A Place for Spirits to Visit

Sunrise at Merry Mount

As we approach Hallow’s Eve and All Saint’s Day, our attention is drawn wherever we look to ghosts, goblins, and spirits of all kinds-some good, some bad, some Saints, and some sinners, just like us folks who remain alive.  Accounts of spirits returning to earth abound in folklore both on All Saint’s Day and especially on the day before.

THE WHEEL

At the first strokes of the fiddle bow

the dancers rise from their seats.

The dance begins to shape itself

in the crowd, as couples join,

and couples join couples, their movement

together lightening their feet.

They move in the ancient circle

of the dance. The dance and the song

call each other into being. Soon

they are one — rapt in a single

rapture, so that even the night

has its clarity, and time

is the wheel that brings it round.

In this rapture the dead return.

Sorrow is gone from them.

They are light. They step

into the steps of the living

and turn with them in the dance

in the sweet enclosure

of the song, and timeless

is the wheel that brings it round.

~ Wendell Berry

Here at Merry Mount, some folks have said that they feel a strange presence as they approach the bottom platform of the darkly stained staircase that leads to the second floor of our farmhouse.  While I have not experienced that feeling myself, I do welcome it.  In fact, I offer the rocker that is positioned nearby to any spirit that may want to sit and relax for a while or better yet, as Wendell Berry writes, that may want to join us in a dance or song.

It is my understanding that a past owner, Dorothy Self, possessed a large and benevolent spirit during her lifetime, and like us, loved the house and property.  Perhaps she returns from time to time to sit and bask in the ambience of this place.

Excerpt from Haunted Houses

All houses wherein men have lived and died
  Are haunted houses.  Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
  With feet that make no sound upon the floors. 

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
  Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
  A sense of something moving to and fro. 

There are more guests at table, than the hosts
  Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
  As silent as the pictures on the wall. 

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
  The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
  All that has been is visible and clear. 

            -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All Soul’s Night 1917

You heap the logs and try to fill
The little room with words and cheer,
But silent feet are on the hill,
Across the window veiled eyes peer.
The hosts of lovers, young in death,
Go seeking down the world to-night,
Remembering faces, warmth and breath–
And they shall seek till it is light.
Then let the white-flaked logs burn low,
Lest those who drift before the storm
See gladness on our hearth and know
There is no flame can make them warm.

- Hortense King Flexner

Here at Merry Mount, we embrace all spirits that may show themselves.  In fact, among others, we would like to once again feel the warmth we once felt from Lynda, Charles, Robbie, Lura, Kim, Trish, and Alex.  We hope that they waft in on this year’s All Saint’s Day.

CPW