Ghost Story

Let's see...this house must be nearly two hundred years old.

Maybe not quite.  Kirby was trying to figure it out.

No, I know it's not quite.  But, see, Barney's father was married three times...

'Cause the first two wives died...

Yes, yeah.

Barney's father, William Langley, is that right?  I seem to remember that.

He was married to Jane Crooks.  Then he married Rebecca Penny, yes.  I can tell you a ghost story about his first wife.  

They were living here in this house, and the upstairs wasn't finished.  But he had lumber up there; there was the beams that went across, and he had this lumber up there kind of drying out, you see...it was kind of damp.  And she was here, mixing bread, and she heard this lumber fall....So, when he came home, she said, "Will, some of that lumber fell up there."  "Oh," he said, "It could never fall."  Well, she said, "You go up and look.  I heard an awful noise, and I know it must have been that, because there was nobody up there."  So he went up, and he said, "No, there's no lumber fell."  

And it was two or three days after, some person died in the community, and of course, in those times, they had to make the caskets.  And somebody came to this house and asked him, could he have some of that lumber to build this casket.  And they went up to get this lumber.  "There's the noise I heard!" she said.  When they took the lumber down, it was the same kind of a noise.  So, that was a ghost, wasn't it?