A young girl
from Springfield, Ohio, once reported seeing a ghost in her living room. It was Christmas
Eve, 1904.
At six o'clock
that night, Frederica Coblentz had just finished decorating the tree in the living room
when her mother called downstairs and asked her to bring a glass of water up to her
bedroom. The Coblentz family's house was large enough to have two staircases. As Frederica
climbed the rear stairs with the glass of water, she saw her mother descending the front
staircase.
"Mother,
here is your water," Frederica called, but her mother didn't seem to hear. Frederica
followed her down the front stairs. "Mother, here is your glass of water," she
repeated.
Her mother
continued walking. Frederica followed her to the front hall. Finally, she said,
"Mother, here is your glass of water." When she didn't answer, Frederica
continued, "Why on earth don't you take it? Where are you going?"
Just then, her mother
turned and entered the darkened living room. As Frederica watched, her mother walked
slowly around the room, stopping occasionally as if she was searching for matches to light
the gaslights.
"Are you looking for
the matches?" Frederica asked.
Suddenly, the outline of
her mother's body blurred as if she were moving to a darker part of the room. Then
Frederica began to realize that something was wrong. Her mother's form grew fainter and
fainter. When it vanished, Frederica was so stunned that the glass of water slipped out of
her hand and crashed to the floor. She began to tremble at the thought that she had seen
her mother's ghost. She raced upstairs and found her mother in her bedroom. No one could
ever account for this mysterious episode, but it probably could have happened only in the
familiar surroundings of Frederica's home.
She had definitely seen a
ghost--and a ghost of the living (in the living room!) at
that.
ŠJames M. Deem. Taken from
How to Find a Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1988).
