a chill when strolling through the lovely home where naturalist John Audubon once drew tropical birds in the garden.

The 1830 home was built for Captain John Hurling Geiger, who raised his family there. The captain’s apparition has been seen in the home, but most of the paranormal activity is focused in the nursery, where disembodied voices are heard. It is there that some believe that the ghosts of Geiger children play. While some siblings died of yellow fever in that room, another son was killed when he fell from an almond tree in the yard.

A haunted doll mysteriously vanished from the Audubon House in Key West. Did someone steal her or did she run away? (Leslie Rule)

A homely little wax doll with dark circles beneath her eyes and yellow teeth once resided in the museum’s nursery. Some say it belonged to a Geiger girl and when she succumbed to yellow fever her spirit inhabited the doll. The doll has been blamed for much of the paranormal activity at Audubon House—including setting off the burglar alarms at night! The doll, however, has mysteriously disappeared.

Imagine the sickly doll, scurrying along Key West’s streets in the moonlight, perhaps leaping out at you when you are least aware.

Renovation Vortex

Reports of ghost sightings escalate while old buildings are being remodeled.

Why?

No one, of course, knows the answer to this but many theories are offered. Some say that the commotion and noise “wake up spirits.”

Others insist that ghosts residing in a place are upset over the change and appear so that they may protest. (This does often result in workmen’s hasty retreats!)

Still others cling to the idea that ghosts are grateful that someone is caring for a place that they are fond of, and they make their presence known as a way of showing thanks.

All of these simple explanations may be correct.

A more complex theory embraces the idea that structures trap energy. When the very walls that hold in this energy are altered, the energy is released. The shifting of the physical environment may open a pathway for ghosts to appear.

In some cases, remodeling stops paranormal activity. These incidents support the above-mentioned theory. Perhaps remodeling closes unseen pathways as well as opens them.

Ladder Phenomenon

This writer has noticed an unusually high number of reports of ghost sightings from those on ladders. Is this simply part of the “Renovation Vortex”?

Or is there something about a human putting his or her body at an odd height that creates curiosity in ghosts?

Maybe the act of poking one’s head into normally empty space disrupts the energy of a room and opens a door.

More Haunted Museums

Glensheen

This breathtaking mansion-turned-museum could be the pride of Duluth, Minnesota, if it weren’t for the skeletons rattling in the closet. Figuratively speaking, that is. The castle-like home was the site of a news-making double murder in June 1977 when mansion heiress eighty-three-year-old Elisabeth Congdon was smothered in her bed. Her nurse, Velma Pietila, was beaten to death with a candlestick.

Prosecutors charged Elisabeth’s adopted daughter, Marjorie, and her husband, Roger Caldwell, with the murder, identifying greed as the motive. (Marjorie was in line to inherit a huge chunk of the $8 million estate.) Though Roger was successfully prosecuted, Marjorie was found not guilty. Roger appealed his conviction and ultimately made a deal and was released after spending about five years in prison. (He committed suicide in 1988. Marjorie was later convicted of arson in an unrelated case.)

In July 2003, Minnesota Public Radio reported that the prosecutor in the high-profile case used new DNA technology on an old piece of evidence—an envelope—and confirmed the guilt of Marjorie and Roger.

Ghost enthusiasts insist that the restless spirits of poor Elisabeth and Velma still wander the enormous mansion on the 7.6-acre grounds. Though beautiful, the mansion is so imposing that it was used in scenes of a 1971 thriller starring Patty Duke, called You’ll Like My Mother.

Roger, who reportedly professed his innocence in his suicide note, may also be roaming the property.

____________________________________________

GLENSHEEN

(HISTORIC CONGDON ESTATE)

3300 LONDON ROAD

DULUTH, MN 55804

(888) 454-GLEN (4536)

Pittock Mansion

This 1914 mansion was home to Portland, Oregon, pioneers Henry and Georgiana Pittock, who spent their twilight years enjoying the majestic hilltop view of the city from their grand perch. Henry Pittock’s rags-to-riches story began in his teen years when he traveled the Oregon Trail “barefoot and penniless” and went to work for the local paper. Within a decade he was owner and publisher of The Oregonian, which is still the Portland newspaper.

With its curving marble staircases, high ceilings, and spacious rooms decorated with charming antiques, the Pittock Mansion is a museum enjoyed by many. Yet it has its secrets. Though not widely publicized, paranormal activity has been reported at the Pittock estate. Some say they feel a friendly presence there. One employee confided she had turned off all the lights and locked up for the night only to step outside and see all of the lights suddenly go back on at once. With the big house’s windows blazing, she got in her car and took off.

The Pittock Mansion overlooks the Rose City. Do former owners still watch the sunrises from the empty windows? (Leslie Rule)

Do Henry and Georgiana Pittock still roam their dream home? If so, who can blame them?

The sweeping marble staircase at the Pittock Mansion, where unknown ghosts roam. (Leslie Rule)

Meeker Mansion

A friendly presence is believed to haunt the Meeker Mansion in Puyallup, Washington. Built in the valley, with a stunning view of majestic Mount Rainier, the seventeen-room Italianate mansion took three years to build and was completed in 1890 for Ezra and Eliza Jane Meeker when they were close to sixty years old. According to the tour guides of the grand estate, Mrs. Meeker “became smitten with the finer things in life” after a visit to Queen Victoria, so Ezra had the mansion built for his wife.

Ezra Meeker was an extraordinary man who platted and named Puyallup, which translates to “generous people” in the tongue of his northwestern native friends. An author, a successful hop farmer, Puyallup’s first mayor, adventurer, and entrepreneur, Ezra lived to be ninety-eight. While his legacy echoes in the sumptuous halls of the Meeker Mansion, it is probably not his ghost that resides there. “He walked away from the house” when his wife died in 1909.

The house became a hospital for a couple of years and later was bought by a Civil War widows organization, the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic. They used it as a retirement home for their members. Then from 1948 to 1970 the house was a nursing home until it was donated to the Meeker Historical Society.

What mysterious presence lurks behind the grand walls of the Meeker Mansion in Puyallup, Washington? (Leslie Rule)

Today it is a museum and available for weddings and special events. Sensitive people insist a pleasant aura surrounds the imposing mansion. Some say a presence lingers on the staircase—a presence so powerful that recent visitors said they could not move past it!

Is it Mr. Meeker or perhaps one of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic who spent their last days there? Or maybe it is something creeping over from next door. Read on for details!

____________________________________________

MEEKER MANSION

312 SPRING STREET

PUYALLUP, WA 98372

(253) 848-1770

WWW.MEEKERMANSION.ORG

It is not just houses that can become haunted. Sometimes it is the most ordinary of objects. Antiques shops, of course, are filled with everyday objects from days gone by. When an item comes with a past, it may also come with a ghost!

Third Street Antique Mall, which occupies a space smack in front of the Meeker Mansion, is home to some suspicious activity. At one time, the paved parking lot was sweet with the scent of exquisite blossoms, for it was once the site of the Meeker Mansion’s rose garden.

Employee Keitha Crain has seen an inexplicable shadow darting through the upstairs several times when she was closing up. “I am a Christian, so I am not afraid,” she said, stressing that she does not seek out ghosts or haunted places.

Then there is the mystery of the phantom squirrel, seen by a pair of older shoppers at Third Street Antique Mall. The couple saw the little gray creature scurry over the floor and disappear under a trunk and they hurried to tell management, who immediately investigated. There was, however, no sign of any living critter, leading some to surmise that he was a leftover ghost from the days the area was the Meeker rose garden.

An old doll peers from the shadows of the haunted Third Street Antique Mall in Puyallup, Washington. (Leslie Rule)

The faces of the dead appeared in the mirror of this dresser so often that the frightened owner got rid of it. (Leslie Rule)

John Cuddeback and his son, Richard, had been in the antiques business in Canandaigua, New York, for over twenty years when they got a strange call in the summer of 2003 from a distraught woman. “Please come get my dresser,” she begged. “I don’t care what you pay me for it. I just want it out of here.”

The old dresser was haunted. The repeated appearance of ghosts in the mirror was disturbing to the woman and she was relieved when the Cuddebacks loaded it into their truck. According to the woman, there had been several deaths in the house, including a suicide.

The dresser was recently purchased, despite the fact the buyer was warned about the unusual feature. No word yet on whether the ghosts are still in the mirror.

Proving the Existence of Ghosts

Do we have concrete evidence that spirits survive past the death of the physical body? Do we have definitive proof that ghosts exist?

No, according to Dr. Sally Rhine Feather, Director of Development at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina. In fact, it was this type of evidence that her famous parents, Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine and Dr. Louisa E. Rhine, were seeking when they began their landmark research on psychic ability.

“My folks got into their work via wanting to study the survival question but were stymied because no one had done the basic work on psi [psychic] ability on the living,” said Dr. Rhine Feather, coauthor of The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary Americans (St. Martin’s Press, August 2004).

J. B. Rhine coined the term extrasensory perception (ESP) when he authored the book Extra-Sensory Perception in 1934. The Rhines’ laboratory studies included testing subjects’ ability to sense shapes on cards. The cards, which show a star, a plus sign, a circle, wavy lines, and a square were created by the Rhines.

Though Dr. Sally Rhine Feather is still “very, very interested” in the ghost question, she stresses that their existence has not been scientifically proved. As her parents before her did, Dr. Rhine Feather collects stories sent to her by people who say they have seen ghosts.

When it comes to proving the survival of the spirit, Dr. Rhine Feather said, “I think it is the most important question we could ask. Even the most skeptical people stop and listen when they hear you are contemplating research in that area.”

Dr. Sally Rhine Feather at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, with a bust of her famous father, Dr. J. B. Rhine, who was known as “the Father of Parapsychology.” (Leslie Rule)