THE PURCHASE
I own Captain Grant’s Inn, a bed and breakfast in Poquetanuck, Connecticut. Poquetanuck is a small historic village within the town of Preston in southeastern Connecticut. The home I call Captain Grant’s was built in 1754 and the village it is in dates back to 1687. Behind Captain Grant’s is a cemetery dating to the mid-1600s. Across the street is the new cemetery dating to the early 1800s. I tell guests that I have more dead neighbors than live ones.
The name of the inn comes from Captain William Avery Gonzales Grant, who lived in the home with his wife, Mercy Adelaide Grant, and two children. Captain Grant died at sea off Cape Hatteras when he was thirty-two years old. Mercy was pregnant with their third child. Although Mercy died in the 1800s, she continues to occupy the home, as does one of her children. She says that she is still waiting for the captain to return.
The cemetery behind Captain Grant’s dates back to the mid-1600s.
Photo credit: Bruce Peter Morin
The newer cemetery across the street from Captain Grant’s
dates back to the early 1800s. Photo credit: Bruce Peter Morin
The Avery home, located next door to Captain Grant’s, is the first house the author purchased in Connecticut. Photo credit: Bruce Peter Morin
In 1993 I lived in the home next door to Captain Grant’s, the Avery home, and I would look up at the house every time I did the dishes. It sits high on a hill. I would think, “What a stately home it is.” At night I would look up at the attic windows from my bedroom and look for ghosts to appear. I’m sorry to say that I never saw one. I could almost imagine what it would look like: a dark figure standing in the window looking out at the world.
My imagination also had me thinking about my retirement. When I was forty-eight years old, I decided that I didn’t want to retire on only Social Security. When I was divorced I lost my IRA and did not see many opportunities for additional income unless I remarried, and marriage at that time was out of the question. I wanted to be in charge of my own life. One day, while I was looking out my kitchen window, I had the idea that I should buy the neighboring house and make it into a bed and breakfast. Then I would have a decent income in my old age, with no worry about living on Social Security. Dreams are usually better than reality, but this time the reality became far better than the dream. An awesome journey now lay ahead of me.
The old structure had been on the market for two years and I decided to make an offer. I phoned the real estate agent and learned that the current tenants also wanted to purchase the home. I told the agent that I still wanted to see the home, especially the interior. She told me that it would take the tenants at least a week to clear a path through the house. She set up a time for me to see the inside eight days later. As soon as I entered the back door I saw the condition of the interior. It was beyond messy. Trash was everywhere. The floor was littered and the furniture was covered with all kinds of stuff, but there was a path. I thought to myself, “The inside is worse than the outside, and the outside is awful.” In the summer the tenants cut their grass three times. That was three times total all summer. Garbage was thrown outside into an area that had a lot of tree saplings. I considered the overall situation and decided to mull it over and make a decision that night. I told the real estate agent that I would call her the next day.
That night I thought about the tenants next door. Seeing how they maintained the place, I could see that having them as next-door neighbors would reduce the value of the home that I was currently living in. If I ever wanted to move, it would be very hard to sell my home. Then there was the cost of the house next door. It started out at $149,000 but had been reduced to $89,900. I still couldn’t afford it, but the price was tantalizingly close.
I called the real estate agent the following morning and told her of my intent to make an offer. I told her I could afford to pay $70,000. She told me that the current tenants had made a bid of $84,000. “But,” she said “they want the owner to carry the mortgage.” That was good news.
The next day the real estate agent phoned to give me the owner’s response. He was angry with the current residents for trashing his home and the property. He said that if I increased my bid by $4,000 he would sell the house to me. I agreed and was now about to own the home for half of the original asking price.
I told the agent that I wouldn’t go to the closing until the current tenants had moved out. I didn’t want expensive attorney fees or a fight in court to get them evicted. I had been told by the agent that they refused to move and had stopped paying rent. It was now November. Winter was a time of year when the tenants could fight eviction due to having children. It didn’t matter if they paid rent or not. The owner finally agreed to find them a new rental. He let me know that it had cost him $6,000 to get them out. It took three months and then they were gone.
Finally, on Friday, February 13, 1994, I became the proud owner of a falling-down wreck of a house. Little did I know that there were twelve spirits in residence. At the closing, my attorney stood up before I signed the papers and said, “I need to tell you that you are going to fail.” Then he sat down. I was mortified that he would say such a thing. I looked at him, my mouth open, and then signed my way into a new life. Next, I fired my attorney.
Now I had a costly renovation in front of me and only $112 left in the bank. As a single woman, what was I to do next? I prayed every day and decided to take some time and kneel. I asked for a lot of material things back then. I needed immediate help to get the renovations started. On a late-night whim, I decided to ask for a new husband. Maybe God would send me one. He would have to be hardworking and smart and have similar values. Then I went to sleep. I had no idea that the spirits in the Grant home were also working for me.
It was at this time that I decided to see a psychic. She told me that I was going to marry Ted in 1996. I said, “Been there, done that.” No way was I going back. She also told me that when I met the right man, he would have a hill across the street from him, with houses on the top of the hill. She said that the house on the left looking up at the hill would be painted green, not a common color for a house. I wrote down what she said, put the script in my attic, and didn’t read it again for a year.
The following day, after the closing, I phoned my aunt Shirley in Minnesota to ask her if I should call my ex-husband for help. I often asked for her advice. My former husband was a master carpenter and had all the skills I needed to get the renovations done. We hadn’t spoken in thirteen years and the divorce had been a bit nasty, which is all too common. My aunt said, “Carol Jean, are you crazy? No, I don’t think you should call him.” She never got hysterical, but her voice was a bit faster and higher in response to this question. We talked a bit more and then hung up.
Five minutes later Shirley called back. “Arch says you should call him.” Arch is Shirley’s husband and my uncle.
“Okay, but why?” I asked.
“Arch says, what do you have to lose? You live 1,500 miles apart. If your ex-husband doesn’t want to help you, he’s not going to stop by and give you a hard time.” Again I hung up, but this time I stared at the phone.
I was sure that St. Anthony had helped me get the house, so I knelt down and prayed. I asked him to intervene with Christ and protect me when I made the call. First I needed to ask one of my children to give me my ex’s phone number. My daughter was reluctant but eventually relented and gave me her dad’s number. She thought I might make him angry. I really didn’t know because she and I rarely talked about him. I summoned all of my courage and then made the call.
“Hi.” There was that oh-so-familiar voice.
“Hi, it’s Carol. Could we talk for a few minutes?” As I write this, I feel myself shake, as if this occurred only yesterday and not twenty years ago.
“I’ve been waiting for your call.” He didn’t explain and I didn’t ask. One thing I knew was that he had his life now and I had mine. If he wanted to share something with me, it was his choice. When we divorced, he had paid only one child support check, so he owed me about $30,000.
“I have a proposal for you,” I said. “I bought a house and I want to make it into a bed and breakfast, but it needs a lot of work. If you would help me out, I will go to court and lift the court judgment against you.” Years earlier, the state of Minnesota had put a judgment against him for not paying child support. I took a deep breath and held it while waiting for his answer. I was so tense that if I had bent, I would have broken in two.
His response was startling. “I had a dream a couple of nights ago. Christ spoke to me and told me that you would call. He said that I should do what you ask. I’m packed and the gang box is packed as well, but I have a problem. I’m laid off and don’t have enough money to make the trip.”
Was he lying or telling the truth? He had seldom ever lied to me. There was no way for me to know. He wasn’t a religious person when we were married. “He must have gone through some spiritual changes,” I thought.
I considered this for a couple of seconds. “How much do you need?”
“About $400 for gas and food. I’ll drive straight through so there won’t be any hotel costs.”
Maybe I was naive, but I said to my ex, “I will have to wait until my next paycheck and then I’ll send you the money.”
We talked for a few more minutes and then hung up. I immediately called Shirley. “He’s coming.”
She responded in a gasping voice, “He is? Well I guess Arch was right.”
Then I called my daughter and son, who by now had their own homes and careers, to let them know that their dad was coming to Connecticut and would be here in about two weeks. Their relationship with their dad was ongoing but at a distance, since they lived in Connecticut near me and he lived in Minnesota. Now, all of our lives were about to change.
When Ted arrived, I had him stay in the bed and breakfast, which we called “the big house,” for the next nine months. I had not sold the home I lived in (the Avery house), so I continued to stay there. Ted’s bedroom was the largest room in the big house. It took about two days for him to say to me, “The house is haunted.” This wasn’t entirely a surprise to me. He also told me about nightly visits from an entity, but he didn’t ask to move to another room. When I asked him questions, he would mumble something and then change the subject. He did mention something about a religious picture that would end up on the floor upside down on its own, but not much else. Considering our estrangement, I wasn’t about to pry.
Our first project was to clean out the house. I had asked for the use of a thirteen-yard dumpster to be included in the house closing, and we began to fill it. Then we filled Ted’s large pickup truck an additional nine times. Ceilings were torn down, inside walls were moved, and holes were drilled into two large beams. Cables were run through the holes, drawing the west outer wall back into place. It was close to falling into the yard.
While working on projects inside the house, we would often hear sounds coming from the second floor but did not think much of it at the time. We knew the house was haunted, but there was too much work to do to think seriously about it. It never scared me. I believe that I instinctively knew the spirits were friendly. What I didn’t know at that time was that they were pulling for me to finish the house. During the renovations I made every attempt to restore the house to its original character. I think that the spirits who lived there wanted exactly that. I often said to myself that if I followed the right path, the universe would open up before me.
By April much work had been done to the inside of the house, and it was now warm enough to get started cleaning and excavating the outside.
This is a photo of Captain Grant’s yard in April 1994 after the garbage was removed but before the brush was cut back and burned. Photo credit: author
Behind the home there were bedsprings standing on end in the lawn. They had been frozen into the ground during the winter. Then there were the unwanted tree saplings and the outside garbage. I made a fire pit behind the house and started burning brush. I burned every day for eight weeks. Ted removed the garbage and started to take down the asbestos shakes that were on the house. I wanted to expose the original clapboard siding to be more authentic to the period of the house. We easily filled two large wooden boxes that had been left on the property. Once filled, the boxes were taken to the town dump.
When we did this, there were no laws about asbestos siding removal. Just the same, a week later a Connecticut state trooper knocked on my door. “I’ve been watching you remove the siding,” he said.
“Uh huh. Yes, sir,” I said.
Then he asked me, “Where did it go?”
I explained that it was sealed in wooden boxes and taken to the dump.
“Does the dump know what was in those boxes?” asked the trooper.
Ted stepped in and said, “Yes, they do. I told them.”
“I’ll be back,” said the trooper. “I’m going to take a ride to the dump.” And off he went to the Preston town dump.
About a half hour later the trooper returned and told us that he warned the town not to take any more asbestos and that I wouldn’t be fined. I was relieved. Another hurdle crossed. Two weeks later the state enacted asbestos-removal laws. I had just made the deadline on that one.
April was a very busy month. Not only did the siding get taken away and the brush and small trees get burned, but I got my license to operate a bed and breakfast. The next thing that happened was a bit of a disaster. The back cellar wall collapsed, dropping the house eight inches in one corner.
The license from the state was an easy thing to get. All I had to do was go through zoning and get a permit. At that time the town of Preston allowed only two bedrooms in a bed and breakfast. I thought, “That’s okay to start. I’ll go back later and ask for more rooms.” I was so naive. Preston was an old farming community run by men according to their agricultural norms for society. In 1994 men did the hard outside work and women tended to the cooking and the children. Men ruled and women listened.
When I faced the zoning board to ask for my permit, I was shocked to see only men who couldn’t possibly comprehend what I was asking for. They didn’t, but it didn’t matter. They were dubious, to say the least, that I could pull this off. At that time there was only one small bed and breakfast in town to act as a reference for what the town should expect from me.
One of the men asked me for clarification. “You’re talking about the old Congdon home?” I said yes and they started to chuckle. Someone laughed out loud. They told me that some reputable engineers and construction companies had looked at the home and decided it was beyond repair. I told them that I was in front of the zoning board to get my permit to operate a bed and breakfast and that I would have a building permit for every part of the renovation.
They immediately voted and I got my license. They never believed that I would get it done, but no one knew the spirits were rooting for me—including me.