A Ghost Story...Maybe.//October 216th, 2021

 Since yesterday was National Paranormal Day, I started thinking about paranormal experiences I’ve had, and if any of them might be worth talking about. Sadly, most of them are pretty basic. I really don’t think stories of seeing the ghosts of my cats running around the house are worth a whole post. However, there was one very strange thing that happened to me when I was younger, that may or may not have actually been paranormal, but I think it makes a pretty interesting story regardless. 

When I was little, my paternal grandparents owned a house in upstate New York, in the literal middle of nowhere. My mother referred to the area as “the boonies”, and always seemed a bit creeped out by it. Rightfully so, at least in my childhood mind. The house was very big, very old, and very spooky. It gave the impression that it was from an entirely different time period. Even though it was a house that had apparently been in my family for years, it was hard to imagine its past without conjuring creepy images of a bygone era, or, at the very least, cartoony, haunted house stereotypes. And that’s not even getting into the rickety old barn on the property. When we would occasionally spend the night there, no matter which room I was in, I was always in “sleep with one eye open” mode. 

Nothing all that strange ever actually happened inside the house, though. The strangest experience I had there, actually happened one sunny, summer afternoon. 

We had gone up tp the house for a long weekend, and my cousins, Michael and Lauren, were there as well. Michael and Lauren were far more outgoing than I ever was as a kid, and literally had a tendency to make friends wherever they went. They had been at my grandparents’ house for a few days already before I got there, so I wasn’t at all surprised when another little girl suddenly appeared in the yard one afternoon. It actually annoyed me a bit, as I was such a shy kid. I relaxed easily with my cousins, but the fact that they always seemed to be bringing new people around, wherever we might be, was exhausting to me. 

It wasn’t until Michael said “This is our friend, Loretta”, that I actually even looked at the girl. And that’s when everything started to feel just plain weird. 

The name struck me right away. I’d never met a child named Loretta before. At the time, I associated it with some distant relative of my mother’s; a cousin’s other aunt or something like that, a much older woman, probably around my grandparents’ age, who always complained that my mother’s cousins invited the children in the family to weddings. Loretta couldn’t possibly be the name of a girl my age! Loretta was a cranky old woman’s name, or so I thought. Honestly, to this day, I have never met another person close to my own age named Loretta. I’ve met a couple more with that name, but they’ve all been at least old enough to be my mother.

Having what sounded like an older woman’s name, though, probably wouldn’t have been so strange if it hadn’t been for the way Loretta looked. Her hair was short, with a thick, fabric headband, and she wore high-waisted beige shorts with a belt, and a white shirt with s vest in the same shade of beige as her shorts. The girl looked straight out of a class photo from the 1970s!

This picture is obviously not exact, but it’s the closest to the same aesthetic and vibe that I remember getting from Loretta. 

I don’t remember any of the conversations I had with Loretta explicitly, but she definitely seemed to take to me more than my cousins, once I was there, which was almost a supernatural thing in itself. Why another child would choose quiet, somewhat boring at the time me, over my magnetic-personality cousins, is something I can’t fathom even now. I don’t even know what her story was, if she lived in the house behind my grandparents or was visiting her own relatives there or what, but there was a swing set in between the two houses that we played on. Loretta and I usually sat on the “seesaw” type swing, just swinging and talking while my cousins did all sorts of crazy daredevil stuff, and as young as I was (I think this all happened when I was either eight or nine.) I definitely could tell she was an old soul. At the time, I thought she was a little like me, just more interested in deep and introspective things than typical children’s games, but the more I thought about her after the years went on, the more I remember her as someone who acted like she’d been a child for a long, long time. She carried herself in a way that suggested she knew things, not in the know-it-all way of that kid on the playground who always had to be the leader, but in the sense that she’d actually seen a lot. Who knows, perhaps she was just lonely and bored, spending her summer in “the boonies”, but she seemed bored in the sense that she’d seen many playmates come and go over the course of time, and just wished she could finally grow up. Another strange thing was, whoever actually owned the house where Loretta was staying, had a dog that would bark and howl like there was no tomorrow whenever we were on the swings. I have a very distinct memory of a woman standing behind him at one point, looking around as if she couldn’t see whatever he was barking at. That’s the image that has stayed with me over the years, when every so often, these events pop into my head and I start to wonder if maybe, somehow, Loretta was a ghost.

I never saw her again after that summer, and she was never really talked about after that. The few times I ever mentioned her to my parents or my cousins, they had no recollection of her, but then, I’m not sure if my parents actually met her, and for my cousins, Loretta was probably just one insignificant face in the constant crowd of kids they always seemed to attract wherever they went. 

The most likely explanation is that Loretta was just a little girl who was probably named after a relative, had a somewhat outdated sense of fashion, and a more mature personality than I was used to seeing in my peers. But there are times when I really think about that summer weekend, and wonder if that girl I met, who looked like she’d stepped right out of a photograph from at least two decades earlier, could actually have been a lonely spirit. 

Either way, I wish I knew the girl’s last name. I’d like to be able to find a social media account...or an obituary. 

Stay spooky, my friends.