The Captain and His Wife

WV- The Mallow Family Farm is haunted by two ghosts. One of them is Capt. Dougherty, a

confederate civil war captain who walks the central staircase repeatedly during the day and the

night. He evidently had a wooden leg to replace his own. An observer can clearly hear the

difference between his "step" and the "thump" of wood as he walks. The other ghost is his wife,

who haunts the upstairs bedroom. She is always seen wearing a purple dress, and is often staring

out the window. The room, even in the heat of summer, is deathly cold. And no matter how it is

blockaded, the doors leading from the room to the stairs and to the attic cannot be closed. On

one occasion they were nailed and wired shut. The next morning they were open and the wire was

hanging loose from the doorknob. The "purple lady" also speaks, it seems. Once, a young lady

was sleeping in the haunted bedroom. During the night, she awoke and heard a woman tell her, "You

should turn over before you fall out of bed." The girl looked, and she was hanging over the

edge of the bed. Thanking the woman, she turned over and went to sleep. The next morning, she

thanked her aunt (the only other woman in the house), but her aunt knew nothing about it. They

attributed it to the "purple lady". Capt. Dougherty himself has only been seen once, though he

has been heard many times. A local schoolteacher moved into the farmhouse, and was unpacking when

she heard movement upstairs. She followed the sounds up to the attic, where she saw a man

sitting in a rocking chair. As she stared horrified, the man removed his head, placed it in his

lap, and laughed as the rocking chair rocked and spun in circles. That is the only reported

sighting of Capt. Dougherty. The teacher moved out the next day. Later, when a family of four

moved in, they reported hearing the footsteps and the "purple lady". They were the ones who

nailed the doors shut, and later found them open.

The two children of the family were evidently the buffers against the spirit's malicious

activities. If any member of the family was home, the ghosts were relatively quiet. If relatives

dropped by and no one was home, they were chased out of the house with loud bangings and thumps.

The father of the family would never spend time in the house alone. Many times the mother and

two boys would return home to find him out in the yard.

I know this from personal experience. That was my father.

By:jsnbrns@yahoo.com

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