The only ghost I ever saw with my own eyes was this elderly fellow in my grandmother's house. I was having a summer visit and sleeping in the big bedroom farthest away from my grandparents. It was a moonlit night and when I woke in the middle of the night, I saw this man in the far corner of the room.

He was just standing there looking at me. My grandfather was a big man and this guy was tall enough but too thin to be Grandpa Joe. I sat up, looked at him, and when he didn't move, I went back to sleep.

But that is not the ghost I want to tell you about. This ghost, who lives in the green house posted up above, is Roddie Duncan MacInnis. Roddie died in the 1930s, as far as I can figure out. My pal Perry and I go on cemetery tours but we have not found his grave yet so I am not sure.

What I do know is that in 1958, Roddie's house had fallen into such disrepair that it was almost falling down. It had been left vacant for years after Roddie died. The only story I had heard about Roddie was how he had almost been struck by lightning.

There was a huge storm and he was sitting in his kitchen with his dog and having a cup of tea. A bolt of lightning shot through the window, knocking the tea cup out of his hand and striking his dog. But I digress.

Moving the House

This is my mother-in-law and in the background is Roddie's house. I mention my mother-in-law as a way of placing the photo in the timeline. This was in the 1960s, at my best guess. That is the old house after it had been moved on skids from Roddie's old property a few miles away and hauled down the lane and set down behind my in-laws' house.

My father-in-law's sister and her husband had made arrangements to move Roddie's dilapidated old house off his land. They got the house for free. All they had to do was find a way to haul it from that land to this new location, which they did.

Okay. That is Roddie and that is his house.

Bad Luck House?

The aunt and uncle who moved the house and settled into it had 8 children. A daughter died from polio and two more children, a son and a daughter, died in separate car accidents. Another son, Arthur (that's him in the yard of the house) drowned in North Lake after a day of fishing (not sport fishing, fishing as a job -- it's a fishing community).

When my husband was in his twenties, he and his first wife bought the house from his uncle and aunt and that is where they raised their own 2 kids. Until 1989 when his wife was killed in a car accident. Undaunted, he remarried. His second wife died of a terminal illness. (Still undaunted, a few years later he married me.)

Over the years, the landscape changed. Here is the front yard and garden in the spring, scarecrow and all. This is the same area where Arthur and his car are in that long-ago photo.

Here it is in the winter.

Enter the Ghost

I moved into the house in 2013, when I married Gerald. There was an atmosphere that I found unsettling. It wasn't upsetting or negative but it was agitating me. I put it down to being the third wife in a house that still held memories and belongings of two previous wives.

Gerald's brother and sister-in-law live on the same lane and when we come to Arizona, his brother, Arthur, looks after the house. He said one day that he dropped in from time to time but always with trepidation. Okay, once I left mushrooms in the fridge and forgot about them when we left for five and a half months.

No, it wasn't fear of fungi that bothered Arthur. It was "that damned ghost." Strange whistling noises, slamming doors in the other rooms, and whispers. That was what bothered him. Arthur's not a fanciful man. Nor is he a drinking man. If he heard strange noises coming from an empty house, then he heard noises.

It's an isolated area where we live, not many visitors. Gerald likes to fly fish. So sometimes, there I often was, alone in the house that I now knew was haunted. I have some mobility issues and each room is on a different level. Going from the kitchen to the sunroom is 3-inch step up and going from the sunroom to the living room is a 4-inch step down. Kitchen to the living room is a 2-inch step.

Would Roddie have me fall and break my neck? How could so many of the members of the households die? Was there a curse?

Was it even Roddie? Maybe a previous wife resented me being there. No, half the children of the previous occupants had died. The ghost had been there before the wives. I sat on the deck and ran these thoughts around and around in my head. I was trying to apply logic where logic did not apply.

I am not fond of cleaning and tidying and all that stuff. There are so many books to read, thoughts to think, and games to play. Maybe my agitation was the urge to make the house my own which meant a lot of housework, which I had no interest in doing.

I have had evidence of ghostly contact in the past and it had been positive.

Slight Sidetrack

The day we buried my father, it was a cold May day. The cemetery is not far from 39 acres of woodlot that was Dad's favorite place. We had plans to go there after the funeral and have a small gathering. It was lobster season so we had a pot of lobsters to cook. And beer.

I walked down to the beach to see about digging clams and was walking back along the old path when I heard the hoots and hollers. In those days, I could run. So I ran. It turned out that a spark from the bonfire had set the dry spring grass on fire and the boys were trying to stamp it out. The fire kept hopping and the burning area was quickly expanding. It was not a windy day.

As you can see in the photo, we got the fire out, saved the beer and the lobsters and got the bonfire under control. Then, I swear I could hear Dad laughing. I realized then that it was his idea of a joke. He was like that. If he could get us agitated a bit, he got a chuckle out of it. It was never dangerous even if we thought it was. The fire just stopped. My son and I looked at each other and just grinned. "Grampy," he said.

Dad always loved a good grass fire and Mom was always warning him to be careful and he would nod and agree and go outside and set another grass fire. It was a springtime ritual. In that moment, I knew his spirit was there and I know it is still there. I spend a lot of my summer days and sometimes nights out there and I always know he is there. I have conversations with him all the time. A ghost is a ghost. A tease is a tease.

Back to Roddie

So there I am on the deck, trying to figure out Roddie's presence. Why not just stop the cogitating about why he was there? Why not open my mind to his presence? It took a little while to get my mind opened. I struggle with meditation, but that is another story.

Roddie is not upstairs. I think that part of the house was just an attic when he lived there. He's not in the sunroom either but that had been added in the 90s. He is in the kitchen. I expected some sort of sign from him but not once did I hear a sound. I felt peace and joy. (I did manage to get some serious decluttering done.) Yet, I wanted some sort of sign. A communication with Roddie.

Biscuits are part of our daily fare. Well, of Gerald's daily fare. I like them hot out of the oven but not so much after that. At least once a week, I make a pan of biscuit and bake them for 16 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. On Saturday, I make a big homemade pizza, which I also bake for 16 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Every time I made a pizza, after knowing about Roddie, the oven turned off. The biscuit baking was never interrupted nor was anything else I cooked in the oven at different temperatures. I thought the stove was breaking down but could not figure out why it only turned off when I made pizza.

It took me a year to realize that it was Roddie. I don't know if he does not like pizza. I doubt he ever ate it himself. It would not have been a common food item in rural Prince Edward Island when he was alive. It is my favorite food and I suspect that he turns the oven off to tease or gently annoy me.

When we close the house down for the winter and come south, he can makes strange sounds and frighten Arthur when he checks to make sure that all is well inside. There is no harm in Roddie. The whole litany of tragedy striking the occupants of the house in the past does not make any logical connection to Roddie. This is how rumors start. Yes, there is a ghost. Yes, bad things happened to good people. They are not connected. I know that so well, I can only assume that Roddie got the message to me somehow that he just wants to hang out in a house that is full of love.

I hope he starts leaving my pizza alone.

Thanks @jerrybanfield for the Supernatural Writing Contest!!

Check out my introduceyourself post here: Who Am I?