BY MAGGIE BEAMGUARD | Insider Editor
My inherited copy of “Charleston Ghosts” opens with a story about “Old House” on Edisto Island, South Carolina. The house came under ownership of some of my extended family members in the 1970s. In the early 80s, my family paid them a visit at their one story house, with its attic and dormer windows.
While everyone said goodbye on the piazza, my grandparents walked me, age four or five, to their car. While we waited, I pointed to the central attic window. “Who is that?”
Everyone who had been at the gathering, other than us, was standing on the porch. My Grandmama Mickey reportedly got a shiver. Margaret Camille Frampton was a superstitious woman who threw salt over her shoulder and never stepped on a crack or split a post when walking with someone. She knew exactly what I’d seen: the ghost of the German tenant of the home who, according to legend, had been murdered after cheating people out of their money.
I don’t know whether I saw the German’s apparition or whether my grandmother grasped an opportunity to further embellish a good story.
October is the season for such tales, which is why it recently came to mind. Wandering and restless spirits are rumored to roam. Terrifying spooks and spectres are the antagonists of many a haunted tale from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.”
After four decades I don’t suppose it matters what I saw or what she said I saw. It never caused me to lose sleep. It’s now a memory.
Memories are not benign. This one conjures for me the image of my grandmother in a neat floral shirtdress, hair curled and pinned to accentuate her widow’s peak, with a mischievous smile and a characteristic twinkle in her eye. If shenanigans were about, she was up to them.
This is not a neutral memory. It twinges with warmth and fullness that once enveloped me in soft arms.
We get the word “ghost” from the Old English gāst, meaning breath, spirit or soul. Ghosts, then, aren’t inherently spooky.
Through this memory that refuses to die, I summon the spirit of Grandmama Mickey. I invoke the breathing life of one I loved and who loved me. She is no ghost switching on lights or rattling drawers. Yet she appears, clear as day and as sure as night.
The older I get, the more I think the ghosts worthy of our attention are not the ones in old houses with creepy attics. They are the people and places that remain with us after they are gone.
Every family and community has them. There are shadows of businesses that once stood on familiar corners. There are phantoms of houses that have been torn down. There are echoes of people whose names come up when someone asks, “Do you remember…?” There are relics of traditions that still hover though they have outlived the people who began them.
The accumulated memory of people who live in Moore County enchants these pages. Stories about things that happened last week or decades ago reveal the breath, spirit and soul of this place in newsprint. Memories have a way of refusing to die. If we are fortunate, they are gratifying rather than harrowing.
I still don’t know who — or what — I saw in that attic window. But after all these years, I know who I see when I remember it. And she is winking at me right now.
Contact Maggie Beamguard at maggie@thepilot.com.