I found this gravestone last week and brought it to a Vermont mason who specializes in cleaning old marble and other stones. He did a gentle and amazing job. He believes this marker is from the early 1800’s, in keeping with the beliefs about the ghost I encountered. I found it underneath some dirt and leaves. It is remarkable, the chain of discoveries and finds that writing about this ghost story has triggered. Stories do have a life of their own. From its position, it is clear it was moved. There are no other stones around it, and no ground suitable for graves. I’ll figure out where to leave it, but it belongs with the farm I think.

I talked to Queen Ida and some others about this family and have gathered some things, but today  I’ll just post a photo of the grave marker and a video of the foundations of the farm and the barn. I decided not to narrate the video, as it is somewhat self-evident and also because I think it is good for people viewing it to fill in their own ideas and feelings. This is a story we all get to imagine, since no one was there. It begins on the path, where I saw the ghost of the man we call Alexander, and then moves to the farm foundations, and around the foundation, and then also walks around the barn foundation. I certainly some intense sounds while I was out there, and the feeling in the foundations is very powerful, very intense for me.

But come and see this farm foundation and the barn foundation near it, a place where a farmer and his family struggled to work and live, where his wife and three children are believed to have died, and where, it seems, and if one believes it, he walks the paths and woods in search of them to this day.  She wrote him many letters before her death, and he found them when he returned from his duty with the local militia. I knew the farmhouse foundation was there, but never explored it, and did not know of the barn foundation. It was right off the path and I cannot imagine how I did not see it. It is possible all of these things – markers, bottles, clues – are messages. It is my intention to go and tell Alexander he is free to go. I don’t know if ghosts are real, but this place is real and I remember my encounter with this man on the path – I now call him  Alexander – and see him clearly in my mind and feel the spirit of his wife, weeping in the dew, the cries of his dying children, and his broken, searching heart.