A true ghost story: When I was thirteen, we lived in a big old house in upper New York State. Built in the 1700s, it was well out of town, and while most of the farmland around it had been sold, it retained a small barn, chicken coop, and apple orchard - and a family cemetery a short distance from the house. I and my four siblings used to play in it, reading the old epitaphs - so many of the graves were children! - and catching the salamanders who lived there. One day I was re-reading a famous epitaph, the one that begins, Behold, O man, as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I . . . when my sister Dolores called my name. As I turned to see what she had found, my eyes passed by a woodlot adjacent to the cemetery, and it wasnt a woodlot, it was an open field, full of sunlight. A woman in a long white dress was standing there, holding the hand of a child, also in a white dress. The were looking down at a tiny brook that wandered through the field. One of them had a parasol. My eyes went past the scene, then jerked back - and it was a woodlot again. What was that? It wasnt scary, but pleasant. There was, in fact, a tiny brook cutting across the woodlot, so I saw the real place as it might have been in the late 1800s or early 1900s - only years later did I date the costumes they wore, they were made of what I interpreted as gauze, but now think was lawn, light summer wear. What was it I saw, a slip in time? I dont know. Happy Halloween!
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 14:52:37 +0000
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