Ghost Story ~ A Sequel ~

October's a time for haunted houses, ghosties, witches, goblins, werewolfs and things that go bump in the night. Some ghost stories just aren't that scary though, like the one that I told here and the same one that my sister Stacey told over here. Both of these stories are about Karen, the ghost of a little girl that was a common place sight in our house and on the acreage were we grew up. We lived, as both stories tell, outside of a remote farming community in the northeast mountains of Oregon were everyone knows everyone and there are many family connections. As we grew up, my siblings and I all moved away, as did our parents. Mom is gone now, but buried in the old cemetary, home again, next to Grandpa and Grandma. In the last few years, three of us have moved back to our home state, dragging our families with us. Dad has come back, too. My brother, Todd, has actually moved back to our hometown where our roots run deep. You may be asking what all this has to do with a ghost story, and I am here to tell you - NOTHING! I got just a little off track, but it's easy to do when you feel so strongly about home.
Okay, back to the ghost story, here we go now...
Like I said, this is a small community, and really in our county and the neighboring county, we all know each other and all seem to have some family connection somehow. (My husband teases us that our family tree has no branches, it just goes straight up. How Rude!!) Our old "homestead" is now owned by a man that my oldest sister graduated with. His little sister was a good friend of mine, and our families were friends. My aunt was at a family reunion picnic this past summer and ended up visiting with a woman who is somehow distantly related and turns out is dating Brian, the man who owns our old place. My aunt told her that her sister (my mom) and family used to own Brians place. The two hadn't been dating a real long time at this point and this gal told my aunt that she wasn't sure what to think of him. She thought there was a possiblity that he drank too much, because he insists that his place is HAUNTED by a little GIRL. "Oh my goodness," said my aunt in shock. "You need to talk to my neices!" Now, you know, we always knew that Karen was not a figment of our imaginations, that she was really there and that all of us couldn't be crazy, but what an affirmation this is. It gives me the goosebumps...Karen is real and she is still there, twenty-two years after I last stepped foot on our little farm.