Mostly I am an artist and I sometimes write stories of my life. I've decided that occasionally I'll post these short memoir stories on this blog.
The events that I write about below actually happened. The night visitation might have be a lucid dream, but I suspect it was real. Whatever that is.
Believe it or not.

Vermont, summer 1980

Waking Up

Sarah told us where in the Simonville Cemetery we’ll find her grave. And we did spend most of last Sunday afternoon looking for it.

Pat and I are anxious to get back in touch with her to let her know we were unsuccessful. It’s Friday evening. We are teaching at Bennington College. Pat’s teaching painting and me, well, since I’m a ceramist, and the resident potter doesn’t want anyone messing with his studio (I don’t blame him)  I’m teaching kite making. We’re here for 6 weeks and Pat owns the 160 year old Rowell’s Inn in Simonville Vermont not far from Bennington. We stay in the Inn on weekends. A break from the spoiled,  entitled teenagers we work with during the week.  It’s the July Program that a friend is running and that’s exactly how we got this gig. Well me anyway. Pat’s a successful painter.

Soon after we arrived this evening Pat opened a bottle of white wine, poured us each a glass. But what we’ve been waiting for all week, is to get back on that Ouija board and get in touch with our disembodied guide.

Pat wants to know who built the Inn and our questions to the Ouija have conjured up a child who calls herself Sarah. She claims to have lived in the Inn shortly after it was built and died here when she was 6.

The Inn has a full production kitchen with a large pine plank table and an 8-burner stove. We sit briefly at the table, sipping our wine before I head to the east living room to retrieve Ouija.  Where we last spoke with her.

“Pat, do you know where the Ouija is, it’s not here?” I holler back to the kitchen.

Pat appears, glass in hand and we both start the search. The downstairs has two formal living rooms, a sitting room with an old upright piano, dining room and the kitchen. We each take a room. Without success, desperate by this time, we stand shoulder to shoulder in the sitting room wondering where to look next.

And then something most peculiar happens. The lamp on the piano turns on and then off. We look at each other and again it blinks on and off and then again. We are across the room and walk over to see what’s up. A short perhaps?

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Pat chortles.

Directly under the light is Ouija.

I’ve already had an eerie experience with our supernatural probing. Two weeks ago, we stayed up late talking to Ouija and once I was good and freaked out by our conversation with the ghost realm, we decide to put her away for the night and go to bed.

Pat’s sleeping quarter is off the kitchen where there is a tiny apartment that she locks herself into each evening leaving me alone in the Inn. The bedrooms are upstairs and on the third floor is a ballroom.

I make my way up the creaky stairs. My bedroom is right next to the stairwell and across the hall from the bathroom. I leave the light on in there for obvious reasons.

‘Anne’, a voice wakes me.

‘Anne’ it says again without intonation or gender even. Just ‘Anne’. At the foot of the stairs is the foyer and  the front door. That’s where the voice seems to come from. And immediately I sense someone/thing coming up the stairs. The steps groan slightly as it approaches and there’s a sudden chill in the air.  I can feel its energy nearing.

I’m frozen in fear. I open my mouth to call to Pat, but nothing comes out.

And then it’s in the room with me. Every hair on my body is erect, a cold paralyzing terror creeps from my gut to my heart as this ‘energy’ sits next to me on the side of the bed and without a pause rolls over me like a bag of soft cloth… or a small child. No sharp edges, no great pressure, just a gentle motion. And then it’s gone.

Once again alone, just me and that old Inn.