Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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“But,” I said, “you fooled my mother and my Aunt Nancy when they were down here not so long ago.” He said “Yes—I did. But you know they grew up here in the South where most everybody believes in ghosts.

“My mother used to tell us kids that there was no such thing as a ghost—but she said it in such a dispirited way as to cause me, as young as I was, to doubt if she fully believed her own words.

I grew up in a generation which talked freely, pro and con, about ghosts. And, believe it or not, I have actually seen Erickson’s ghost—that is, until the apparition faded away into something tangible, as “ghosts” always do if given time. There was a time here when I — and other youngsters of like caliber—looked for Erickson’s ghost in every dark corner. And I think that if I should even now go through the woods on the old Hazeltine farm adjoining town, at night, as I often did in the early days, I would involuntarily keep an eye peeled for the ghost of Jim Erickson, a murderer and suicide, of May 10, 1873—buried, without benefit of clergy, mourners, or even regulation coffin — on top a high hill just south of town. To mention only one of the several proclaimed haunted houses—which always go hand in hand with ghosts—Jim Erickson’s ghost cut up a good many capers here in the early days, particularly where “it” was often “seen” on the margin of the big swamp lying between town and the high hill. Let there come a foggy night someone was sure to say: “Erickson’s ghost will stalk tonight.” A party of three young couples—boys and girls — set out one night to trap old Jim, or whatever it was that haunted a vacant house of many rooms, which sat on a high hill near the swamp—but, would you believe it, they were disturbed by another couple who had preceded them—and all fled the scene in a rout. Actually, some brave people — grown-up’s—positively refused to venture south of the creek on foggy nights. It’s not a promise—but I may, at some future date, write the Erickson story for the Spectator readers.