The Ghost in the Tower: An Episode in Jacobia

by Earl H. Reed

A GHOST never makes the mistake of appearing before more than one person at a time. There may be much logic in this, for the element of mystery, which is one of the essential attributes to comfortable ghostly existence, would be destroyed if that existence should be established at some one time and place by a preponderance of unimpeachable testimony.

There is a ghost in my friend Jacobs’ water tower over in Michigan, or at least there was one there last Christmas eve. To me he was visible most of the time during a long interview I had with him, and to me he had all of the elements of reality. Nobody who reads this narrative will be in a position to dispute his existence, for, so far as I know, he and I were the only occupants of the tower at the time. If my nebulous friend should choose to make himself known to somebody else, it may furnish material for discussion and comparison of experiences in the future, but in the meantime controversy is quite useless.

To those who do not live in the world of romance and errant fancy, the winter landscapes along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan offer few allurements. The sweeping miles of piled and broken ice, the bleak and desolate bluffs, with their pale brows—fringed with naked trees—in moody relief against the dull skies, that are flecked with the white forms of the roving winter gulls, seem to repel every thought except that of hoped for creature comforts in some human habitation beyond. If it were not for these distant aureoles of hope—mirages though they often are—how gray and dreary the world would be.

Notwithstanding a love of Nature in her sterner moods, it was not for this that I journeyed to my friend’s country retreat in the winter time. I knew that warm hearted hospitality awaited me in the little farm house, nestled among the knolls back of the bluffs.

High up on one of the hills of “Jacobia,” the tower bares its lofty brow to the blasts of the gales. The huge structure seems calmly to defy the winter winds whistling through its upper casements and pounding against its sturdy sides. The swirling snows envelop its weather scarred top in the darkness, and an atmosphere of loneliness and isolation seems to pervade the great bulk, silhouetted against the flying legions of shredded and angry clouds, scudding across the gloomy and storm embattled skies at night.

The storm that had lasted all day subsided during the evening, and the skies cleared, although a mournful wind still moved over the drifted snows. The genial glow of the Yule Tide spirit was in the little farm house. The small evergreen tree that stood in the front room had been cut on the bluffs and brought through the storm during the day. Its candle-lighted branches had been divested of the conventional gauze bags of popcorn, nuts and candy, much of which was now scattered over the floors, and the little ones, in whose hearts lived the happy illusions of childhood, had hung long stockings about in places where they thought that the expected Patron Saint would be most apt to find them. Their melodious saxophone band had become silent, and their tired loving mother had got them off to bed.

Melancholy reflections, that sometimes creep into older minds with Christmas memories of years that are gone, led me out over the moon-silvered hills for a walk.

There was a weird charm in the cold shadowed forest and the strange stillness of the sheltered hillsides. A subtle witchery brooded over the familiar landscapes in their robes of white. I spent some time in a dark nook listening to a sad old owl, located somewhere up among the grapevine tangles and sassafras trees on a hill about a quarter of a mile away. Periodically he sent forth his loud and dismal wail into the darkness. Like a wild cry of mockery to the world of a soul in torment, the sepulchral notes echoed through the woods and mingled with the low moanings of the wind rhythms among the dead clinging leaves and bare branches.

It was nearly midnight when I approached the tower on my way back. Many times during my visits the thought had occurred to me that it was an ideal habitation for a ghost. The maze of timbers, water pipes, wires, and open winding stairways that led up to various landings in the successive octagonal rooms, on the way to the upper chamber of the tall edifice, seemed to provide a perfect environment for a discriminating specter. There was every facility for concealment, and for sudden and vivid apparition when desired. The height of the vast interior would permit of majestic upward sweeps of a wraithy shape into the darkness above, and dissolution into the overhanging gloom. The arrangement of the stairways would enable a phantom to await the coming of whoever was to be haunted, upon any one of the floors, without being visible from the one above or below it.