A Ghost Story By George Ziemann The first time I saw her I reacted much the same way that most people do when they see a ghost. Fear. Raw, cold fear. The year was 1975. I was in Lawrence, Kansas at the time. I had landed in Lawrence when my band found a new booking agent there, an agent that brought us from Ohio with the promise of bigger and better jobs. Between the band members, road crew and wives, there were ten of us living in this big old house on the north side of town. The house was large enough to accommodate all of us rather comfortably, as long as a couple of us was willing to accept couches as sleeping quarters. To us, this inconvenience was a minor issue. We were a family. We traveled together, worked together, lived together, supported each other and took care of each other. We could certainly cope with a slightly crowded house. It was early October. The days were still warm, but the nights took on an autumn chill. The leaves had turned and had begun falling to the ground, the pleasant, earthy smell filling the air and, as autumn always does, reminding me of the omnipresent cycle of life, death and rebirth. Three of us had stayed up late that night - myself, our guitarist Doug, and Gary, our lighting director. We had been planning how to most effectively stage a new song that the band had just written and going over a few changes in the rest of the show. It had been a long day already and Gary fell asleep on the couch. Not long after, Doug excused himself and went upstairs to go to bed. There was an album playing and I decided to listen to the rest of it before I went to the upstairs living room and my own fold-out bed. I turned out the light on the table next to me, tilted back the recliner I was sitting in and closed my eyes to listen. Evidently, I didn't last all the way through the album because when I awoke, the house was silent. The only sounds were Gary's light snoring and the hiss of the speakers. The turntable had stopped when the album finished, but the stereo itself was still on. The radio dial cast a dull, amber light across the room. And then I saw her out of the corner of my eye, in the chair where Doug had been sitting earlier. She wasn't actually in the chair, she was hovering over it, a translucent image that seemed to shimmer, even in the dim light. I had never really believed in ghosts, but I knew that I was looking at one. I was hypnotized by the presence, yet paralyzed with fear. I knew that if I could wake Gary up, one of three things would happen - I would discover that this was a dream, the ghost would disappear, or Gary would see it too. I tried to yell, but my chest was clamped so tightly by the hand of terror that I could utter no more than a small, quiet gasping sound. Slowly, the figure approached me, coming between myself and the faint light of the stereo. As it did, it seemed to almost take solid form, although the amber glow still shone through it. It stopped just a foot or two away, close enough that its face filled my vision. And even though the only light was on the other side of it, the spirit's form seemed to use the backlighting to create a glow, illuminating its face for me to see. There was a sadness to her expression. Not overt sadness, but a deep, hidden sadness; one that seemed to reach from the depths of her soul. There was no hint of malevolence in her eyes, yet the terror I felt held firm and would not release me from its grasp. Then she touched me. She reached out and placed her hand upon my head, moving slowly and deliberately as if she did not want to frighten me further. No real contact was made, there was no sense of touch, but when her hand came into the same space as my forehead, a tidal wave of emotions and images swept through me. For a brief moment, I knew her. The rush of feelings made me involuntarily close my eyes for an instant. When I opened them again, she was gone. And so were the iron talons of fear.   A week passed before I saw her again. It was almost 4 a.m. I was upstairs and had been sitting up watching the late show. I got up to turn off the TV and when I turned around, there she was. I had been so frightened the first time I'd seen her that I hadn't noticed much about the way she looked. But this time, after the initial shock, the terror that had gripped me at her first appearance was a mere tremble. She was wearing a long, pale blue dress that looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie. I guess it was gingham, but I wasn't really sure. Anyway, it didn't matter, because it wasn't really much of anything. Just a transparent image that seemed to gain and lose form, becoming real and then fading away again. She had long blonde hair and a pleasant face. She was neither the hideous nor or the beautiful vision that I had read about in ghost stories. She was pretty, but rather plain. And she just stood (or floated, rather) there looking at me. "Who are you?" I asked. "What do you want?" She didn't answer. She turned and looked out the window. Slowly, I approached her. She raised her right arm and pointed out the window, into the back yard. I came close enough to look out, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. I turned back to her. "What is it? What do you want me to see?" She said nothing. A light breeze wafted through the room, even though the window was closed. I didn't notice this incongruity as the woman had begun to drift away from me. She went through the kitchen, almost, but not quite, touching the tiled floor, rounded the corner and floated down the stairs. I followed her down the stairs. She passed gracefully through the dining room and out the back door. Well, she actually went through the back door, which surprised me somewhat. I don't know why; if you are capable of embracing that you are having communication with a ghost (wordless though it may have been), it should be perfectly natural to assume they would be able to go through solid objects. Nevertheless, it's still a bit disconcerting to see this actually occur. I fumbled with the lock and went outside. She was standing near the rear of the yard. As I approached, she held up her hand, as if to stop me. I complied and waited for her to make the next move; waited to see what would happen next, why she had drawn me out here, what the purpose of this whole experience was. She pointed to the ground, then faded away and was gone. "George, what in the hell are you doing? Do you know what time it is?" I jumped at the voice, which turned out to be Gary. "Jeez, Gary, you scared the hell out of me. Uh, I'm just, uh, getting some air." I wasn't about to try to explain the ghost to him. He'd never believe it. "Well I didn't need any fresh air. You left the door wide open. It's a little bit chilly, you know." "Sorry. Go back to sleep. I'll be right in." He shut the door and I turned back to where my enigmatic spirit had been, expecting her to return. But she did not rematerialize that night.   "Ben, why don't you come up out of that hole and have some supper." "All right, Ellen." Ben climbed out and stood at the side of the hole, dusting himself off. "I wish you would cover that hole up," Ellen said. "I'm so afraid that Tommy is going to fall in and break his neck." "Ellen, you know I've got to dig a hole if we're going to have a well. I'm only down about ten feet. Got a ways to go yet. Unless you want to walk down to the river every day for the rest of your life to fetch water." He reached out to take her in his arms. "Oh, no, you don't. Don't you even think of touching me until you wash up," Ellen said, backing away quickly. "I know we have to have a well. I just wish you would cover it up when you're not down there working in it." "Daddy! Daddy!" It was their son, Tommy, running out from the house, his crop of golden hair flying as he ran. "Hurry up or supper's gonna git cold. I'm hungry," he said, stomping his foot in the dust for emphasis. Ben and Ellen both laughed. Tommy was only four years old and had already developed his own dynamic personality. "All right already. Just give me a minute to wash up, you little scamp," said Ben. "Well hurry up, Daddy. I'm hungry." Tommy ran back into the house, to make sure he was at his place when supper was served. Suddenly, a group of five riders on horseback came crashing out of the nearby trees. Ben turned, surprised but not alarmed. He had no quarrel with anyone, and expected that some emergency had taken place in town. Ben kept thinking that, right until the moment the lead rider drew a gun and shot him in the head. "Ben! Ben!" Ellen screamed, running to her fallen husband. The riders drew up, jumped off their horses and two of them pulled her away. "What do you want?" she demanded, kneeling next to Ben's lifeless body. "Why did you kill my husband?" The lead rider grinned and spat on the ground. "We kill everybody, lady." He said, laughing. He walked up to her and stroked the side of her face. "Except purty little ladies like you." "Leave my Mommy alone." It was Tommy, running back out of the house again, this time with a look of determination and anger replacing the boyish charm that had been visible on his face just a few minutes ago. He didn't get far. One of the men scooped him up with one burly arm. "What should I do with this?" the rider asked. "Put him and the dead one in that hole and fill it in," said the leader. "No!" screamed Ellen. "You can't! Not my child!" Her protests went unheeded. The men dragged Ben's body to the hole and unceremoniously dumped it in and followed it with the young boy, heedless to the child's cries. And then they shoveled the nearby pile of dirt into the hole, laughing as they worked, heedless to the child's cries. The entire time, Ellen was screaming, pleading, begging them to stop.   The screaming was still echoing through my brain when I awoke from the dream. She was there, waiting. Once again, I followed her down the stairs and outside, She stopped at the same place and pointed to the ground. This time I understood. "Ben and Tommy. They're there, aren't they?" She nodded and disappeared.   The next morning I started digging. It was a Saturday morning and most of the rest of the band had gone to Kansas City to take care of some errands, do some shopping and confirm the next week's booking. Gary was the only one left at home and he was out running, part of his eternal quest for fitness and a physique designed to weaken the knees of every woman he met. By the time Gary finished his run, I had managed to dig down about five feet. He came out into the yard, curious as to what I was doing. "I'm digging a garden," I said, before he had the chance to ask the inevitable question. "Aren't gardens supposed to be wide and shallow?" "Okay, I'm digging for treasure. I read a book in the library that said there was treasure buried in Lawrence and this is the spot." He shook his head and laughed. He wasn't laughing a few hours later when I found what I was looking for. There wasn't much left but the bones and a few scraps of fabric that had been their clothes, but it was easy to recognize the two bodies which occupied the makeshift grave. Tommy was buried almost standing up, his knees slightly bent and arms extended, the fingers bent, showing how he died trying to dig his way out. Ben's skeleton was crumpled in a ball at Tommy's feet, a clean hole through one side of his skull, the bullet that had never exited lying loose inside of it. The discovery caused quite a commotion, drawing a flock of researchers and historians from the college and a deluge of questions, very few of which I was willing or able to provide answers for. After they finished with all their questions and excavating (digging a far bigger hole than was necessary, despite my insistence that nothing else was there to find), it was determined that Ben and Tommy were just two of the victim's of Quantrill's Raiders, the terrorists that had sacked Lawrence in the 1860's.   By the time all the commotion died down, Halloween had arrived. It was after 11 o'clock and the evening had stayed particularly comfortable, the autumn chill evidently saving itself for another night. The children were finished coming around, having all headed home with their bags of goodies. Doug and I were sitting on the back porch, having a beer and talking about nothing in particular, just passing the time. Doug saw her first. He stopped what he was saying in mid-sentence and said, "Look." There was no emotion in his voice. He raised his arm and pointed toward the alley at the end of the yard. Ellen came slowly across the yard, going through the motions of walking, even though she was clearly at least six inches off the ground. She stopped about thirty feet away. "I can see right through her," Doug said, almost in a whisper. "And she's floating!" "Don't worry about it, Doug. It's okay." I got up and went toward her. As I approached, I noticed that her former barren expression now seemed to reflect a new peace, a ray of happiness even. "I did what I could," I told her. "They took the bones away to study them. But they say that when they finish, they'll bury them in a proper grave." She didn't answer, just smiled slightly and turned, sweeping her arm across with a gesturing motion. There, at the end of the yard, were the same images that had populated a recent dream - Ben and Tommy. I looked back to her and watched as she spoke. No sound crossed her lips, but it did not take an expert lip reader to interpret the message. "Thank you." She held out her hand and I reached for it, despite my knowledge that there wasn't really anything there to touch. For a moment, they both shared the same space and at the outer reaches of my sense of touch it seemed as if there was almost, but not quite, something there to feel. With this elusive instant of contact came a deluge of images and emotions, much as I had experienced on that first night. This time, however, the end result was pure telepathy, a wordless exchange of feelings and thoughts. I knew that if I had never before done anything in my life that made a real difference in the grand scheme of things, I had now. This knowledge, along with an expansive feeling of inner comfort, was Ellen's gift to me, her repayment for the favor I had done for her. I tried to share with her the realization that I had no choice in the matter - her request had been one it would have been impossible for me to refuse. She seemed to almost laugh. She knew this all along. It had been the reason she chose me. The moment passed and Ellen withdrew her hand. The electric sensation did not immediately cease, however, lingering within me as she drifted across the lawn and joined hands with her ethereal husband and son. Slowly, as one, they faded and vanished. I walked back to the porch to find Doug staring in disbelief, with his mouth gaping open. He took another drink from his half-empty bottle of beer and rubbed his chin. "Did I just see what I thought I saw?" "I don't know," I answered. "What do you think you saw?" "It looked like a family of ghosts." "Then you saw what you thought you saw." "But I don't believe in ghosts." "That's okay, Doug. Neither do I." "And it looked like you held her hand for a minute." "Don't be silly, man. Everybody knows you can't touch a ghost." "I guess you're right." Doug reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. For a long moment, he watched the smoke curl upward and drift into the wind. Twice he turned to me like he had a question to ask, raising a pointing finger as he turned, but both times deciding to keep the question to himself. "That was the damnedest thing I ever saw," he said finally. "Yeah. I bet it was. It was kinda different for me, too." I got up and headed for the door. "I'm getting another beer. You want one?" He laughed. "Maybe you ought to just bring the rest of the case out." I did. We sat out there until late in the night, not saying much, just drinking a lot of beer and staying incredibly sober in spite of all our efforts to the contrary.   A few months later, we moved on, chasing our dream in another town, another state, another endless string of nightclubs and shows, leaving Lawrence and its colorful past behind. I never saw Ellen or Ben or Tommy again and don't expect to. After all, I don't believe in ghosts.