Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf Read Free Page A

marry one of her father’s employees, but Baker refused to let her marry a common working man.
    In truth, the wedding dress belonged to Elizabeth Bell, the daughter of another wealthy merchant in the area, who wore it on her wedding day in 1830. But as Maxwell Scott said in the film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” So the dress has forever been associated with the forlorn lover Anna Baker. It is said she was so upset with her father that she never spoke to him again and never found love again, either.
    When the Baker Mansion became the headquarters for the Blair County Historical Society, the dress was discovered and placed on display under glass. As the story goes, the dress began to move under its own power, swaying back and forth under the glass. The historical society volunteers blamed the movement on loose floorboards that caused the case to shake and the dress to flutter.
    The dress is no longer on display because, according to rumor, it began to shake so violently it nearly shattered the glass case. The official line is that the dress was put away because the fabric was deteriorating. Those who believe in the undying nature of true love know the truth.

The Little Girls’ Dresses
    Sometimes ghosts can return in different forms to the same location. They may knock on doors, turn lights on and off, and even be seen from time to time. Some believe ghosts return to a familiar location to connect to the living world, perhaps to regain some sense of their own humanity. Are their loved ones still thinking about them? Are they still remembering them?

    The house on Allen Street, where the two girls died.
    Others believe spirits never leave, that something traps them in a location; with an emotional anchor in place, they wander places that were once familiar to them until their energy dies or the location changes so dramatically it forces them to move on.
    There can be an emotional link between a ghost and an object, particularly if the ghost once owned it. This link was formed before the person died, and is the foundation of the idea of a haunted object.
    Children, for some reason, are the one exception to that rule. Ghosts of children, who play with toys that do not belong to them and throw tantrums when they are taken away, plague many haunted locations. Investigators often bring toys to investigations as a means of making contact with children.
    With all the hauntings in Chuck and Dodie’s house on Allen Street, the dress in the upstairs guest room might have gone unnoticed. The property has seen much tragedy, and the night two little girls died in a house fire may have invited more spirits inside.
    By the time Chuck and Dodie and their family moved in, the little girls had been dead for almost 20 years. During that time, people had moved in and out of the house, never staying long. The spirits of the young girls had been known to play with and steal tools from the men who worked on the property after the fire. A girl who lived next door always kept the shade pulled down in her room because she had seen the ghost girls across the yard too many times. The police officer who owned the house before Chuck and Dodie said he was selling it because of the strange activity there. Chuck and Dodie only had an odd sense something was wrong and misunderstood the sideways glances from friends who knew the house’s history.
    But there were more than the spirits of the girls in the house. Over the short time they lived there, Chuck and Dodie saw floating balls of light and dark figures, and objects disappeared and reappeared more times than they could count. The ghost girls were the most active, though. Their daughter’s boyfriend spotted them on the landing of the third floor, where they died. They could be heard giggling when they pulled practical jokes, including turning lights on and off when male guests were taking showers.
    The most lasting connection to the house took