Letter to Libby (a response to "Do you believe in ghosts?")

(I'm sitting in the old Edwardian parlour of my dead grandmother, writing a letter to my niece, with whom I share a pleasant correspondence, old-fashioned, by letter)1

Yes, child, I do.2

Since I first pondered your question yesterday evening, after I started to read your letter, dated 14 March 2007, I had got some sleep, &though I feel still sick, I can try to answer you better. I was dizzy, not ... well. 3

I have actually heard ghosts, and felt and seen spirits. Probably many would scoff at this, but since I was a little baby I been able to listen and talk to animals, trees, and I've been able to see spirits, angels, ghosts.4

Night mares used to terrify me when I was a small boy. Seems like there would be all these voices, sad, lonely, despairing, all around; but I did not know who made these, why were they there around us at night? 5

Years later, when I had almost forgotten this, & it seemed only a bad dream recurred in childhood, as an adult I learned that on the ground floor of the house I grew up in, there was a family owned funeral parlour, that bodies were laid out for wake, until the service. 6

I don't know if corpses were prepared for the service or embalmed, whatever. But the house I was in, designed in a Victorian or Edwardian style, had a spiral staircase with stained glass windows that always seemed so pretty but kind of out of place.7

Another thing that would happen is the varnished wooden post at the top of the stairs looked to me as if it were an alien head with one eye. From time to time it would freak me out, and I would run back to the kitchen to stay in the comfort and safety of Mother and Father.8

When I was six going on seven, we moved to the closest larger town, so I could attend parochial (Catholic) school. Never was I told this, but the three story old house, painted a dark blue grey, held a dark secret. When I was twelve, a friend told me that he had heard that a lady hung herself in the cellar. I did not believe him; thinking it was just a figment of some imaginations, and forgot about it.9

Years later, a veteran of WWII and his wife gave me a ride back to see my old pa. When we got to the house, he recognised and aske me, "Say, what do you know about this house of your father's?"10

Indeed, she had hung herself under the stairs. It was these same stairs that had always gave me creeps when I was sent down to the cellar to fetch some food or drink for mother or father. I imagined two great mad dogs of hell would scuffle from under the stairs to chase me. So real would it seem, fear would flow through me like icy fire, my scalp would tingle, and one of my parents would ask "what's bugging you?"11

I will not bore you with more. Anyway, it's almost time to feed the cats, and your Uncle Vanya is coming for lunch. However, I wanted to tell you, truly, and with no exaggeration, how I began to be able to know of ghosts and spirits, angels and other...