Ingrid Abramovitch

A Tibetan woman recently asked me if in the research for my book I had discovered a lot of haunted houses in New York City. No more than anywhere else, I told her. The one documented ghost in my book was in Savannah, where having a ‘haint’ in residence adds to one’s real estate value. The woman, who grew up in Nepal, said that in her culture every house previously occupied is said to have spirits. The first thing they do when moving into a house is to recite prayers and enact purification ceremonies to keep the ghosts at bay.

Renée Schettler is the winner of my contest for the spookiest true old house tale. Renée is a former editor at the Washington Post and Martha Stewart Living, a foodie who recently started the cathartic blog ThankYouGourmet.com and who leads wonderful workshops in recipe writing and editing (for more info: ReneeSchettler.com).

She is an experienced journalist with a firm grasp of the facts. So I have no reason to doubt her hair-raising story. Here it is:

It had its quirks, my first home away from home: a white clapboard town house (1839 or thereabouts) on the eastern edge of Georgetown in Washington, D.C. The entire house leaned rather dramatically to the north, the wooden floorboards creaked, and the pane windows had to be jimmied open from all the layers of paint.

I was renting the rear half of the top floor, which had been fashioned into its own ad hoc apartment. A door at the end of my galley kitchen mysteriously led nowhere, a remnant from the house’s more genteel balconied days. I didn’t care. It was a quiet refuge, although I did occasionally have the odd feeling that I wasn’t alone. There were shadows that seemed to be watching; the creaks and groans that one expects from an old house; things that go bump in the night. As it turns out, the things that manifested in the morning turned out to be far more terrifying.

One Sunday morning, I awoke in one of those half-conscious states in which all the senses are blurred. And then in an instant I was awake–and terrified. I heard someone–or something–breathing. And yes, I’d spent the night alone. I heard the unmistakable deep, rhythmic inhale and exhale of someone asleep. The sound filled the small room and reverberated off the walls. I remained motionless. I grasped for a rational explanation. A neighbor snoring? A rat in the attic? The wind in the branches? Yet the sound was RIGHT NEXT TO ME. My thoughts raced, pondered, catapulted, then finally prayed for some sane explanation.

How could I have made it through the night only to be haunted during the day? At some point—seconds or minutes or hours later, I lost track of time– it occurred to me that nothing about the breathing seemed menacing. I slowly, slowly summoned my wits and tiptoed to the next room. I could still hear the breathing in the other room, but it was fainter. And then—what possessed me to do this I still don’t know—I returned to the bedroom. The breathing became louder with every step closer that I took. And as I settled onto the edge of the bed and lay myself down, hanging precariously at the edge, the sound changed cadence slightly. It became shorter, less rhythmic, less comforting. And eventually, after an hour or so, it left. Abruptly. And I, grateful and weak-kneed, slumped into a chair and listened to the silence.

A few nights later, still in something of a daze, I casually invited my neighbor—the one whose apartment completed the top floor—over for a glass of wine. We’d only exchanged pleasantries in the hallway until that evening. After niceties, talk turned to the house. She knew quite a lot, knew that it had been a sanctuary of sorts during the days of the Underground Railway, knew its most recent tenants, knew to ask if I’d noticed anything unusual about the house. Especially, she inquired innocently, last Saturday night? As my story tumbled out, I saw in her face the relief that I felt. We shared a secret. She had come for wine and conversation that night seeking reassurance that she was not alone. Her experience, what she too had heard but not seen, was something altogether different yet in in its own way quite similar to mine. But that’s her story to tell. She and I never spoke of it again. Thankfully the occasion never arose. We each resigned ourselves to adding yet another inexplicable quirk to the traits of the house at 1514.