Ghost Girl

Ghost Girl

Gary E. Grissom

In the past, I had never thought too much about ghosts. Maybe they existed, and maybe they didn’t. But one afternoon while tuning my guitar and preparing to perform some folksongs in O’Hungry’s in Old Town, I noticed a little girl wearing old fashioned clothes standing near the small stage. As I smiled at her, she clapped her hands and said “Oh boy! I love to hear the guitar played.”

“Well, in that case,” I said. “I’m going to sing a song called “Riding in My Car” just for you.”

She had a puzzled look on her face and I noticed that she had a big bump on her forehead.

“What’s a car?” she asked.

“Oh you know.” I answered. “A car like you ride in with your parents. Or like all those cars you see driving by outside.”

“Oh.” She said softly.

I then started playing my guitar and was about to start singing when my guitar pick slipped out of my hand. As I reached down to pick it up, the little girl disappeared. I then stood and looked around the restaurant and out of the large windows to see if she was walking down the sidewalk.

“Did anyone see that little girl I was talking to up here? She was here and then she was instantly gone.”

One customer looked at me and said “Are you okay? I heard you talking but I didn’t see a little girl.”

“Are you sure? I was just talking to her and when I dropped my pick, I looked up and she was gone.”

At this point, a waitress named Janice ,who was standing nearby, walked up to me and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t worry Gary.” She whispered. “ I think you just saw the Whaley House ghost girl. She occasionally appears to people here in Old Town.”

“What? You mean that little girl was a ghost!”

“Shhhh…not too loud Gary. Just play a set and then I’ll talk to you when I take a break.”

“O-oh okay. But you gotta know that I’m freaked out.”

“Don’t be…she’s harmless.”

I took a deep breath and then played a set of folk and easy listening songs. The customer who had spoken to me gave me a dollar tip after he’d paid his bill and said he had enjoyed my music. Then he added with a grin and said “I hope the little girl comes back.”

When Janice took her break, she asked me to step outside and told me how lucky I was that I had seen the ghost girl. Although she had never seen her, she claimed that she had seen some strange lights in the Whaley House when she had visited it a year ago, and had felt the presence of a spirit.

“Maybe the spirit you felt was the ghost girl.” I said.

“Well it could have been her of course, but there have been reports of four other ghosts who haunt there.”

“

Please tell me more about the ghost child. You said that other people have seen her.”

“Oh right! Well, there’s a woman who works at the Taco Bell down the street who said that she had seen a little girl wearing old fashioned clothes, playing with a metal hoop she was rolling in the backyard. Since she didn’t have any customers at that moment, her curiosity caused her to cross the street to get a closer look at the child. But as soon as she got within twenty feet of her, she instantly disappeared.”

“Amazing!”

“Oh yes it is. When I mentioned this to the people who work at the Whaley House, they said that several other people had claimed to have seen the child. They then went on to explain that the child wasn’t actually of the Whaley family; but, instead, was a friend of the Whaley children who had been killed in the backyard on a rainy day. The cause of her death was that she had been running and slipped and fell against a brick wall.”

I then remembered that the ghost child had a large bump on her forehead.

“That is so interesting. Guess what? The little girl I saw had a big bump on her head.”

“Well then, that was her for certain. Because that must be the bump she got on her head when she crashed into the brick wall.”

“Yes!”

After I finished my daily gig at O’Hungry’s, I walked down the street to the Whaley House. When I told the staff about my experience, they rolled their eyes a bit as if they thought I was some local joker wanting free admission by telling a story I had heard from someone else. But when I mentioned in more detail about the old fashioned clothes she was wearing, and the bump on her head, they seemed genuinely interested.

“The clothes she wore were like the clothes worn in the pictures of  Little Bo Peep or Mary of Mary Had a Little Lamb. And she had a big bump on her forehead,” I had said.

“Well, those are certainly more specific details than most folks give us,” a staff member said. “Come on in and look around and tell us if you see her or any other of our ghostly residents.”

I was then advised to go into the parlor and listen to a recording about the history of the Whaley House and its ghosts. I, and several other visitors, listened intently until the end of the recording and then slowly browsed around the first floor before ascending the rickety stairs to the second floor. I was in the lead and was startled by a mannequin of a woman dressed in period piece clothing at the top of the stairs. She looked very lifelike and I would have been terrified if I had been alone in the house at night and had come upon her. I then looked into the children’s bedroom and saw dolls and other toys on the small bed. I wondered if the little ghost girl had ever spent the night there with the Wayley children. Finally, I went back downstairs and looked at artifacts behind a roped off area. I noticed an old piano in the corner and a staff member told me that it had been played in the classic movie “Gone With The Wind.” Last of all, I glanced through a photo book taken by visitors showing strange lights and forms throughout the house.

That night, I was awakened from a deep sleep and felt a presence in my room. But as I tried to rise up and see it, my head was pressed against my pillow and I couldn’t move. Finally, a few minutes later, I was able to raise my head and I turned my bedside lamp on. I didn't see anything unusual, but I noticed the room smelled like strawberries.