So Sav Wants a Ghost Story Part 3

If you haven’t already, please scroll down 2 posts (not including the comic relief post) and start there. Otherwise, this is going to sound like the ramblings of a lunatic.

So Dad has squalled in the driveway to rescue me and hopefully the house. The house was built out of pine in the 1870s. During different remodeling steps, we found the rafters, the studs, and even the lathe behind the plaster had dried to the point that it was kindling. On the off chance you didn’t already know, kindling is the wood used to get a fire going. It burns hot and it burns fast.

Our house of kindling was burning. Daddy sent me back to the restaurant to get the fire extinguishers from there. They were huge things, bolted somehow to the wall. Upon my arrival, my mom wanted to get all sentimental and paw on me since I was alive. I remember picking her up and moving her out of the way, informing her “the damned house is on fire Mama. Get the hell out of the way where I can get the fire extinguishers.”. Of course, the latches didn’t want to unlatch for me.

I ripped them off the wall. Literally. Daddy didn’t bitch when he patched the holes later.

I got back to the house and met Daddy coming down the steps. “It’s too late.”, he told me. “The smoke is so thick and black in the attic that I can’t get close enough to the fire to do anything about it. Start gathering what you can and get it to the van.”.

Mama had called the fire department. The closest “big” fire station was 20 miles away. There was a volunteer fire station right beside the restaurant though. It being Saturday, most of the volunteer fire fighters were home.

They started arriving 7 minutes from Mama calling.

Now, what I’m fixing to say is in no way a dig against the local volunteers. At that time though, training was minimal. Scoot water on the fire and try to keep it from spreading was the main goal. Hell, they didn’t even have proper gear. Few helmets, few jackets and no breathing apparatuses.

Luck was on our side. A professional fire fighter from Atlanta was in the area on vacation. He happened to ride by the house as the flames were becoming very visible. He stopped to make sure anybody who was in there knew the house was on fire.

And then he started helping us take our stuff out.

As the local volunteer firemen started showing up, they went into action as they were taught to do. The man from Atlanta stepped in, telling them what he was and what he knew and he was put in charge of the situation by the fire chief. He had them change their method of attack and more importantly, had them call for backup.

Within 20 minutes, 9 fire stations responded to our house fire. 7 were rural volunteer stations, 2 came from the city’s fire station where there was lots more training done and tons more gear provided.

Now for the kicker. Out here in the sticks, where everybody knows everybody, there is a tendency to follow fire trucks. There were cars on both sides of the road for over a mile each way. They weren’t gawking either. They were there to help.

Approximately 200 people were there, going in and out while the fire fighters worked their asses off to save every bit of our house they could, toting our stuff out. One man went home and got his semi and pulled a trailer into the lot behind the house to put our stuff in.

They emptied every stick of furniture out of the house. I mean every piece of furniture. They carried out every appliance, including the well stocked refrigerator. They were even trying to remove the vanities from the bathrooms.

Remember my dream? Our house was on fire and there were hundreds of people there taking our stuff out? If that doesn’t send a shiver up your spine, not much will.

Fifteen tankers of water later and the fire was finally extinguished.

Neighbors were offering us places to stay, money for staying at a hotel, food, everything you can think of. Many friends from school were there, offering me a shoulder to cry on. One guy told me, “Yeah, we heard the call go out and decided since we weren’t doing anything, we’d see where it was. We saw it was your house and knew we had to stop and help.”. He’d shown up barefoot. He grabbed a pair of Daddy’s shoes from the back door because he kept stepping on hot coals, burning his feet. Daddy never saw the shoes again, but he didn’t care. He was rather moved that a 17 year old boy cared enough to stop and help.

We never knew the name of the fireman from Atlanta. Both the volunteer units and the professional fire fighters from town attributed him with saving the house because he had the volunteer units change their method of fighting the fire.

From a distance, you almost couldn’t tell what had happened to the house. Even though every rafter was burned completely, the roof still stood. It was a very unusual roof. Completely free standing aside from the support the old chimneys gave it. Under several layers of tar shingles, there were two layers of interlocking tin, one being the original roofing I would imagine. Those two layers of tin held the whole thing together and let it remain standing.

Every bit of Daddy’s labor was ruined though. What hadn’t burned was extensively water damaged. The beautiful job he’d done replastering walls was lost. The plaster hung in chunks. The 16 foot ceilings he’d hung upside down nearly to redo were ruined. My once beautiful suite was ravaged.

Daddy lost his will to redo anymore. This house sat empty for two years until I managed to sell it. It was my only sale during my short stint as a real estate agent. The couple who bought it moved here from Florida. A few weeks shy of their two year anniversary in the house, the woman and daughter were killed in a horrific, never explained auto accident. It was placed on the market again. They never fixed the roof.

The next young couple who bought it were unusual. They ended up getting divorced and the house was for sale once again. They did fix the roof in a half-assed manner though.

The next young couple who bought it were from Texas. They had 7 children. 6 months after they moved in, the father developed a sudden drinking problem that hadn’t been apparent ever before. They lost the house and nearly lost their children thanks to his abuse. After moving, it was said his drinking problem stopped. Their kids were friends with my kids and they told them about hearing voices and seeing things they could not explain while they lived there.

The house was on the market again. A couple from Atlanta bought it this time and actually restored it from the ground up. I asked the construction workers who did the work if they ever noticed anything strange while they were working. One told me, “I won’t say I noticed anything strange, but I will say I won’t ever work there by myself.”. The couple doesn’t live there and seldom comes down to stay. When they do, I’m always tickled by the fact that they have EVERY light in the house on. Uneasy much?

If the house is haunted, who’s ghost would it be? Would the severe looking old woman have been Mrs. Major? Perhaps she was unhappy to see changes to what she’d done to the house over the years, even if they were needed and in good taste.

Or was it possibly the slave who was shot and hanged in the front yard? The sister house I mentioned in one of the previous posts was quite a bit older. It had been built in the 1840s, when slavery was still in full swing. There had been a slave trying to escape by horse and Mr. Anderson shot him off the horse in what is now the front yard of what was our house. He wasn’t killed by the shot, so he was strung up in one of the oak trees on the spot and hanged for his attempt at escape.

Or was it possibly another slave killed on the property? Mr. Anderson was particularly fond of one of his female slaves, even though he was married. He had several children with her, but she was in love with one of the other slaves. Mr. Anderson told her to end her “affair” with the other slave or he’d kill her. She chose not to and one morning when walking up the steps from the root cellar with the morning eggs, he shot and killed her. He made the slave she was in love with recover the body and bury her. Perhaps it is his ghost?

Or maybe a dying Confederate soldier? Rumor was the Confederate seal was hidden in a knothole of a tree on this property by a dying Confederate soldier. (To my knowledge, the true seal has never been found.)

Or even a Creek or Cherokee Indian who lived here before that. We constantly find arrowheads and broken tools around the property. They were the only inhabitants of this land for years.

I still wonder about the “Get out!” warning. I still wonder if it was for my benefit or something else’s. Was it an unhappy spirit who wanted to see the place gone? Or just us gone? Has the house itself been a negative factor in the lives of those who have lived there since or was it just strange coincidences?

One thing I am sure of though- since one week before the fire that fateful July 8, 1988, I have never had the dream again.