The Haunted Beauty of New England
Austere snapshots from a road trip across the Northeastern United States
Ihave never believed in ghosts. But after having breakfast in a house in the woods of Western Massachusetts, I no longer know what to think.
It was just after 6:30 am when I heard what sounded like soft footsteps moving towards the kitchen. At first, I assumed that either my father or my sister had come down the stairs. But when I craned my head to look, I couldn’t see anyone at all.
What was weird, though, was that I had sensed a presence in exactly the same way that you can perceive when someone is standing behind you. It’s like a spidery sense that goes beyond what the eyes can see.
That morning, I was sure that someone was there…until they weren’t. So the fact I couldn’t see anyone was more than a little unsettling.
Let’s just say there’s no way I’d want to be alone in that house at night, lest it turn out I was never alone in the first place.
Given how brief that moment lasted, it might be weird for me to spend so much mental energy on it — especially when you consider how strange it seemed that a ghost would make its presence felt in early daylight. Yet there’s no denying it affected me. To this day, I’m not fully convinced that…
