Please Welcome Guest Author...Marilu Mann

I'd like to share a ghost story with you. Unlike many of the things I write about, this one is real…

There's a lovely Victorian home in a small town in Arkansas. Built in the 1920s, it has a wrap-around porch, rounded corner rooms, and the carriage house still stands in the back yard. There's also a gazebo where you can almost hear a band playing while men and women stroll around the backyard - the men in their high collars and the women in their long dresses carrying parasols. On certain nights, you really CAN hear music coming from the backyard…no, it's not the neighbors--it's some of the ghosts.

The house belonged to a friend of mine - I don't know if she still owns it, so I'd rather not reveal her name or the town itself, just to protect the privacy of whoever does own it now. I first saw the house at Christmas time. My friend, let's call her Barbara, had put a lighted tree on the porch on the second floor and another one in the front room (to the right as you faced the house). The front doors had oval glass fronts, and when you drove or walked past the house, you could see the staircase leading to the second floor. She'd wrapped greenery around the newel posts and had a small votive candle on every other step going up. All in all, it was a gorgeous house and I loved going by it.

One year, in the fall, I tried out for a play at the local little theater. The play was Blythe Spirit by Noel Coward. For those not familiar, the main characters are Charles (a writer), his second wife, Ruth, their friends the Bradmans, Edith (the maid), and Madame Arcati - a spirit medium. Madame Arcati has been invited along to the dinner party as a research subject by Charles. He doesn't believe in spirits, so when a séance is proposed, he goes along willingly. Little does Charles know that a real ghost will be raised…the ghost of his first wife, Elvira. Complications ensue…but I won't spoil it for those who aren't familiar with the story. J (There were several movies made of this play - Rex Harrison plays Charles to Margaret Rutherford's Madame Arcati (Remember her? She starred as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in many BBC productions.) in one of them.)

Anyway…I was cast in the play as Ruth, the second wife. Barbara was cast as Madame Arcati. We spent many nights at the theater, talking, becoming friends, practicing our lines. One night Barbara asked if anyone wanted to come to her place for a glass of wine. I took her up on it - being a poor college student in a 'dry' county, it was a good way to actually GET a glass of wine!

So, imagine my surprise when I followed her home and found that she lived in the Victorian house that I had to pass twice a day on my way to and from college classes, and that I secretly adored. Barbara introduced me to her husband who then excused himself to go work in his shop - the converted carriage house. She gave me a tour of the house - pointing out the curved glass windows on the first floor and the antiques in each room - including a baby grand piano in “the music room” (the room where the downstairs Christmas tree had been).

We went into the “family room,” no antiques in this room, just Barbara's cats - all four of them. The family room adjoined the kitchen where Barbara's collection of Carnival glass adorned shelves above the kitchen windows. We sat talking, sipping our wine and relaxing. Suddenly, from the kitchen, I distinctly heard the sound of glass breaking. I looked around, seeing all four cats in the room with us, one of them staring into the kitchen. There wasn't anyone else in the house, but Barbara didn't react to the sound. I just waited to see what she would do…eventually she got up and asked if I wanted more wine. When I agreed and followed her into the kitchen, we both looked around.

Barbara asked if I'd heard anything and I told her I had - we couldn't find anything broken anywhere, and Barbara shrugged it off as “the ghost trying to get some attention.”

Of course, I HAD to hear more about 'the ghost,' and here's what she told me. The house was haunted by three distinct spirits, an older woman, a younger woman (the daughter), and a little boy. The older woman was the wife of the man who built the house, the younger woman was their middle daughter, and the boy their grandson. Both the daughter and her son died tragically in the house, the daughter by suicide, the grandson by a lung infection possibly caused by influenza. The older woman died of a heart attack in her 80s, and not in the house.

The music from the gazebo is attributed to the younger woman - she loved the parties her parents would throw for all their friends and frequently hummed around the house. The breaking glass was an activity of the boy, as was the moving of some small objects (keys, shoes, glasses) from room to room. The older woman was a bit more direct - once overturning a glass case built into a table that was filled with knives belonging to Barbara's recently deceased son. Apparently the older woman didn't approve of any type of weapon in the house.

A medium who visited my friend told her about the two women and the child, even going so far as to tell Barbara that the older woman was very pleased with the renovations Barbara and her husband were doing to the house, and that the stain in the upstairs bedroom (the medium had not been upstairs at all) was caused by a leak in the dormer window in the attic, and the rattling in the pipes upstairs was nothing more than air in the pipes. Seems the older ghost wanted my friend to know about those two items specifically since one of them could be easily fixed and the other was going to take some time and effort.

I should mention here that my friend Barbara would NEVER read her lines in the house - you need to remember that she was playing a medium and many of her lines revolved around the séance in the play - she definitely didn't want to increase the ghostly population of her own home! There are more 'adventures' I could share from my visits to her home, but I'd like to hear about some of your 'ghostly visits/sightings/experiences.' Won't you leave a comment and share your experiences with everyone?

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Disclaimer (because we don't have a choice): The views expressed by the guest blogger do not necessarily reflect those of The Deadly Vixens.