They say sometimes Walker would start up the stairs, and he would look and there would be Josiah standing in the doorway of his bedroom staring at him. It finally got so bad, Walker seeing Josiah so plain and so often, that Walker closed off the upstairs and would not go up there for the longest kind of time.

At night lots of times Walker would wake up hearing Josiah calling for water and begging for a doctor.

It got to where Walker did not like to go home at all. He took to playing cards at night, and he would stay out as late as anybody would stay to play with him.

One night Walker was playing setback with some friends in the lobby of the old Baldwin Hotel. Actually they were not exactly friends Walker was playing with, but they were the closest thing he had to friends. They were all relaxed and were having a good time when all of a sudden Walker threw down his cards and yelled,

"My God! Look behind you-my boy is standing there!"

Nobody else saw whatever it was that upset Walker, but the other card players knew in all reason that something had been there in that lobby. They said they never saw a grown man as pale and as trembly and all to pieces as Walker was.

But Walker’s worst torment came those long days and nights just before he died. It was a stroke that killed him. They said Josiah’s ghost came and stood at the foot of Walker’s death bed. He, the ghost, just stood there and looked at Walker. Never said a word, just stared.

Walker screamed and cried and begged for forgiveness. He would plead, "Don’t look at me! Josiah, please don’t look at me!" And he would add, "I didn’t know you were sick, Josiah. I would have sent for the doctor if I’d known. Please forgive me." And then he would start again begging Josiah not to look at him.

He was still begging for forgiveness when he died.

The big house on the corner of Jefferson and McIntosh streets looks much the same as it did when the Walkers lived there. It still has the mansard roof and the eight-sided room and the Victorian porch.

It still has ghosts, too.

People living there still hear footsteps on the stairs, and they know that, too late, S. Walker is going up to see about his son. And then they hear other steps, lighter steps, in the hall, and a thud on the landing.