By Tom O'Malley, a professor of English and Education at Canisius
College, and a freelance writer published in The Christian
Science Monitor, the English Journal and The Buffalo News. Married with three children, Concord has been like a second home to him ever since he
read Walden in college.
"Our ghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlor..."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I have always enjoyed being afraid. Ghosts scare me. Therefore, I must
like to be around ghosts. I know that sounds a bit odd, especially given
the fact that I have only seen one ghost up close. I was thirteen and my
brother Brian was nine. We were both sleeping when I awoke, or at least I
think I awoke, and saw a shadowy blue woman standing by his bed. For all
the world she seemed to be tucking him in. A benign smile spread across her
face and light surrounded her entire body. Why this spirit should choose to
come to earth just to give my little brother a tuck in, I'll never know.
"De gustibus non disputandum," my father always said. There is no accounting
for taste even in the spirit world. The benign blue spirit lady vanished by
the time my eyes actually got into focus. The experience shocked me into
wakefulness.
"Brian, did you see that?"
"Brian..."
"Brian. Wake up."
Brian never woke up until morning, and I spent several delicious evenings
in a state of fear and pleasure waiting for my blue spirit lady to return.
She never did. My family chalked the whole thing up to indigestion but I
know what I think I saw.
And that's why I came here to Concord.
Concord's Old Manse is probably one of the most historically significant
houses in the United States. Built a few years before the Revolution, it has
sheltered generations of the intellectual Emersons and hosted an
encyclopedic guest-list of American literati. Travelers come here for all
sorts of reasons. Some admire the architecture, others, the furniture,
still others to walk the historic grounds.
I came to the Old Manse is search of ghosts. I dreamed of flying dishes,
rattling chains and voices moaning in muffled chambers. I did not expect to
see my blue spirit lady, but ghosts are smart, and I guessed they would know
that I -- or at least my little brother -- had been visited, by one of their
own.
As twilight approaches, mists rise from the cool waters of the Concord
River. It is a perfect setting for a haunting. Insects are everywhere,
slowing in the chill night air. I arrived at the Old Manse along a path by
the river's slow moving waters, which the Native Peoples called
Musketaquid – river of grassy banks. The river is popular with local
canoeists who can easily paddle in either direction due to its sluggish
current. As I arrived behind the house, fingers of sunlight edged the Manse
's windows, reflecting orange and red back into the evening. It is as if
those windows form a distinctive face, eyes into other times and other
places. If Hawthorne's ghost still lingers; he is content to stay hidden in
the shadows and the wind whispering through the trees.
It is easy to imagine the Reverend William Emerson admiring this same view
as he inspected his new home back in 1770. The river sighs behind me.
There are shadows in the upstairs window. Overhead, a pair of bats gorge
themselves on a banquet of mosquitoes who, in turn, are gorging themselves
on me. A full moon climbs through the zodiac.
It is hard to tell what time it is in Concord. Perhaps it is 1775. Phebe
Emerson, the Minister's wife, sits in her sewing room. She is knitting a
blanket for her eighth child. A portrait of quietude in unquiet times. All
day rumors of impending war have blown through town like leaves before a
storm. From her upstairs window she watches as British Troops line up at
the Old North Bridge. The Concord Minutemen are facing them from atop a
rise, muskets at the ready. When the men see smoke rising from the village,
they believe the Brits are razing their homes. Shots ring out and blood
from both armies stains the ground. Days later, the Reverend Emerson rode
off to join the Revolution, never to return home. People say that Phebe
Emerson often looks for her husband from that same window where she saw the
American Republic being created, though tonight, the window remains shrouded
and empty.
Since that day, many others have left their mark on this house and its windows. Ralph Waldo Emerson, William's grandson, came to the Old Manse
after the death of his wife Ellen in 1834. In despair, Emerson returned to
the home of his grandparents looking for a foundation on which to build a
new life. Perhaps he looked out these same windows and drew peace from the
placid waters of the Concord River as it drifted beneath his room. From
this vantage Emerson watched the change of seasons, felt the regular pulse
of nature, and formulated his groundbreaking understanding of democracy and
man's place in the natural world.
Now the darkness is deepening. In the moonlight I can read the letters
scraped into the upper window by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia.
"Man's accidents are God's purposes." The Hawthornes came to the Manse in
1842 seeking to set up a home for their young family. These were happy
times for them as Nathaniel was close to such literary friends as Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. Here, Nathaniel
wrote a volume of stories entitled Mosses from an Old Manse and Sophia gave
birth to their first child, Una. Often, on nights like this, the gloomy
Hawthorne liked to walk though the local fields or row along the river in a
handmade boat he bought from Thoreau. He found the solitude to be a fountain
that refreshed the well of his creative genius. And his writing flourished
during his three years in this house.
Genial Spirits still haunt Concord's Old Manse. Their presence is as
palpable as the solid grandfather clock purchased by William Emerson in
1770. It still marks the minutes as surely as the steady march of history
flows toward our shadowy future. And while I came to the Old Manse
searching for ghosts, I left filled with something more. For here in this
peaceful corner of Concord, where blood was once spilled, the air is sweeter
and the pathway is lighter, thanks to the words of the writers who lived
inside.
Back in town a church bell rings, and through the curtain of dark
enshrouding three centuries, I walk back toward the Musketaquid and off the
beaten path toward home.
Artwork: Frosty leaf photos by Jacques H; the rest courtesy of Word of Mouth Web Design.
