A troubled single mother moved to town to a big house on the top of a mountain in Lansing.
She came into my shop after hours, as I was still there making various potions.
She thought I seemed like someone that could help her with her "ghost problem" . Said she was seeing a black shadow and that her 3 year old daughter was afraid of "the bad man" and was having nightmares. She was having nightmares too and was constantly on edge. She and other members of her family began hearing phantom footsteps upstairs when everyone at home was sitting downstairs.
This house, she said, was the only house on this mountain and while it was the only house on the mountain, there was a graveyard behind it. The house was fairly new, but there had been another one in the same spot before...
One day she was sitting upstairs with her daughter on the bed and a necklace she had hanging on an old vanity dresser suddenly flew off into the floor...
Later she was walking down the stairs and when she reached the landing to round the corner to the hallway, she was grabbed by a dark shadow shaped like a man. It laughed in her face and she froze, petrified... She broke free, screamed, and ran through it. It disappeared, of course.
So she stumbled upon my shop this one fateful evening. She wanted to know if I had a remedy...something to rid her of the haint.
She said she had already asked some other people to help her. She described some strange things involving blood, graveyard dirt, symbols, and fire. And then to beat all, she said the people "helping her" admitted to not knowing what they were doing and that what they did only seemed to make it worse!
"Amateurs", I thought to myself.
So I counseled her, listened, gave her my best advice and did all I could think of at the time that I could do.
I made her a "mojo bag" and told her how to banish the spirit.
She reported back that it had helped, but in the end I couldn't save her from being "possessed".
She was later accused of having inappropriate relationships with people at her place of work...she was working as a night jailer.
Maybe she wasn't "possessed" but it makes for a good story, right?
She has since moved away from town.
I liked her and I do not judge her at all and I would like to believe her story is true. I wish her the best.
Join me on the Great Southern Gothic Ghost Tour of Downtown West Jefferson, COMING SOON. To hear more true stories and tall tales of haints, boogers, geographical anomalies and the tragic history of Ashe County.
Thank you, goodnight, and as Elvira always says, "Unpleasant dreams"...
