To get to my full family tree, click here to visit the MyHeritage site.

Also I’d like to build links in my family tree to individuals as I tell their stories.

Last October, after spending much longer than planned touring the Boston area, my daughter and I drove south on the Pilgrim Highway to Cape Cod where our reservations for a 2-night stay at a bed and breakfast included dinner. I selected a large old home built in the 1700’s because it was right along the old King’s Highway in Yarmouth Port and I fancifully thought to commune at night with my ancestors Gabriel WHELDEN and Giles HOPKINS who had been part of the group originally surveying and constructing portions of that highway.

Checking the time, I realized we would miss the 6 p.m. check-in time so I called. A woman answered and when I identified myself she said “Oh, we will still honor your reservation.” …Huh? That’s weird. I asked her what was the problem and she said about a month ago the owner had died suddenly.

She quickly assured me there would be someone waiting for us. I got the impression that there would not be many guests and as it turned out we would be the only living people spending the night in a very large very old three story mansion. An hour later, when pulling into the large parking area, we noticed only one truck parked in the back. Very few lights were on, only enough to get us to the front porch and in the front door.

The person meeting us showed us to our room on the second floor, toting along a portable heater. He made recommendations for places to eat and gave us keys to our room and the front door. He said he would be around for a while doing some repairs so don’t mind any thumps we heard. Since the New England weather had suddenly turned cold we instantly cranked up the space heater.

Pausing in
the entry before we left for dinner he handed us the memorial card for the deceased owner and I asked if he had been ill for a while. I got a rather pained but vague answer along the lines of “not really” so decided to ask no more questions.

After we returned from dinner I checked the front desk register and noticed that there had been no guests recently and the now-deceased owner had written my home phone number, not my cell phone number to contact. In a way that explained why I had not heard from them but we were still mystified because although I had been in Boston for a week and the owner had died the month before that. Likely they noticed the register while I was in Boston and panic ensued.

There were only enough lights on for us to get up to the second floor and to our room. The dining area was a dark cavern and the other room doors were closed and locked. When we were on the second floor landing, I stopped and looked up to the third floor which was in total darkness. Once we settled into our room I had trouble going to sleep. It seemed all night long I heard random thumps and creaks and I was too distracted to think about communing with my highway-building ancestors as I sensed too many other energies in the house. My daughter was no help – she fell asleep quickly and slept like a log.

The next morning, one table in the smaller dining room was set up to serve us breakfast. Our server was friendly but clearly this was his first time doing something like this. As we enjoyed our coffee we planned our day of visiting family cemeteries, doing a little research and stopping at a small beach bearing the Crosby family name. Noticing mention of a swimming pool and curious how that was integrated with a 1700’s house I asked our server if I could see the pool. I received a very quick answer “no”. Ok…

After finishing our breakfast, we grabbed what we needed for the day and headed to our car. The woman who answered the phone the day before passed us and said “thanks for moving”. I actually got all the way to the car before the message sank into my sleep-deprived brain. My well-rested daughter picked up on it sooner and had been trying to get my attention. We decided we should find out what she meant so reversed our course to go back into the building.

Apparently the group of people trying to run the place had decided to start working on the floor in the dining room and they were expecting us to move to the Carriage House located behind the main house for the second night. Unfortunately, no one had told us! So our departure was delayed while we repacked, they took our luggage to rooms in the Carriage House and we exchanged room keys. A Carriage House sounds charming but the furniture reminded me of a collection of leftovers out of the 50’s and I found no charm. Since each room had one full size bed, my daughter and I were in separate rooms.

We had a full day of activities planned and didn’t return until about 8 p.m. This time the place was clearly deserted and there were no lights on in the main house. The only light was one in the very top turret room of the house. We made our way to the carriage house, fortunately that walkway was lighted, and as we entered we stopped to examine narrow stairs next to my room leading down to either the basement or a lower level. A cold draft was coming up from below.

Not only that but the Carriage House was very cold. While in Boston, the weather had turned cold it and had even snowed a little the day before we left. So we quickly looked for the trusty space heater we had relied on the night before and it was nowhere to be found. Then we fiddled with the thermostat to try to get it to work. Nothing happened. We looked for the space heater more desperately with no luck. It was likely the furnace was down those cold narrow stairs but I wasn’t going to try to fix it. The guy who greeted us the night before had given us his phone number in case of an emergency and this was certainly an emergency. I called, there was no answer so I left a message. We waited for him to call back and discussed other options. As time passed we used our phones to search for other lodging nearby, figuring a regular hotel would take us in.

So at about 9 p.m. at night my daughter hand wrote a tactful note, (mine was not tactful) using our key and her phone for lighting to put it in the main lobby of the pitch dark, deserted main house, and we literally fled to a Doubletree in Hyannis. We desperately needed a modern place with a staffed reception desk, other guests, heat, and fluffy white towels in the bathroom. And a bar.

Ghosts usually don’t bother me considering I spend a lot of time during my New England travels visiting cemeteries. However, I think visiting with the ghosts of former ancestors is much more pleasant than the ghosts of strangers.

In this blog I have not mentioned the name of the B&B since it is now under new management. However, a search of haunted hotels on Cape Cod will bring up the name.

Uncle Bob used to call me “the digger” and for so many years I would dig around, collect information about my ancestors and then well…  just collect it.  I wasn’t quite sure what I WAS going to do with all that stuff.  Write a book?  Publish scholarly genealogical articles?  Hold seances?

Well, it’s about time to so something.  I AM writing some articles for our genealogy group quarterly publication and what I decided to do here (for the moment) is to write the side stories about my adventures of digging for ancestral gold.