Memories That Haunt Me
By Corey Kirkland
I grew up in one of those sleepy southern towns where there was nothing to do and no one to do it with. Each school year crawled by with endless studies and church nights until summer finally arrived, filled with sweat, mosquitoes, and mischief. Grandchildren would be pawned off on Mimis and Big Mamas, and after brief introductions to neighborhood children, would be left to their own devices. New summer friends meant new old houses to explore. New old armoires filled with minks and mothballs, and hat boxes bearing mismatched gloves and dilapidated hats with faded flowers and threadbare veils were waiting to be plundered. Everyone was happy as long as we were quiet, but we would be hard to be heard over the chatter and laughter and clanking of teacups each afternoon in the parlor.
Ladies would reminisce and regale each other with the latest news and oldest rumors as they filled their stomachs with finger sandwiches and emptied their minds of original thoughts. Folklore intermingled with facts like creeper vines in a boxwood, and the strains of these melodious tales drifted upward to the heavens and landed firmly on our young ears as we pried open old jewelry boxes filled with costume jewelry that we would swear was the real thing.
Perhaps these snippets of faraway conversations mingled with our active imaginations formed the tales we would one day weave. Or maybe it was all that time we spent digging through cedar chests and chifforobes, reviving the once cherished items of those long forgotten. Or maybe it’s just statistically probable that in a town with over 700 structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places you’re bound to know a ghost; or at least know somebody who knows one.
I live in a home constructed by my great grandfather. It stands between another home he built and one that he bought. The three houses in a row were intended for his three children. The one to my left was built for my great aunt. The one to my right was occupied by my grandmother and now my mother. The one where I sit right this second was built for my great uncle, but he never occupied it as he did not return from the Second World War. When I was a child, it was the residence of my great grandmother, Precious. She was an invalid for fourteen years, requiring round the clock nurses who became my playmates. My brother would pretend to be Raymond Burr from Ironside with the aid of a wheelchair, and I would play my own version of hide and seek where a nurse would hide a teacup or whatnot from the china cabinet, and I would proceed to quietly look for it. Everyone spoke in whispers.
Directly across the street from me stands a home built in 1852 by Elizabeth Rhodes and her husband, Chauncey. Elizabeth kept a diary of her life from 1858 until 1900. She detailed the births and deaths of her children, her husband’s employment, and other things you would anticipate a woman of her time to document. But she also outlines changing sentiments and views, the economy, and the political culture of my hometown of Eufaula, Alabama, both before and after the Civil War. Much like me, her family ended up with a row of houses beginning with her son Jamie to her left, her daughter Mamie to her right, and her twin sister Mollie one more house down. I’m sure they entertained and went between house-to-house toting plates of leftovers and oven baked-goods the same way my family does now.
My friend, Mary, and her husband purchased the house in 2004. Mary grew up a few blocks over and spent her childhood rambling in these big old houses just like me. When they took possession of the home, a portion of it had been damaged decades before in a fire, changing the face of the home from its original design. As a history buff, Mary decided to research the home resulting in some bizarre coincidences and a lot of hard work that produced the publication of Elizabeth Rhodes’ diaries and the acquisition of stereograph photos of the home as it appeared in the 1860s. With the photos, she and her husband were able to rebuild the home’s large wrap-around porch and restore the home’s original architectural beauty.
In the summer of 2005, the back yard looked like an archeological dig. While digging in preparation for the porch rebuild, Mary and some other history buff friends began finding random items one would expect to find on an old home site: antique medicine bottles, rusted, vintage toys, and other artifacts. One day, in all of the digging, Mary came across a set of French made china dishes, stacked neatly and buried just below the grass. It wasn’t unusual for people in the late 1800s to bury tableware if they felt it had been contaminated by use of someone gravely ill, so finding these plates wasn’t terribly off putting, but the events that happened next were certainly odd. Mary gathered the dishes and placed them in her kitchen sink with the intent to wash them and add them to her collection of bottles and pottery that had come from the yard. That evening, Mary felt a little tense, but decided she was antsy as her husband was out of town. As she prepared for bed, she decided to bolt the door leading to the bedrooms as a extra layer of protection.
Deep in the night, she and her young son were both awakened by a commotion in the kitchen. Someone was clanging dishes around! It sounded as if someone was taking dishes and stacking them clumsily, and her son declared that it must be his older sister home from college as a surprise. She was supposed to come home that afternoon, June 18th, for a party, so maybe she did decide to drive home in the night. Mary gathered up her courage and went to the bolted door. As she slowly opened the door, the clanging stopped. All was quiet. She peered through the window, but her daughter’s car was not there. She debated calling the police, but what would she tell them? So, she closed the door and slipped the bolt back in place and waited for the sun to rise. In the safety of morning light, she went into the house to investigate. She expected to find the dining room trashed after all the early morning clatter. But everything in the dining room and kitchen was neat as a pin; just as she had left it. The only dishes amiss were the muddy, broken plates sitting in the sink.
Shortly after, while driving through the historic cemetery just a few hundred yards from her house, Mary parked the car and began making her way to the back of the cemetery after an overwhelming urge to walk to the bluff. There before her was the towering, marble finial with the name inscribed, RHODES. She walked farther into the Rhodes’ family plot and found herself staring at the headstone of Elizabeth Lewis Daniel Rhodes, born August 3, 1834, died June 18, 1905 – one hundred years to the day of the commotion in the kitchen.
With old houses comes history, and with history comes tragedy, and with tragedy comes speculation. Who really knows what all has gone on behind all these ancient walls, and who am I to say that someone doesn’t have the right to come on back down and sort things out for themselves - especially their dishes? Are stories just stories or is there something behind the things that go bump in the night? I’m not sure what I think, but sometimes my dog barks at an empty corner in what was my great-grandmother’s bedroom, sometimes I walk through a cold spot in the backyard in the middle of July, and I’ve picked up a rusted, vintage bobby-pin (and promptly thrown it away) from the exact same spot in my house seven times in the last ten years.
If you find yourself in Eufaula, stop by the Shorter Mansion. You can tour the home and hear the stories that led to investigation by the Southern Paranormal Researchers. While there you can also see the original handwritten diaries of Elizabeth Rhodes. But if you’d rather look for your own mysteries, grab a Walking & Driving Tour map from the Chamber of Commerce and roam the sidewalks of the Seth Lore Historic District. I’d recommend you stroll right about dusk. It’s a lot cooler that time of day, and although you may not be able to hear old grandmothers yapping on over tea, you may just hear the faint serenades of reminiscing on wrap-around porches over wine and other medicinal cocktails. Maybe you’ll even be invited to come sit a spell – or have a spell put on you.
