Ghosts. Do I believe in ghosts? I was raised with ghosts, or at least the possibility of ghosts. Even the disciples had heard of ghosts (see Matthew 14:26 and Mark 6:49), so ghosts are nothing new.
I've never seen a ghost (that I know of). I've certainly looked for them. I have been on several ghost hunts at purportedly haunted spots. I've encountered little in the way of seeing ghosts. Not that I am a skeptic, though, mind you. I still believe that they are possible.
Now, I have had one ghostly encounter at my ancient Masonic Lodge building (built in 1823) in Franklin, Tennessee. It was while I was Master of the Hiram Lodge Number Seven in 1990. One day in the middle of the day I went into the Lodge building to retrieve some of my notes from a meeting. I unlocked the door and went to the second floor of the three story building. I was getting my notes when I heard some one go stomping across the third floor above me and out in the stairway. I thought immediately that someone was trying to scare me and that they would shortly appear on the stair, but it dawned on me that I had unlocked the door to let myself into the Lodge building - there could be no one else in there but me! At that realization every hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I bolted for the stair case, the only way, other than the fire escape, out of the building. I darted down the stair to the first floor and out the front door as quick as a wink. Only when I was safely in the street did I turn around to see if anyone or anything was pursuing me. There was no one.
I was virtually raised on ghost stories. That came about because I grew up on a large farm and the field hands were full of scary stories that I simply absorbed like a sponge. The greatest ghost story teller was Hardy Britton, and his greatest ghost story was the Natchez Trace ghost. Hardy passed it off to be the honest truth, and I believe him, because whenever he told the story, every detail was always the same over a period of several years.
The Natchez Trace ghost story starts out in the 1950's when Hardy and his first wife were given a tenant farmer's house to live on Temple Road just up a little piece from its intersection with Old Natchez Trace Road. Old Natchez Trace Road follows the path of the original Natchez Trace through a portion of Williamson County, Tennessee. The Old Natchez Trace Road winds along the Harpeth River from Old Hillsboro Road past Temple Road, then Moran Road, until it dead ends into Sneed Road. This narrow, paved, two-lane road is just a few miles long.
As Hardy would tell it he had just recently moved into the house on Temple Road when he first encountered the ghost. The ghost first manifested itself in the daylight as a light about the size of a softball that started following his car one day as he turned onto Old Natchez Trace off Temple Road. The ball of light was hovering alongside his car just outside his driver's side window. Hardy sped up - so did the light. Hardy slowed down - so did the light. Hardy drove really fast and the light kept up with him until he reached Old Hillsboro Road at which point the light crossed that road and disappeared into the bushes on the far side. Hardy then turned on Old Hillsboro Road to New Hillsboro Road and circled back to his home by coming down Sneed Road to the other end of Old Natchez Trace. After he turned onto Old Natchez Trace the light met him again at about Moran Road and followed him home. It went on the other side of the wall as he pulled into his garage.
After that the light was constantly showing up at his home and it seemed to prefer daylight hours. Hardy came home one afternoon to find his wife stuffing pillows in all the widows to try to keep the light out. She had found the light inside the oven!
One of the creepiest manifestations of the ghost did take place at night. One evening Hardy and his family heard the screaming of a woman coming from the River at about the area where Temple Road intersects Old Natchez Trace. The screaming sound frightened everyone into the house. They heard the screaming moving across the field moving closer to the house. The screaming stopped as it reached the edge of the yard but Hardy and his family could hear the sound of the wire fence crying as if someone or something was climbing over it. They then heard a slapping thump described by Hardy as if someone had dropped a side of beef on their concrete front porch, and this sound was accompanied by a tremendously terrible odor of something dead. After a while they heard the fence crying again as what ever it was climbed back over and started screaming again its way back to the river.
I spent many a night in my teens carrying dates out to ghost hunt at the Harpeth River. We would pull over by the side of the river at the intersection of Old Natchez Trace and Temple Road and wait, but nothing ever manifested itself.
Other strange happenings have been witnesses by others in that area. I was told that a famous country music person that once lived on Moran Road saw a woman ride on a horse up out of a pond. A school chum of mine who lived on Sneed Road Close to the Harpeth River told me stories of how they had a ghost that walked around in the pea gravel out side their house at night. They verified this by raking the gravel smooth and finding foot prints in the gravel in the morning.
Do these stories establish that there are such things as ghosts? No. I can vouch for only for my exotic experience at the Masonic Lodge. I also believe that Hardy was telling the truth. You just can't make a story like that up - I mean, ghost lights in your oven? That's just too weird to make up.
So do ghosts exist? Who can say? Perhaps what I heard in the Masonic Lodge was my imagination, but I don't think so. Many others have heard footsteps and voices in that old Lodge building. I still haven't seen a ghost, but I'm far from ready to say that ghosts aren't real.