Happy Birthday Dad

[Anonymous Poster]

I missed that completely, I guess my subconscious put the 'n' in there, as I have heard that expression before. But, truthfully either way would work. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[RichZ]

Thanks, Cindi! Eventually, we'll be full time farmers, right now, we're happy to even be part time farmers.

I will post pictures of our house when it's done. It was built sometime between 1770 - 1780, but the 1930's - 1960's weren't kind to it, and the owners did a lot of modernizing, which we're trying to undo. We want the house to be as original as possible, and we don't want much modernizing to go much beyond about the way it would have been by 1900 (except for electricity! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif). For example, we found a circa 1900 farm sink that we're going to use to replace our modern stainless steel sink in the kitchen. We used to own an antique shop, so all of our furniture is from between 1800 and 1900. Now we just have to re-renovate to get the house back to the way it's supposed to be. Luckily we have a friend who is a carpenter, who understands what we want to do, and he is running the project with my wife and me as his crew. Hopefully we'll be done before the summer is over!! I wanted to take pictures of the construction, but we get so involved, I never get the chance.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

This is really exciting!! I have always wanted to do something like that. I wanted to buy my grandmother's old house which was not as old as yours, built in the late eighteen hundreds, but it was in such a depressd area of the country that working for a living would have been a bear. Two questions.....

What state....you may have said but I'm too lazy to go back and look.

Any weird stuff.....have you found any historic objects or heard an odd bumps in the night? Hee hee....shiver shiver. /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

 

[RichZ]

We live in Cambridge, New York, which is upstate New York, north of Albany, and just barely over the border from Vermont (about 5 miles from Vermont).

Being into antiques, we were excited when we started excavations. I was sure we'd find some artifacts....but so far...we've found almost nothing. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif We've found a few horse shoes, an old horse bit, a rail road spike (our road was a rail road until the 1930's, and most people still call it the railroad bed). My wife found a milk glass cosmetic bottle, probably from the 1930's.

When we were doing some interior work, we found some crumbled up bits of newspaper that had once been used as insulation behind the plaster walls. We figure the house had been renovated about 1860, because we found an article in a bit of newspaper about the Lincoln/Douglas debate, before Abraham Lincoln was elected president. That was the most exciting find. But I'm still hopeful we find some good stuff before the renovations are over.

If we can figure out where the outhouse used to be, we'd stand the best chance of finding good stuff. You see, once the outhouse hole would become too smelly, they'd move the outhouse, and fill up the hole. Well, they'd toss in all sorts of stuff, and since the hole was full of liquid and, er, ah, soft poop, the things they threw in often weren't broken. Now 100 years or more later, all the bad stuff is now just dirt, but there can be treasures in them there outhouse holes.

Bottle diggers often try to find where outhouse holes were, and get permission from homeownwers to dig there. I know a bottle digger who dug up an almost perfect, nearly complete set of flow blue china from the 1880's, from an old outhouse hole. The set was worth a few thousand dollars. The family had probably gotten a new set of china, and tossed the old set in the outhouse hole before filling it up!

Happily, we have had nothing go bump in the night!! I'm not sure how I'd react to that, but I'm glad I don't have to find out! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif We have friends how live nearby, and their house is haunted, although we've only heard stories, we've never met the poltergiests, though we know lots of people who have! They even have a ghost of a cat who appears often to children!

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Ohhh! Cool! Well, I reccomend a seance right away! Lol! Maybe you could wake up a few old spirirts. Or maybe you shouldn't go there, but I would. Or maybe I wouldn't, I don't know. I never used to beleive in spooks until I had an experience with one, now I watch and read everything about them. Haunted History and all that. I haven't quite made up my mind if ghosts are really ghosts, or if somehow some of us are just atuned to memories of things gone by. But it's fun to speculate just the same.

 

[RichZ]

OK, that demands stories. Mine are all second hand. Here's one:

My two buddies went to a neighboring farm to pick wild grapes that they use to make wine. The owner of the farm is a mutual friend of ours. It was a nice, but hot day, so my buddies waited outide for the owner to get ready. As they did, an old man came around from the back of the house. Nothing was unusual about him except that he was wearing a heavy looking red plaid shirt on a very warm day, and he didn't appear to be sweating.

The old man said that he was glad that they were there, and they had his permission to go anyplace they wanted. He told them that he didn't like most people who showed up at the farm, but he knew that they were good guys, so they could feel free to go anywhere they want. Then he suddenly started jabbering incoherently. My buddies tried to understand him, but nothing he said made any sense, but he was so friendly, they didn't want to hurt his feelings, so they just smiled and nodded, and said "Thanks" every once in a while. Then the old man said "Well it's been nice meeting you boys, but I have to be getting back, now." Then he turned around and walked behind the house, where they couldn't see him anymore.

When the owner of the farm came out, my buddies did "We didn't know your father was staying with you." She said "He's not why?" One of the guys said, "well then it must be a neighbor." The owner said, "were you just talking to an old man in a heavy red flannel shirt?"
The guys said, "Yeah, who was he, he was real nice, and he welcomed us here, then he sort of started muttering jiberish.
She said, "Well, you've just been greeted by my spirit. That's what I call him. He comes out from behind the house, and he either tells people to get out or occaisionally welcomes them, and tells them they can go wherever they want." She said sometimes he comes out and tells her that her flowers look good, or the lawn needs raking, and then he disappears back behind the house.

These guys are two of my wife's and my best friends. They swear it's true, and so does our other friend who owns the farm. She never tells anyone about her spirit, because she figures they'd think she was a nut. She said, at first, he scared her, but not anymore. She says he seems to think he's protecting the farm, keeping people he doesn't like away, and making sure it's well cared for.

OK, Cindi. It's your turn! I can't wait to hear your story!!! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

..."Then he suddenly started jabbering incoherently...."

Oh MY LORD!

Every single hair on my body went ....attenTION! Ahhh!

Okay, my daughter Jillian was about three when we moved into a little house in Sarasota, I didn't like the place when I first saw it, but we could afford it, so we took it. We'd been there about three weeks when Jillian started coming into our room every night wanting to sleep with us. I thought it was just the new house, or the fact that my son Jake was a newborn and slept in our room and she was a little jealous.

One morning I finally asked her why she was doing this. She said...

"Because of the monster lady."

Bear in mind that she was not allowed to watch anything even remotely scary, not even scooby doo.

I picked her little brain some more and she finally told me that the 'monster lady' came in her room at night, closed her door and leaned against it, so that she couldn't get out. There were two doors to her room, so she would get out of bed go to the other door and come down the hall to our room. She described the monster lady as having no face, having blood all over her, and having long white hair.

I didn't know what to think, but I promised to sleep in her room that night with her, to put the matter to rest once and for all.

That night I sent her to bed as usual and then stuck my head in her room about ten. I eyed her little bed and was seriously reconsidering trying to climb in it with her. I noticed the covers had fallen half to the floor so I reached in carefully to straighten them.

She sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the covers to her chin.

"I thought you were the monster lady." Her eyes welled up with tears. You couldn't have pulled me out of there after that with a truck and a chain.

I fell asleep, amazingly enough and awoke at about eleven o-clock to the sound of a sharp BANG. It sounded like someone had dropped a book on the floor, or a ballon had popped. I blew it off and went back to sleep. At precisely midnight there was a loud pounding on the front door. I raced through the house, climbed over my husband (our bed was right by the window) and peered out onto the porch. There was no one there, furthermore, my husband had been lying right there and swore he never heard a thing.

Nothing else happened that night to my knowledge. The next morning, our landlady who lived right next door, came over for coffee. I told her what had been going on and she went white as a sheet right in front of me.

"The lady who lived her before you was a heavy drinker, so I just never believed....I just never thought she could be telling the truth....." She stammered.

"Excuse me?" I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. She gripped the edge of the table with both hands..

"If you want to move I'll understand...I just had no idea...."

"Please tell me what this is about." I said quickly, losing my patience.

"About fifteen years ago a young girl moved in here. She rented the place for her and her boyfriend. The night she moved in, he called to say that he'd met someone else and that he would not be moving in. They spent the better part of the night calling each other arguing back and forth. She was hysterical and threatened suicide. He didn't beleive her. He tried to call again a few minutes after eleven and she didn't answer the phone. He tried again about eleven thirty, still no answer, so he called the police."

The gist of the story was that she had shot herself in Jill's room, her back to the door that Jillian said she always blocked, about eleven, the same time I heard the loud bang. The police arrived about midnight, the same time I heard the pounding on the door.


"It was a shame too," the landlady finished up "because she was a beautiful girl. Slender, long blonde hair, and the shot destroyed her face." She shook her head sadly.

Monster lady, with no face, and long white hair.

Those are just the facts. We did move out shortly after that. Jill slept in our room until we could move.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

holycrapI'mgettinouttahere!

and I ain't reading this thread again til daylight.

 

[RichZ]

Yikes!!! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

You and your husband are pretty tough people, Cindi!!! I would have had my stuff packed up and been out of there before nightfall!! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Even if my family and I had to live in the car until we found a new place!! /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

 

[rancar]

<font color="blue">"...If we can figure out where the outhouse used to be, we'd stand the best chance of finding good stuff..." </font>

Hi Rich...

Talk to Outback Jack in the village. He may be able to tell you where the outhouse was. I was at his place one day and after describing my place with front and back entrances he told me the outhouse was to the right of the back door as one steps out. Remarkably, he was right. He tried to explain to me how he knew this but I never did grasp the concept of why outhouses were placed in these locales.

Thing about the bottles though is valid. If you find the hole, there will likely be some treasures in there. Jack told me many oldtimers in the 1800s and early 1900s used to try to sneak a sip of booze on cold winter nights away from their wives and families. Best place to do it was in the outhouse. After the bottle(s) were done, down the hole they went. I know where my outhouse was and the corresponding hole, but just haven't had the chance to do the digging yet.

Great progress you're making at your place. Passed by yesterday and noticed the dozer and track hoe. Can't wait to see the end result. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

...Bob