THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610240482
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: 64 lines
With Halloween only four days off, I'd like to anticipate the eerie eve traditionally haunted by witches and goblins by featuring my favorite family ghost story in today's column. Since it has a somewhat startling climax, I'm sure it will give you a good chuckle while you are enjoying your leisurely Sunday morning coffee.
When my Grandmother Tucker's mother was left a widow when her ship-captain husband died at sea in 1854, she lived in one of a row of identical houses with narrow alleys between them near the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth. One evening when she was tucking her four daughters into bed, all hell broke loose in the attic above their bedroom. The children were terrified, but great-grandma reacted by locking the door to the attic so that whoever or whatever was making the racket couldn't descend the stairs.
The noise, consisting of ghostly groans and the rattling of chains, continued nightly for a week. But even though great-grandma searched the attic during the daytime, she couldn't discover any evidence of what caused the disturbance. Finally, when her patience had been worn to a frazzle, she decided to play detective in order to get to the bottom of the business.
Since her house was on a corner, she reasoned that no one could enter the attic from the street side. Once that deduction was made, she nailed a board across the rafters on the street side of the attic and hung a dark blanket over it. In order to have a clear view of the situation, should anything turn up that was visible, she cut a small hole in the blanket.
That night, long before the hullabaloo usually began, she sent her children by prearrangement to a friend's house to spend the night. After that she took up a vigil on a stool behind the blanket and waited. Shortly thereafter, the silence was disturbed by the irregular opening of the weightless window at the opposite end of the attic. Peering through the hole in the blanket, great-grandma saw a neighbor's boy, with a candle in hand, thrust a plank from the window across the alley between the houses into the window of her own attic. After testing it for safety, the boy crawled across it followed by two of his brothers, one of whom brought along a length of chain.
Once the door leading downstairs was secured, the boys had a high old time, rattling the chain and making weird noises, never suspecting that their victim was sitting only a few feet away behind the blanket. Then, after these shenanigans had palled, the boys unlatched the door leading downstairs, crawled back across the plank into their own attic, closed the window on great-grandma's side, hauled in the plank, and silence reigned again. With this knowledge in hand, great-grandma imparted the details to the boys' father the next morning. After a few chuckles, he told her to resume her perch behind the blanket that night and see what happened. In the meantime, he assured her he would also take up a similar vigil in his own attic at the other end of the plank.
That night great-grandma donned a long white nightgown, greased her face, daubed it with flour and soot, and let her hair fall in a wild tangle about her shoulders. Taking along a bundle of switches, a tallow candle and a box of sulphur matches, she resumed her seat behind the blanket and waited.
When the boys repeated their performance, she let them get into high gear, then lighted her candle, lifted the blanket and suddenly appeared like one of the furies from the underworld. Needless to add, the culprits were petrified with fear. Then, after giving each of them a good switching, she carefully passed them back across the narrow alley to their waiting father, who was soon wielding a razor strop with a vengeance.
After that, great-grandma nailed up the connecting window and went downstairs with the satisfaction that she had permanently banished the supposed spooks from her household. by CNB