A ghost story

Three years ago today, I wrote a fun front-page story about ghost hunting in the middle of the night in one of Charlotte's oldest houses. But I did not tell the entire truth, and never have. Until now.

The entire published story appears below. At the time, the most unusual thing about the story was that I filmed a video of objects moving inside the historic Rosedale Plantation home. That was an amazing thing to witness, and I remain convinced it was in no way a trick. But in the time since that latenight phenomenon, other things have transpired, things that have made a much more startling impression upon me. For reasons you are about to discover, I have never spoken about this.

It all began happily on a crisp fall day that seemed impossibly innocent and light. I was sitting at my desk that October afternoon in 2006, when I received a phone call from someone telling me something fun: Things were moving inside the Rosedale house near NoDa, which was built in 1815. I'm a newspaper columnist, and, sensing a Darren McGavin "Nightstalker" story, I jumped at the chance to investigate.

A crew of us assembled to investigate: A docent of the plantation, a writer about ghosts, a psychic, a couple who like to chronicle such things, and myself. We met at a nearby pizza place late that night. The docent told us there was rumored to be a ghost named Cherry in the home, a woman who had run the kitchen, and that she was beckoning someone for help. Something horrible had happened to innocent children on the top floor of the house, it was said. Cherry wanted help to set those children's souls free.

We grabbed our flashlights, and headed into the darkness.

We walked past the outline of a faded corral, up the cold steps, and into the darkest place I have ever been.

The small door of the large, empty home swallowed us in.

There was, of course, no electricity in the house, and we huddled together so that we comically bumped along like the cartoon cast of "Scooby-Doo." The old wooden floors creaked beneath us, and our shoes scratched along in the dust until I began to believe that the familiar tingling along my spine had always been there, and always would follow right behind me, from now on, a chill that had attached itself permanently to me.

Up the steps, to the top floor we climbed, closer to a low ceiling that pressed down upon us, pushing us into a presence that contracted my chest and widened my eyes. In the top room, where the children were, where the horrible crime took place, we felt a numbing headache, all of us, as though a great bell were ringing. In the corner: A dense black hole splashed into the room, a crawlspace that emitted such pain, I could not look into it. My throat seemed to echo a moan in the air. I was so oppressed by this that I gasped that I needed to leave. It was not so much fear that caused me to flee as a kind of pressure, the sheer force of 200-year-old crime never reckoned, of innocence tormented and brutalized, and a sustained despair with nowhere to turn.

I stumbled down the stairs, dizzy and fraught with the stunning torment above me, and my cohorts followed me down into the kitchen -- where we found ... comfort.

Kindness, even. A feeling of love. Cherry was here, the psychic told us. She was glad to see us. She had called us here, to help the children.

Then the psychic absolutely stunned me by asking something: Would I like some proof of Cherry's presence? If so, Cherry was happy to provide it. Yes, I said. I want her to move something, as has been rumored. Very well, the psychic responded. What?

Herbs hung from the ceiling in large bunches. Move those, I said. And I watched as the herbs, which had been still, twisted in the air. Now this one, I said. But turn them this way. Now this one, but not that one. Every request I made was met. And I caught it on video.

The psychic climbed the stairs again into the top room, to relieve that centuries-old burden, and free souls both tragically young and terrifyingly old. She performed a rite, burning herbs and throwing open the windows, and I can sincerely report that the pain in the top room seemed pacified. There was relief.

We said goodbye to Cherry's presence, who seemed grateful and even more kind. And we left.

I went into work the next day and told my editor I did not want to write the story. Why, she asked. Because I believe I saw ghosts. And I have a video. That's not the kind of thing a newspaper reports.

The features editor disagreed: That's exactly what a newspaper reports, in a tongue-in-cheek way, on Halloween. On Halloween, everyone knows, or should know, not to take a scary story too seriously. The story ran on the front page. The video of the herbs twisting in the air received hundreds of hits.

All of this you can read below, from The Observer archives. The video, sadly, has been lost.

But there is something you can't read there. There is something from that house that I have not revealed, and that has traveled from that blackest crawlspace into me and as a part of me since that time. That tingling energy unexplained, and uncontrolled, marshaled not by laws or men, which climbs my spine and will not release me.

I know what that is. I have known since that night.

The story was published. Readers joked with me about it. Thanksgiving came and went.

Six weeks after that night I received a phone call from an unfamiliar number. On the other end of the line was Catherine C., the psychic who led us that night. I do not know how she got my number, yet I was not surprised to hear from her. C. was no kook; she was calling from Detroit, where she'd flown to help a Fortune 500 auto company (they had those in 2006). A top executive needed to make a decision, and was struggling to get in touch with his intuition after all the reports and analysis.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," she said. "With your experience." Her voice in my ear stopped me from what I was doing, and I struggled to swallow. "You don't have to be alone with it. You should be flattered that they came to you."

"I know they won't hurt me," I said.

"They won't," she agreed. "I knew that you saw them. Why didn't you talk to me about them?"

I did not know what to say. "I can always feel them," I told her. "They come to me anytime." A tingling chill at my side. An unstoppable energy that flutters through me and won't let me be.

"They like you," she said. "They do."

"I know," I said. "I know."

C. has checked in on me again, several times, and I appreciate that. I have grown accustomed to the added buzz of the companions at my side.

But on murky autumn nights, when we play at ghosts, when shrieking and laughter dispel any respect for the unearthly, when all is a joke, and you cannot see what is more than real, I do feel fear. Not of the friends I made that night. They will never hurt me. When I watch you pretend, I see my friends again, and I fear what they could do. They do like me.

But I am afraid you will soon discover that they do not like you.

A HALLOWEEN GHOST STORY
SADNESS PERVADES THE DARK QUIET, THEN LIFTS WITH THE SCENT OF AN ABSENT FLOWER. SILLY, SPOOKY IMAGININGS - OR SIGNS OF AN UNSEEN POWER?

Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Section: MAIN
Edition: THREE
Page: 1A
JEFF ELDER, JELDER@CHARLOTTEOBSERVER.COM

On these autumn nights, as branches claw the moonlit sky

and leaves scrape the cold sidewalk,

do you ever feel the looming of a quiet presence?
Even the most reasonable among us can shiver

when a steely chill scurries up the spine.

You must come to where the spirits linger to feel them

tingle in your bones. Into a Charlotte house built in 1815, where

sadness dwelled, and slaves were kept. Into the dark. Into your fear.

I got a call last week from my friend Debby, who mentioned there'd been ghost sightings at Historic Rosedale in NoDa. I called Andrew King, a member of the board of the old plantation, and asked if I could visit the house. He arranged for a Charlotte intuitive (many dislike the term psychic), Catherine Crabtree, to come along. Stephanie Burt Williams, the author of "Ghost Stories Of Charlotte And Mecklenburg County" and "Wicked Charlotte," happened to be available. Radio personality Anthony Michaels from 107.9 the Link, and his wife, Melissa, also came along.

At 11:30 p.m., we drove through the gates and up to the old white house on North Tryon Street, where three stories of dark windows peer over the deserted grounds.

We huddled on the porch as King unlocked the door. "Are you ready?" he asked. "Let's just all stay together."

Inside it was dark and cold. Most of the house doesn't have electricity. We all followed the path of King's small flashlight.

There was a hollow darkness at the top of the stairs. A void into which we climbed. On the top floor was a schoolroom with slates set out on benches.

Slave children had sometimes been taught here - which was against the law. But children also had been treated badly, Crabtree said. "You can feel the heavy sadness."

"I have a headache," said Williams, the author. We all did. It was stuffy, confining.

In the corner was a crawlspace. A small double door opened out. Inside was a despairing depth of black.

"There is such sadness in there," whispered the intuitive.

"Yes, you can feel it," said King. "Like a moan."

"I want to go," said Williams.

"So do I," Anthony Michaels said.

Our heads throbbing, we descended the stairs. But we were met with the oddest thing:

The smell of jasmine. A light, floral fragrance that hadn't been there when we went upstairs, and there was no jasmine to be seen.

"That's not unusual," Crabtree said. "Someone may be trying to comfort us. Because of upstairs."

We had one more room to visit. In the white-walled basement is the old house's kitchen. It is a warm room, where generations of meals were cooked. Here slave women cared for children, black and white.

"Cherry's here," said the intuitive. Historical documents show that Cherry was a slave woman, a nursemaid who helped run the house for decades. As much as anyone, she cared for Rosedale.

"What would you like as documentation of her presence?" Crabtree stunned me by asking.

I didn't know what to ask for.

King was at the ghost sighting I'd been called about a few days earlier. He said, "The bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling turned last week. Ask her if she will do that again."

"Can we have the herbs move, please?" Crabtree asked. A large bunch of rosemary turned, slowly, but quite noticeably.

"What about this one?" I asked. The rosemary stopped moving, and a different bunch of herbs turned. The others bunches of herbs were still.

To see the herbs turn, go to charlotte.com, click on Charlotte.com/news

"Why is she here?" the author asked.

"Cherry wants the house to be well taken care of. She's cared for it for a long time. And she would like the children in the attic to be freed."

Crabtree climbed the dark stairs back up to the attic, and burned sage in a large clay saucer. She closed her eyes and told the children it was OK for them to leave. And, she said, they did.

"A huge whoosh of pain seemed to flow up and out of the house," she said.

The intuitive suggested that was it: The reason we'd been called.

"Will Cherry leave now?" Williams, the author, asked.

"Cherry would like to stay a little longer," the intuitive said. "She loves this house. She likes it when other people do, too."

That night I returned home with a tingle inside: A feeling that I was not alone.

I stretched out on my bed, and slept better than I had in months.