How A Ghost Inspired My Writing

Sharing a 19th century farmhouse with an angry and loud ghost was the motivation behind writing Long Shadows. I hoped researching the house’s history would provide clues to reasons for its presence and even exorcise it from my life. Instead, what I discovered became a book narrated by a ghost.  

The property in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia has been in my husband’s family for over one-hundred-and-fifty years, overflowing with everything anyone had brought there since 1854. After the last great-aunt died in 1960, it was inhabited only by black snakes and mice for several decades. We were newly married and young when my husband inherited the place. We had no money to renovate an old house we’d use only for a weekend retreat. So, we did only what was necessary to stay overnight, painting and plastering on weekends, fixing the plumbing, and doing much of the work ourselves. We never removed the furniture, dishes, books, and old clothing, but when we started to renovate, all hell broke loose.  Someone or something was watching and was letting us know they hated change. 

It’s a charming, light-filled place when sunlight pours through the tall, mullioned windows. Each generation built on additions, giving it a delightful higgledy-piggledy character with steps up to some rooms, down to others. I had learned heavy carpentry, could refinish floors and paint anything. This new project excited me. But the first night we slept in my husband’s grandmother’s four-poster bed, I was awakened by the undeniable sound of heavy boots stomping angrily from one side of the room below to the other and then stop. This was only the beginning. When I painted the bedroom woodwork, a door made the sound of slamming for fifteen minutes but never moved. A workman saw someone pass through the dining room when we replaced the roof. When I retiled the kitchen wall, the box of old tiles slid several feet across the floor by itself.  These incidents were repeated many times over as we continued to work. And most of them seemed angry in nature. 

I loved the house and hated that I was too afraid to stay there alone at night. One weekend, deciding to tackle my fear, I prepared to stay there with only our St. Bernard for company. I left every light on in the house before going to bed. Before dawn while the night sky filled the bedroom windows, I awakened. The lights, every single one of them, were off. Going downstairs with the dog creeping at my side, I checked the circuit breaker box. It was in good order, but going back through the house, I pulled every chain, flipped every switch, and pushed every button to turn the lights back on. They had all been individually cut off. 

Because it’s a family house, we knew something about previous inhabitants.  One was my husband’s great-grandfather, Tom, who had been a captive during the Civil War at Ft. Delaware, a Union prison. His life had been more traumatic than those of other ancestors, making me suspect that he was the one likely to be lingering in his childhood home. By exploring Tom Smiley’s past, I thought there was a chance of ridding the house of the uninvited visitor. Using his story as the seed, I’ve written a coming-of-age tale with a different twist that begins when Tom is only eighteen and carries through to the present. 

With the book’s completion, angry activity has stopped, even though work on an old house never ends. I can’t say whether the ghost is gone for good or that his needs have now been met, but in the process, I’ve greatly expanded my own understanding of this country’s troubled history and what it means to live with the sound of cannons rattling windows and soldiers marching past the front door. 

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Abigail Cutter started out as an artist/printmaker with a MFA from George Washington University, but during a long stint at the National Endowment for the Humanities she developed a deep love of American history. She married a man who came with a farm and an 18th-century farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The farmhouse came with a very active ghost. She currently lives at both the farm and in the small town of Waterford, VA, with her husband, a black Labrador named Emma, and a cat named Barnibi.

LONG SHADOWS

Tom Smiley signed up as a private in the Confederate army when he was eighteen and quickly came to regret it. Spending the last year of the war in a Union prison scarred him so deeply that even death hasn’t brought freedom from its memory. A ghost in his deserted childhood home, he can’t forget the bloody war and its meaningless losses, or shed his revulsion for his role in the Confederate defense of slavery. But when a young couple moves in and makes his home their own in the early 21st century, trouble erupts—and Tom is forced to not only face his own terrible secret but also come to grips with his family’s hidden wartime history. He finds an unexpected ally in his house’s new owner, Phoebe Hunter, who is both fascinated and frightened by his ghostly presence—and whose discoveries will have momentous consequences for them both.

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Category: On Writing