The Visitation

To be perfectly honest, most of my life, I didn’t believe in ghosts (or other supernatural phenomenon for that matter). I never DENIED their existence but I never acknowledged it either. A vacation in West Virginia, however, changed all of that.

I and a female friend, who was a firm believer in such things, were on vacation in an area where neither of us had been before. Our wanderings had taken us to a historically recreated village in West Virginia and to a house which a brass plaque on the door told us had once been owned by a family named Wager.

My friend asked me to “let go” of my skepticism, close my eyes, and tell her what I “sensed” in the house. Playing along, I made up a story about a nine-year-old girl who died in 1849 with a cough and fever. I told my friend that I “sensed” that the girl’s name was Maria and described how I imagined her to look. We discussed what I “saw” and she told me her impressions. I didn’t think anything about the incident until, about two hours later we were touring an old cemetery high up on a nearby hill. When we reached the top we sat down to rest on a stone bench. It was then that I noticed the grave just across from where we sat. It was the grave of Maria Wager. She had died at the age and in the year I had “made up” a short time earlier. Later investigation also backed up other facts in my description including the fact that she had died of scarlet fever.”

Currently we have three ghosts living with us in our little home. All three have been seen by others. First, there is Charles. He died in the 1700s. He was a mountain man in the little valley where we live. From what he communicated later, he was attracted by my hobby of shooting black powder rifles. Apparently he had gotten sick of something that sounded like influenza and froze to death when he could no longer care for himself in the wilderness. He first came to our attention when we saw our cats watching something that wasn’t there. Scared the heck out of them! He also has a penchant for getting into our cabinets and turning bottles and such upside down.

Next, we came to know Jacob Marney, the only one to communicate his full name. Jacob was a long skinny “Ichabod Crane” kind of guy. He apparently died in the 1960s. He doesn’t say much but he is the most “physical” of our visitors. He came to our attention while Tracy and I were sitting on the living-room having a glass of tea. Tracy was sitting at one end of the couch and I was sitting in an easy-chair nearby. All of a sudden, I saw the cushion at the opposite end of the couch from where Tracy sat depress as if someone were sitting down. I turned to Tracy and she was already staring at the cushion, her mouth hanging open.

“Did YOU see that?” She asked me while I was trying to shut my own fallen jaw. A few minutes later, the cushion uncompressed as if whoever were seated there had gotten up. In a later communication with him I learned his name and that he had once owned a large part of our little valley and had been a farmer.

The funniest incident regarding Jacob was when a friend came to visit a few weeks ago. A friend was staying in our guest room. He was drifting off to sleep the first night he was here when he felt someone sit down on the bed next to him. Thinking it was me, he said out-loud “Go away and let me sleep, I’m tired!” He felt the person get up. As that happened, it dawned on him how strange that I or anyone would be in the bedroom without knocking and besides, he remembered he had locked the door. He opened his eyes. There was no one there and the door was still shut and locked. He says he didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night.

Last of all we met “The Floating Lady” Tracy was the first to see her. She asked me one night if I could “see” (physically that is) anyone in the bedroom with us. I shifted into that mindset and “saw” her. All the other disembodied spirits I had seen before were at ground level, just as they would have been when they were living. Not this one, however, she has always floated several feet above the floor with her head near the ceiling. She has never “spoken” so I am estimating her life time as being in the 1800s. She has always worn a brown dress and a shawl which she kept over her head. A female friend came to visit us sometime back and came out of our bathroom with a somewhat shocked and puzzled look. “I just saw a woman in the mirror and it wasn’t me.” She then described her as appearing to be out of the “old west” and that she was wearing a brown dress and a shawl. Cool, didn’t know they could be seen in mirrors.