It reminded me of the afternoon when Troy had been here during the storm, so I made up my mind to go to the basement. I had no sooner gotten down there than I was aware of smoke, but there was no fire to be seen, and the smoke didn’t smell like burning wood or oily rags.
For the first minute or so, I couldn’t see a thing, but when I did, there were the figures like Troy and I had seen before. Only this time, three were much clearer than the rest. They were a woman and two men. I saw one of the men lift up his hand and drop what seemed to be a large, fat coil of smoke down over the other’s head. When he did, there were the most terrible sounds I ever heard, for the man’s screams merged with eerie cries of glee from the crowd of figures. A loud, thunderous crash sounded again, and there were such strong vibrations, they went right through me. I don’t know what happened after that.
When I came to, I was lying on the floor in the upstairs hall, a few feet from the basement door. I got up and went into the big living room, and there was some light coming in the big windows and making a path across the floor. It was night by now, and there was a moon.
There was also something else—and it was in the house with me. I walked cautiously into the hall. It was coming up from the basement; there was a muffled, clanking sound on each step. I heard it stop in front of the door to the stairs, but the door never opened. Instead, I saw a dark shadow on the door, and the outline of a man’s figure began to emerge. Gradually, it came right through that door, and there, a few feet from me, stood the apparition.
I gasped and stepped back, but he never once looked my way. He was not so distinct that I could tell anything about the color of his clothes, but he was clear enough for me to know him for a man.
I thought of the stories about Woodburn, stories of a secret tunnel that connects this house with the St. Jones River behind it, stories of when Woodburn belonged to a Quaker named Daniel Cowgill and was a busy stop on the Underground Railway. In the years before the Civil War, runaway slaves from Maryland and all over the South were sheltered here until Cowgill could help them on their way to Canada or a free state. Sometimes the slave-catchers would raid the house and take runaways back by force.
I’m ashamed now that I didn’t take off after that strange figure as I watched him head toward the front door, but I didn’t. I sat down on the floor with my back to the wall, and my hand shook so, it took me three tries to light up a cigarette and calm down some.
I didn’t want to follow any ghost or even get out to my van, for, if I did, I would have to walk right past its destination. If the specter was the slave-catcher who had met his end here, I was sure he was headed straight for the hanging tree. There was no way I wanted to see a body hanging from that gnarled, old tulip poplar out there in the yard, the tree with the hook embedded in its hollow.
Either I passed out again or I went to sleep briefly, but when I next looked out the window, the moon was high in the sky. I had to get out of there. As I hurried out toward my van, gusts of wind like strong fingers flung wet leaves through the air and sometimes in my face. I didn’t turn my head. Then I recalled my tools. Should I leave them until the next morning or go back to the house and get them? I turned around, and, when I did, my eyes were inevitably drawn toward the big poplar and to the hollow in its trunk.
There it was! The sight I had dreaded to see: In the moonlight hung the struggling body of a man, twisting and turning, this way and that, suspended by a rope from the hook in the old hanging tree. I turned and ran. On the way home in the van it was hard for me to think, I was so frightened.
Why should I hear and see all that? My great-grandfather Pennington was a slave in Maryland who ran away from his master. He went through Delaware on his way north—maybe even through Dover.
But what did that have to do with me? Had I seen my own great-grandfather here in the basement and not known it? Was he one of those ghost figures who had hanged the slave-catcher?
This is one of several ghost stories in connection with Woodburn, located at 151 King’s Highway SW, Dover, Delaware. In the house also reside a colonial gentleman, a ghost who is a wine bibber, and a little girl in a red-and-white-checked gingham dress. Tours are offered Monday through Friday, from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm, by appointment only. Visit woodburn.delaware.gov/ or call (302) 739-5656.
THE ROMANTIC INN BY THE SEA
INN BY THE SEA, CAPE ELIZABETH, MAINE
A nineteenth-century shipwreck occurred offshore from where the Inn by the Sea now stands.
He needed to get away from the pace of speaking engagements, even from his much-loved research. Four days at the luxurious Inn by the Sea in Maine was to
