Emily Paine Carter

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[Part One ran last week and is posted at www.roanoke.com/Neighbors.]

Vanderbilt Law Professor Carol Swain's recollection had chilled my blood a few degrees: she told me of a menacing ghost "out to scare" her from Monterey. She was one of Roanoke College's first guests at the mansion.

College associate professor Tom Carter (no relation) e-mailed another report: a former RC professor said she had awakened to "muffled sounds, rather like a loud radio." When she and Carol happened to be placed at the same dining table, they indeed had something to talk about.

"Well," I remarked to Carol in a phone interview, "it's small comfort, but a screaming ghost doesn't sound like easygoing, kind Katherine Burke [the previous longtime owner] or her daughter Ryan Walker."

"It's an old house; maybe someone before them," Carol suggested.

(Sadly, recalled Burke daughter Katie B. Moushegian, "Mama B." was predeceased by her husband Richard Sr., who was killed in 1967 by a hit-and-run driver on Salem's East Main Street. Ryan died of complications from diabetes.)

Would Katie and brother Richard Burke Jr. wish to hear my reports? And allow publication? Such revelations are a delicate matter; some folks demand privacy, as paranormal investigator Jammie Spradlin had stressed ("Front Porch," Oct. 5). Would I sound mean-spirited to this family I loved? Tarnish their -- and our -- treasured memories: festive holidays, parties, long visits, sweet Katie's parlor wedding ... ?

A call to Katie in Atlanta quickly banished my concerns. "Wonderful! I'm so glad you're writing this!" she exclaimed. "I never told anyone; I always felt something, especially after Mama died -- not evil, but comforting. Like I wasn't alone.

"I'd brushed off 'funny feelings' over the years; I didn't want to sound crazy. But I'd wondered about that 'company room' and two others ...

"And as a child many times I'd see 'things' running, out of the corner of my eye." At this I shared Carter's reports of "black, floating spheres." (His class' 2006 investigation there "found nothing to confirm a haunting, but ... enough to keep the question open.")

Also not wanting "to sound crazy," Richard Jr. had not told Katie of his "repeated and repeated and repeated" childhood dream. "I could actually bring it on! All I had to do was look in the parlor fireplace and act mad, then that night I'd dream of being knocked down and pulled into the fireplace."

Another frequent dream came unbidden: a black-caped Grim Reaper chasing him around the house. (Here I remembered Roanoke College visiting artist Hunt Slonem's bizarre dreams in Monterey.)

Richard's girlfriend Marna Akers added her daughter Donna Lazenby's story: "After Katherine died Sept. 27, 2000, we wanted all-out decorating for our last Christmas in the house. Donna (now 51) was alone working on the parlor. She turned around and saw Katherine standing there!

"Donna had only met her briefly, so she knew her face but not her wardrobe. Yet she described exactly what Katherine wore; I knew she had those clothes.

"We always felt old souls are in old houses. We kidded that we brought Katherine along with the grandfather clock when we moved from our apartment -- the [Monterey's] old slave quarters -- to Shawsville. The [clock] weights and all had been removed, but it chimed anyway!"

Katie had mused, "Ghosts, spirits: these things are there for a reason. Maybe they want only family around? Or maybe we're to help 'them' along their path?"

I remembered Carol Swain's reasoning as she read me Psalm 139: " 'God sent me there ... ' Maybe he wanted me to go there, then to tell, in order to get that house blessed."

But, Gentle Reader, I still pulled my afghan closer.