The Old House Where the Dead Will Not Rest

But the specter of the young girl who died while fleeing to her forbidden love eventually changed Mrs. Woodlock’s fear to pity. “Rose was 15 when she fell in love with one of the servants and became pregnant,” Mrs. Woodlock explained. Her aunt forbade her to marry below her class and locked Rose in a room on the third floor. She fell to her death while trying to climb out a window to elope with the father of her unborn child.”

Mrs. Woodlock was deeply shaken when, while painting a picture of the stairway where she saw the woman in black, the image of the young girl appeared on her canvass. “I didn’t paint the girl in,” she insisted. “It was then that I realized she was a lost soul – the poor little girl could never find her way to heaven. I understood then that I shouldn’t be frightened of ghosts, because they are the ones in trouble, not us. They need our help.”

Mrs. Woodlock sought the help of a clergy to put Rose soul to rest. They each prayed in the room from which she fell, but to no avail – the family still heard the child’s footsteps echoing through their home. At the suggestion of a psychic, Mrs. Woodlock decided she could help Rose’s soul find its way to heaven. “I did a painting called “Rose’s Wish,” she said. “I painted Rose with her lover, and in her arms was the child she was not allowed to have.” When the painting was completed, says Mrs. Woodlock, the footsteps and all traces of Rose’s ghost vanished forever from the home. But the spirits of less tragic figures continued to haunt the mansion. One of them, strangely, was a cat.”

“Once, I had a class of 60 metaphysics students visiting, and many of them said they felt a small furry animal on the corner of a bed,” Mrs. Woodlock recounted. “Even the skeptics in the group, were shocked when they saw an indentation in the quilt that was warm to the touch.” Her days in the mansion now in the past, Mrs. Woodlock says she had learned a lot from life in a haunted home. “It opened up a whole new dimension for me,” she said. “I know now that death is not final.”