George and I got so frustrated for a while, we really didn’t know how to handle it, for we thought the children were just hearing old-house noises. I made up all sorts of funny and comforting stories about the footsteps on the stairs to take their fear away. After a while, they said they weren’t afraid anymore.
One winter evening about a year later, my husband and I were sitting in front of the fire, working a jigsaw puzzle. We enjoy doing them and sometimes sit up quite late. I remember that I had just found a piece we had been looking for all evening and was putting it in the right place when—bam! The front door slammed so hard that we both nearly jumped out of our chairs. We sat looking at each other, frozen, waiting to see what would happen next.
Then came a series of thuds that sounded like heavy boots going up the stairs, step by step. We heard them reach the top of the first floor. They went on. When they got to the second floor, George was out of his chair.
“I’m going up there, Mary Alice,” he said. The steps seemed to pause at the third-floor landing. Then we heard them again. Now he—if it were a man—was on his way up to the fourth floor.
I was so relieved that he had passed the third floor, until we heard the attic door at the top of the stairs open and slam hard as it shut. George’s face was white as he ran out into the hall and up the stairs, with me close behind him. We were very much afraid, and we both wondered what we were going to find in the attic. At the third floor I stopped and switched on the light upstairs, but when we reached the fourth-floor landing, no light at all could be seen under the door.
“I’m not going into a completely dark room. Stay right here,” said George. “I’ll get the flashlight and be back in a second.” It seemed as if he were gone forever, but it probably wasn’t over a minute or two until he returned. “Get behind me,” he whispered, and I did. He threw open the door and swung the powerful flashlight from one end of the room to the other. The attic was empty! With relief, we both just collapsed into each other’s arms.
Nothing happened for about a month after that. Then one night, when George was working on the third floor on something he had brought home from the office and I was reading to Sabrina, he called downstairs.
“What are the girls doing playing in the attic this late?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I hear them walking all over the place up there.”
“You couldn’t,” I said. “Sabrina is down here with me, and Andrea is asleep in her bedroom up there with you.” I heard George go into Andrea’s room, and in few minutes he came downstairs, carrying the sleeping child in his arms.
“I want you all to get out of the house immediately. There is someone upstairs. Go across the street, and, if you hear a gunshot, call the police.”
He searched the attic, looked under beds, and opened closet doors on every floor of the house. But like the night that the two of us had gone up to the attic, there was nothing to be found, at least nothing that anyone could see.
My mother probably had one of the strangest experiences of all. We were going on a business trip, and she volunteered to spend the night with the girls. She slept in our room, which is right between the girls’ bedrooms. Just as it does at home, her little dog slept on a pillow beside the bed. In the middle of the night, my mother awoke to a thump, thump, thump. The first thing she thought about was the ghost. She determined that she wasn’t frightened and that she was going to see if anything was there.
Thinking it might be her dog, she said, “Susie, now you get right back on the pillow.” She reached over and found the dog was there. Then she exclaimed out loud to herself, “My Lord. It’s the ghost!”
Her finger flipped the light switch, and, when the light went on, she saw her bedroom slippers being tossed into the air. Up and down and up and down. To her, the bizarre and frightening spectacle seemed to last forever, but it was probably only a few seconds. She didn’t get to sleep again until after the sun came up.
Mary Alice Gaffos and her family have lived at 218 Glasgow now for a quarter of a century. “Sometimes months go by and nothing happens. Then we may see our dog looking as if he is ready to spring into space and barking his head off as he faces an empty corner in the front hall. When that happens, we know the captain is back!”
If the daughter of the sea captain really did die in this house during the yellow-fever epidemic, it surely broke the old man’s heart. Does his love for her still go on in some timeless dimension? Does it sometimes bring him back?
Located at 218 Glasgow Street, the Gaffos House is not open to the public. However, the town is popular, pleasant, and walkable, so a self-guided tour is a great way to become acquainted. A good place to start is the cemetery behind Trinity Episcopal Church, 500 Court Street, Portsmouth, Virginia. For more information on the area, visit the Portsmouth, Virginia official tourism website, https://portsvacation.com/.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
NANCY ROBERTS (1924–2008) was the author of more than twenty books, most pertaining to the supernatural. She was named “custodian of the twilight zone” by Southern Living magazine and was often described as the “First Lady of American
