Uncle George

What Happened to George?

Shortly after Freda and I were married we spent a night with her grandparents who lived in Wizard Wells, Texas in an old house that looked like the set for the Munsters. It was a spooky looking old house, three stories high and sat on a small hill.

Actually, her grandmother had died and her grandfather had married the lady who owned the house. Her parents had owned the house and she moved back when they died.

We were sitting in the living room after dinner and suddenly the dog jumped up, looked up the stairs and began to growl. He started up the stairs and got about half way before we heard some thumping upstairs. The dog whirled and raced back to crouch behind her grandfather's chair.

The lady casually said, "Don't pay George any mind, he's always making noises."

I hadn't seen anyone else since we arrived so I asked, "George who?"

"Oh, George the ghost," she replied casually. "He lives in the attic and has been here since before I was born. I used to go up in the attic and play dolls with him when I was little."

The downstairs was a large living room or parlor as they called them when it was built, the kitchen, dining room and master bedroom. There were four bedrooms on the seconds floor and the third floor had never been finished. Our bedroom was on the second floor and we weren't sure if we really wanted to stay there. But it was twenty miles into Jacksboro and the lady assured us that we were perfectly safe.

It's the only time we ever slept in an actual feather bed, mattress, cover and all was stuffed with feathers. You didn't get on it, you got in it. Before we got in bed, I hooked a chair back under the door knob so it couldn't be opened. We didn't hear George any more and after giggling about it for a bit, we fell asleep. Next morning we got up, the door was still closed but the chair had been moved back to where it had been.

I explored the house the next morning before we left and found sliding doors in the backs of all the closets so one could travel from one of the bedrooms to another one without ever going out into the hall. There was also a tunnel that ran from the basement down the hill to under the barn where you could come up through a trapdoor.

Freda's grandfather died a few months later so we never got a chance to go back. I was down there fifteen or twenty years later and the house had burned. Wonder what happened to George.

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