A True Haunted House Ghost Story for Halloween: The General Says “Yes”

My friend Randall asked me to go with him to see a house in downtown on California Street that he was thinking about buying.

The house was said to be haunted by a woman. I don’t remember the details of  who she was or why she was supposedly haunting the place. I didn’t really put much stock in the story. The house was built by Civil War Yankee General Vandevere; later he was a US Congressman.

The Realtor led us on a brick path between beautiful yellow rose bushes and I stopped to smell the opening, fragrant  blossoms. We went up a few steps to the wide porch and she let us in.  The interior had been turned into an antique shop and was wallpapered in a mauve and pink stripe. It was a foggy day, and dark, so the Realtor turned on the bright florescent  lighting.

Randall was excited that we might see a ghost, and he kept asking about her.  Instead, however, I sensed him, the General, not her. I smelled his pipe tobacco, and twice I glimpsed a shadow which disappeared. I told Randall the woman wasn’t around,  but the General was.

“Do you think I should buy it?” he asked.

In my ear, the General whispered a breathy sigh “yes.” I answered, “Well, you wanted something downtown and by the beach. The little apartment upstairs would be perfect for you and you could rent the downstairs.”

“What does the General think?” he asked, half joking as we headed outside. “Does the General want me to buy it?”

“Yes,” I answered, “he wants you to have it. He hates how it’s decorated, and he wanted the woman who did this to his house to fail in her business so she would leave.”

When we went outside, the sun was splashing through the fog.  A long stemmed yellow rose was partially broken off the bush and hanging there pointing toward me as I walked down the path.

I knew immediately that the General had picked it for me as a thank you for convincing Randall to buy his house.

Epilogue: I took the rose with me home where, in a vase, it lasted an unusually long time.  Randall wanted me to live in the General’s house, but I never did, although I performed in some local historical plays as the General’s daughter, a horseback traveling librarian.  A few years later,  Randall sold the General’s house for a fat profit, and purchased the tallest building in downtown, an office building  where Erle Stanley Gardner wrote his “Perry Mason” novels. Randall then traded that building for a mansion up the hill.

In the image below, the General’s house is just to the left of the palm trees near the bottom of the image with a car parked in front; the Erle Stanley Gardner building has the green flag on top, and the view in the image approximates that from Randall’s current house. I found this photo here; the site has a link to a surf webcam located on top of the hotel to the right.

Here are other gothic poems by Read Write Poem participants.