Art & Narrative #5: The Winslow Ghost

THE WINSLOW HOUSE GHOST by Susan Buffum


I checked my watch. It was a few minutes before three o’clock. So far, spending the night alone in the allegedly haunted Winslow House had been a cakewalk. The squeaking and skittering noises in every room had only been mice. The fluttery, rustling sounds had been bats. A cautious journey up the creaking attic stairs had led to the discovery of quite a few of those beady-eyed creatures stitching in and out through the jagged panes of broken glass in the fan-shaped windows at either end of the vast space, the windows the victims of vandalism. The beam of my flashlight had picked out various sized rocks littering on the dust-furred floorboards.


I’m back on the main floor now, in the music room. They claim the ghost of twenty-one year old Alyce Winslow plays the piano forte here. The beautiful, vivacious Alyce had been murdered by her father who, in a fit of rage over her refusal to marry a much older man who had agreed to finance a business venture with him in exchange for her hand in marriage, had strangled her and then hidden her body in a trunk in the attic while claiming that he had sent Alyce away to tour the Continents while reconsidering her refusal to marry.


Earlier, I had raised the lid covering the yellowed ivory keys and tested them. Pressing the keys had produced only discordant notes, flat and dull, a few of the keys simply mute. 


The house is silent now. A slight breeze stirs the boughs of the trees outside the window. Nothing else moves. But then, a sound, as of fabric sweeping across the bare wood floor, causes me to turn from the window…and there she is, a ghastly phantom emerging from the darkness, her dark locks limp, dry, and straggling in front of her desiccated face. A faint luminescence reveals the horror that she is, just as others have described her.


As if unaware of my presence, she floats to the piano forte and sits, as if upon a stool or a bench, although there is nothing there now. Melodic notes fill the room. I cannot move. I am both aghast and mesmerized. As the music reaches a lovely cascade of descending notes, she throws her terrible head back. An ear shattering shriek rends the air.


She rises, turns toward me, arms extended, talon-like fingers reaching, mouth agape. With a newfound will, I urge my legs to move. I flee past the wretched apparition.


At quarter past three in the morning I am running down Kensington Avenue like a madman, screaming, fairly foaming at the mouth. The only thought in my head is to run, to keep running, to not stop running…