This is a truish* story.

While planning a trip for the memorial of an uncle (in the Fall of 2012), I learned that some relatives from a different branch of the family would be in town at about the same time. Since it was within a week of the planned celebration and because it included a tripping to my sister Shawn’s mountain cabin (which I absolutely love for its healing mountaintop qualities), I decided to extend my plans. I looked forward to having a wonderful getaway to the mountains with my mom, sister, aunt, and niece.

I was originally going to arrive in Seattle within half an hour of my ex-sister-in-law and niece, but the latter two missed their flight by just four minutes and were forced to fly in the next morning. They returned home for the night while my sister retrieved me for dinner with her family and our other sister. It turns out that my niece’s kittens had been neutered the week before and were wearing those collars that prevent pets from messing with their stitches. When she arrived home from their missed flight, she found one of her kittens fighting mightily with the collar. Further examination revealed a tangled collar string that was actually choking the cat. This bit isn’t actually a part of the ghost story - just a side story to let you know: We don’t believe in coincidences.

My ex-SIL and niece arrived as (newly) hoped Friday morning, without any further delays. After repacking and shopping, we headed out for our weekend away.

On the way, Shawn and I let the others know that a group of folks were planning their fourth annual rave near the cabin. We admitted to being a bit uneasy about this for a couple of reasons. The first being practical as we’d seen a flyer for the party and knew they would be literally playing with fire - planned bonfires and Poi performances (spinning fire, which I actually enjoy watching) - in an area where the fire danger was very high during a year when more than 12 fires had already caused plenty of damage. The second reason we were uneasy was that they were also playing with fire in a much more figurative way - dancing with darkness in the mouth of a tunnel connected with a horrible train accident that left 96 people dead just over one hundred years ago.

Since I’d known about the rave before leaving home, I brought some protection crystals and stones with me and had purchased sage and sweet grass for smudging purposes in Seattle. Not knowing ahead of time about the openness of our relatives (since we basically knew them from childhood more than as adults), we started out telling them about everything rather tentatively. It turns out we needn’t have been so cautious as they are as psychically sensitive as my sister and I.

Once up at the cabin, we took a quick tour through the neighborhood finding more than the usual number of residents present and a brand new sign posted at the head of the pathway to the tunnel. It clearly stated that the tunnel was closed, with absolutely no trespassing allowed. We also saw a sheriff cruising the area. This helped all of us to calm down and hope for a decent night’s sleep rather than the edgy, ready-to-flee-a-forest-fire-in-the-middle-of-the-night possibilities that we had presumed. A fire that likely would have also taken out the nearby ski resort since the closest decent fire equipment is an hour away.

I want to take a moment to explain the layout of the cabin here. There is a steep incline up to the “front door” which brings you into a foyer type of entrance on the basement or bottom floor. Originally this floor didn’t exist but due to a particularly high snowpack one year, which shifted the cabin off its foundation, my sister finished it off into a more usable space. The remodel added a couple of bedrooms, bathroom, and storage. From the basement entry you go up an “L” shaped set of stairs to the hallway of the second floor. If you go straight ahead you’ll enter one of the two bedrooms on this floor. To the right is another bedroom, a bathroom, and a door out to a back deck. To the left is the kitchen and living room-dining area. On this floor, off the living area is an outdoor balcony type of deck and the stairway to the top, loft style floor which holds a room where you can watch movies and the master bedroom.

Back to our story: After settling in and setting up a protection altar on the wood stove (which we wouldn’t be using over the weekend due to the dry conditions) I took to smudging.** My sister asked me to focus on a couple of places where she had recently noticed hinky energy in the upper part of the cabin. I also opened myself to other parts of the cabin that might need special care and started my work. Beside another small part of one of the rooms that my sister had mentioned and a few spots in the room upstairs, I found a very concentrated area along with some other lighter spots in one of the rooms downstairs.

During and after the smudge I noted a couple of the oddities out loud to the rest of the group. We had fun trying to figure out what might or might not have been the cause, deciding eventually with a chuckle that we actually might not want to know what someone had done to create the hinkiness.

Friday evening we chatted, getting reacquainted and going into more detail about the train wreck the ravers had planned on tapping into. While we were talking, four of the five of us discovered that we shared a common feeling of uneasiness about the bottom floor of the cabin. (I love stumbling on synchronous feelings, and this one was very pronounced to us. It can seem very validating to find others who share our intuitional truths.) We all agreed that our disconcerted feelings were more of an agitated sort of feeling. Each of us felt that it didn’t really feel threatening, just uncomfortable and somewhat off-putting. It was more a feeling as though we could spend time downstairs but wouldn’t want to spend more time than necessary and would really prefer to be elsewhere, given the choice. We were all very glad not to have to sleep downstairs.

At one point, during the early part of the weekend, we mused that perhaps some of the spirits of passengers from the train accident were “camping out” down there. Our SIL offered that they may have followed the stream that runs by my sister’s cabin up from the tunnel since spirits and water have a known and strong connection.

Saturday morning we chatted happily about having survived the night and about the rave not setting the mountain on fire. We also planned our day ahead, traveling down the other side of the mountain to a fun little town celebrating Octoberfest. We dined on a wonderful breakfast of omelets and fruit then headed out. As I shut the door my sister noticed the lock acted oddly. Our SIL had already suggested we pick up some graphite for the lock upstairs while we were out so my sister figured it could wait until we returned.

The festival was fun from parade to the keg tapping, arts and crafts show, and all the usual stores presenting their best selves. We stopped in several shops, including one that sold crystals and other treasures. Four of the five of us happily added to our collections. We wandered through the art show, listened to some wonderful native music, and raised a glass in celebration. Once piled back in the car, we picked up a couple of groceries to restock the cabin, the graphite dust, and headed back up the hill.

When we got back to the cabin, the downstairs lock wouldn’t budge with the key. Since we didn’t have anything to cut the off top of the graphite tube, my sister went through the upstairs backdoor and came back through the cabin with the necessary tools. (I have to say that I’ll be adding graphite to my tool box right along side the WD-40 when I get back home - it's a great little tool.) Once back inside the cabin we didn’t think another thing of the lock sticking and settled back in upstairs.

That evening, after sharing an enjoyable dinner, we played an extended game of Apples to Apples® and had a great time visiting and talking about our various sensitivities then toddled off to bed.

Since my body was still working three hours ahead of everyone else, I woke up early Sunday morning, decided to sit in the living room area, and watch the sun rise. As I cozied in under an antique quilt on the couch I figured I might as well try to figure out more about the energy everyone agreed to not liking on the first floor. Even after the smudging, the energy concentrations had still seemed to be there.

I am by nature an intuitive and empathic huming who works through my heart so much that I often have to translate things within myself through my head and into words so that I can see them well enough to share with others. I have a system of checks in my body that help as I try to get as close as possible to descriptive words so that I can more fully understand what I’m feeling, knowing that I may not have the grace of time or additional information to get exactly precise. But, I can get close given the time. (Note to friends: this is why it sometimes takes me time to answer what most would consider easy or simple questions. I’m feeling for the most precise truth and translating that into words.)

And so I sat in the dark talking to the Universe and myself while trying to see if I could figure out the energy that I felt downstairs. My sister has felt this "uneasiness" possibly since they first bought the cabin (she can’t be sure exactly when, but knows it’s been for most of the time they’ve owned it). I have felt it since the first time I visited. The other two (SIL and niece) hadn’t been there before but noticed it right away, before any of our discussions about it.

As I sat quietly on the couch, wrapped in my quilt and looking out at the black silhouette of trees merged with mountain, I could describe the energy right away as not being harmful or dangerous. That came easily. And, although it was an agitated feeling, it didn’t seem aggressive at all. It felt more… lost. More like grief or sadness, but not quite even those. Lost really is the closest I could get. And, maybe tentative. But definitely palpably present.

I decided to try to pinpoint these feelings a little more specifically since it was surprising me that I was getting such clear answers. I tried on a few different scenarios before I defined what could be best explained as the energy of a young boy.

This is where my head gets too involved at times. My puzzle-solving passion can get tangled up with my love of creating stories and, well… I can too quickly fix on a story that makes sense to me but might not be appropriate to the reality of the situation. I have to also add that I knew only the smallest facts about the train accident. Though my sister has a book at the cabin written about the accident, I hadn’t yet picked it up.

As the sky started to lighten showing the sun’s first hints of rising, and the mountain separated from the trees into a hazy dark gray, I came up with a story. I felt that one of the young boys from the Wellington tragedy had found his way up to my sister’s place, probably attaching to her on one of her early walks down the hill. This made sense to me because she is one of those people who helps lost souls like the homeless or the wandering. She helps them by actually seeing them rather than looking past them as so many of the rest of us do. She hears their plight and does what she can to help them move toward their own success. One of her main talents is networking for people. Her connections ease people’s pathways. It was easy for me to imagine that this little boy might have “seen” her inviting soul walking nearby on one of her hikes near the tunnel opening and might have longingly followed her back.

I decided that this boy would be on the younger side because he felt well-behaved to me. That was such an odd description when it came up that it stuck in my head. When I was forming the story, well-behaved fit with a boy about five years old. I felt that he would stay downstairs in order to be near people, but since he simply followed my sister and hadn’t been invited to do so outright that he would have stayed downstairs rather than inviting himself up where people spend most of their time when visiting the cabin. The energy didn’t feel as though it went beyond the top of the stairs into the second level. It actually didn’t feel that way to any of us. It felt as though the “creepiness” was mostly on the ground floor (where main entrance is). This is one of the things that made it feel "well-behaved."

It was around this point in the forming of my story that my sister woke up. She had planned on going back to bed to sleep in - it was the weekend after all and she works very hard during the week. But I was ready for company and was just a bit excited about what I felt I was discovering so I tempted her with, “Go ahead (sigh)… I won’t tell you about the little boy downstairs then.” She hates me now, especially since I woke her up to talk the prior morning at 5am. Hey, that’s what big sisters are for, right?

After relaying my story to her, which she found plausible enough, she decided that the little boy's name was Johnny. Since I’d already been in the zone of fact-checking, I immediately tested the name Johnny and found that didn't seem to fit. I quickly took a few names through my body checks and found Billy was a much closer match, though it still felt a little off.

Shortly after this, the rest of the group began waking. We quickly caught them up on our story. We all decided that Billy should be put in charge of the cabin mice who come in to live and borrow the cabin when people are scarce. Since that can cause all kinds of problems my sister has opted to trap them. After trying several different styles of traps, beginning with the live variety, she found one that works well but isn’t the most humane and seems rather cruel. Since we all prefer not harming others it made sense to ask Billy to help out.

Without telling each other ahead of time, as we went about packing our things for our trek back to civilization, each of us ended up telling Billy that he was welcome to stay in the cabin and act as mouse wrangler and general protector of the cabin. He needed to be respectful and to not harm anything but he could stay until he was ready to go into the light. Our SIL even told him if he wanted to keep one mouse as a pet he could name it Mickey. (She lives in Southern California.) But, we insisted, they weren’t to make a mess or otherwise wreak havoc.

I also surmised that Saturday’s stuck lock was due to his feeling our understanding and acceptance of him, reading it as acceptance and invitation, and that he explored a little upstairs while we were gone. Since we left without most of our stuff, it was obvious that we were coming back. Being unsure of how long it was going to be and wanting to fully check out the upstairs, he messed with the lock so he’d have time to get back to his spot downstairs while we were getting back into the cabin.

Once I offered this explanation to everyone, we thought back and realized that the energy had notably shifted in the cabin while we were gone on Saturday. We all agreed about the agitation energies that we felt only downstairs but we now found that the energy didn’t feel “lost,” in fact it felt much closer to “happy” - almost joyful - and certainly more solicitous rather than hesitant and tentative. It was no longer contained on the bottom floor either. It felt very much to me as though Billy were right there with us in the common living area.

As I was privately talking to Billy, urging him to keep the mice out of the cabin, I felt a full body hug which was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. It definitely felt enveloping. It also felt cold in a get-the-chills sort of way. Because of what I’ve heard before about lost souls attaching to living people, and because I had a lot of work to do when I returned home, I immediately told him that he needed to stay there and couldn’t come home with me. (I was maybe a little too quick in my response but... Hey! I was a little freaked out about even a child ghost touching me for the first time.) I reminded him that he was chief mouse wrangler, that he’d have lots of company, and that if he needed to he could communicate with me long distance.

We packed our things, cleaned up the cabin, ate breakfast, said goodbye to Billy, and trekked back to the city. The next day (Monday) I had the opportunity to go to the main library downtown and search old newspapers for more specifics about the train wreck. I discovered that there were a lot fewer children who died in the accident than we had suspected. I was finally able to find the names of most of them but was missing some ages. I didn’t find any Billy. But I did find a Francis, male child, age unknown with a sister. It turns out both Francis’ father and grandfather (on his mother’s side) were named William. My SIL guessed that maybe Francis’ middle name was William (we still don’t have that information) and that maybe they called him Billy. That certainly seemed feasible.

After a little more research, I have a different story. I actually think that we have two ghosts. It turns out Francis was only 8 months old at the time of his death. That age and feeling doesn’t match up at all with the readings I was getting while at the cabin. However, his sister, Lillian (or Lilly!) was nine. The tentative feelings I had felt definitely would line up with a nine-year-old Victorian-era girl. Tentative and well-behaved or well-mannered, knowing her "place".

Lilly and Francis’ mother and brother survived the wreck. Their grandfather died and their grandmother also survived. It turns out that the previous December their father was killed in a railroad yard accident by a locomotive. In fact, the family was traveling back home with grandpa (and grandma) so they could complete some legal work due to daddy's death when tragedy struck again with the Wellington disaster. Grandma survived along with Ida (mom to Lillian and Francis) and 7-year-old brother, Raymond. I’m guessing that grandpa’s spirit went directly to watch over grandma and that he lost track of Lillian and Francis. Since mom and brother survived, the two children were lost to wander. There is another (local to the area) woman who believes some of the children wander the area around Wellington. It’s my belief that Lilly may be one of those children. I’m very curious whether the hauntings at the other end of the tunnel will change at all with our “healing” at the cabin.

It also turns out that I was misinterpreting the area where I felt the concentrated energy in the room downstairs. I felt a muskmelonish-sized ball of energy in a place midway between the floor and the ceiling in one of the downstairs bedrooms. When I went back into the room after smudging, which I had done without turning on the lights, I noticed that the area was just below a fishing tackle backpack and next to some arrows. These items were what had focused me on it being a little boy. Sexist of me, I know, especially when I myself am an archer.

When we all went back down to check it out a bit further, we also noted a photo of a couple of women fishing (from the general turn of the century time period) and a drawing done by my sister’s daughter of a train locomotive. Our jaws dropped when we saw the obviously childlike train drawing so near the concentrated energy. These things are all within about a foot of each other. Before I found out that Francis was too young to match the presence I felt, I discovered that his parents were married in Minnesota and his older sister was born there. I thought the fishing connection could be another reason for comfort in that general area.

What my sister later pointed out to me (once I found out that Francis was a baby), was that the collection of goodies in that corner is all set on and around an antique baby chair. The energy I felt would be about where his head would be if he were sitting there - the energy that was about the size of a baby’s head. I am not making any of this up!

I’m convinced that Lillian and Francis are the spirits in the cabin. I think that it’s actually mostly Lilly’s energy that filled the basement, though I have no doubt Francis has spent a lot of time in his chair. I am hopeful that the acceptance and loving guidance we all gave them during our visit has helped them get closer to finding their way Home. Until then, we hope they’ll help keep the mice outdoors so they can live long and fruitful lives.


*truish: Because it is based on real events, feelings and sensations but includes interpretations that cannot be proven to be real at this point in time.

**smudging: Many cultures throughout the time humings have had easy access to fire have used some form of smudging, from the use of sage (by Native American Indians and folks of the pagan persuasion) to the use of incense (in the Far East and by the Catholic church). I employ the use of sage to help move negative energies and spirits out of an area or from an object (living or otherwise) and use sweetgrass to invite positive energies and spirits in to replace them.


UPDATE! Since our trip up to the cabin, my sister has been back several times. Only one additional mouse has been caught, rather than the usual eight per vacancy. The energy shift has continued to hold. It may also be possible that Lilly is getting a bit more interactive with guests who stay downstairs. We'll see what comes next.