Haunted Long Beach
by Claudine Burnett
Copyright ©1996 Claudine Burnett & the Historical Society of Long Beach
Whispering Woman
Here’s a story by Vivian Reed, told in her own words.
"If you buy an old house, you’d better be prepared for ghosts. My husband
learned this a few weeks after we moved into our home on Appleton Street, built in 1907 by
Rufus Dodge. We moved in on October 5th, so his encounter with the ghost would
have been right around Halloween. Funny, we didn’t make the connection at the
time."
"One night, my husband woke up suddenly for no apparent reason. He was immediately
aware of a presence at the foot of the bed. Sitting up, he saw the shadowy figure of a
woman in old-fashioned flowing clothes. She was moving effortlessly, almost floating,
toward the door and the stairs beyond."
"As she reached the door, she paused and turned and looked straight into my
husband’s eyes. He had no doubt that the ghost was acknowledging him, sizing him up;
but, oddly, he felt no fear. She was so still and serene it seemed she was welcoming him
to the house. Then she disappeared without a sound."
"A neighbor encountered our ghost when he was helping the previous owner renovate
the house. While repairing the steeply pitched roof, he had stacked a pile of shingles on
the flat roof over the back porch. He went back to work on the other side of the house but
was soon startled by a loud thud. Scrambling back to the porch roof, he discovered the
shingles scattered all over the back yard. He had stacked the shingles carefully and felt
there was no way they could have fallen over accidentally."
"He told me, ‘I always came in to work while the owner was at her office, but
I often had the feeling there was someone else in the house with me. After it pulled that
dirty trick with the shingles, I knew I had a mischievous ghost on my hands.’"
"I felt that the presence of the ghost in May of 1995. One night I kept being
awakened by soft whispery noises - like paper being crumpled or footsteps on the stairs -
even though I am usually a sound sleeper. I’d get up and look around, but nothing
ever seemed unusual or changed. No one else in the house was disturbed by the
noises."
"The next morning we learned that our devoted baby sitter and friend had died in
the night. She had visited us almost every day for over five years. I am sure our ghost
had learned to love her as we did and was distraught for the poor old woman dying
alone."
"Over the years, we have come to refer to our ghost as ‘the whispering
woman’ because of her secretive ways. I like to think of her as shy and proper, maybe
a cook or a maid, not even a resident of the house but bound to it forever by a secret
known only to her. A troubling though sometimes lingers. Is she trying to whisper a
warning from beyond the grave?" |
