Hollow Hill

Portsmouth, NH – Real ghosts, private home – pt 2

[Part two of a true story that began at Portsmouth, NH – real ghosts, private home]

After this, I kept hearing louder footsteps on the stairs to the second floor and upstairs, usually at dusk and for about thirty seconds at a time. I ignored them. Old houses make funny noises, I reminded myself.

It’s important to understand that I really wanted my own house after several years in rentals. This house seemed such a great opportunity to buy a house at well below market value, I wanted it to work out.

Besides, I’d lived in a very haunted house in Northern California (which was later the subject of a Fate magazine article). I figured that it was highly unlikely that I’d ever live in a second haunted house.

When I couldn’t explain an odd event in the Portsmouth house, I ignored it.

But small incidents kept occurring.

FILE BOXES REARRANGED THEMSELVES OVERNIGHT

I kept heavy file boxes of papers and reference books near my work area in the dining room, and some mornings I’d find them rearranged.

I asked my family if anyone had been searching for something in my boxes, and they all said no. I wanted to believe them, but I also wanted the simple explanation that someone had been looking for something, and just didn’t want to admit it.

One morning, I found the white ceramic hippo that I kept on the center of the dining table, in one of my file boxes at the bottom of a stack. Annoyed, I brought him out of the box and replaced him on the table.

That did not happen again.

The heavy, paper-filled boxes continued to rearrange themselves overnight, about once every ten days. I never heard this happening, though my bedroom was immediately above the area where the boxes were stored, and without carpeting, sounds traveled easily throughout the house.

A WARNING – THE SMELL OF SMOKE

A few weeks after the hippo incident, in the late afternoon, I started smelling smoke in the dining room, at the corner above the basement electrical box. I rushed to the basement, but the odor was not there. I went outside to see if a neighbor was burning leaves, or if a nearby chimney could account for the odor. The air was crisp and fresh outside.

In a panic, I had my husband check the box and our wiring as soon as he came home from work. He said some of it was old, but nothing looked particularly dangerous or in need of immediate replacement. Nevertheless, he did a little work on the wiring to the dining room, to put my mind at rest.

Soon after this, I paid to have an energy audit of our house, to lower our utility bills. The representative of the power company checked the wiring and said it was fine. He used a couple of devices to check for drafts in the dining room, and found that the area was tight so I probably was not smelling smoke from outside.

I was baffled, and these “little things” were starting to snowball. There were no single, frightening events at this point, but I began to have doubts about remaining in that house with my family. Something seemed not right, though I couldn’t say that a flying spatula, creaking floorboards, or shifting boxes were particularly frightening.

ANOTHER WARNING – DREAMS ABOUT A FIRE

Then I started dreaming about a fire. In my dream, could see the flames reflected in the rear window of the dining room. Sometimes I saw flames in the corner of the room. Generally, it was just heavy smoke and the reflected flames in the window. I don’t usually smell things in my dreams, but this was such a vivid nightmare, the acrid odor remained in my nose even after I woke up.

I mentioned this to my husband, who’s lived with me long enough to know that many of my dreams are prophetic. He looked anxious, but reminded me that there was no logical reason for a fire, and nothing we could do. We had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and he re-checked the electrical box and wiring, just in case.

The dreams persisted, as did the daytime smell of smoke from time to time. I started moving our belongings into a storage facility on the other side of town. This seemed silly since our huge attic was less than one-third full, and we also had a basement suitable for storage.

GHOSTS IN THE KITCHEN

I had located my writing area in the far corner of the dining room, where I could look out the window into our backyard, and also see the kitchen over my shoulder.

One early evening as I sat working, I saw something white pass through the kitchen. I looked straight at it, just in time to see (what I thought was) the back of a white shirt go past the doorway.

I thought it was my older daughter, and shouted to ask her if she had a new tee-shirt.

There was no answer. Then I noticed that she hadn’t turned the light on in the kitchen, and the afternoon light was fading fast. If she was cutting carrot sticks or another snack, I was ready to lecture her on safety.

I stood up to see what she was doing in the kitchen, but no one was there.

What had I seen that looked like someone in white, moving quickly past the doorway? I checked for a reflection from the yard next door, but the blinds at that side of the kitchen were closed. The window to the back was covered by a nice large ficus tree on the lower half. Light streamed in the top of the window, but only a foil balloon could reach high enough to reflect that kind of light,there. I returned to my desk, baffled.

Deciding that I’d been working too long and my eyes were tired, I left my desk and went out to the kitchen to start dinner. Everything seemed normal for the rest of the day.

However, over the next several months, I saw the “woman in white” more often. Many times, I was looking straight at her, and saw the filmy white shape of a woman in a long gown, float peacefully past through the kitchen. She was always going from the front hall towards the back door.

Less often I saw a man, mostly in brown clothing but still translucent as the woman was. He was sometimes on the stairs to the second floor, but usually followed the same path as the woman: From the front hall, through the kitchen, and vanishing towards the back door. Once, I thought I saw him at the window of the attic, but that may have been an odd reflection.

I still told no one about what I was seeing. I didn’t want to scare my children, and my husband was probably more afraid of ghosts than they might be.

THE GHOSTS APPEAR TO OTHERS

Finally, my older daughter announced firmly, “Mom, I saw a ghost in the kitchen.”

We exchanged stories and she had seen the same woman as I had: A filmy white shape in the kitchen, usually floating through the room.

I was relieved that someone else had seen her. But I was also concerned that my children were being affected by the energy–and perhaps spirits–in the house.

Next, more dramatic events lead to a decision.

ghosts

NOT SURE IF YOUR HOUSE – OR SOMEONE ELSE’S – IS HAUNTED?

Portsmouth, NH – Real Ghosts, private home – pt 3

(Continued from Portsmouth – real ghosts, private home, part two)

A TRUE GHOST STORY – PART THREE

There were a few more incidents of things casually flying through the kitchen. The faucets turned themselves on more frequently, and with more force. Other odd little things happened, but nothing particularly destructive or frightening. In fact, many of these things struck us funny.

One of the funniest “ghostly” events was when the paper cups would topple in the kitchen. It almost always happened when my oldest daughter was in the kitchen. She did the dishes every afternoon at about three o’clock.

With three children, we have always used paper cups for beverages. It reduces the number of dishes to wash, and the cups were safer for the children when they were small; my youngest liked to chew on the edge of whatever held his beverage. Paper was a vastly better choice than glass. As the children got older, we simply continued to use paper cups for convenience.

Paper cups come in two stacks of 40-50 per plastic-wrapped package. They stand on a level counter easily, and our kitchen counter was level; we’d checked it.

However, when my oldest daughter was in the kitchen, and usually when she was washing dishes, the cups would topple repeatedly. One of us would straighten them back up, make certain that the cups were stable, and stand back. While we watched, the stacks would begin to sag and then fall over, as if someone had accidentally leaned against them.

This didn’t happen just once or twice, but dozens of times. We finally gave up, and learned to leave them sprawled across the counter the first time this happened, each afternoon. Later, we’d prop the cups back up again when my daughter was about to leave the kitchen. Then they would stay in place until the next time she visited the room.

Although the poltergeist incidents ranged from funny to annoying, the bigger problem was the general sense of discomfort we felt in the house. We tried painting the front hall a warm, cheerful yellow with crisp white trim. I displayed quaint country quilts on the walls, and later tried sunny landscape paintings. I bought country-style bleached pine furniture. We read about feng shui and tried a variety of “remedies,” and though they made the house look better, they didn’t solve the problem.

The house still wasn’t cozy and home-like, although we’d been there over six months. Still, the house seemed like an irresistible real estate opportunity, so we stayed. But I was anxious about the fire premonitions, and kept making trips to the storage place with boxes of our belongings, ignoring the illogic and unnecessary expense of it.

More and more, I had the impression that the woman in white was kindly urging us to leave the house, while the man in brown was ordering us out in a sinister manner. I have no idea why I got this impression. The woman seemed to be trying to leave through the kitchen door. The man always seemed to pause abruptly at the door instead of trying to exit. I can’t honestly say that I ever connected their focus on the door, with the idea of leaving the house, but in retrospect it seems obvious.

Nevertheless, I rarely saw the man in brown, and he visually appeared fewer than five times during our year in that house.

Then the neighborhood took a turn for the worse. About three nights each week, I’d answer the door to the police, who were searching for reported criminals. During the day, the police were often on our street, dealing with malicious mischief. Tagging — words I didn’t want my children to see — appeared on walls a few blocks from our house.

My husband and I decided that the house might not be a smart investment, after all.

Then, one night, our next-door neighbors’ truck had been smashed with what looked like a baseball bat. They gave notice to their landlord at the same time we told our house’s owner that we would not be staying.

We prepared to move. It wasn’t much work. Many of our belongings were already in storage on the other side of town.

The story concludes in part four

Portsmouth, NH – Real Ghosts, Private Home – pt 4

This concludes a true story that began at Portsmouth – real ghosts, private home

OUR LAST NIGHT IN THIS HAUNTED HOUSE

Our last night in the house, the footsteps returned, louder than ever. It was late in June, and about three o’clock in the morning. I remember hearing the footsteps, pounding up the varnished pine stairs as my family slept. Hard, leather-soled shoes.

For some reason, I thought that I was the only one who heard them.

Then the noise woke up my husband, and he leaped from the bed and turned on the lights. He shouted into the hall, and the steps paused.

My husband returned to bed, but sat up, prepared to go out to see who it was if the noise resumed.

It did. The footsteps suddenly continued, like someone was now running up the final few steps to the second floor where we slept.

Then the noise stopped, as if the person waited one or two steps from the top. My husband and I both went out to the stairway, turned on the lights, and saw nothing unusual. After checking the locks on the front and back doors, we left the lights on and nervously returned to bed.

Adrenaline pumping, I checked the stairs and hallway many times that night, but it remained silent. Something felt malicious to me, but that was probably my imagination after too little sleep, and the accumulated stress.

We moved out the next day. (My now ex-husband’s independent summary of the footsteps that night, are on the …Other notes page.)

THE FIRE WARNING WAS REAL

The night after we moved out, a huge Victorian house in back of ours burned to the ground. The distance between that house and ours was about 100 yards, at the most.

Our house would have been filled with smoke. The fire would have been seen from the window where — in my dreams — I’d seen fire reflected.

We were miles away, sleeping peacefully under the stars on the first night of a well-deserved camping vacation. When I saw the newspaper the next day, I was both stunned and relieved.

Someone else lives in “our” house now. It’s been fixed up, and the neighborhood may be improving after all. Perhaps we made a poor financial decision, but I don’t regret leaving that house after all we witnessed there.

1999 UPDATE

I took photos of the house on Sunday morning, Oct. 17th, but I felt as if someone was watching me from the house. Perhaps someone was; it’s certainly odd for a woman to stand in front of your house with two cameras, taking pictures. Nevertheless, when I picked up the prints, something about one photo nagged at me. It didn’t look right. One of the windows had a reflection that didn’t seem right to me.

Below, I scanned the section exactly as it appeared in the print, and an enlargement of it on the right. To me, it’s the man’s face, looking to the right, with an indented scar beneath his right cheekbone. He’s wearing round, dark sunglasses from either the 19th century or the hippie era. He has long-ish, light colored hair, and he’s slightly balding at the top.

From a 19th-century Portsmouth city directory, I know that the first inhabitants of the house were probably a man from England, his brother, and his son. All of them worked with leather, making shoes at a local factory, I think.

He’s the man in brown that I’d seen in the house. I’m certain of it.

Ghostly man in wondow of Portsmouth house. Close-up of ghostly face in window.

But, maybe I’m just jumping at shadows, and perhaps you see something different in the image… even just the reflection of the lilac bush in front of it.

You can read more about this photo, and see a sketch of the man, at Portsmouth – portrait of a real ghost

Portsmouth, NH – Real Ghosts, Private Home – Other Notes

(Additional notes from a story that started on Portsmouth, NH – real ghosts, private home.)

Haunted house in Portsmouth NH

Author’s comment: My ex-husband wrote this before reading my notes about what happened.

“One night, at about 3AM I clearly heard someone coming up the stairs to the bedrooms. We lived in one of those old Cape Cod type houses, built around the turn of the century. The stairs had no carpet on them and the hallway was quite bare with excellent acoustics. I called out, ‘Hello?’ wondering if it was a burglar or other intruder.

“We had only lived in the house for less than a year. The previous owner had myriad tenants who rented rooms. There was a distinct possibility that one of these ex-tenants came back from a night of drinking or drugs and had mistaken our home for theirs.

“I could tell that the person on the stairs had stopped right at the top step or the one right below it. I turned on my light, got out of bed, and looked at the top of the stairs and no one was there.

“There was no possibility of someone running down the stairs before I got there. There was no place to hide. There was no possibility of there being someone making the noise outside of the house. The footfalls were definitely on the stairs. I remember hearing that slight crunch of that stuff between your shoes and the treads of the stairs. Someone had definitely been walking up the stairs. But no one was there.”

Is this a real haunted house? Those who lived there in the early 1990s would say that it is. We have tried to conceal the actual location of this private home and ask those who recognize it not to bother its current residents. They have enough problems, if the house is still haunted.

[2016 update: The current residents say that they’re not troubled by any ghosts at the house. But, if a ghost did show up, they’d be fine with any benign spirit.]

Wentworth by the Sea, NH and ME – Ghosts Revisited

Hotel Wentworth ghost hunting — Hotel photo modified from a picture by Chip Griffin.

On the northeast side of Portsmouth, at New Castle, a grand Victorian hotel overlooks sailboats, fishing boats and yachts.

For generations, the Wentworth Hotel, also called Wentworth-by-the-Sea, or “Hotel Wentworth,” was a summer destination for wealthy families.

Built in 1874, this hotel was synonymous with ‘opulence’ through the 1960s. However, times changed and – by the late 1970s – the next generation showed less interest in their parents’ vacation choices.

As a guest during the waning days of the Wentworth’s popularity, I encountered some of the hotel’s ghosts.

An Encounter with a Wentworth Ghost

At that point, the fourth floor was dusty and abandoned.

Decades earlier, it had housed servants. Usually, they were a mix of English and Irish immigrants. They’d arrived with affluent families staying at the hotel.

But, by the late 1960s, the fourth floor was strictly off-limits to small children… which was exactly why I went there.

I’d sneak off when my parents were busy with golf lessons, formal afternoon tea, or while they were swimming laps at one of the hotel’s pools.

My first trip to the fourth floor wasn’t an idle visit. I’d seen a woman in a long dark dress, and a white apron and cap, dash up a narrow staircase from the third to the fourth floor.

After waiting until she was near the top of the dusty stairs, I followed her.

But, at the top of the stairs, she’d vanished.

I thought she’d slipped into one of the tiny servants’ rooms on that floor, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I roamed from one room to the next, noting torn floral wallpaper, rickety wooden chairs and sagging cots.

Eventually, I realized that the only footprints in the dusty hallway were mine.

That was the first of many encounters with ghosts on the fourth floor and the turrets of the Wentworth Hotel.

Every summer, I explored the “off limits” areas of the hotel. Now and then, I’d see an odd flickering light or shadow. Sometimes, I’d see translucent apparitions, and follow them. But – always – they’d vanish.

Those ghostly encounters are among the reasons I developed a lifelong fascination with ghosts and haunted places.

A Return to the Wentworth Hotel

In February 2008, I returned to the Wentworth. I was taking pictures and double-checking my stories for Weird Encounters, the sequel to the book, Weird Hauntings. (As I did in Weird Hauntings, I’ve described some of my favorite first-person tales of real ghosts.)

Entering the front door of the Wentworth hotel was like returning home. It took me a minute to get my bearings. The hotel has been remodeled at least once since I was a guest.

But, because I’d spent so many childhood summers at the Wentworth, I had no trouble finding my way back to the fourth floor and its cozy rooms.

Today, they’re not dusty little rooms any more. The Wentworth is a Marriott hotel, so the fourth floor is as opulent as the rest of the resort.

Still Haunted… but only by the very best ghosts, of course

On the fourth floor, I could feel that familiar, homely ‘ghost feeling’, especially at the staircase landings near the hallway ends.

Twice, I saw figures appear and vanish, but perhaps that’s because I expected them. One was a man dressed in black tie formal attire… or he may have been a butler or valet.

The other figure seemed female, but I didn’t see more than a filmy outline that disappeared in a split second.

It may have been coincidence that the door to one of the most haunted rooms was unlocked and unoccupied during my visit.

Haunted New Hampshire's Hotel Wentworth To me, that suite of rooms feels happily haunted, perhaps by a man of the sea.

He’s a loner. He won’t bother anyone who doesn’t welcome his presence.

I had the idea that he was pleased that I remembered him, and left the door open.

I didn’t see anything, but I smelled the faint aroma of good pipe tobacco.

I said that I was glad to see him. But, of course, I didn’t actually see anything unusual. It just seemed the polite thing to say.

After that, I left… with a smile. The Wentworth is still a sort of “second home” for me, and my memories are happy ones.

In the future, I’ll return to the Wentworth. On this short tour, I was able to confirm that the ghosts are still there. There’s something very comforting about that.

Portsmouth, NH – Portrait of a Real Ghost

Ghostly man in wondow of Portsmouth house.

Portsmouth house, Portsmouth, NH
October 1999, about 11 a.m.

This photo was taken outside a Portsmouth private residence. While living in that house, I saw two ghosts and experienced considerable poltergeist phenomena. I took several photos of the house in late October 1999, to illustrate my pages about this very haunted house.

When I had this film printed and examined the photos, I kept returning to the photo shown above. Something about it didn’t seem “right.” My attention was drawn to what seemed to be window reflections of the old lilac bush in front of the house.

The following day, I decided to enhance the image with my computer, simply making it larger so I could determine what was bothering me about the picture. That enlargement appears below:

pnh-winman

Either this photo looks like a man looking to the right, with longish hair and 19th-century dark sunglasses, or it looks like a reflection of lilac leaves. Nobody seems undecided about this photo!

If you’d seen the male ghost in that house, you’d recognize the window reflection right away: That’s our ghost. He has a broken-looking nose, a scar under his right cheekbone, and his hair is thinning on top.

winman-sketch — My sketch from memory, and from the photo.

In spectral appearance, he was about 5’5″ tall and stocky. He looked like a hastily-groomed, slightly British version of Buffalo Bill… sort of.

Among people I know in modern times, our ghost reminded me of folk singer Jaime Brockett.

When our ghost wasn’t wearing sunglasses, he had average no-particular-color eyes, somewhat tanned skin, and slightly sun-bleached brown hair. He favored brown clothing, usually wore a suit, rarely buttoned his jacket, and he always seemed in a hurry to go nowhere. When I took this photo, I had the sense that someone was at the window, but I didn’t notice the man’s face.

It seemed reasonable that the current residents of the house might have been peering out at the strange woman taking photos of their house. I don’t put any significance on my discomfort at the time.

Read about our experiences in Portsmouth – real ghosts, private home

Camera: Olympus AF-1, point-and-shoot
Film type: Kodak ASA 400 b&w film, 35mm
Negative shows: Same image. Nothing unusual.
Developed and printed by: Shaw’s Supermarket overnight photo service