I suppose we all react to a surge of terror in different ways. For me, I just can’t move. I’m paralyzed. I find myself holding my breath as if to be so quiet and motionless that I might become invisible myself. I don’t scream. I don’t run.

As a child, I wondered if I dared to look at what was causing my terror. I was afraid on so many levels as I unwittingly began this journey of discovery. I remember lying in bed, quivering under the covers—barely able to breathe and praying for protection from this evil.

Ghost in the Farmhouse

SpiritWatching - Catherine Espara

In 1961, my family moved to an old farmhouse in Kansas. The land around our property was mostly flat, with creeks running through shallow gorges etched into the sloping banks on an otherwise featureless landscape. Rows of corn, milo and alfalfa grew along both sides of the straight road extended for a mile in all four directions. Osage hedgerows sketched fields and farms with dark green borders.

The weathered two-story farmhouse fronted sagging outbuildings and a large barn making up the main homesite. Near the driveway, a shrub-lined walkway led to an iron hand pump centered on a concrete slab. Just beyond was a house built sometime in the 19th century by men who also built a barn with beams fitted with wooden pegs and angled inserts. They forged and hammered square nails to use in the horse stalls and sliding doors.

My awakening to the phenomena of the ghost haunting the farmhouse was progressive over the years we lived there. It’s hard to remember the first experience exactly. I do remember my uncontrollable quivering as I lay awake, cowering in a tight fetal position under the covers in my bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway. It was always very late at night while everyone in the family was asleep...