A Summer of Fear: A True Haunting in New England by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

away, just dissipated into thin air. If I’d had a container in my bedroom I might have turned right around and peed in it rather than face leaving the room.
    At the tavern I must have looked as bad as I felt because when my favorite server approached me, she stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, honey,” she sang. “Are you sick? Are you okay?”
    “That bad, huh?” I laughed weakly. I was so tired I wasn’t even sure I could manage to eat, despite how empty my stomach had to have been. I’d barely eaten in two days.
    “Well, you’ve looked rough before but this is about the worse. What’s going on?” She looked so sincere, so caring, I couldn’t help myself.
    I was tired of pretending everything was okay and even though there were tables full of people around me and the room was a little on the quiet side, I spilled my guts to her. I started with the isolation and then told her about the sounds, my inability to sleep, and then ended with the fact that although things were certainly getting better as far as companionship went I still wasn’t sure it was the job for me. I did not, however, tell her where I was working, what my job was, or even which town it was in.
    During my speech she had stood there, hands on her hips, her eyes sympathetic and trusting. When I finished she sat down in the booth across from me and reached out and took my hands. With solemn eyes she said, “I believe everything you said about the ghosts. I think there’s something in that place you’re living in, I do. You look bad, honey, and it can’t just be in your mind. I’ve seen and heard things, too. I know.”
    “Thank you,” I whispered, grateful someone else believed me. Just getting it all off my chest again helped. I’d talked to the girls in my hostel, the woman in the Salem shop, and even the Czech girls at the resort but somehow talking to this woman was different. She’d seen me from the beginning. In a way, she’d been on this journey with me.
    She smiled. “I just hope you’re not living out on Bethlehem Road because that place is awful. I dated a guy out there once and it’s got bad spirits. Awful ones. Not the good kind that you want around.”
    I looked at her with wide eyes. “That’s exactly where I’m staying.”
    She turned a little pale. “You’re not up at that farm house are you? The resort?”
    “Yes,” I nodded, eager. “ Yes ! Why?”
    “Oh, God,” she slapped her forehead. “Everyone around here knows about that place. That house is crazy haunted. All kinds of bad stuff. And that pond, too. Have you been to it? Honey, get out of there!”
    “I went to the pond a few times,” I said, a little unfocused. “I tried to walk around. Something didn’t feel right.”
    “Of course it didn’t,” she agreed. “I’ve heard all kinds of stories about it. Things thrown in it, things buried at the bottom…even that it covers up some caves and burial grounds. But the farm house…that’s another story.”
    “What happened there?” I asked excitedly. “Do you know ? What is it?” Because I still felt if I could just figure out what “it” was, maybe I could learn to live with it… or make it go away.
    “I don’t know,” she replied a little sadly. “But growing up, we used to even dare each other to walk up to it, go to the grounds when everything was closed. That’s how bad of a reputation it has.”
    “Did you ever see anything there? Can you tell me?”
    She nodded. Once, when I was a teenager, I went up there with my boyfriend. It was March, maybe early April. Everything was closed. They don’t have a caretaker living up there year-round, as you know. We poked around the pond but it was so dark and really foggy. I didn’t like it. I made him leave. Then, as we were walking back to the parking lot I felt like someone was watching me. I kept turning around, looking behind me, but nobody was there. I started walking faster, just pulling him along. We got all the way to the car and I