Stumbling in Endor

Columbus, Mississippi, is a haunted place. The Civil War never made it to this booming merchant-cotton town with a river and railroad, so plenty of hauntable places still stand. The ghosts have yet to be displaced by an urban landscape or suburban sprawl.

Calloway Hall on the campus of the Mississippi University for Women is the forlorn home of Mary, a civil war nurse, who hung herself in despair from the bell tower. During the War, Calloway Hall was a hospital for wounded soldiers from the North and South, so she probably is not the only ghost. When her beloved died in the hospital, she ascended to the bell and ended her days in the mortal coil. Still, in the dorm rooms beneath the bell, the co-eds can hear her body thump against the bell when it rings, and she takes a lot of rides on the elevator to the vacant fifth floor. By most accounts, she’s magnanimous to the residents.



Nellie haunts Errolton, an antebellum mansion downtown, but she mostly just etches her name in a particular window of the house to lay claim to her digs. White Arches hosts the soul of a lass who died after contracting pneumonia after spending a misty night on the front porch during a party to celebrate her engagement. Waverly, of course, is the most famous, by dint of marketing. There remains at least one ghost of a little girl who will call out on the grounds and who leaves the bed clothes disturbed in empty rooms when she takes a nap.



The most terrible and least documented is the specter on Three-Legged Lady Road, so named for the specter herself. She is known to attack the cars of those who would venture to the little church out there and dare to put it in park. With this ghost, I have had personal transactions or with her colleagues.

I also had personal transactions with the ghost who lived in our house on 4th Street, a tudor house with an unfinished and beautifully accessible cellar and attack. The ghost never approached me in the cellar where I kept my chemistry set, but it did call my name in the attic. I was playing “war” with a group of boys in fourth or fifth grade when an adult male voice said in my ear, “Jeffrey.” I stopped among the hollering, plotting boys to see who called and asked if anyone else heard something, and Billy Robbins said that he heard someone say my name. The next occupants of the house, a family named Dollar, got the brunt of that haunting. Their poor mother went just about crazy with the footsteps in the attic in the middle of the night and the blasted attic light that would turn on when they were away from the house. When we lived in that house, there were about four house fires within two or three blocks of the house in a year, although I do not think that the ghosts were necessarily involved.

A friend of ours from church, C.C., rented a house with some friends on the north side. A poltergeist named Jefferson terrorized those young girls during their sojourn in his old house. Among his taunts, he would turn off or turn down their music, scratching the needle off their vinyl records. He would suggest that they stop playing piano by touching their shoulders. He would fill the house with his cigar smoke. He would make the toilet paper fly off the roll. Last, he appeared to them, the top part of his torso drifting the house or appearing at the foot of their bed. He was not hospitable. Apparently, they found in research that paralysis or amputation required his use of a wheelchair in life, and he shot himself in the stomach, as I recall. They fled after he appeared over them in the nighttime; lease be damned. C.C., by the way, never believed in ghosts and is a rational, smart, educated, devout woman.

I know of more alleged interactions with the not yet departed, but these are the accounts in which I have the most confidence.

I also have struggled a great deal in adulthood with Halloween, even more now that we have kids. The struggle is common: is this revelry harmless or harmful given the imagery and tales associated with the day? I’m all for revelry, mind you, but the imagery and tales do begin to run up against Christian faith. Even so, I’m all for mocking Death. Where is its sting, after all?



Here’s the rub in my mind. It’s all just good fun if it’s just imaginary. What could be the big deal for flirting with something wholly fantastic? We read, watch and love Harry Potter. I am conversant with the Force. I am a big fan of Samwise Gamgee and Galdalf the Grey.

In Halloween, however, we find a good deal of focus on ghosts, kind and unkind, witches and magic. I believe that magic exists in many forms, including love, grace and miracle, but the Good Book contemplates and condemns another sort as well. All the witches I’ve known seem to believe in themselves. Above, I demonstrated some commerce with the ghosts, too. Thus, Halloween bothers me, because I do not believe it is a flirtation with fantasy.



What to do? Let us honor and trip with the Dead for a night; we’re all on our way home anyway. By all means, let us disguise ourselves for revelry and fun, so long as we do not neglect our souls in the process. Let us please be careful not to worship anything other than God accidentally along the way. Let us eat candy and speculate on the mysteries of this funny life.