Rosa looked down the hall in the direction of the library. “All I know is that she went into that room and never came out of it. Mmm. If I saw that sort of thing often, my nerves wouldn’t take it!”
Rosa still wonders: Will she ever again see the apparition of the woman who lived here more than two centuries ago?
The Mordecai House and the Andrew Johnson Home are at 1 Mimosa Street, in the heart of downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Tours are held on the hour from 10 am to 3 pm. Visit www.raleighnc.gov/parks/content/ParksRec/Articles/Parks/Mordecai.html or call (919) 996-4364 for details.
BEWARE THE LIGHTS OF LOUDOUN
LOUDOUN HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Loudoun House, built on a hill over the bodies of Revolutionary War soldiers, has its own strange story.
It was in the early 1940s, just after Miss Maria Dickinson Logan died, and yet I remember it as clearly as though it was only a few months ago. My wife, Elizabeth, and I occupied a room in the house while I was looking after the place. I don’t think either of us will ever forget the nights we spent there, when I was a temporary caretaker.
If you are familiar with Loudoun, you know that it is the house with four white columns across the front and that it stands at the top of Neglee’s Hill, where Germantown Avenue passes Apsley Street. Miss Logan willed the house to the City of Philadelphia to be maintained as a museum.
One night, about the middle of December, my wife was awakened by a feeling of intense cold and the sense of a strong breeze blowing full on her face. She sat up in bed and saw to her great amazement a tall column of cloudy white light extending from the foot of the bed straight up to the ceiling. Staring at it, spellbound, she noticed that the light fell across the bed so that she could see the pattern of the spread; it also illuminated the dressing table and mirror. She was extremely frightened, pulled the covers up over her head, and lay there petrified. Eventually, she gathered enough courage to look out; when she did the room was completely dark.
When I woke up, Elizabeth described the column of light to me. I could hardly believe this, and she was worried that I might think it was either a dream or something that had occurred in a half-wakeful state. But she seemed so certain that I told her to awaken me immediately if she saw the luminous column again.
A few weeks later I woke up early in the morning to find her calling to me.
“Hurry! I want you to see it.”
“See what?” I was still half asleep.
“That thing is here again.”
I rose up in bed and looked in every direction, but the room was extremely dark, and I saw no sign of light. We then turned on the lamp, and my wife said that while I was asleep, just before she woke me up, there had been a bright, globular light at the foot of the bed. At first it was the size of a child’s rubber ball, and then it began to increase in size until it must have been three feet in diameter and was taller than the bed. Again, there was a filmy appearance, and the inside glowed as if there were a light in it.
She had tried to awaken me but could only elicit a groan, as I seemed to be in a deep slumber. All the while the light was directly at my feet and partly over the edge of the bed. Afraid that it might grow into something dangerous, Elizabeth shook me vigorously. The light kept on shining and growing larger, but when I finally did wake up and answer her, she said that it collapsed at once and sank down into strange-looking folds, similar to those of an accordion. This time I took her story much more seriously, and, after I turned out the lamp, we watched together until daybreak. The light did not reappear.
I was walking back to Loudoun one day when a neighborhood boy stopped me for a few minutes to talk. It seems he delivered newspapers early in the morning, and on several occasions in the winter, while it was still dark, he had seen lights flashing on the darkened front windows of the house. I think he really wanted to know whether I had seen anything. I didn’t let on that my wife had.
Elizabeth and I both came to share the feeling that there was a presence in the house. Whether it was that of Miss Maria Logan or her brother, who lived here with her for many years, or even some earlier owner, we had no way of knowing. My wife thought it was Miss Logan, and sometimes, when she would find a book or magazine out of place, she would say, “I wonder if this is something Miss Logan was reading.” When she would say that, it always gave me an eerie feeling.
A month or so must have passed, and we had begun to think that whatever had happened was an isolated event and would occur no more. Then, late in the summer, I woke up to my Elizabeth’s hand gently pressing my shoulder and her whisper, “It’s here.”
“What is it?” I asked. I rose to a sitting position, and there, at the end of the bed before me, was an awesome cloud of glowing light about four feet in diameter, suspended in the air. It was only a few feet away. As I watched it began to float upward like a gas-filled balloon, and I thought that it would hit the ceiling. It seemed to go straight up, but when it reached the ceiling, rather than stopping, it went right through it. I know I cried out, but it was an exclamation of wonder rather than of fear.
I checked the room to see
