The Odd Ghosts of Ottsville
Dr. Richard Blasband, the eminent psychiatrist, and his attractive wife, Inge, live with their young daughter on a beautiful hillside in Ottsville, Pennsylvania. Their home is a picturesque old stone structure that they have graced with simple decorative taste ranging from Early American to modern Danish.

There is also an unforeseen addition to the house that they had not counted on when they bought it ... ghosts.

Inge Blasband with a vigorous shake of her pretty blonde head, comments, "Whoever they are, they are here."

"They?" she is asked.

"Yes, a talkative man and woman. My husband and I had heard strange voices at different times and in different areas of the house from the very day we moved in a few years ago. But neither of us mentioned it. It all seemed too ridiculous. Then one day something happened that made us pay attention to this strange phenomenon."

"What was that?" she is questioned.

"We let friends of ours from New York spend their vacation here while we were away on our vacation. They're old friends and very down-to-earth people. When we came back they had an eerie story to tell us.

"It seems just as we had, the two began hearing voices in the house the very first day. Like us also, they didn't mention it to each other, it seemed so silly. Finally, at the dinner table that first night, one of them remarked about hearing a voice calling, then a conversation between a man and a woman. The other hastily added that he, too, had heard such talking. They agreed on their experiences - they were identical. First there was the sound of a voice calling someone. Then followed a conversation between a man and a woman. They words were soft at first, then grew to an excited pitch until finally there came the sound of a door slamming, then dead silence.

"The couple searched the house the next day. They found nothing.

"In the afternoon, the husband decided to look over the old carriage house on the property. He was admiring the worn stout beams overhead when suddenly he heard two people talking. Obviously a man and a woman. The exact sentences were indistinguishable, but the voices were clear. Then, as had been the case the day before, the sounds rose in a crescendo of excitement as though a heated argument were going on. Then followed the loud slamming of a door and complete quiet. The husband looked all about him. Of course, there was no one."

Dick Blasband nods as Inge recounts their friends' strange visit. "By the time we heard the story from them we realized we, too, had tales to exchange. We admitted to our friends, and to each other, for the first time, that we had a house with a phenomenon ... a talkative ghost couple."

Dick leans back in his study chair and adds an interesting note. "The four of us discussed a fascinating part of the voices. They spoke in old-fashioned words ... talk of a century or so ago. Obviously not speech as we hear it today."

"That's not the end of the story, either," adds Inge. "As the four of us sat in the front room talking about the experience, we suddenly heard a clock chiming the hour. The notes were deep and unmistakably the brassy sound of a clock's chimes.

"We stopped talking. The wife looked over at me and said, 'Those are beautiful chimes. We heard them while you were away but were never able to find where the clock was ...'

"'How could you?' I answered, exchanging amazed glances with Dick. 'We have no chiming clock.'"

Inge brushes her hair with one hand, thoughtfully, "Dick and I hear those chimes still - every now and then."

"We also hear someone calling on many occasions," adds Dick. "Sometimes I'm out in the garden and I think I hear Inge calling me or she's in the kitchen and thinks I've been calling her. We frequently think we hear the other calling."

Inge contributes another strange experience that happened when a friend of Dick's was visiting them. "In the middle of the night the young man heard footsteps slowly coming up the stairs. He knew it could not be anyone at that hour. Yet he felt it had to be. He turned cold as he lay there waiting. Finally there was silence. The footsteps had ceased. Of course, the next day, he learned, as he suspected, it was no one of us."

So the life of the Blasbands goes on in their Ottsville house, so strangely permeated with voices from the past. Who is the conversational couple? Were they occupants of the place many, many years ago? Did they argue a great deal about something? Do their conflicting thoughts and spirited words still hover in the atmosphere of their old home?