I spent Thursday evening at Ferry Plantation House in Virginia Beach. The tour focused on the property’s history of reported paranormal activity: a long list of ghost sightings (including numerous accounts of a ghostly cat), eerie sensations, and unexplained noises.
I didn’t see, sense, or hear anything that I would describe as paranormal, but I confess a measure of skepticism. So would I recognize a ghost or spirit? Would I explain away the inexplicable, reaching for words like draft and reflection, echo and entropy? I admit a tendency to skepticism, but I can’t solidify my position into one of denial. As with many of life’s mysteries, I am conflicted.
What I can say with certainty is that I enjoyed prowling through the house, which is filled with interesting artifacts. My fascination with history borders on obsession, and the house contained more history than I could absorb in the course of one evening.
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I would love to hear from readers on the subject of paranormal experiences. Do you believe, or are you a skeptic?
“Silver had two guns slung about him–one before and one behind–besides the great cutlass at his waist, and a pistol in each pocket of his square-tailed coat. To complete his strange appearance, Captain Flint sat perched upon his shoulder and gabbling odds and ends of purposeless seatalk.” from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
In 2005, Mother signed up for a class about pirate literature. The course focused on Peter Pan and Treasure Island, as did most of our telephone conversations at the time. She shared bits of trivia regarding the authors and texts. She followed tangents of memory sparked by Peter’s exploits and Jim’s adventures. And she read from her notes, teaching me how the books fit into the history of literature.
A few years later, when she met a pair of orphan kittens named Captain Flint and Long John Silver, I was tempted to call it fate.
Captain Flint, 2007Long John Silver, 2007 (photos provided by my brother and sister-in-law)
These two kittens arrived at Challenger’s House in the summer of 2007. Captain Flint was found, malnourished and abandoned, in front of a local business. Long John Silver was thrown from a car and rescued by the driver who witnessed it. As they were about the same age, and both too weak to keep up with healthy kittens, they were placed in a foster home together. To be exact, they were placed in my brother and sister-in-law’s home.
Flint had trouble gaining weight. Long John needed surgery to repair his broken leg. And Mother talked about them for months, calling with detailed updates after every visit. It seemed to me as if she visited my brother and sister-in-law more often, while the kittens were there, and her attachment to the little pirates grew with each week. All the while, she denied any desire to adopt them.
Then she called one day and said, “Guess what I just did…” She claimed that her decision came from an urge to keep the boys from being separated. They had finally been declared healthy enough to go to the adoption center, and she feared they would not find a home together. So they went to live with her, and our telephone conversations were soon filled with the antics of Long John Silver and Captain Flint.
Long John Silver is a charismatic troublemaker, a bit like his namesake. (Right down to the bad leg, which healed stiff because the joint was too damaged to repair.)
Captain Flint is both buccaneer and parrot, sometimes starting the trouble, and sometimes following Long John’s lead.
Last year, when Mother died, the pirate cats returned to my brother and sister-in-law’s home, which means I get to continue following their adventures. And their misadventures, because they are often very bad boys. A pair of mischievous rogues, well named and well loved.
Yesterday’s sky made me dizzy. High cirrus clouds drifted eastward while fair-weather cumulus clouds surfed brisk lower currents. Vultures and seagulls spiraled on afternoon thermals, swooping low over the house before soaring out of sight too rapidly for my lens to focus.
Underfoot, chickweed and henbit sprouted through mulch and rotting leaves, spreading beneath the pear tree and creeping into the iris beds.
The sky made me dizzy, but every time I knelt to photograph a weed, quarreling gulls called me back to my feet. Then weeds lured me back to my knees. I spent a distracted hour switching the camera in and out of macro mode, kneeling and standing and kneeling again. It was almost a relief when the batteries died…
The last few days have been warm enough for open windows and bare feet. The yard looks like winter, but the sky looks like summer.
Warm wind rattles through bare branches and ripples over a raveled carpet of leaves. Migrating birds gather in restless flocks, and I wonder if they regret flying south too soon.
Or maybe the birds know best. After all, the calendar insists that December is here, even if the sky doesn’t agree.
I grew up in a house with a wood burning stove, so all of my winter memories are tinged with the scent of smoke.
Mother ordered the first load of wood mid-summer, which gave it time to cure. She ordered a cord at a time, requesting a mixture of kindling and longer burning logs. It arrived as a tumbled pile at the end of the driveway, and we hauled it off by armfuls and wheelbarrow loads, stacking neat rows under the tin roof of our open-sided pole shed.
Starting in my teens, I claimed the wood as my own domain because I enjoyed the physical activity of hauling and stacking. Plus, it gave me an excuse to be outside with the animals, who followed me back and forth as I worked.
Mother disliked storing firewood on the porch, so she rarely wanted more than one day’s supply brought down each afternoon. However, she relented when we had snow or ice storms. Then I would carry wood until my shoulders and back ached.
Or until I got bored and wandered off to explore the pasture and woods.
The stove was undeniably harder to maintain than central heat, but it was also undeniably warmer.
Except it didn’t heat the entire house. Our den was a smoky, sleepy haven, but my bedroom, in the opposite end of the house, stayed so chilly that blankets were not sufficient for a comfortable night’s sleep. Even so, I didn’t suffer. I had plenty of furry companions to keep me warm.
Rae Spencer 