A G-G-G-Ghost?

Every once in awhile I hear rational people telling stories about encounters with ghosts.  I respectfully have listened to them wondering what on earth they have experienced.  I didn't to want to believe them for two reasons;  I had never felt anything akin to their descriptions and I felt it was so unlikely to be real as to be absurd. Yet, they were not absurd, so in my mind a grey area of respect mixed with superior doubt, existed.

My studio, that I am using for the next six months, is a single room on the third floor of a former hotel building from 1871 which burned almost to the ground and was rebuilt in 1890.  It was used as a hotel for a very short period of time before it was converted to a school building.  Rumor has it that a ghost has lived there for decades.  When I was a child the ghost was supposed to be on the fifth floor attic level.  In the last twenty years she supposedly roams the third floor near the hand-bell choir rooms. I have always pooh-poohed this notion. The archives, where I have spent many hours the last fourteen months, have a door which moves every time we approached it, but the building is drafty and obviously the door rattles from imperfectly sealed windows. We used to say that Mr. Nobody opened the door, when doors slowly opened or closed, which happened several times each school year.

I have been in my studio for one week and it had been delightful to have a private space in which to paint, draw; make risky attempts and grotesque errors without witness.  Errors are the key to new horizons which flourish in the safety of privacy.  It has been grand. Today, after working effectively for several hours, I had to attend a meeting from 6- 8:20 PM.  I planned on cleaning up and going home right after the meeting, which was one floor below my space.  At 8:30, I climbed the stairs to the dimly lit hallway leading to my studio.  The light is not bright, but it is my space and comfy.  To get to the sink in the bathroom, I have to pass through two other rooms and there is yet one more room past the bathroom. They were all pitch dark, but I know the layout well.  As a poor sleeper, I frequently wander through my house in the dark and I have spent much of my life alone in empty houses.  I am not afraid of the dark, nor of being alone.  I was not alone tonight.

I have experienced many sensations, emotions and experiences; this was unique and new.  I felt very clearly that presence of a woman, likely Victorian.  She was not fully comfortable with me.  I saw nothing, thank God, but I got about my business and got out as quickly as I could. I do not ever want to see anything up there.  The bell teacher, who has worked with her presence for years,  calls her Priscilla.

I have never felt so creeped out in all my days.   I will; not be up there again in the evening.  As winter draws colder and darker, I may find myself in the dark again, but that really doesn't matter as she is there all day as well. I don't know what changed in me, that allows me to sense this now when I did not before, but it is changed and I am not too happy about it. Ignorance was bliss, real bliss.

I may move back home to my house if this keeps up.  Yikes.