We have a ghost. Oh, I know the skeptical amongst you are rolling your eyes and wondering if I’ve totally lost it, but let me assure you, I have not. Our ghost has been corroborated.
When we first purchased our little piece of PEI history – that being the 85-year old farmhouse in Oyster Bed Bridge, we knew we were buying a home with a history, a home that had lots of stories to tell. As we moved our things in and began talking to neighbors we learned about how our home had only had 3 previous owners…how the potato field out back used to be farmed by the first family that owned it…how there used to be 7 out-buildings on the property, including a cattle barn…how we used to only have a cold cellar not the full on finished basement we now have. Stuff like that.
When we first purchased the house, our little dog, Gidget had a hard time making the adjustment from apartment living in the Rockies to full-blown two-story house in the country. Any strange noise would bring forth an episode of barking the likes of which you’ve never heard. We used to lie in bed at night, listening to the house settle around us, floor boards groaning under the weight of a dog lying in the hallway, the sound of the wind as it whipped its way in one window and out the other. Gidget would, at the mere hint of a creeky floor board, begin a cacophony that literally took us bringing her into our bed to quiet her down. We would lie there and joke that she was barking at the ghost. Little did we know.
The week before our wedding my dear friend came to stay with us and help us get to the chapel on time. My friend is sensitive to energy fields. All her life she’s known things before they’ve become public. She feels things and sees things that you and I are blissfully unaware of. Like dead people. Yes, she sees dead people.
After her first night in our 85-year old house she came downstairs for breakfast and casually mentioned that we have a ghost. Picture the look on my face and that of the one whom I adore… “A ghost you say?”
She quickly clarified and said – “oh it’s a spirit. And I think it’s a young girl. She’s very friendly. She seems very happy here.”
I thought, well, that’s good, because if you’re going to go to the trouble of sharing your house with a ghost, it better damn well be a happy one!
We laughed and joked about our little girl ghost the whole time my friend was on the island. What does she wear? How old did you think she is again? Does she have the run of the house, or does she just hang out in one area? When you have a friend who can see things that you can’t, well, curiosity can sometimes get the best of you. My friend didn’t have a lot of answers other than our spirit was a girl, she was young and she seemed happy.
Fast forward a few months later to a dinner party we were hosting for our neighbors, whose grandmother just so happened to once own our home. After a lovely stuffed pork tenderloin and enough wine to loosen us up, I ventured forth with the question “has anyone ever died in this house?”
Well, the look on her face told it all. Her husband responded with “why do you ask?”
Why do you think we asked? Because we think we have a ghost! is what I wanted to say, but I was polite and responded “well, we have this friend who senses things and she stayed with us recently…and well…she sensed that perhaps we might have a spirit in the house.”
With that our neighbor couldn’t spill the beans fast enough. Seemed that yes, in the 1940s a young girl, about the age of 12, died of burns she sustained in an oil-lamp fire here at the house. Our house. While she didn’t die at home (she passed away in hospital) and our house didn’t burn down, it seems that this was her family home (therefore the aunt of my neighbor) and she had been really happy here. So happy, I guess she came home to stay…in a sense.
Her name is Frieda.
I damn near choked on my Pinot Grigio. I know, I know, coincidence, right? Maybe. But if one of your best friends is psychic, you don’t just shrug this kind of stuff off and certainly learning about Frieda from our neighbors only confirmed what my friend told us. I couldn’t wait for them to leave so I could call and tell her that YES! YES! We have a ghost and now we know her name!
We think Frieda’s pretty happy here. I never hear or see her. I think the dogs do. Occasionally they’ll stand straight up for no apparent reason and start barking at nothing that we can see or hear.
We like Frieda. We think it’s cool that our home not only has a history, but it’s own personal historian.
We’ve even created a song about her. It’s to the tune of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me & Bobbie Magee” and it starts like this…
Frieda’s just another word for little spooky ghost…
