Government Buildings

Unfortunately, we've had a lot of mass shootings recently. They used to be rare. The other night a couple from Maryland joined me. He worked in a government office building, the sight of a tragic shooting a long time ago. A man had been laid off just before his retirement and he took a shotgun into the building and killed a lot of people. The man said everyone who worked there had seen or experienced something. At one point his department was having a dispute with another department over copies. The people in his department were convinced people from other departments were using up their copies. One day he was walking down the hall and saw a man in grey pants and a white shirt go into the copy room. Cornered. He got up his courage and walked into the room--there was no one. Convinced one of his co-workers at a nearby desk must have seen something, he asked. Sure enough, the co-worker had seen the same figure. A few months before one of the co-workers had died; he always wore grey pants and a white shirt to work.

Delivering Babies

Common wisdom says that children and old people are the most sensitive to ghosts. A couple from Pensacola had a few stories for me the other day, but the stories weren't the most interesting part.

The husband didn't really much believe in all this stuff, although he did once see a human shadow in his house --when it was struck by lightening--he got out his gun. But his wife did believe. Once she saw a man she thought was her husband. They were sitting at the table and he was down the hall, so she opened her mouth to call to him when she realized her husband was sitting across from her. Apparently his uncle had died years before and the two looked exactly alike. The husband's mother saw him too. Shortly after the wife saw the man down the hall they got a phone call from the husband's mother; her long dead brother had just tucked her into bed.

The wife had many such experiences, but only in the last three years. She was an OB-GYN and I asked when she had started delivering babies. The question got an odd look-- three years ago, she said.

I don't remember where I heard it, but somewhere in South America, if you take a new born baby on a picnic to the seashore, the forest, the woods, before leaving you call to the child. You yell the name all around. The belief is that the spirit isn't fully attached to the body yet, and it likes to be free so you have to call it back to remind it that it belongs in the body.

Gulfport, Mississippi

When I first began talking to people about their experiences with ghosts, I was surprised by how many stories involve smells. A lot. This spring a woman from Gulfport came on an evening tour. She was very familiar with New Orleans, as her nephew used to live here and she would come all the time to stay with him and party in the French Quarter. He was very fond of Patchouli, and after he died she would sometimes go into a room in her house, where he always staid when he visited Gulfport, and she would smell patchouli in the room. She would walk out of the room, close the door and walk back in and the sent would be gone.

At another time she and her family were sitting at her dinning room table talking. Across the room was a sofa and behind it a table with lots of family pictures. The conversation moved along until it came to her nephew. They heard a slapping sound and looked across the room. His picture had fallen over on the table.

At another time she'd come home from work and found a picture of the two of them, having a good time together, on the floor. No one had been in her house that day, but that morning the photo had been sitting high on a shelf with a mug in front of it. The mug was in the exact same place.

Georgia

Hospitals are full of ghost stories. Two women from Georgia joined me in the Garden District on a rainy Sunday afternoon this spring. One of them was a nurse in Labor and Delivery and she said they had one room that things were always happening in. The phone rang routinely without anyone on the other line, until the staff got fed up and pulled out the cord--the phone still rang.

For some reason that room was used mostly for storage. But if all the other rooms were full, they would have to put a new mother in that room. When that happened, they would have to make a path through the boxes to get the bassinet into the room so that the mother could hold her baby. Once they had a woman there and her husband was with her, sleeping on a chair beside the bed. At two o'clock in the morning he called the nurses' desk and demanded, "where is my baby?" The nurses didn't know what he was talking about, the baby was asleep in the nursery. He was furious, he insisted that someone had just wheeled the baby into the room and must have taken the baby away. The nurses went to the room to show him that his baby was fine and asleep in the nursery. When they entered the room the path they'd made through the boxes was all filled in.

Kings Mountain

March 30th, 2013

There is nothing like an old picture of family member. A month or so ago two ladies came on my tour and one, the one who's sensitive to this stuff, had a great story from Kings Mountain. Her friends' grandmother was on her death bed and the family had all come to keep an eye on her. Well when it was this woman's turn, she sat in the room and saw a man at the foot of the grandmother's bed. Long old fashioned coat, little spectacles. She kept watch anyway.

When she was able to bring it up to her friend's mother, the woman ran and got an old photo of the grandmother's husband who'd died a few years before. The photo was not him as an old man but in his prime, looking like a fine country doctor.

The photo exactly matched the man she's seen at the foot of the bed.

Making Amends

March 30, 2013

Having issues with the dead is often considered explanation for a haunting. A month or so back, two men from Chattanooga, TN came on my tour and one shared a ghost story with me. Growing up in Delaware he had seen his grandfather four or more times in his room. This was over the course of several years. His grandfather would sit at the foot of his bed, or on top of his chest of drawers. As a child he remembered his grandfather's comb over, a telltale feature of the old man.

When the boy grew up he finally decided to make amends with his grandfather at his grave site. He hasn't seen him since that visit.

Pocatello, Idaho

Some people are constantly on the move. The other day a woman joined the tour. She was living in London at the time, but had once lived in Pocatello, Idaho. There was only one occasion in her life that she thought might relate to paranormal activity. While living in Pocatello, alone, no pets or roommates, the remote control to her television went missing. She searched her place, but for a year she couldn't find it. One day she came home from work to find it sitting in plane sight on her couch.