The Old Black Gardener of Spencer's Hill

It was our custom to sit out on the back porch and have tea and talk at the end of the day. So my mother and I were listening to the radio and chatting and I got this weird feeling-that feeling of being watched. We had a neighbor whose son had Downes and he liked to hide in our privy hedge and peak at us, so we were used to being watched. When I mentioned it to my mother she became stiff and said, "You feel it? Thank God!" She told me to slowly turn my head to the left and not to speak. I looked, and standing there I clearly saw a black man, wearing bib overalls, no shirt, no shoes, and he had a garden rake or a hoe or something. I opened my mouth to speak to him, and he was just gone.

My mother kept asking me saying, "You saw him? What'd he look like? What was he wearing?" and she would nod when I answered her questions. She then explained to me that this man had been visiting for a few weeks. During the late afternoon when she got off work, Mama had been painting the exterior of a rental house that she owned that was behind the house we lived in. She said she saw the man several times and at first she thought he was real, but when she spoke he would disappear. She said that she had seen him nearly every afternoon, but that he had always been at the back house and never in her yard close to the house we lived in.

We were advised to, upon seeing the ghost again, ask in the name of Jesus Christ what it wanted. My mother did and the ghost never returned.

As a historical footnote, the house next door to us was an old tavern built in the middle 1700. In those days, the road by our house was part of the main route between New York and New Orleans. The land that our homes was built on had been the tavern's garden, the ground in the front yard of the "back house" as we called it was still furrowed and bumpy. We figured the black man must have been a gardener for the tavern.

Another possible explanation for his visits would be the addition we made to our house. The addition was an old tobacco barn that we had dismantled and moved, then reconstructed as a living room and loft bedroom. The barn was bought off of an old plantation nearby, and this plantation, known as Carlbrook, is rumored to be haunted as well. Carlbrook has been turned into a private school.

Ten years ago, we sold the land to a developer who also bought and tore down the tavern. The "back house" was destroyed by a fire.

By the way, my husband thinks I am crazy and doesn't believe at all.