Halloween is upon us, so it seems fitting to have the theme of "Trick or Treat." Any Halloween stories (or photos)? How about a good ghost story? Maybe an ancestor who has been tricky to research or an unexpected treat in a record? This could be a fun theme!
"The Blackest Night falls from the skies,
The darkness grows as all light dies.
We crave your hearts and your demise,
By my black hand, the dead shall rise!"
-- Black Lantern Oath
I love Halloween! Growing up I had a myriad of costumes ranging from a vampire with real fangs my father crafted in his dental lab to the amazing Spider-Man. My aunt Linda actually made a comic accurate costume for me when I was thirteen. It also scared my then two year old cousin, Ryan. To this day I have no idea why. It wasn't even Spidey's black costume! It was the classic red and blue one and it has served me well. My aunt's work got me first place in the 8th grade Halloween dance. I still have the costume all these years later and I've used the mask in videos from time to time.
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| With great power, there must come great responsibility |
Halloween was and still is one of my favorite holidays and I could spend ages talking about the various things my friends and I did trick-or-treating around town. I could even talk about the visits my brother and I made to the old couple who used to take care of us when we were young. Instead, I'm going to regale you all with a couple of ghost stories. MWAHAHAHA!
If you didn't believe in ghosts, you might after these stories. Just saying....
This first one takes place a couple of months after my grandmother, Ollie, passed away. It was the spring of 2002 and I was bummed because my nonna was going to miss two major events on the horizon. I was graduating college that May and my brother's wedding was going to be that August. It was a sad time. But, we had to make the most of it like my parents said.
That spring, we put my grandmother's house up for sale and had a huge yard sale. Don't worry, genealogy peeps. We saved all the important things like pictures, documents and all that fun stuff. We really ended up selling a bunch of clothes and maybe some appliances. Pictures, postcards, a collection of canes and swords and all of those things came home with us. Yes, I said swords. What? =)
I also want to say that the house once belonged to my great-grandfather, Vincenzo and he left it to my grandfather. So you could say the house had been in my family for decades. It was a special place because I spent a lot of time there. We didn't live that far away so visits were very frequent.
My parents were outside making sales and doing all kinds of things while I was inside the house by myself. I looked around and all I could think about were memories of my grandmother. I saw myself sitting at the kitchen table listening to her tell stories and watching her cook. In the living room, I even saw myself watching television with her. While I was in there, I looked at pictures of her parents, Giuseppe and Clementina as I sat on the couch I spent many hours playing with Transformers on. I put the album down after a few minutes and picked up my own reading material. It was going to be a long day so I brought along "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" to read.
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| Did my grandmother really visit us? |
As I was reading, I heard a voice call my name. It wasn't either of my parents. This voice sounded a lot like my grandmother and she kept saying "Christopher" over and over again. I also felt something touch my shoulder the second I got up from the couch. Naturally, I was a little freaked out. I went outside and my mom saw that I was a little shaken.
I told them what had happened and my father decided to conduct an experiment. He was a dentist. So it's in his nature to conduct experiments. He also tended to believe in spirits because sometimes when he worked in our house he could sense his father's presence and even smelled him! Apparently he had an unmistakable odor. Before we left for the night, we put a candy bar on the kitchen table. We locked up and left.
The next day we went back to the house and saw that the candy bar was gone. All that was left was a wrapper and next to it was a crumpled up tissue. My grandmother tended to use tissues instead of napkins. There were no signs of a break-in. Everything was still as we left it. When we were leaving again, I could hear a voice say "I love you". When that happened, I was less scared and I guess a lot calmer. It was just surreal. I hadn't heard her voice since that day.
This wasn't my family's first run-in with a ghost. A few years later, my family and I were up at the historic Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. We were attending the wedding of a family friends' daughter. I grew up with her and her family. Naturally, we were close and still are. The thing about the Mount Washington Hotel is that even though it's great for skiing.....the place is haunted.
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| Princess Carolyn |
The ghost in this case is a woman named Carolyn Salome Foster de Faucigny-Lucinge. In life, she was the wife of a famed designer named Joseph Stickney. Together, they built the grand hotel in the middle of Bretton Woods. He passed away in 1903 and she ended up marrying a French aristocrat named Aymon-Jean-Baptiste Marie Faucigny-Lucinge.
We went on a tour of the hotel and the guide explained how Carolyn liked to observe guests from her room. She tended to try to make herself look prettier than the other women present. She was jealous and wanted all eyes on her. There's more to the story. You can read it here.
That night, my parents and I were heading down to dinner via the grand staircase. I was talking to my mother and suddenly an earring popped out of her ear and fell down the stairs. We quickly realized that Carolyn made her presence known and was kind of jealous about how my mother looked that evening. Crazy.
Ghost stories are one in a million. They can help use connect with loved ones long gone or scare the pants off of us. If these stories taught me anything it's that....I ain't afraid of no ghosts.
Happy Halloween!!
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