“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties, and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us!” – a Cornish prayer
Fall is here, which means it will soon be Halloween and since nothing is scarier than a good ghost story, I’ll share mine. Spoiler alert – we have a ghost in our house; his name is Pete; and, he’s not scary at all, which is just fine with me.
Our house was built in 1903. It’s big and rickety and old, so it makes sense that we have a ghostly roommate, but we first met Pete through hearsay. The house was condemned when we bought it, badly damaged from a fire. It had sat vacant for some time and while it did seem quite dark, there was nothing spooky about it.
Then, as we began restoring it, people started stopping by - to welcome us to Winder, ask about the project and tell us about Pete. Apparently, the last family to inhabit the house before us was a fun loving, creative, boisterous bunch with five kids. Those kids had a lot of friends and the house was where those friends gathered after school, after football games, during the summer and for sleep-overs.
According to the accounts of the now-grown-up/once-young visitors in our home, Pete is a young male entity who likes to play tricks, especially on kids spending time in his house. He’s never malicious and only rarely appears as the ghost-like image one might expect. Pete mostly just enjoys hanging out with young people, but sometimes he plays tricks on them – like taking their car keys or making noises in the night. It’s his way of saying, “Hey, guys, I’m here!”
During the many months it took us to restore the house, we heard a lot of Pete stories, so we were primed for him to make a grand appearance once we moved in - that, it turns out, is not Pete’s style. It took him months to do anything at all and when he finally let us know he was here, all he did was play a series of notes on the piano and beat several random riffs on my son’s drum set and those, only occasionally, in the middle of the night.
“Not much of a ghost here,” we thought, secretly glad that’s all we had inherited. But, when the kids hit high school, Pete began to have some fun. True to the home’s history, it was once again the hang out house, and more than once, after a football game or during a sleep-over, one of our guests had something turn up missing, only to find it again, once the search was discontinued.
That happened often enough that Pete became a legend in our time, as well. The kids called him by name, told stories about him, and, when necessary, ask him politely for whatever was missing – and every time, the object would reappear, within about a half hour, in an obvious spot we had already searched.
One night Pete hid one of my son’s friend’s car keys, which predictably reappeared after the young man said, “Alright, Pete – enough! I know you’re here. I just want to go home!” That young man told his girlfriend’s dad about the event (probably because he got the girl home late) and it turned out, that dad knew all about Pete from his experiences in our house when he was in high school.
What we heard about Pete meshed with our experience. He was good natured and loved it when the house was full of noise and energy. The only time he got grumpy was when he thought his beloved house was in danger…(we heard tales of scary things being seen in the windows during the time the house was empty and folks were creeping around outside, perhaps hoping to steal one of the pretty mantels or ornate fireplace covers..) Pete also hates it when things get too quiet.
I didn’t experience Pete first hand until early in the fall when both kids were away in college. One morning I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper and the kitchen clock flew off the wall onto the floor. Startled, I picked it up and hung it back on the wall. A few minutes later, the clock flew off the wall again…”Wait a minute,” I thought, “This must be Pete!”
“I know you miss them, Pete,” I said. “So do I. But it’s just you and me here now, buddy, so let’s make the best of it.” That clock never flew off the wall again…
A few years later, during the week my daughter got married, our house was once again full of young vibrant energy. That time, Diet Coke cans started flying off the top of the fridge. (That’s where we kept canned drinks and Diet Coke is my now son-in-law’s favorite beverage.) Nothing like this had ever happened before, then it hit me - Pete was mad because our Diet Coke drinker was taking Pete’s friend away.
My daughter said Pete just wanted to be included. So, we sent him an invitation to the wedding by placing one addressed to “Pete” on top of the fridge in front of the Diet Coke cans. We told Pete we’d set him a place at the family table at the reception and that is exactly what we did. The Coke cans stopped flying and I like to think Pete had a grand time dancing in his ghostly best the night his friend, my daughter, got married to the Diet Coke guy.
I don’t’ know if ghosts are real, but I like to think the nice ones like Pete are. After all, wouldn’t any house or family be lucky to have such a loyal, fun-loving being, standing by, taking watch and enjoying the unique energy each house and family have?
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