Old Time Ghost Story

Every holiday visit inevitably leads to “do you remember when?” and talk of the past. This holiday was no different. All the cousins were talking about genealogy. We are all going to work on Ancestry.com to pool our knowledge. In the discussion of who knows what piece of family history; my mother tells this story.

“Charlie!”

Grandpa Charlie sat straight up in the middle of the night and looked around. “Davey?”
He got out of bed.

Grandma Lizzie rolled over. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”

“I just heard Davey call my name.”

“Charlie honey, that‘s not possible. Your brother lives down by the river. It would take days for him to get up here on horseback. Come back to bed.”

“I tell you, I just heard him call my name. He must be outside.”

Grandpa Charlie went outside and started to search the farm. Grandma Lizzie stood at the door with s shawl wrapped around her and looked out. She was scared. She had no idea of what was going on.

Grandpa Charlie finally came back to the house alone and perplexed.

“I can’t find him. It is strange. I heard him speak to me clear as a bell.”

Lizzie finally got him back to bed. Several days later they got word that the night Davey spoke to his brother was the night that he committed suicide by drowning himself in the river.”

I looked over to at my mother and then at my cousin Lynn.

“I never heard that story before.”

“Funny, I haven’t thought about it in years. I happened a long time ago. It is just a story that my mother told me about a funny thing that happened to her parents.”

These are the kinds of stories that need to be written down. I encourage you to talk with your aging relatives to get them reminiscing. You never know what will come up.