Browse:Footfalls (Volume 1, entries 82–83)
Footfalls
Volume 1, entries 82–83. Source context: SPIRITS → GHOSTLORE. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 82
This happened in 1917 in the City of Petersburg, Virginia, on Whych [?] Street in a section of the town called Glanville [?]. I was in the custom of coming home each night - after finishing work - and getting to a particular corner and waiting on a friend of mine. Then we would both proceed on until we got to Clutchfields Laundry. That's where another friend worked. Then the three of us would proceed on home together. This boy that worked at Clutchfields was killed in an automobile wreck. Several months after, on a rainy night we were coming home and we heard footfalls. They were following us. We looked and could not see anything. Then we thought the reflection on the street lamps hid the person from our view. So we stopped and tried to look under the glare of the light to see if we could not see what it was that was following us. We didn't see anything. We walked a little further and we stopped again. As we stopped the footfalls stopped. We walked about three more blocks and these footfalls continued. They followed us until they got to where this boy always used to turn. From there we didn't hear it any more. So I spoke of this when I got home to an old man, a man that had fought in the Civil War, and he said that's something people hear anytime. That there's a crater that's on the right hand side of Whych Street and there were many soldiers killed in there. People see things and hear things most any time of night.
Entry 83
I went to Pittsburgh from Staunton, Virginia, and my husband had rented me a house there. So one night while I was setting there sewing, I was very much disturbed about my children, so I sent the girl I had living with me upstairs to look after them. She came down and said, "Mrs. Baker, what is the matter with you?" She said, "The children is all right." So after awhile in about ten or fifteen minutes I heard someone put the key in the door and unlock it. But no one had a key but my husband. So I heard the tips [tiptoes] going up the steps - you could hear the steps cracking. So I said to Mr. Davis and Mr. Walker, they were boarding with me, "Do you hear that?" And they said, "Yes." And Mr. Davis said, "That ain't nobody but Bummie" - that's what they called my husband. And I say, "Oh, he would not do that." So we got up and we went upstairs to look and see what was going on. Well, I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything up there. I said to Mr. Davis and Mr. Walker, 'I guess that's a token of the man who lives on the third floor, for his wife." She had gone to the hospital. In the meantime then I had forgot my own people. And in a week's time my husband was sick and died. And I never believe anything that that was a token of his death.