Ghosts and posts

It's a dark and stormy night and a perfect time for some out-of-this-world news. I thought I'd post some intriguing notes about these past couple months. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Mr. Pipe may still be hanging around my daughter's house. I went to hang up Hannah's dress in her closet the other day and caught a faint whiff of ... pipe smoke. I actually spent the night at Jenn's. Unfortunately, Mrs. Kitchen did not surprise me with breakfast the next morning. But there are surprises galore regarding the ghosts in our closets.

I have been told by my researching daughter that the house I've chosen is actually the same space occupied by Mr. Pipe's and Mrs. Kitchen's son and his family in the 1920s. Mere coincidence or are Jenn and I really meant to discover the Richmonds and learn something about them? From them? What do they have to teach us?

Let me fill you in a bit more. Tree (of the amazing tattoo and psychic ability) told me that she was getting a sense of "multiples of twos" and my mom's presence when she thought about my moving on up to the Berkshires. In fact, she told me that she felt that the choice of the house was "already decided". Now this was before I had even selected or looked at the place I took. Somehow my mom was communicating the location to Tree. My mom died in 1985.

This is how the deal went down. I was on a long waiting list for this particular place and, therefore, didn't even think anymore about pursuing it when I drove up to Jenn's to look at properties. I didn't even call the realtor about it. By the end of a week's worth of house and apartment hunting (almost in a panic because I still had not found something), I got an unexpected call from the landlady telling me that this unit was suddenly open for me. It's an upper floor of a duplex and set right in the middle of a row of duplex apartments. "Multiples of two." It was built on the foundation of the old houses which were once situated on a Magnolia street or lane almost a century ago. Jenn has reminded me that magnolia is a symbol for perseverance.

Once I signed the lease, the fun began. Jenn went through the local archives and found out that my upper unit is, indeed, the exact place the Richmonds lived. They had four children and little Buddy was the boy who died at age four in 1930.

Jenn has already taken me to the cemetery to meet the Richmonds. We do seem to have this thing about cemeteries, don't we?

What were the odds, randomly, of my choosing my new house and actually making a connection to Jenn's friendly household spirits? Tree was right. This was not purely chance.

The house chose me.