IMPRINT 3

To continue.  Here are some places in which I've experienced in an almost overwhelming way the imprint of something I can only describe as supernatural. 

Kitzbuhel Mountain in Austria, Mont St. Michel in France, Cologne Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, Stonehenge, Salem Mass. (though the modern day would be 'witches' have commercialized most of the magic away), Carnac, Montsegur, The Tor on the Hudson River, Sleepy Hollow, Sedona in Arizona. And more. 

There are places much closer to home that carry an imprint.  Our home to start with.  Old man Quackenbush died in the room we first used as the master bedroom.  A coffin small space then in this broken place we bought.  Crazy young we were.  The whole family gasped when they saw the place.  The old man hung around.  Attempting to resurrect the gardens my spade hit something which turned out to be an old peeling garden gnome.  It had that 'imprint' of something foreboding. I bid it good speed and threw it in the dumpster.  I got some words from a church building dedication rite and read them in the house.  Quackenbush left after that. 

A house up the street now renovated.  I never met the three former, who built on a hopeful dormer, but drowned the place with drink and dread. Some say the mother is now dead.  The addition was long undone. Some remember a pale, thin boy walking up the shady street to accept a shirt from neighbors- and something to eat. 

Across the street.  She pictured a mother's cozy cheer.  He built the fireplace, one night stands and his career. Her dreams were charred; she stifled her screams in mail order magazines. He faced his lies in his child's eyes; her legs a bend parenthetic to her hate, wild and pathetic. Kicks and bites and wails at slammed doors and parents planning a divorce.  The new people did the whole place over.  Past imprints have faded to insignificance.

Another house further down.  They hope for a happy address, but forgot to bring the happiness. Pain to their child survivor, worse than having been hit by the car: Dad's triple by-pass patch, the mismatch of guilty mom and brutal father. After the coma, the massacre.  The child's help was all professional- a safe, though pricey, confessional.  The new people expunged that imprint. 

Further down the house of Powell farm workers.  The new people, utterly reasonable German stock, began to hear footsteps on the ceiling above the den.  Going upstairs they find tiny dusty looking footprints all over the bedroom ceilings. They chastised the kids for getting out of bed past their bedtime.  Then, there were doors slamming on windless nights.  The Labrador Penny backed out of the dining room, growling fiercely, hackles up.  Bob picked up a poker to hit whatever thief  had broken in.  The dining room was empty but all eight chairs were turned outward from the table.  And this summer night it was so cold in there he could see his breath.  A picnic with neighbors one afternoon.  They left the windows open so they could hear if the baby cried.  In and out of the door with platters of food.  The baby woke from his nap and cried. They went  to get him up.  All the windows and doors were found to be locked.  Bob broke in the screen door.  They said they felt crazy to call the ghost hunter from NYC.  He said the entity, he called it, was Missy.  And that she used to laugh and play on the limb of a huge tree no longer on the property.  Bob went to the county seat to look up records.  Powell farm workers' family had long ago lived in the house.  They had a daughter, Missy.  A beloved and happy blond haired child. Her name was Melissa; her people called her Missy.  She died at 11 years old of consumption. 

Don and I stayed up one night to watch the fire in my parents' Federal home built in 1789 in Mt. Holly.  We spoke out loud almost in unison of the imagining of a Hessian soldier coming out of the bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs.  He was dressed in red and green, with high gloss patent leather dress riding boots.  With each step descending we heard the clink of metal.  We saw that his decorated sabre sword was clanging behind him on each step.  Flash of elegant gold braid on his uniform, flash of white powdered wig. He proceeded to the front door and was gone. This was not seen with the eyes, but the mind.  We've talked about it many times over the years.  My engineer husband is not given to fantasy ever by any means.  And this fact shook me.  That he has pictured the exact thing I had pictured, with the exact detail.  Hessian.  I had an idea, but later had to look it up.  The picture of the uniform was stunning in that it was identical to the one the man we pictured in the old house was wearing.  Turns out the Hessian mercenaries were housed in the house during the Revolutionary War.

Though the very walls may hoard dingy secrets, many do seem imprinted with great joy.  I have felt this and said a prayer.  In case you're wondering, I've taken all the psychiatric tests wondering myself if I were mad. There was no mental pathology found in me.  Almost more daunting, actually. What THEN?!  It is some comfort that women in my family have hinted at same. My Aunt Ollie, a dedicated Baptist believer, would say things like, "A lot of work needs to be done in there.  Time for house cleaning."  The way she said it you knew she didn't mean with mop and broom.

Time and care is the surest exorcist.  All souls clear out to a degree, given the right opportunity. God has them well in hand.  This, I believe. Make of this what you will.