For Margaret it was not a laughing matter. She was afraid in her own home. Her heart would pound, she would feel cold, and her throat would become dry and raspy. Later in the evening, it grew even worse. The old house seemed to come alive with a sinister presence, and Margaret circumvented the dining room in order to avoid the feeling of panic that engulfed her there. As if that were not enough, Margaret sometimes smelled fire. There were nights when highly agitated she sat bolt upright in bed. She would awaken her husband and the children. "Something’s burning," she’d insist, "I smell it here and there," and she’d pace around and point to placed on the living room floor. For the next hour, she, her husband, and all the children, (who considered it a great adventure) would crawl about on their knees like puppies, sniffing at the cracks between the highly polished floor boards. But only Margaret ever smelled the fire that was not there.

Then, in the late 1960’s, a famous British author and psychic visited the family. The pale, slender woman, upon taking one step into the living room, shrank back.

"There’s a ghost here. I can feel his presence," she said. "He has the kind of dark energy no household should endure. I shall assuredly rid you of him."

The next day the psychic lay on the down-cushioned living room sofa and sank into a deep trance. An hour later, weak as a rag and dripping wet, she awakened. The story she brought back to the family was bizarre. I went like this:

"Between 1868 and 1888, a mean-spirited, foul-mouthed old bachelor arrived from England. He anticipated buying his way into island society and purchased this handsome house. But no matter how hard he tried, who he pursued, or how he flashed his money about, local society snubbed him and shut him out.

"The years passed. He grew bitter, hostile, reclusive, depressed, and finally suicidal. One day he pulled an old flintlock pistol from a rack and shot himself.

"Sad to say," the psychic mopped the sweat from her face and arms with a dampened hand towel Margaret offered her, "a part of his spirit remained trapped right here.

"The next day his servants found him. They hated him for the years of abusive treatment, and they called in an obeah man. The obeah man instructed them to lay the corpse on a table, right here," she said, walking up and down along the wall of the dining room where Margaret had often felt the dark threatening presence.

"This was all hallway then," the psychic said. "For seven days the servants worked obeah spells in a vain attempt to turn their former employer into a white zombie. After a week they had a vile-smelling corpse on their hands. Terrified that they would be charged with his murder, they decided to burn down the house." The psychic told Margaret that she was very intuitive. That was why she had picked up the old gentleman’s terror and his fear of fire. "He’s gone now," she said. "I’ve explained everything to him and told him he was free to go."