Halloween a good time to tell ghost stories

During my recent travels, I picked up a book titled, “Ghosthunting Illinois” by John B. Kachuba. The stories were short and there were lots of pictures, so I figured it would be good reading material as we wended our way back home again. After reading some of the ghost stories in Kachuba’s book, I remembered some of the stories that I had heard down through the years. It is Halloween, after all, and this is as good a time as any to retell them. A Vandalia woman told me there was a presence in her home in the northwestern part of town. It didn’t bother either her husband or her, it was just something that came with the house. The couple asked in a psychic to see who it was, and what he or she wanted. They learned that a little old lady wasn’t quite ready to leave her home in old Vandalia. The little lady said she had saved the house from burning when a pot was left on the fire, and the homeowner said that could well be true, because they had an incident where a burner could have been left on. On the upper floor of a downtown business used only for storage, several employees heard or felt something. Boxes are found moved, and one girl told me that she had to be especially vigilant near the top of the stairs because she, along with another employee, each got a little bump or push there from an unseen hand. In a Ramsey home, a chair that is placed at the bottom of the stairs in the evening will be moved by morning. Northeast of Bingham, the murder of an elderly couple, John and Hannah Sears, by soldiers of the 41st Illinois Infantry on Aug. 11, 1864, was also re-enacted for a frightened teenage visitor we’ll call Jean. Visiting with her aunt and uncle’s family, the family had settled down for the night when Jean heard something downstairs. Her aunt called out, ‘Betty is that you?’ to which Jean said, ‘No, aunt, she is asleep.’ The noise started up again and Jean got up to investigate. She first checked on her young boy cousins, who could be pulling a trick on her, but they were fast asleep. Approaching the stairs, Jean heard the front door open and men enter the house. The rocking chair was rocking to and fro, but there was no one downstairs at the time. As she stood frozen, the sounds advanced to the kitchen, where she heard chairs scraping and the sound of people eating. This abruptly ended and the chairs scraped again, the footsteps became faint and then she heard the horses as they rode away into the night. Jean looked out the window but saw no horses. All was quiet again and she returned to her bed, scared, puzzled and full of questions. The next morning, she breathlessly told her aunt of her nighttime experience, to which her aunt replied, ‘We hear that all the time.’ Only later did she learn the story of John and Hannah Sears. They were about ready to sit down to their supper when the soldiers came. The soldiers demanded a saddle, but were really looking for the Sears’ son, Tom, who rode with the Clingman Gang. Sears opened the door of his house a little and a soldier fired, striking both John and his wife, Hannah, who was huddled behind him. They both fell as one to the floor. The Poor Farm, later FAYCO, was another place that had eerie things going on. One day, a secretary was working in her office, one of the converted bedrooms. She saw the painter come into the room and enter the closet/store room. When her supervisor stopped in a short time later asking where the painter was, she directed him to the closet. There was no one there, and no other way out. From time to time, college interns would work at the center. Because she was a temporary employee, and they didn’t want to scare her, the other FAYCO employees did not tell a newly hired intern of their experiences in the century-old building. One night, she was working overtime on a project. She thought she was alone in the building when she heard footsteps of someone approaching down the hall. She waited, but no one ever came into her room. After this experience, she no longer worked extra hours. The back staircase from the outside to the dining hall had more than its share of ‘sightings,’ but we hadn’t told our teenage son that when we visited one day. I walked off to take pictures of the tombstones in the Poor Farm Cemetery behind the main building, leaving him to explore with his dad. The brick, single-story building was slated for demolition at that time, and work had begun on the removal of the roof. As they walked around the back of the building, Dale got the feeling that something or someone was watching him. They walked up the concrete back stairs and the hair rose on the backs of both of their necks. Dale, who’s not afraid of much, decided that the sooner they left, the better. Near Farina, a knock at the door startled a farm wife working in the kitchen. She left her work and opened the door to find no one there. She returned to her work, and again the knocking began. She again walked to the door, opened it, but, you guessed it, no one was there. This story has a little twist, because one day that farm wife actually caught a glimpse of her visitor. Looking up from her work, she saw an older woman, dressed in clothing of the mid-19th Century, standing on the front porch. Before her eyes, the woman disappeared. Describing her visitor to the people they had bought the house from helped her to identify her visitor as the former lady of the house. She stayed with them for a number of years.