This is just a little something for Halloween, about a beloved family home… and ghost house…
In the remote hills of Vermont
H.P. Lovecraft found inspiration in the remote hills of Vermont, in the same area where my great-grandparents bought over 100 acres of land and an old farmhouse in the 1950s. The farmhouse had been built in the 1800s, and at one time it had been a stage stop. It was a family house – many aunts, uncles, and cousins visited often, over many decades. I grew up knowing this farmhouse as my home away from home. I loved roaming the woods, dipping into the nearby rivers, and staring in wonder at the vast number of stars visible in the country sky. And the house itself, I loved deeply. I had great affection for its rustic qualities. This was despite its lack of hot running water.
Secret compartments and a spooky cellar
There were some spooky things about this beloved house. The stove was an old potbelly that had to be disassembled each time a visit ended. We hid the parts away in secret compartments in the stairs to the attic. This was because at one point, someone had broken in and stolen the previous stove. They removed it piece by piece, through a window. The idea of attic stairs that lifted up to reveal secret compartments seems pretty neat now, even practical. But back then it simply added an old-fashioned mystery to the house.
The cellar was short-ceilinged, with a dirt floor and giant stones for a foundation. Upon arriving for a visit, the electricity had to be turned on by going into that cellar and fiddling with antique glass fuses. It meant walking through the dark, shuttered, creaky house, finding one’s way down the old stairs, straight into the middle of the cellar. The tall house sat alone, looming over the dirt road that was not much older than the house itself.
A family get-together
Though I loved the house dearly, it did at times feel creepy. When several families of us cousins would visit together, filling the house, the energy was alive and cheerful. But when only a handful of people came to stay, it seemed pensive, at best. On one occasion, I and my boyfriend (who is now my husband), arrived at the house in the middle of winter. We had planned a visit with my brother and his girlfriend. They were to join us later. We cleared snow from the doorway, turned the electricity on, and got a good fire going in the woodstove. We settled our things and lay down for a quick rest.
Out like a light
The fire in the stove warmed the place nicely. We both fell asleep in cots set up in the living room, unexpectedly drowsy from the heat. We woke suddenly to the distinct and familiar sound of the key in the front door. Jumping up to greet my brother and his girlfriend, we were surprised when the door did not open, and around us was as silent as snow. My boyfriend reached for his glasses, which he had placed on the floor by his cot when he lay down, and could not find them. I joined him in the search, and finally found them clear across the room, past my cot. On the floor, but certainly out of anyone’s reach.
We both went to check the door. It was still locked, and it was clear there had been no one there. At that point we were getting a little spooked. The sound we had both heard was the exact, familiar – and distinct – sound of the key in the door. The glasses were inexplicably found fully across the room. The gentle silence of winter surrounding us was little comfort.
More unexplained noises
Shaking the feeling, we decided to start dinner and wait for their arrival. As my boyfriend stood at the stove, stirring, I sat by the still-shuttered window. We were just talking together easily, when we suddenly heard a loud, deep scraping sound. I jumped up, heart racing, he stopped stirring, and we looked at each other, trying to figure out what had caused the sound. Our first thought – trying to be rational, was that an animal had pulled on the outside shutter. Seemed unlikely, but a possible rational explanation. The shutters were closed whenever anyone left after a visit, and they were held tightly in place by strong hooks. My boyfriend went outside in the deep snow to take a look… no tracks, no sign of an animal anywhere around the side of the house.
Get out…?
Our second thought was perhaps a boulder had slipped loose in the cellar; it certainly would have made a loud scraping noise. It also seemed unlikely though. We both went to look and found nothing out of place there either. When we came back to the kitchen, we both felt our nerves growing on edge, and when we tried to get back to what we had been doing, we simply looked at each other and knew… I don’t remember which of us said it first, but we had both strongly felt the message, “Get out.” It was as if each event had been trying to tell us what suddenly formed as a message in both of our minds.
We started hurrying to clean up the uneaten dinner. As we did so, the feeling intensified and it wasn’t until we had driven away that we started to feel better. It was many years before the time of cell phones, and the town we were in had no pay phones, so we weren’t able to call my brother and his girlfriend until we checked into a motel many miles away. They had not been able to travel north, as something had come up, and of course, had no way of reaching us.
Unexplained activity
We’ll never know what had created those noises. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard noises in that house that were not easy to explain, and it wasn’t the first time I’d felt a little spooked there, but it was the first time the noises had been so precise, an object had been found somewhere it hadn’t been left, and such a negative energy had risen up. It was also the first time that more than one person had experienced the same things together. When describing it to my brother and his girlfriend, they both admitted having felt such unease there before, only when they were there alone as a couple, and had actually been unsure about making this visit.
Continued family visits, continued love
After that time, we had a few family visits there and all was fine (the house has since been sold and renovated). We never went back alone, and as far as I know, few people did. At one point we buried my father’s dog on the land there. My dad of course had a close kinship to the area, and his dog loved the woods there. In dreams, this house has appeared to me as “the ghost house,” where I have visited and conversed with family members who have passed away. I don’t know what the real nature of the house is… whether there really is something “other” about the place. But I am pretty sure it would have made a great setting in a Lovecraft story!
As an addendum – a cousin eventually purchased the house for his own immediate family and did some renovations. My husband and I visited a few years ago and spoke to him and his wife… He insisted, and this is an otherwise rational seeming guy, the house was haunted, and often spooked him.
More spooks…
If you enjoy spiritualism or all things haunted or ghostly, check out my post about Conjuring the Spirit World, a fantastic exhibition at the PEM in Salem, MA. And if you’re interested in the Lovecraft story set in the remote hills of Vermont, check out The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft at Amazon, which includes the tale, The Whisperer in Darkness.
~ Nellie
p.s. that is the beloved old house in the image above, dressed up a little for Halloween with some blurred edges 😉. It has since been renovated nicely and is quite beautiful. And I still have immense love for this place – if I could afford it, I would buy it myself 🙂