I was surprised at the reaction to my Ghost Story with Rose.

These are the actual foundations of the house out in the woods by the path. Izzy is the only one of my dogs not afraid to come up to the foundation but he will not go in.  Built before 1800 we think,and surrounded by stone fences that marked the farm’s passage. My ghost has a name, I learned, Alexander. People asked me why I didn’t write this sooner, and perhaps it is because I don’t believe in ghosts or perhaps it just unnerved me, because I know I saw him.

And I would add these things to the tale,and they are also true.

From her first day, Rose would not come to the foundation, go in it, or stop near it. She would always skulk and lower her tail and rush past. Once or twice, she refused to even walk beyond it.

A few days after I encountered the stranger on the path, I ran into a neighbor, an elderly woman who had lived on my road for 80 years. I said I had run into a strange man on my path, and I described him. She lowered her head and shook it, and it was she who just said “Alexander,” and she said if I saw him again, to tell him he is free to go, that he can leave his farm.  But, she said, everyone on the road knew not to walk on that path, told their children to stay away from it. She wasn’t afraid of it, she didn’t think it was dangerous. But it was strange, she agreed, down there. You could always hear voices there, she said, even back to when she was a child. The story was, she said, that the farmer’s wife and three children all took ill with fever one winter, while her husband was away with the militia, and she wrote him many letters before she died, all of which were found in the house when he returned.

I felt I saw much sorrow in the man’s eyes as he came down the path at me.

I did not see Alexander after our first encounter on the path. But the story does not end there for me. One day more than five years ago, and soon after our encounter,  Rose and I were walking in the woods, and I came upon the foundation, which is hidden from sight in the Spring and Summer. I walked off the path, and I noticed that Rose would not follow me – perhaps the only time she wouldn’t in our time together. I wondered if there was a snake in the foundations. I came upon the foundation, which I knew was there but had never approached. Standing with my Canon pointed up at the light coming through the trees – I just wasn’t paying attention to the foundations, and I distinctly heard a voice saying, “please.”  It was a high voice, I remembered, a woman’s voice or a child’s voice perhaps. And I spun around, and heard nothing, and since I hear voices in my head from time to time, I thought nothing of it.

As I moved out of the foundation and started climbing up, I found a beautiful glass inkwell sitting upright on one of the foundation stones. It was specked with dust, but surprisingly clean, and it was pristine. I took the inkwell and brought it into my study, and I have written seven books in front of it. My friend Jack, an antique dealer, said it was old, probably from the very early 1800’s or even earlier. I know it was hers, and that she wrote her letters with it. It seems she left it for me, as no one had found it there in 200 years. I think of her often. And of him. I think I understand why he can’t leave.

I’ll put a photo of it up tomorrow.