Ghosts of Madison, Indiana by Virginia Dyer Jorgensen

Author:Virginia Dyer Jorgensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Red Dog Antiques at 322 West Main Street. The laundress is often seen in the front street-level window.

On one occasion, Mike had brought his wife and seven-year-old son, Shawn, along with him on a weekend “camp out” in the house. While the couple slept in a Dutch bed, Shawn slept in a hammock in one of the other upstairs bedrooms. When they got up, Shawn asked his dad what he had been doing earlier that morning. Mike asked him, “What do you mean?” Shawn explained that he had gotten up to go down the hall to the bathroom, and as he passed by his parents’ room, he said that he saw his dad sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking toward the hall. Mike asked what he looked like. Shawn said he looked like his dad, but he had on a black jacket and white shirt, with a round hat. And he looked really mad. Mike tucked that piece of information away in his head, not wanting to scare his young son with what he thought it was. But every time he later asked Shawn to recite his remembrance about the incident, he told him the same story of the grumpy man wearing the derby hat.

That’s not the only spirit thought to inhabit the second floor. Mike says that there is the spirit of a dog there and that he sometimes feels the dog brush by and against him. The dog is not one of his two Irish setters, Pal or Piper. Customers have mentioned that they feel an unseen dog rub by their legs, too. He doesn’t see the phantom dog, but Piper will sit and stare at the corner for hours, as though his ghost dog friend is sitting there entertaining him with unseen tricks.

While Mike made progress on restoring the home, the then middle-aged grandchildren of the former owner would stop in at various times to see the changes he was making in the building. As he worked pulling out newer drywall, he uncovered a fireplace that had been hidden for an unknown number of years. When one of the grandsons saw it, he yelled at Mike, asking why he had installed a fireplace there. Mike gently explained that he had not installed it but had discovered it when removing non-original walls.

The three grandchildren of the last owner of the house had been raised there by Grandmother Jones. When they would stop in, they would tell Mike stories about living with her there during the 1930s. He also found out about the corner where he liked to sit by the window. Apparently, Grandmother Jones took in laundry to help support the family during the meager years of the Great Depression. She would set up her big wash pan in the southeast corner—the very corner that Mike found so calming. These were the answers behind the clean, fresh smell of that spot—the scent of soap and fresh laundry. A grandson gave Mike a photograph of his grandmother hanging laundry on the clothesline located on the back roof of the house.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.